Facebook: Flash Storage in Database

Facebook continue to propel flash NAND memory usage in server and storage through open source implementations. See below more details on Flash Based Database.

“With the advent of flash storage, we are starting to see newer applications that can access data quickly by managing their own dataset on flash instead of accessing data over a network. These new applications are using what we call an embedded database.

“… When database requests are frequently served from memory or from very fast flash storage, network latency can slow the query response time. Accessing the network within a data center can take about 50 microseconds, as can fast-flash access latency. This means that accessing data over a network could potentially be twice as slow as an application accessing data locally. “

Additional technical details at Under the Hood: Building and open-sourcing RocksDB


More about Facebook Propels SSD Flash Storage


Ron

Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.

Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/



 

Facebook’s latest open source effort: a flash-powereddatabase called RocksDB

by Derrick Harris

SUMMARY:

Facebook has open sourced a new embedded database called RocksDB that’s meant to take advantage of all the performance flash has to offer, from right on the application server. It might be a sign of best practices to come.

Facebook is on an open source roll lately, and on Thursday announced its latest open source project — an embedded key-value store called RocksDB. The company uses it to power certain user-facing applications that would suffer too much from having to access an external database over the network and to eliminate the certain problems relating to non-fully utilized IO performance on flash storage devices.

Facebook database engineer Dhruba Borthakur describes the design of and rationale behind RocksDB in some detail in a blog post, but the biggest factor leading to its creation might be the emergence of relatively inexpensive flash storage cards for servers (or, in Facebook’s case, custom-built servers packed entirely with flash).

“With the advent of flash storage, we are starting to see newer applications that can access data quickly by managing their own dataset on flash instead of accessing data over a network. These new applications are using what we call an embedded database.

“… When database requests are frequently served from memory or from very fast flash storage, network latency can slow the query response time. Accessing the network within a data center can take about 50 microseconds, as can fast-flash access latency. This means that accessing data over a network could potentially be twice as slow as an application accessing data locally. “

RocksDB was designed with these new hardware realities in mind, so it can take full advantage of the IOPS potential of flash memory as well as the computing power of many-core servers, Borthakur explains. Facebook has posted the results of a benchmark test running on a Fusion-io-powered server on the RocksDB GitHub page, and claims it’s significantly faster than Google’s LevelDB embedded key-value store.

From a broader IT perspective, RocksDB signals that the shifts in storage and computing economics that made the big data movement possible are now making their way into web application development, albeit using a storage media most organizations would consider using for storing “big data.” Facebook is performance hungry, but it’s also cost-sensitive, and it wouldn’t be storing “close to a petabyte of data across different applications,” as Borthakur writes, if the cost to do so was out of control.

He offered a handful of application types an embedded database like RocksDB is suitable for, including:

1. A user-facing application that stores the viewing history and state of users of a website.

2. A spam-detection application that needs fast access.

3. A graph-search query that needs to scan a data set in realtime.

4. RocksDB can be used to cache data from Hadoop, thereby allowing an app to query Hadoop data in realtime.

5. A message-queue that supports a high number of inserts and deletes.

In fact, Facebook has been finding all sorts of new ways to utilize flash as stepping stone between slow disks on one hand and expensive-but-fast RAM on the other.

Facebook is no doubt an early adopter of flash-heavy application architectures, but it’s also probably serving as a guiding light for other companies and their developers who want to achieve Facebook-like performance. As flash prices continue to drop — and now that Amazon Web Services is offering a whole suite of flash-backed instances on EC2 (the prices of which should also drop) — it’s conceivable we’re approaching an era of ever-better web and mobile applications that communicate with the network and the hard drive as little as possible.

Google and Facebook Shaking Server market

See more about server marketplace at Google, Facebook Top Buyers of Intel Server Chips


and at SSD, Flash, iPad, PC, Tablet, and Servers Architecture

Ron

Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.Semiconductor information and news at - www.maltiel-consulting.com

Google and Facebook Are Shaking Up the Server Market

By TIERNAN RAY 

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748704882404578382574172584946.html?mod=BOL_hpp_dc#printMode

The 'Net giants are shunning traditional suppliers for cheaper, made-to-order hardware.

Hewlett-Packard and Dell, the top two global vendors of server computers, are caught in a whirlwind of change.
The personal-computer market, which generates enormous revenue for both firms, gets most of the attention when the companies' attempts to right their businesses are analyzed. But the humble server, which many assume is the stable part of the computer world, is experiencing far greater change -- change that, in coming years, could pay off in a big way for the duo, or cause them tremendous pain.
Hewlett-Packard (ticker: HPQ) made up 26.5% of worldwide server sales volume in the December quarter; Dell (DELL), 21.3%. Servers handle a myriad of tasks in corporate- and Internet-data centers, from serving up files to desktop computers in offices to processing online purchases to streaming video to tablet computers. Last year, the server market was worth roughly $52.5 billion on shipments of 9.7 million units, according to research firm Gartner.
That's relatively minuscule, compared with 2012 PC shipments of 352 million units. But the corporate market is a bastion of profits that offsets the low margins on PCs.
In the fiscal fourth quarter ended in January, for example, Hewlett-Packard's enterprise group, although not a perfect proxy since it sells networking and storage equipment in addition to servers, accounted for almost 16% of HP's total profit. PCs produced only 3% of the company's earnings, even though they generated greater revenue.
And unlike the personal-computer market, which is fighting tablets and smartphones for attention, servers are constantly finding new uses, and they're not going away anytime soon. "Servers have always been a gluttonous market," says Gartner analyst Jeff Hewitt, meaning the industry just can't get enough of them. Richard Fichera, who follows the industry for Forrester Research, even argues that building server farms is "the élan vital [vital impulse] of modern society."
Fichera and Hewitt agree that a couple of massive changes are under way.
One is that large Internet stars such as Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB) and Amazon.com (AMZN) are building their own servers by picking out parts and having machines assembled to spec by some outfit other than Dell or HP, often one of the Asia-based "original design manufacturers," such as Inventec, Quanta or Wistron. Google and Amazon "have incredibly low-cost infrastructures" as a result of using this commodity hardware, says Fichera.
Public and private organizations, such as schools, government and smaller companies, don't have the resources of a Google, but they're eagerto get the kinds of savings that can come from buying cheap, no-name hardware.

The category of "other," meaning not HP and Dell, made up 35% of server unit shipments in the fourth quarter, up from 31% a year earlier. Hewitt expects the figure to rise this year.
"The substitution of commodity servers for name brands is a real thing," observes Fichera. He cites a "large Wall Street firm" that has more than 75,000 servers, of which 20% are nonbranded. Hewitt says that Google and other nonbrand buyers have "been one of the primary drivers of unit growth" in the server market for some time.
The other trend is toward simple, modular servers -- basically, appliances -- that perform one dedicated task. As Hewitt sees it, the software vendor VMware (VMW) brought about a revolution in servers by allowing companies to use a single machine for several tasks simultaneously. The inadvertent outcome of VMware's software is that some of the server "workloads" -- video serving, database queries -- are now as big as the entire database market in terms of the number of "virtual servers" they employ. That makes it feasible to create specialized, stripped-down servers built for each kind of workload.
And he observes, "Where it gets interesting over the next three to four years is that these low-power processors in our cellphones are all that's needed for certain kinds of server workloads that don't demand a lot of individual CPU horsepower."
Both trends are being helped by the breakdown of the old WinTel regime in computing. Says Hewitt: "For years, if you did what Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) told you to do in terms of product design, you could make money." Now, "You can still listen to Intel, but there are other influences weighing on server design."
HP and Dell realize all this, of course. They hope that some outfits that aren't Google will look to them to wrap their brand and support around the cheaper hardware -- to mainstream it. HP and Dell can certainly build server appliances.
But for the moment, both trends favor the no-name vendors of Asia, along with the Silicon Valley appliance start-ups. "There is market pressure on Dell and HP from both sides," says Hewitt. The outcome, he adds, "will depend, in part, on how they respond and whether they want to end up squeezed into a higher-margin but increasingly lower-volume segment of the market."
THE STAR OF BLACKBERRY'S fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report on Thursday was undoubtedly the phone maker's chief, Thorsten Heins, who resonated calm, confidence, and intelligence as he batted away the frantic questions of the business news anchors. This is a man who will go places.
And what of the business? What we know is that BlackBerry's subscriber base is declining; it fell by three million last quarter. Shipments of the new BlackBerry models are off to a good, but not great, start, with one million shipped in the quarter. And the company produced a surprise profit in the three-month period.
The stock (BBRY), which is up almost 22% this year, trades at just 1.2 times tangible book value, and the company has a still significant cash pile of $2.9 billion. All that probably puts a floor under its shares, around their Thursday close of $14.44. What we don't know is whether sales of the new handsets will speed up or slow down, and by how much. The mobile market is fiercely competitive, with Apple (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics (005930.Korea) dominating sales. We don't know how quickly -- or whether -- subscribers will keep sliding. But the drop last quarter -- the quarter in which BlackBerry introduced new phones -- isn't encouraging.
Probably, earnings estimates will rise in coming weeks as the next new model, the Q10, comes to market. This is a stock that still trades based on the premise that BlackBerry the company can be a profitable third- or fourth-place player in the smartphone market. For now, based on those hopes, the stock will continue to levitate. 

Enlarge Image

Google, Facebook Top Buyers of Intel Server Chips

The link below discuss the top 8 buyers of server chips from Intel. It is interesting to notice the rise of Google and Facebook in the list.



These chips are about 20% of Intel's revenues (Intel: Tremendous Growth of Clouds' Servers ).



Ron
http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/


Intel Confirms Decline of Server Giants HP, Dell, and IBM
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/09/29853/

In 2008, says Intel bigwig Diane Bryant, three familiar names bought far more server chips than any other company on earth. That year, she remembers, HP, Dell, and IBM accounted for 75 percent of the revenue Intel raked in from the sale of processors destined for the beefy computer servers that drive the internet and so much of the software used inside the world’s businesses
Intel sells a vast majority of the world’s server chips, so this was a sure sign that a vast majority of the world’s businesses were buying their servers from HP, Dell, and IBM.
But just four years later, Bryant says, the landscape has completely changed. Today, she explains, eight server makers account for 75 percent of Intel’s server chip revenues, and at least one of those eight doesn’t even sell servers. It only makes servers for itself. “Google is something like number five on that list,” Bryant told us on Monday evening, during a dinner with reporters in downtown San Francisco.


That’s right, Google is likely the world’s fifth largest server maker.
Over a decade ago, Google started designing its own machines for the massive data centers that underpin its web empire, looking to save both power and cost as the empire expanded to epic proportions, and this was only the beginning of a movement away from traditional server sellers such as HP, Dell, and IBM. As Bryant points out, other companies are now buying machines directly from “original design manufacturers,” or ODMs, in Asia, working to cut costs in much the same way. This includes Facebook, and according to a former employee of one large ODM, it includes Amazon as well.
In short, some of the biggest server buyers are cutting out the big-name middlemen. Those ODMs are some of the same companies that manufacture machines on behalf of the HPs and the Dells.
Bryant did not list all eight of Intel’s biggest customers. But she did name Quanta and SuperMicro as ODMs who are “growing up into OEMs” — i.e., original equipment manufacturers that sell directly to server buyers — and she mentioned Wiwynn, the new U.S. subsidiary of ODM Wistron. The whole idea behind Wiwynn is to sell directly to server buyers here in the States.
She also said that new server makers in China, including Huawei, are now having a big effect on the worldwide market.

The Big Switch

In 2008, Diane Bryant left Intel’s server group to take over as the company’s CIO, but in January of this year, she returned to lead the group as vice president and general manager. When she arrived, she didn’t recognize the place.
For one, the name had changed. The server group had morphed into the datacenter and connected systems group, encompassing not only server chips but also storage and networking hardware. But the bigger change was that HP, Dell, and IBM were no longer the dominant forces of years gone by.
Dell and IBM did not immediately respond when asked about Bryant’s view of today’s server market. But an HP spokesperson said her comments were inconsistent with the latest server market stats from research outfit IDC, which still put the combined market share of HP, Dell, and IBM at 73.9 percent, down slightly from 78.2 percent in 2008.

‘Google is something like number five on that list.’
— Diane BryantIt should be noted, however, that research operations such as IDC and Gartner don’t have the best view into direct sales by the ODMs — let alone Google’s highly secretive hardware operation — and these hidden parts of the market are increasingly important. It’s the big web players that are moving away from the HPs and the Dells, and most of these same companies offer large “cloud” services that let other businesses run their operations without purchasing servers in the first place.
To be sure, as the market shifts, HP, Dell, and IBM are working to reinvent themselves. Dell, for instance, launched a new business unit dedicated to building custom gear for the big web players — Dell Data Center Services — and all these outfits are now offering their own cloud services. But the tide is against them.
Google now calls itself one of the world’s largest hardware makers, and Bryant’s comments show just how big it has become. Asked about its relationship with Intel, a Google spokesperson merely said: “We work with a variety of vendors to manufacture the equipment we use in our data centers.” But it has long been an open secret that Google buys directly from Intel — and that it buys so much.
This summer, Urs Hölzle told us that Google designs just about all the servers used in its worldwide network of data centers, and though he declined to discuss where these machines are manufactured, it appears that the company contracts with manufacturers in Asia and elsewhere in the world, providing these builders not only with the server designs but with chips and other hardware purchased from component suppliers such as Intel.


Google Not the Only One

In August, Bryant told us that Google is the only web company that buys chips directly from Intel. But Facebook also designs its own servers, and a source familiar with Facebook’s operation tells us that the company purchases directly from Intel too.
However, the source said, Facebook uses a “just-in-time” purchase model, meaning it does not actually acquire and store the chips itself. Intel sends Facebook’s chips directly to manufacturers such as Quanta and Wistron when they’re needed for manufacturing, the source said.
This means that Facebook avoids getting stuck with a warehouse full of old chips it doesn’t want. It simply buys chips as it needs them.
In any event, Facebook is also a big part of the move away from the HPs and the Dells. It has even “open sourced” its server designs, hoping that others will buy similar gear through the ODMs and drive down prices even further.
The social networking giants shows that the lines between the web players and the ODMs are often blurred. Facebook designs its servers in tandem with the ODMs and other hardware makers, and though it negotiates directly with Intel for chips, the ODMs do all the manufacturing. Which one is the server maker?
Though Bryant did not rank the rest of Intel’s largest server chip customers, we’re guessing that Quanta now sits quite high on the list. According to an ex-Google engineer, Quanta has worked with Google in the past on its custom-built networking gear. Facebook is quite open about its relationship with Quanta. And Quanta itself says it has been selling servers, storage gear, and networking switches to multiple web outfits, which jibes with what an ex-Quanta man has told us.

Typically, the big web companies say very little about who they’re buying gear from. Companies such as Google and Amazon see their hardware operations as a competitive advantage best kept hidden from rivals. But Diane Bryant provides another look behind the scenes. And one thing is for sure: HP, Dell, and IBM aren’t the powers they used to be.

Intel: Tremendous Growth of Clouds' Servers

In an interview with Bloomberg (interview) Diane Bryant, Intel VP states; "Cloud growth is tied to people accessing the Internet.

For every 600 smart phones, every 120 tablets there is a server behind it.

Intel architecture runs 90% share of all the servers in the world.  There is an accelerating demand for big cloud data servers, not just for Google and Facebook data servers, but even from companies in emerging markets in China such as Baidu, Tencent...."


Intel benefited from the server growths already in 2011. Its sales grew 24% in 2011.


See earlier April posts

Top 25 2011 Semiconductor Sales Ranking
"IC Insights' report of the top 25 semiconductor companies (see below) states that Intel grew 24% in 2011 due to the purchase of Infineon's wireless segment. It is likely that the growth of databases and cloud servers (20% of sales, 3x PC segment growth) also added to Intel's growth"  

Also in an Intel, AMD, or ARM Servers?
"The article...about low-power servers doesn't mention Intel's large growth in database servers. Intel had more than $10 billion in revenues from ICs sold into data centers, including servers, storage products, and networking"  

Intel, AMD, or ARM Servers?

The article below about low-power servers doesn't mention Intel's large growth in database servers.  Intel had more than $10 billion in revenues from ICs sold into data centers, including servers, storage products, and networking.

Considering the high power usage by databases, it is not surprising that Intel wants to dominate the low-power servers market.  It is likely that databases and cloud servers  (20% of sales, 3x PC segment growth) added to Intel's growth in 2011.


Ron Maltiel

 

 

Intel to Face Off Against AMD, ARM with New Low-Power Server

http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/servers/296555-intel-to-face-off-against-amd-arm-with-new-low-power-server

By Michael J. Miller

Intel may think extremely low-power servers are only a small part of the server market, but that isn't stopping the company from competing in this segment.

At its Intel Developer Forum in Beijing, the company said it will release a six-watt, dual-core processor known as Centerton, based on a dual-core Atom design, in the second half of this year.
Atom is Intel's low-power core design and the company has been pushing variants of it for everything from smartphones and tablets to set-top boxes and netbooks. Centerton will be a 32nm, dual-core system-on-chip (SoC) that will draw six watts of power. This will be a 64-bit chip with support for the large amounts of memory that many server applications require.

The microserver market is particularly interesting because of a theory that massive "scale out" deployments—typically large Web farms—would do better with a larger number of physical cores if those processors used much less power than traditional servers. SeaMicro was perhaps the biggest early advocate of this process, coming out with its SM10000 server using up to 512 Atom cores and its proprietary fabric for connecting multiple processors, along with the associated memory and input/output. Last year, it upped the ante by switching to 64-bit Atom N570s.

SeaMicro was acquired by AMD earlier this year, and the company is widely expected to start using that fabric with its own processors and offer the technology to its OEMs.

Meanwhile, a number of companies—notably Calxeda, with its EnergyCore ARM processor— have been talking about using multiple ARM-based cores to compete in the microserver market. The concept is good, and Calxeda says its processor can draw as little as 1.5 watts for a dual-core server, although it is 32-bit only. This, too, is expected to go into real production in the second half of this year.

ARM has announced a 64-bit architecture that many vendors are expected to embrace, but 64-bit ARM cores aren't expected to be available for volume production until 2014.

Intel also said it will be shipping a new version of its Xeon E3 processor based on the Ivy Bridge architecture, manufactured on a 22nm process using "tri-gate" transistors. These chips are aimed at slightly larger servers, usually a single socket 1 U rack or blade server that effectively is the equivalent of a high-end desktop. Currently, Intel offers 45- and 25-watt versions of the 32nm Sandy Bridge-based E3s, along with a 15-watt Pentium 350. It hasn't yet listed power requirements for the next generation E3s, but suggests the 22nm process will be more power efficient.

These should be competing more with AMD's recently announced Opteron 3200, which is meant to be a lower-power, low-price variant on the company's Opteron 4200 chip, based on the Bulldozer architecture. The four-core versions of these chips are rated at 45 watts.

Whether from Intel, AMD, or one of a variety of ARM providers, we're seeing more competition in the server market, particularly in the low-power segment. That's leading to lots of innovation and the potential for companies to save a lot on power bills.

Top 25 2011 Semiconductor Sales Ranking

IC Insights'  report of the top 25 semiconductor companies (see below) states that Intel grew 24% in 2011 due to the purchase of Infineon's wireless segment. It is likely that the growth of databases and cloud servers (20% of sales, 3x PC segment growth) also added to Intel's growth.

It is important to note that the semiconductor sales and growth rankings do not include SanDisk's $5.66B sales in 2011. See more details about SanDisk's results from 2008 to 2011 at Is Apple Squeezing Suppliers, Or Is SanDisk Simply Missing Out?

Ron Maltiel

Extreme Results in Top 25 2011 Semiconductor Sales Ranking! http://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/Extreme-Results-In-Top-25-2011-Semiconductor-Sales-Ranking/ ON Semiconductor and Elpida represented an 89-point swing in 2011 growth rates. Although only 2% growth was registered in the worldwide semiconductor market (including ICs and Optoelectronics, Sensors, and Discretes; O-S-Ds) in 2011, several companies posted results that were far different (Figure 1). Boosted by its acquisition of Sanyo’s semiconductor business, ON Semiconductor registered a 49% sales increase last year and moved into the top 25 ranking for the first time! Qualcomm, spurred by a 73% increase in smartphone unit shipments last year, logged a strong 38% increase in semiconductor sales in 2011. At the other end of the spectrum was Elpida, which registered a steep sales drop of 40% (45% when expressed in yen)! Although 15 of the top 25 semiconductor sales leaders posted negative results last year, in total, the top 10 and top 25 semiconductor suppliers grew 7% and 4%, respectively, in 2011 as compared to 2010. These growth rates were much better than the 2% increase shown in the worldwide 2011/2010 semiconductor market. A listing of the top 50 semiconductor suppliers of 2011 will be included in IC Insights' April Update, which is part of the subscription to The McClean Report. As shown, Intel remained firmly in control of the number one spot in the ranking last year. In fact, Intel, helped by its acquisition of Infineon’s wireless IC business, extended its lead over second-ranked Samsung by registering 48% more in semiconductor sales than Samsung in 2011 as compared to a 24% margin in 2010. Healthy growth in its graphics and communications processor business helped Nvidia jump five positions and move the company to 18th place in the top 25 ranking. In contrast, Elpida fell six spots in the ranking last year (from 13th to 19th) as the collapse in the DRAM market had a disastrous effect on the company. In fact, Elpida lost almost $1.2 billion in the second half of calendar 2011 and filed for bankruptcy in 1Q12. In contrast to 2010, memory companies did not secure the top growth rate positions in the ranking in 2011 (Figure 2). In fact, as shown below, non-memory suppliers logged the top six growth rate increases last year. Moreover, in the case of ON, Qualcomm, and Intel, 2011 semiconductor sales growth rates were significantly boosted by company and/or business segment acquisitions. 1) ON Semi; 49% jump primarily due to the acquisition of Sanyo’s semiconductor business 2) Qualcomm; 38% jump due to surging smartphone IC sales and its acquisition of Atheros 3) Infineon; 29% growth from continuing operations (23% using 2010 exchange rates) 4) Intel; 24% increase spurred in part by its acquisition of Infineon’s wireless business 5) Nvidia; 10% growth due to healthy sales of graphics and communications processors 6) TSMC; 10% (2% using 2010 exchange rates) Of the big five memory suppliers in the top 25 ranking (i.e., Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix, Micron, and Elpida), only Samsung registered 2011/2010 growth. In total, only 9 of the top 25 suppliers (including Infineon’s 29% sales growth from continuing operations) outperformed the total worldwide semiconductor industry 2011/2010 growth rate of 2%. Figure 1 Figure 2