Rumors of spring say Google is trialling Tilera chips
Rumor: The grebes of Mountain View speak loudly
Apr 13, 2011 in Chips, Efficiency, Finance, Microprocessors, Rumors, Servers, theintertubes
The birds of spring are particularly active this year, and the return of the reticulated grebes to Minnesota after their yearly sojourn to Mountain View is full of news. This year, they bring news of airfields, 100 zeros, and 100 core chips.
Feeding mackerel McNuggets to the grebes is always a good way to dig up news in the semiconductor field, and this year, we had to go through almost four supersize buckets before we got a tip. One particularly bloated bird walked back to the water, turned to a friend, and said, “I do like it better here, Mountain View just isn’t the same since Google stared looking to efficient chips. I can’t keep the webbing between my toes warm any more, next year I’ll probably go to my sister’s condo in Sunnyvale.”
This got me curious, so I asked him what he meant. His response was that Google is trialling boxes from Tilera, If you recall, last time Tilera gave an update, they were talking all about the cloud, and plain servers made by Quanta, not pretty showpieces. Quanta makes inexpensive servers, and they make lots and lots of them. Quanta also doesn’t make a box unless it has orders for lots and lots of them. It is all about huge volumes for ODMs like this.
When pressed for specifics, all that reticulated grebe would say was that Google is trailing the boxes, so this means that there hasn’t been a huge order placed yet, a trial is just that. Given the Quanta relationship, it is pretty certain that someone is either buying, or about to buy a lot of them though. Google fits that description well, and Facebook is already there, and there are many others facing similar problems where lots of small cores is the answer. Then again, you know what they say about how reticulated grebes jump to conclusions.S|A
so what? don’t you figure G is trying a lot of different hardware? wouldn’t it be irresponsible if they weren’t?
a little company trying to push a disruptive technology needs to put all their wood behind one arrow. but a big company in a dominant position needs to have a finger in every pie, to have wood behind quivers of arrows. and a metaphor in every pot…
NIce, since we have begun seeing servers from Tilera. Would be really interesting to know if their way, is a better performance system than others for google. Hope Google will tell, if they do change.
I remembered that google made their own switches. Maybe this is the case.
Im thinking the technology age as been put to halt by the commanding few people who want control it all, thats why news is slow in the tech world and nothing truely new and invinitive is coming anymore. Just 3d/i-shite rehashed rubish.
not agree tech is being held back? I seen nothing new and interesting for at least a decade
Lucky you, haven’t seen anything [truly] new since the 80′s; I kid thee not.
Question is, for which servers will it serve. Routers? NAS?
Googlears trailing servers on trial… traumatic.
AMD WILL FAIL WHATEVER THE WILL-oh, wait, not here.
…
Intel ftw?
yes
Dude, this was a great article! Where else can you read up on what the birdies say?
I hate it when Carlie writes about something that isn’t about nVidia/ AMD.
Ya I bet Charlie is in stitches as our brains get turned inside out by this article. fun read.