Porting LING VM to 64-bit ARM

[Maxim Kharchenko]

Dear erlang-on-xen members,

x86 architecture reigns in datacenters today. Yet the status quo may change as energy efficiency
becomes a major constraint of a datacenter design. The viable alternative is to use ARM processors
typically found inside smartphones and other mobile devices. ARM processors are optimized to
drain the device's battery as little as possible -- a property invaluable for datacenters. They can
compete with x86 performance-wise too, especially, the ARMv7-based models. And there is
more. A new 64-bit ARM architecture -- ARM64 or Aarch64 -- may get implemented in silicon
before the end of 2013.

Software world is getting ready for the imminent ARM64-based clouds. Linux runs on ARM64
starting from the end of 2012. The ARM64 version of Xen is under active development.

LING VM as a quasi-OS contains a few bits that are x86-specific. One cannot just recompile the
source to run LING VM on ARM64. A porting is required and it is underway. As of now, Xen for ARM
does not support ELF binaries when loading DomUs. This is blocking us from completing the port.

We encourage you to share your thoughts on how relevant ARM64 porting to your projects. You
may start by giving your opinion on the following question:

In 2015, what will be the ratio of ARM vs. x86 servers in datacenters?

Regards,
Maxim

[TJGodel]

Hi Maxim,

Do you have any idea what the current market share of ARM in datacenters or which datacenter owners are leading the conversion from

x86 to ARM servers?

Thanks,

Terry

[Maxim Kharchenko]

Terry,

The whole food chain seems getting ready for ARM servers. Chip makers - systems integrators - software

vendors - cloud providers. On the top of the chain are Facebook and Google. They will definitely try ARM
servers for their *new* datacenter capacity.

The trick is ARM servers will favour smaller computation nodes. Lightweight instances, such as Erlang
on Xen, will be much more relevant.

Regards,

Maxim

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