iPhone v Xserve
After the weekend that saw the US-wide introduction of iPhone, we were treated to an equally long-awaited technical marvel of our own. A cluster of nine 3.0 GHz Xserve machines arrived. With 18 dual core CPUs, a 7 TB RAID and oodles of RAM, this was a piece of equipment that would serve us well for the next years. Scientific computing as we do it needs a lot of oomph.
But as genuine geeks and technophiles, we were of course aware of all the hoopla surrounding the iPhone. I myself had watched the January Macworld Keynote, and being an avid reader of DaringFireball, along with all the other reputable sources of Mac related news (CARS first among them), the excitement certainly didn't go unnoticed. Then came the finally days of buildup, on TWiT, on DF, on the Wallstreet Journal, and by Pogue. This was getting unreal, the whole tech world was getting swept up by this phenomenon.
Still, we had our job to do and had been looking forward to our own special XDay for several months. So when I got the message that the final parts had been delivered, I stormed home from work, packed up some essential tools, some buns and a large bottle of soda, my wife and daughter and met up with my co-conspirator to start unpacking the goods.
We soon started discussing the iPhone. What were it's real merits? Was it worthy of all the sound and fury? The specs surely look impressive on paper. Or on the web, to be more accurate. We continued along these lines as we schlepped the boxes - three Xserves at a time - through the narrow corridors of the department, from the IT offices to the small shack that would house the rack-mounted servers.
The iPhone certainly compares well to the likes of a Blackberry, a Treo or any other smartphone. Absolutely, that was evident, my colleague agreed, as we slid the penultimate 1u machine into place. While connecting the fiber-optic cables from the RAID to the top server node, I said that it would soon be compared to every other gadget on the market. Every mp3 player, every other phone, camera or small handheld internet device. Sure.. yes. The green and blue diagnostic lights started to flicker into action after we plugged in all the power cables and booted our cluster for the first time. The iPhone is better than just about everything on the market to date. Was it really better than.. .. well.. I looked at my friend. How would it compare to... I asked. He slowly shook his head, you can't suggest... A teraflop cluster with 36 cores ? 64 gigs of RAM and 24 installed hard drives ? How would the beloved iPhone compare to one of these puppies ? We had to know!
We decided to start where all Apple product descriptions start. The unpacking experience. I should preface the following by saying that all the information I have on the iPhone comes exclusively from the web - be they descriptions of sorts or movies on youTube. That just as a cautionary caveat.
So then.. the unboxing experience. The iPhone comes in a cute small box, which most buyers have commented very positively on. It easily fits into one hand and shows off the sleek and beautiful exterior of Apple's newest offering. Our toy came in twelve large boxes, each weighing upwards of 28 kilograms.
Unpacking the iPhone takes about twenty seconds, if you are very excited, don't mind scratching the box with your car keys and are desperate to upload your video of the procedure to youTube. Our unpacking procedure took a solid hour, mainly because moving boxes in and out of the small shack where we were setting up the cluster is an exercise in advanced logistics. The verdict: clearly the iPhone beat us hands down here.
Next is setup. To setup your iPhone, all you need to do is place it in the supplied cradle, and iTunes 7.3 walks you through all the steps. Activation requires, as everyone now knows, an AT&T account, costing between 59 and 99 US$ a month, only then can you use it to make a call. The Xserve does not come with a cradle, but all the software is pre-installed, and the IT department had issued us with ten IP addresses beforehand. So if you want to make a call - as we are on a very fast University internet connection - Skype can be downloaded in a few seconds and you are ready to go! There is also no price-plan attached to an Xserve -although two part time support staff have to be paid to keep it running (one of them being yours truly, the other my friend opposite). As more infrastructure is required to operate an Xserve cluster, here again the iPhone is the winner.
When comparing other features, things get even more interesting. The iPhone includes an iPod. As the storage capacity is either 4 or 8 GB, this translates to being able to hold upto 800 or 1600 songs, respectively. The storage on our Xserve RAID is currently 7 TB, which means it can hold roughly 1.5 million songs. This equates to roughly half of the total catalog of the iTunes Music Store. Clearly, the cluster spanks the iPhone here.
It loses out on not having a number of other goodies. There is no ambient light sensor. We are not that fussed, because the lighting conditions hardly vary in the tiny room we are in. If the lights are on, you can see, if the lights are off, it is very dark. We always work with the lights turned on. Also, there is no accelerometer. Its function is to indicate to the iPhone if it is being held in portrait or landscape mode. On the cluster though, this is not a major downside, as it is not recommended to operate the rack-mounted server in landscape mode at all. But the lack of gee-whiz sensors hands another win to iPhone.
Let's talk about important tech stuff such as IO. These features could hardly be more different. The iPhone has a headphone jack for audio-out, and one 30-pin iPod connector as it's main interface with the computer or peripherals. That's it, two ports. Contrast this with the cluster: it has two independent Gigabit ethernet connectors, two FireWire 800 ports, one FireWire 400 port, two USB 2.0 ports and one mini-DVI port per unit, of which there are nine. This adds up to 72 ports in total. Our cluster is also equipped with a dual channel fiber-optic PCI card for ultra-fast IO. Alas, there is no headphone jack anywhere in sight, even though many of the small holes at the back of the unit look like one (but they're not - we checked). Upshot - if you like lots of ports, go with an Xserve, if you don't want lots of holes, take an iPhone. Verdict: even par.
The iPhone does have the upper hand in terms of wireless. It supports WiFi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth, EDGE and has access to the cellular network. In actual fact, the iPhone itself can be completely wireless if you buy a bluetooth headset. Very sleek. This is totally different on the cluster. At the back of the unit, when you have everything plugged in, there are wires absolutely everywhere and it looks a total mess. In terms of pure elegance, the iPhone wins by a large margin. We were getting trounced.
Next up is everyday use and mobility. Both machines are designed for everyday usage. We expect to run our servers 24/7, most days of the year. People also expect their phones to be working whenever they are. This is either all day (if you are on call), or between the hours of 11 am and 2 pm, if you work in our IT department. Mobility is high on the list of priorities for the iPhone. It weighs in at 135 g. You can take it just about anywhere, as it easily fits in a shirt pocket or handbag. The assembled cluster weighs more than 175 kg. It can be moved a few inches if you manage to point all four wheels of the rack-mount in the same direction. This is harder to do than on an average shopping trolley, so beware. In this category, again the iPhone comes out top. This was getting worrying.
The last comparison deals with price and running costs. The iPhone costs either US$ 499 or 599 up front. Add to that a two year contract worth at least US$ 59 a month, and you arrive at a grand total of US$ 1915 in the cheapest case, or 2975, if you go with the 8 gig model and the 99 bucks a month plan. This sort of money will be available in most average household budgets. To finance our baby, we had to write a grant application to a government funding agency, wait months on their decision and fret if it was going to be approved or not. The total amount we needed was upward of 250.000 US$, covering hardware, warranty and part time staff. This is serious money. An iPhone can be had at less than one percent of that cost. This iPhone was good! We were beginning to regret our purchase.
We had to regroup. And focus. There is no coverflow on the cluster, as it still runs OS 10.4 Server. No visual voicemail, no multitouch to pinch and zoom, no one finger scrolling, no swish sliders to unlock the unit! This was serious, we were getting desperate! Why again did we spend that quarter of a million dollars ? What were those killer features of the server OS ? We hastily leafed through the manuals and looked for reassurance. Why don't we have Google maps, this thing isn't even quad-band and where is that cleaning/polishing cloth ?! Ah.. yes! Here...Xgrid for distributed computing, access control lists and multihoming, as well as all the admin tools you will ever need to manage this thing from off-site. And not to forget those 18 dual core 3 GHz processors... and the terabytes in that RAID. Whoa, we could breathe again. That was close.
But as genuine geeks and technophiles, we were of course aware of all the hoopla surrounding the iPhone. I myself had watched the January Macworld Keynote, and being an avid reader of DaringFireball, along with all the other reputable sources of Mac related news (CARS first among them), the excitement certainly didn't go unnoticed. Then came the finally days of buildup, on TWiT, on DF, on the Wallstreet Journal, and by Pogue. This was getting unreal, the whole tech world was getting swept up by this phenomenon.
Still, we had our job to do and had been looking forward to our own special XDay for several months. So when I got the message that the final parts had been delivered, I stormed home from work, packed up some essential tools, some buns and a large bottle of soda, my wife and daughter and met up with my co-conspirator to start unpacking the goods.
We soon started discussing the iPhone. What were it's real merits? Was it worthy of all the sound and fury? The specs surely look impressive on paper. Or on the web, to be more accurate. We continued along these lines as we schlepped the boxes - three Xserves at a time - through the narrow corridors of the department, from the IT offices to the small shack that would house the rack-mounted servers.
The iPhone certainly compares well to the likes of a Blackberry, a Treo or any other smartphone. Absolutely, that was evident, my colleague agreed, as we slid the penultimate 1u machine into place. While connecting the fiber-optic cables from the RAID to the top server node, I said that it would soon be compared to every other gadget on the market. Every mp3 player, every other phone, camera or small handheld internet device. Sure.. yes. The green and blue diagnostic lights started to flicker into action after we plugged in all the power cables and booted our cluster for the first time. The iPhone is better than just about everything on the market to date. Was it really better than.. .. well.. I looked at my friend. How would it compare to... I asked. He slowly shook his head, you can't suggest... A teraflop cluster with 36 cores ? 64 gigs of RAM and 24 installed hard drives ? How would the beloved iPhone compare to one of these puppies ? We had to know!
We decided to start where all Apple product descriptions start. The unpacking experience. I should preface the following by saying that all the information I have on the iPhone comes exclusively from the web - be they descriptions of sorts or movies on youTube. That just as a cautionary caveat.
So then.. the unboxing experience. The iPhone comes in a cute small box, which most buyers have commented very positively on. It easily fits into one hand and shows off the sleek and beautiful exterior of Apple's newest offering. Our toy came in twelve large boxes, each weighing upwards of 28 kilograms.
Unpacking the iPhone takes about twenty seconds, if you are very excited, don't mind scratching the box with your car keys and are desperate to upload your video of the procedure to youTube. Our unpacking procedure took a solid hour, mainly because moving boxes in and out of the small shack where we were setting up the cluster is an exercise in advanced logistics. The verdict: clearly the iPhone beat us hands down here.
Next is setup. To setup your iPhone, all you need to do is place it in the supplied cradle, and iTunes 7.3 walks you through all the steps. Activation requires, as everyone now knows, an AT&T account, costing between 59 and 99 US$ a month, only then can you use it to make a call. The Xserve does not come with a cradle, but all the software is pre-installed, and the IT department had issued us with ten IP addresses beforehand. So if you want to make a call - as we are on a very fast University internet connection - Skype can be downloaded in a few seconds and you are ready to go! There is also no price-plan attached to an Xserve -although two part time support staff have to be paid to keep it running (one of them being yours truly, the other my friend opposite). As more infrastructure is required to operate an Xserve cluster, here again the iPhone is the winner.
When comparing other features, things get even more interesting. The iPhone includes an iPod. As the storage capacity is either 4 or 8 GB, this translates to being able to hold upto 800 or 1600 songs, respectively. The storage on our Xserve RAID is currently 7 TB, which means it can hold roughly 1.5 million songs. This equates to roughly half of the total catalog of the iTunes Music Store. Clearly, the cluster spanks the iPhone here.
It loses out on not having a number of other goodies. There is no ambient light sensor. We are not that fussed, because the lighting conditions hardly vary in the tiny room we are in. If the lights are on, you can see, if the lights are off, it is very dark. We always work with the lights turned on. Also, there is no accelerometer. Its function is to indicate to the iPhone if it is being held in portrait or landscape mode. On the cluster though, this is not a major downside, as it is not recommended to operate the rack-mounted server in landscape mode at all. But the lack of gee-whiz sensors hands another win to iPhone.
Let's talk about important tech stuff such as IO. These features could hardly be more different. The iPhone has a headphone jack for audio-out, and one 30-pin iPod connector as it's main interface with the computer or peripherals. That's it, two ports. Contrast this with the cluster: it has two independent Gigabit ethernet connectors, two FireWire 800 ports, one FireWire 400 port, two USB 2.0 ports and one mini-DVI port per unit, of which there are nine. This adds up to 72 ports in total. Our cluster is also equipped with a dual channel fiber-optic PCI card for ultra-fast IO. Alas, there is no headphone jack anywhere in sight, even though many of the small holes at the back of the unit look like one (but they're not - we checked). Upshot - if you like lots of ports, go with an Xserve, if you don't want lots of holes, take an iPhone. Verdict: even par.
The iPhone does have the upper hand in terms of wireless. It supports WiFi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth, EDGE and has access to the cellular network. In actual fact, the iPhone itself can be completely wireless if you buy a bluetooth headset. Very sleek. This is totally different on the cluster. At the back of the unit, when you have everything plugged in, there are wires absolutely everywhere and it looks a total mess. In terms of pure elegance, the iPhone wins by a large margin. We were getting trounced.
Next up is everyday use and mobility. Both machines are designed for everyday usage. We expect to run our servers 24/7, most days of the year. People also expect their phones to be working whenever they are. This is either all day (if you are on call), or between the hours of 11 am and 2 pm, if you work in our IT department. Mobility is high on the list of priorities for the iPhone. It weighs in at 135 g. You can take it just about anywhere, as it easily fits in a shirt pocket or handbag. The assembled cluster weighs more than 175 kg. It can be moved a few inches if you manage to point all four wheels of the rack-mount in the same direction. This is harder to do than on an average shopping trolley, so beware. In this category, again the iPhone comes out top. This was getting worrying.
The last comparison deals with price and running costs. The iPhone costs either US$ 499 or 599 up front. Add to that a two year contract worth at least US$ 59 a month, and you arrive at a grand total of US$ 1915 in the cheapest case, or 2975, if you go with the 8 gig model and the 99 bucks a month plan. This sort of money will be available in most average household budgets. To finance our baby, we had to write a grant application to a government funding agency, wait months on their decision and fret if it was going to be approved or not. The total amount we needed was upward of 250.000 US$, covering hardware, warranty and part time staff. This is serious money. An iPhone can be had at less than one percent of that cost. This iPhone was good! We were beginning to regret our purchase.
We had to regroup. And focus. There is no coverflow on the cluster, as it still runs OS 10.4 Server. No visual voicemail, no multitouch to pinch and zoom, no one finger scrolling, no swish sliders to unlock the unit! This was serious, we were getting desperate! Why again did we spend that quarter of a million dollars ? What were those killer features of the server OS ? We hastily leafed through the manuals and looked for reassurance. Why don't we have Google maps, this thing isn't even quad-band and where is that cleaning/polishing cloth ?! Ah.. yes! Here...Xgrid for distributed computing, access control lists and multihoming, as well as all the admin tools you will ever need to manage this thing from off-site. And not to forget those 18 dual core 3 GHz processors... and the terabytes in that RAID. Whoa, we could breathe again. That was close.
posted by sven at
6:49 pm
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