Killing the Business Desktop PC Softly
by Johan De Gelas on July 19, 2007 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Blade PCs
Next up is the blade PC. The challenge is to make sure that the blade PC and the thin client consume less energy together than a typical business desktop. The big advantage of a blade PC is that all PCs draw from the same the power supply, which allows for the use of a more efficient power supply. HP has designed an enclosure that can house up to twenty blade PCs in a single 3U rack mount chassis, all of which are powered by the same redundant 600W power supply. That means that each blade PC consumes less than 30W.
The HP BladeSystem bc2000 and bc2500 consist of:
If you only need a 1.2 GHz Athlon 64, it becomes less clear why you would allocate a blade PC for each user. You might be better off with VDI for example (see below). It might seem like nitpicking, but if you want to add a full rack of relatively modern PCs with dual core CPUs, the system administrator of the data center has to cope with another 12-14 KW (bc2500). If you chose the bc2000 blade, you are looking at only 7.6KW per rack. Clearly there is nothing magical about blade PCs: a 50W blade PC and 15W-30W thin client are not going to save much power compared to a desktop with the same (low voltage) dual core CPU.
Let's take a closer look at the blade PC.
The HP blade PC bc2000
It is a pretty elegant and slim design with a small heatsink on top of the CPU, and two SO-DIMMs for memory expansion. If you don't like your blade PC to be headless, you can add an old Lynx EM4+ video chip which supports an 800x600 resolution when you access the blade PC directly.
Adding a video chip to the blade PC
The video chip plugs into the black "IDE-like" connectors. The second generation of blade PCs still has room for improvement: why use a hard disk if your data is going to be saved on centralized network storage? Solid state drives were probably too expensive at the time of the new blade PC design, but basically the design right now has room for improvement.
Next up is the blade PC. The challenge is to make sure that the blade PC and the thin client consume less energy together than a typical business desktop. The big advantage of a blade PC is that all PCs draw from the same the power supply, which allows for the use of a more efficient power supply. HP has designed an enclosure that can house up to twenty blade PCs in a single 3U rack mount chassis, all of which are powered by the same redundant 600W power supply. That means that each blade PC consumes less than 30W.
The HP BladeSystem bc2000 and bc2500 consist of:
- Low voltage AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3000+ processor (1.60 GHz 2x512K L2) (bc2500) or AMD Athlon 64 2100+ (1.2 GHz 512K L2) (bc2000)
- ATI RS690T/SB600 w/integrated DirectX 9 compliant graphics
- Up to 2x2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
- 2.5" 80GB 5400 rpm SATA 1.5 Gb/s
- 100 Mbit Ethernet (Broadcom 5906M)
If you only need a 1.2 GHz Athlon 64, it becomes less clear why you would allocate a blade PC for each user. You might be better off with VDI for example (see below). It might seem like nitpicking, but if you want to add a full rack of relatively modern PCs with dual core CPUs, the system administrator of the data center has to cope with another 12-14 KW (bc2500). If you chose the bc2000 blade, you are looking at only 7.6KW per rack. Clearly there is nothing magical about blade PCs: a 50W blade PC and 15W-30W thin client are not going to save much power compared to a desktop with the same (low voltage) dual core CPU.
Let's take a closer look at the blade PC.
The HP blade PC bc2000
It is a pretty elegant and slim design with a small heatsink on top of the CPU, and two SO-DIMMs for memory expansion. If you don't like your blade PC to be headless, you can add an old Lynx EM4+ video chip which supports an 800x600 resolution when you access the blade PC directly.
Adding a video chip to the blade PC
The video chip plugs into the black "IDE-like" connectors. The second generation of blade PCs still has room for improvement: why use a hard disk if your data is going to be saved on centralized network storage? Solid state drives were probably too expensive at the time of the new blade PC design, but basically the design right now has room for improvement.
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Pale Rider - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
I work for a fortune 500 company as a sys admin. We have 10,000 nodes (PCs and servers).Half of those are desktop business PCs and we use PCs on purpose - they fullfill the business need the best.
The facst are, most applictions do not run correctly in a terminal server or think client enviroment. Until the software developers change this and the cost of this clients come down consideranly we have no plans to move to think clients - this is true for the majority of IT departments as well.
rowcroft - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
It's been out there for years, but I have deployed Sun's SunRay systems and they worked great. Granted, the environment had limited Windows requirements (ran Mozilla for web and e-mail, used custom apps for business use) but those were satisfied with a Citrix deployment.If you're looking for a stable, cost effective environment (both from a productivity and hard cost savings PoV) then you should consider something like that as well.
yacoub - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
I'd feel horrible for anyone working in that type of locked-down environment... no freedom, no ability to use software beyond what is installed by the default image (obviously I'm talking about winamp, AIM, and other useful items, not trojans or malware), all of your programs and processing power are at the mercy of whoever dictates how much your share of the server's horsepower you're allowed to consume and what software you have access to. Ugh. What a death sentence of a work environment.And for the IT department, what a dream come true! ;)
rowcroft - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Problem is, who gets to determine what's OK and what isn't? Try managing that in an enterprise environment. This isn't meant for a shop with 200 computers and one admin.yacoub - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Why the preview lure text for articles that is posted on the homepage below the article title always cuts off and yet the exact sentence never seems to be found in the actual article:nobody less than who? Please finish the sentence of the preview text on the homepage, instead of burying parts of it amongst several sentences later in the article.
strikeback03 - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
If you go to the "IT Computing" tab at the top of the page (or whatever section the article is in) you get the whole intro blurb. they just display a portion on the homepage.punko - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
As a heavy guy, I resent the term "fat client".The biggest improvement in cost of ownership lately has been the change to LCD monitors. The effect is real in power savings.
The biggest headache is the licensing model change by Microsoft, AutoDesk and Adobe. This may lead to a massive shift in software to open source alternatives.
In our firm, most have PC's with a large number of laptops. Thin clients can't replace laptops, and most of us with PC's tend to push them hard, so there isn't any advantage over PC's.
Chunga29 - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Give me a break - take the PC (political correctness) somewhere else, please! If you're so offended, get off your duff and get some exercise, drop the fast food, don't drink sodas or juice or alcohol, and you'll be amazed at what that can do for your obesity.And yes, you probably are clinically obese, as are 65% (and rising) Americans. I was one of them until a year ago, when I kicked my ass into shape doing the above. Dropped from 240 pounds and 31% body fat down to 190 pounds and 16% body fat, where I have been happily resting for the past six months.
Or, you can be like so many others and blame the problem on genetics, your job, etc. because weight issues certainly can't be caused by personal behavior!
NT78stonewobble - Saturday, September 15, 2007 - link
I read it as a joke.Still I WOULD blame my doctor on gaining around 30 % body weight in one year when I was twelve by giving me hormones.
Hormones that in the end wouldn't have had any effect on me. Hormones would help eg. 60 % of cases and in the rest surgery was necessary. However the initial exam of everyone with this particular problem was cut due to costs and thus everyone was given one or even two halfyear treatsments of hormones instead.
So unless you really know the guy dont ditch him.
P.S. Yes I've lost the weight since then. I am however still suffering from depressions going on the 10 th year and have an allmost anorectic relationship to food.
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Thin portables do exist, and could be a reality once Wimax and/or 3G are ubiquitous.But I do agree that the licensing models of the bige Software guys add a lot to TCO. Is it just me or is IDC always trying minimize those by grossly overestimating administration costs? :-)