On: Servers for an Accelerated Future

[bluedino]

>> For storage, we continue to have ~3TB, but moved to 3x1TB form factor using NVME flash

Are they not using additional storage for caching? I also kind of expected some GPU's for some tasks.

[Hardops → bluedino]

No GPUs, yet.

Yes, the 3TB is 2/3 used for Caching, and 1/3 as a local storage for our SSL/DNS/Firewall/etc.

[anarazel → Hardops]

Is the 2/3 for caching using part of each NVMe, or is there one dedicated for the rest? Mostly wondering about spreading writes more evenly, rather than peak throughout.

[sudhirj → bluedino]

What cache tasks are possible on GPUs? Maybe computing a hash, but that doesn’t seem like a big problem.

[wmf → sudhirj]

I could imagine CloudFlare using GPUs for image optimization or video encoding. They do a lot more than caching these days.

[elithrar → wmf]

Neither is “great” on a GPU:

• Image optimization is still mostly software: JPEG, PNG, WebP. GPUs do not bring much to the table here at all, and consume a lot of power, which is likely to upset the hosting ISP of that cache node.

• Video encoding is better, but still average. NVENC (Nvidia’s encode Engine) has some quality challenges and limitations.

Further, doing this at the edge makes less sense: if you have to fetch the source material from the origin, do the heavy lifting centrally and store the results at the edge. Storing 4-5 renditions is cheap compared to GPU running costs here.

[zoonosis → sudhirj]

I think the question about caching was separate from the question about GPUs. I don't think it was meant to imply GPUs for caching.