This whole project seems backwards a custom hardware

solution to handle a software problem to use a looney tunes

analogy hey mister you need a house to go with this doorknob.

How about somebody develop a language that works with current

hardware might be easier/cheaper/more likely to succeed.

that would be C

So custom hardware it is then :-p

I had a close look at the Azul systems a while ago, and I was quite impressed once I had got my head round the concept.

Azul's argument appears to be - offload your CPU processing work into a common "pool" of CPUs which can execute the instructions for you, and feed back the results to your current version of websphere, jboss, weblogic, tomcat,... whatever.

We all understand that a SAN centralises the management of storage, so why not have the same thing for CPU power?

It may not be as backward as you might think.

"So custom hardware it is then"

only if your programmers suck :-P

Actually many of you guys doubting this stuff are getting it completely wrong.

The Azul hardware is great kit. This is nothing like the Java chips that Sun and other were working on. These are chips designed with a instruction set applicable to any VM environment - so not just Java - just there's only a Java client available at the moment. I speculate, but perhaps they'll release a .NET client at some point??

Anyway the key thing is that we evalauted one of these and found it would give us a HUGE amount of scalability in a small, easy-to-install and VERY VERY data-centre friendly format. We estimated each 5u unit was roughly equivalent to about 25 of the quad core app-server boxes that we currently use, or at least for the web app we tested!

Also from a virtualisation point-of-view these are great - you can back all your web-sites with Azul and deal with spikes in load on one site seamlessly by using spare capacity. Far more effective and dynamic than trying to pre-allocate set numbers of servers to each site in advance.

stop double spacing your comments

it makes them impossible to read

and you are no longer in school

so we are not counting the number of

pages

you

fucking

write

write

double

spaced

in courier

14

Looks like they are not in that bad shape:

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=46884#239676