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Google doesn't talk about its server operations very often; most of what we know boils down to one word: "big." The company lifted the lid ever-so-slightly yesterday (no April Fool),
and gave the world a peek inside a data center that's normally locked up tighter than Fort Knox. The results (and the company's focus) might surprise you.
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One of the pleasures of reading the The Server Room is taking part in various threads on the theme of "lessons learned." So when we hit upon the idea of distilling the collective wisdom of the Ars forums into an article on virtualization for a broader audience, the first thing we thought of was, "let's ask everyone to share their biggest virtualization deployment mistakes." The results so far are worth checking out for anyone who's about to make the jump to a virtualized server room.
I'll summarize just one of the issues highlighted so far, to give you a sense of the discussion.
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If you've got even a passing interest in the subject, you're undoubtedly aware that true progress in general-purpose x86 multicore programming has been slow and uncertain. Intel and AMD may
have made the technology affordable—a quad-core system could easily have cost thousands of dollars just five years ago, compared to the low hundreds today—but software development has
lagged well behind the pace with which we've seen new multicore chips.
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For a product whose success determines whether AMD lives or dies, there's been surprisingly little said about Shanghai of late. Granted, there has been no shortage of semiconductor news,
economic blues, various lawsuits, and the company's self-division to occupy the digital press, but when all is said and done, AMD's future rests significantly on Shanghai's ability to
compete in the server market. Server processors typically carry much higher premiums than their desktop counterparts; the revenue-per-CPU that AMD derives in this market is extremely
important to the company's bottom line. With Nehalem-EP on the way, and Shanghai now established and available, what's the consenus on the core?
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A pair of Argentinean researchers has demonstrated a BIOS-level exploit that allowed the duo to potentially run a great deal of invisible code—which could remain installed even if the hard drive
was wiped. Much has been made of this last bit, but malware attacks against the Basic Input Output System are anything but new.
The CIH (Chernobyl) virus that first appeared in 1998 was
capable of bricking a system by rewriting critical boot information in the computer's BIOS with garbage output. Even if you dodged this bullet, CIH's primary payload rewrote the first 1MB
of the hard drive. If Chernoybl successfully activated on D-day, the best outcome a user could hope for was an apparently wiped hard drive. At worst, system repair involved physically
pulling the BIOS chip and installing another.
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They may be advertised as speeding deterrents to city councils and safety tools to worried parents, but according to another school of thought, red-light cameras are all about making
money. It's not clear whether the systems are always pitched as profit generators from day one or if the city government, confronted with a sudden jump in ticket revenue, makes its own
decision to shorten yellow lights. The correlations, however, are there. There's weak evidence that the red-light cameras reduce accidents at certain intersections (though the severity
of those accidents may actually rise), but there's no doubt that they provide a major source of revenue at a time when cities are hurting for funds.
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Ever since AMD announced its plan to split itself into two separate companies, there have been legal questions surrounding the move. AMD's x86 cross-licensing agreement with Intel has always
required that Sunnyvale maintain a certain corporate structure in order to continue to manufacture x86-compatible microprocessors. When it unveiled its plans to spin off The Foundry Company
(now Globalfoundries), AMD confidently maintained that its plan avoided any licensing entanglements or issues Intel might seek to raise.
AMD has filed a form 8-K with the SEC, advising the agency of a cross-licensing dispute between itself and Intel. In discussions with Ars, however, AMD has also insisted that neither it nor Globalfoundries actually
requires the cross-licensing agreement in order to design or manufacture x86-compatible microprocessors. That's a surprising claim that runs against the general understanding of what the
AMD/Intel cross-licensing agreement allows or contains. Has Intel's ownership/stranglehold on the right to manufacture x86 processors been broadly misconstrued for years?
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In a case that has stretched out for almost ten years, Hynix and Rambus have come to an agreement "in principle" on the royalty rates and infringement penalties that the DRAM manufacturer must pay.
In late February, Hynix disclosed that, while the US District Court for the Northern District of California had denied Rambus' attempt get an injunction that would prevent Hynix from
selling DRAM in the United States, the court affirmed a prior ruling ordering Hynix to pay Rambus various damages and penalties. The two companies then entered a negotiation process; the
results of that process were announced on Wednesday, March 11.
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The cast of characters that make regular appearances in our coverage could be in for a shakeup this year, as a new list from credit rating agency Moody's indicates that a number of household names in the technology, media, retail, and automotive sectors could default on their debt. Palm, AMD, Freescale Semiconductor, Unisys, and Blockbuster are just a few of the names on Moody's "Bottom Rung" roster of the 283 US companies that are most likely to go bust. Moody's describes the members of this list, which also includes communications companies like Clearwire and retailers like Eddie Bauer, as having "high default risk and weak liquidity," and the agency suggests that up to 45 percent of these companies could default on their debt this year.
Of course, a default doesn't mean that these companies will go out of business, but it does mean, at a minimum, that their shareholders would be wiped out and bondholders will take a hit. If a company defaults but is able to secure financing for a bankruptcy, it can keep running without interruption while it reorganizes; only if the credit markets—which are actually tightening back up at the moment—were in such bad shape that no financing was available, would the company be forced into liquidation.
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Sun announced the availability of new flash storage systems equipped with Intel X25-E SLC (Single Level Cell) SSD drives on Wednesday. The new launch is part of a sustained effort on Sun's
part to push flash storage and its Open Storage initiative across the market; the company has bet on SSDs as the future home of enterprise data systems and it isn't looking back. SSD
technology has been aggressively marketed by just about everyone as The Next Big Thing, but jumping for Intel's X25-E SLC drives may not be the best approach to gaining or holding market
share in a depressed economy.
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Intel's netbook dominance has yet to be challenged in a serious way, but at least one business analyst thinks that's going to change in the next 2-3 years. The
netbook market is extremely new; Atom itself isn't even a year old—if the IT industry were to break with the existing Intel+Microsoft model, the emergence
of a new product type combined with a deep economic recession could be the perfect opportunity to do it.
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It's launched, online, and the now-independent Globalfoundries is searching for its non-AMD customers. CEO Doug Grose is reportedly visiting Taiwan to seek
relationships with companies that may be currently contracting with TSMC or UMC for their semiconductor foundry needs. If true, this would raise questions
regarding the future of AMD's relationship with TSMC. That company currently fabricates Radeon processors for Advanced Micro Devices, and while Globalfoundries
and AMD are now separate entities, they are separate entities that remain joined at the hip. Globalfoundries will probably take over fabbing ATI Radeon
processors at some point, but is not yet believed to have the bulk silicon production in place to do so.
DigiTimes cites the usual "industry sources" in reporting the rumor of Grose's imminent visit to Taiwan and further suggests that Globalfoundries receives (or
will receive) preferential treatment from IBM thanks to its membership in that company's foundry alliance. While it's true that ties between IBM and AMD go back
years, Chartered, Freescale, and Samsung are all part of the same IBM-led organization and would supposedly have access to the same technological
breakthroughts/benefits.
In the run-up to Globalfoundries launch, AMD portrayed the coming spinoff as one in which AMD would only initially be the new foundry's single customer. Grose's
trip to Taiwan, if true, would indicate that Globalfoundries is wasting no time when it comes to finding customers, but raises the question of whether or not the
new company's search could jepoardize AMD's existing relationships before Globalfoundries can take over its partner's full line of manufacturing needs.
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The semiconductor industry has been taking a sustained pounding for months, but there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Taiwanese market analysts expect
TSMC and UMC to report even worse financial results for February than they have to date, but to improve thereafter. That's good news for both foundry companies;
sales figures have plummeted since August 2008.
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Earlier this week, we covered AMD's successful splitting of itself into two separate companies. We've now got the name of that second company, and it is—wait for it—
GLOBALFOUNDRIES. I guess a space, singular noun, and/or proper capitalization were just too old-fashioned for a hip, edgy, processor foundry. This is the first
and last time I'll be typing the name in all capital letters and I hope to God AMD didn't actually pay anyone to come up with this name. The newly named
Globalfoundries will be headed by Doug Grosse and AMD's chairman of the board and former CEO, Hector Ruiz.
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Asset Smart is finished. On Monday, March 2, AMD divested itself of certain manufacturing and corporate assets and formed those assets into a second company.
Henceforth, the Fabrication Facilities Formerly Known as AMD will be the property of the imaginatively named Foundry Company.
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