RESEARCH NOTE: Intel’s Disaggregated Server Rack

Does “Disaggregation” Really Mean Anything? There’s been a lot of discussion about “disaggregated” servers, racks, and datacenters since Facebook and Intel promoted their vision for the phrase at the Open Compute Summit at the start of this year. Haven’t we spent the last few decades disaggregating datacenter architecture? And if so, what does disaggregation mean now? Is it something different? Moor Insights & Strategy explains Intel's disaggregated server rack and looks at the implications of Intel's disaggregated server rack and the impacts on companies. You can download the complete paper here.

Outline:

Executive Summary
Hyperscale State-of-theArt
What Does "Disaggregate" Mean?
Intel, Facebook, OCP, and Disaggregation
Copper Interconnects vs Intel's Silicon Photonics
System Architecture Implications
Which Workloads Require Complete Disaggregation
Implications
Important Information About This Paper

Tables and Figures:

Table 1: OCP DRS Compared to Current Designs
Table 2: Copper interconnect standards for the middle of this decade
Figure 1: Maximum Interconnect Bandwidth vs. Maximum Interconnect Length
Figure 2: Physical Board Layoutsde
- HP Moonshot Cartridge with Intel Atom processor
- AMD SeaMicro processor card with AMD Opteron processor
- Calxeda EnergyCard with EnergyCore SOCs
Figure 3: Network and Fabric Topologies

You can download the complete paper here.

Patrick Moorhead

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Patrick founded the firm based on his real-world world technology experiences with the understanding of what he wasn’t getting from analysts and consultants. Ten years later, Patrick is ranked #1 among technology industry analysts in terms of “power” (ARInsights) in “press citations” (Apollo Research). Moorhead is a contributor at Forbes and frequently appears on CNBC. He is a broad-based analyst covering a wide variety of topics including the cloud, enterprise SaaS, collaboration, client computing, and semiconductors. He has 30 years of experience including 15 years of executive experience at high tech companies (NCR, AT&T, Compaq, now HP, and AMD) leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing, including three industry board appointments.