Atom Processors Set New Record For Power-Efficient Sorting 92
schliz writes "German researchers have set a new record for energy efficient data sorting with a system based on netbook processors and Solid State Disks. The system, dubbed EcoSort, more than tripled the power efficiency of former record holders, leading one of its developers to claim: 'In the long run, many small, power-efficient and cooperating systems are going to replace the so far used, heavy weighted ones.' Records were defined by 'Sort Benchmark,' which was created by missing Microsoft scientist Jim Gray and was now managed by representatives of companies like Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Not much in the article (Score:5, Informative)
Good to see that Jim's work lives on...meanwhile, this is about all you get in the article:
"EcoSort set records in the Joule category, which measured the amount of energy required to sort either 10GB, 100GB or 1TB of records.
It reached a maximum efficiency of 36,400 records sorted per joule for 100GB of data, using an Intel Atom 330 processor, 4GB of RAM, and four 256GB SSDs by flash vendor Super Talent Technology.
In 2009, a team from the University of Melbourne had the 100GB record of 11,600 records sorted per joule using the OzSort system, which comprised a 2.6GHz AMD processor, 4GB of RAM, seven 160GB 7200 RPM SATA hard disks and a Linux operating System."
Sure, this is the way things are going, but until prices come down we won't be seeing SSDs replacing HDDs; work fine for the desktop, tho'
Re:Not much in the article (Score:2, Informative)
More details are here [sortbenchmark.org]. Looks like it's a tweaked merge-sort.
Re:why is the Via C7 not more popular? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. The bottleneck for ssh probably becomes the HMAC - this thread is enlightening [mindrot.org]. SHA HMAC is afaict considered difficult to accelerate with Via's implementation, though a patch may exist. With a stock (AES-accelerated) build, software MD5 is quicker.
Re:why is the Via C7 not more popular? (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry - although I mentioned that the Via's great for a home/office encrypted NAS, I perhaps wasn't clear that this is precisely the application I was talking about. I was just expanding the discussion on power-efficient CPU applications, and implying that, when considering energy efficiency, a low power CPU with dedicated circuitry for popular complex operations might be the way forward.
Re:why is the Via C7 not more popular? (Score:5, Informative)
Erm, no, for developers there have been Linux kernel crypto modules supporting the Via Padlock [logix.cz] included since 2.6.11, and if you don't want them, you can always use the crypto instructions directly. The Java is just an API option provided by Via.
System power is what they measure (Score:4, Informative)