DFI’s two systems on one motherboard
This is a VERY cool new motherboard from DFI. It features a P45 chipset motherboard along with an NVIDIA Ion motherboard and Intel Atom CPU on a single board with an integrated gigabit Ethernet switch. It comes with a USB and audio KVM switch as well. The system allows you to shut down or suspend your high performance P45 system and leave the NVIDIA ION chipset and Intel Atom CPU running in low power mode. The video quoted 30 watts which isn’t all that low power unfortunately.
Only downside to this that I can see is the $399 list price. Hopefully more motherboard makers will build a product like this and get the price to come down. What I want is a P55 chipset motherboard and the next generation PineTrail-D Atom system as the second system.
What I would like much more than this, would be for it to be a dual CPU system, where both CPUs had identical capabilities and instruction sets (to keep the OS from bugging out, as per my most recent blog here), but one was something like an Atom and the other was much more high powered, a Core i7 or Xeon. Basically, “speed step” taken to an extreme. But on the other hand, I suspect that would not have any real advantages over “speed step” to begin with.
J.Ja
Having dual system images is more important than having dual CPUs for a workstation. Dual CPUs don’t allow you to independently boot and shut down the two systems.
I would actually prefer a high-end quad-core system based on an X58 or P55 and a low-end Clarkdale (due early next year) dual-core system which can drop to 35W power consumption or less and deliver much higher performance than an Atom system. What is needed is a custom chassis that allows you to put in two motherboards.
@George Ou
While I am not a big fan of desktop virtualization as a general practice, I would much rather have a dual CPU system (which would cost less than a dual MB system) and use VMs for any secondary usage (testing, isolation, etc.) than have two OS’s booting in the same chassis.
J.Ja
Almost every new computer is a dual-CPU systems, and it’s called a dual-core processor
. Some of us have quad-CPU systems and we’ll soon have six-core Nehalems by the end of the year which acts as if it is a 12-CPU system. The fact that it is running on a single CPU die or two dies on the same CPU package on a single CPU socket is irrelevant as far as performance is concerned. Having two physical processors and sockets however is VERY expensive.
Having two motherboards means you can power one system down entirely and have a 20-30 watt system running as a dedicated server or client device for P2P applications running at night. That beats having a 100+ watt system running 24×7.
Also, when I’m gaming, I want a completely separate computer handling things like IM. I do not want it interfering even at the slightest with my game play.
@George Ou
Yeah, but even a dual quad core system will drop the CPU freqs when the system is not under heavy usage, right? Isn’t that the whole point of that “speed step” stuff Intel has been baking into the CPUs? If that’s the case, other than your gaming scenario (which makes sense for two systems to me), I don’t see how 2 seperate PCs would beat 1 PC with an extra physical CPU to give it the extra horsepower for VMs, in terms of usefulness.
J.Ja
When I quote you 100+ watts, that’s for IDLE power consumption where the CPU and graphics adapter have already dropped to their lowest state. The main power consumption culprit with a high performance computer is the graphics card. Switchable graphics on the desktop may help this problem, but no one is doing it on the desktop. So at the end of the day, if you want a network attached storage server running 24×7 along with a few other virtual machine servers and workstations, having it on a dedicated motherboard and CPU running a separate physical image is the best solution.
Also, what happens if you don’t want to take the performance penalty of virtualization on your main rig? What happens if you need to update the host operating system and you can reboot because one of the guests is running? That’s the benefit of having two separate bare metal images.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love virtualization on the server end and I use the technology heavily. I also use virtualization on the workstation for test machines. But I still have a requirement for separate bare metal images that have zero interdependencies.
@George Ou
I didn’t realize that the graphics card could consume so much power just sitting there with Outlook open. That’s nuts! They need to have those GPUs do something like “speed step” too, so they can draw a lot less power for basic chores, but still have the strength to run the games, too.
Sure, there is a performance penalty of using a VM on the desktop, but I think that given a choice between a seperate motherboard, and an extra physical CPU (which would be a bit cheaper, I think), the extra CPU would more than absorb the performance hit of the VM on the host system, and a VM running on a super fast host would still beat a VM running on a low power CPU. The *real* VM performance issues, from my experience, have to do with two OS’s competing for the disk, particularly when the VM starts using swap file. Since the two motherboard approach would have you doubling up on RAM and hard drives anyways, I’d say that by putting the VM on a seperate disk and making sure that the host has lots of RAM, you’d be addressing the performance issues pretty well.
Overall, we havfe two different viewpoints because we have seperate needs. Yesterday, I played Civ IV for 20 minutes while on the phone; a few days before that, I played Chess Titans while on a conference call. That was the first time in over two weeks that I even looked sideways at a game. My needs are development, testing, etc., and VMs are the obvious answer in that scenario. Although, now that you mention it, your hybrid machine idea is not too bad for my needs, since I have a server that is nearly completely idle all of the time. Then again, if all goes well with the project I am working on, I hope that server gets busy quickly!
J.Ja
@Justin James
The GPU is already doing power saving mode, and it’s better with the latest generation. The older cards used to idle the system at 150W. Peak power consumption on the GPU can easily mean that the whole system jumps to near 300W at the socket.
“and an extra physical CPU (which would be a bit cheaper, I think),”
And there’s your mistake
. You don’t need an extra PSU. You can share a single PSU between two motherboards with a $13 24-PIN ATX Y splitter. The cost of an Atom motherboard and CPU is about $70 and it might get even cheaper with PineTrail-D. You can find cheap Dual-core Core2 (branded as Celeron) and a motherboard for under $100 when they’re on sale. So this is even cheaper than buying a dual-socket motherboard and an extra CPU.
Now the fact that you are running a separate PHYSICAL server proves my point
. Two motherboards in a single chassis and PSU would be far more efficient than two separate boxes and two separate PSUs not to mention less expensive and far less clutter. I think in the future, all hardcore workstations and gaming rigs will need to have dual systems. Casual desktops will go strictly to the all-in-one design.
@George Ou
Yeah, that makes sense for a desktop server/PC combo. All the same, it’s such a limited market, I doubt you’ll see many options in this niche for a while.
J.Ja
Drool!!!
I see this as the ultimate LAN box. So wonder DFI has the “LAN Party” moniker on their boards.
@Justin James
I run an i7 right now and can have 3 systems virtually with little problem with the exception of heavy I/O. Perhaps I need to get some RAID setup going. Part of the Problem is that I am using Virtual PC to get hardware enabled virtualization. I still have problems with high I/O knocking performance to the other guest and host systems while the performance is much better than before with an AMD Athlon 64 Proc.
I would still prefer a second on board but physical PC for some of the other functions I would like to do, say for perhaps for Media Center or Vent Server or some other task like web server. While I usually lug around an additional laptop for just such an occasion, the portability of such a system can’t be beat.
I have taken up to 4 systems to a single LAN party in my more reckless youth. Nowadays, not so much, but this is a pretty cool setup. One Laptop for surfing, a spare gamer rig, a main gamer rig, and a file server for all of those files that wouldn’t fit on my gaming rig but should be brought just in case;)
@George Ou
I should have built that mod of 2 in one systems a while ago, I could have the same design only two separate systems. I had the idea, just not the resources. I believe I wanted to put an Atom in the same case as my desktop.