Recent Blogs

Announcing workshop: LAMP optimization

Tuning your webservers, without any metrics, can be tricky. Often neglected is the fact that a web application runs on top of a large stack, starting with hardware powering all the software pieces on top. And all those different layers come with their own configuration. So what is the best way to set this all up, maximizing performance?

Working together with the engineers of Silicon Valley

Our current TETRA project "saving energy in the IT infrastructure" is halfway. As we are specialized in applied research, we don't invent any new technologies, but instead try to improve existing ones. After all, our main projects are IWT TETRA projects, which have the objective of "TEchnology TRAnsfer" to the Flemish small business.

However, as a research group we have to be ahead of the technology curve. We have to investigate emerging technology so we can point out opportunities for some of our partners. One of those opportunities is ARM based server technology. ARM SoCs, traditionally used in very low power appliances, used be quite slow, hardly a good match for most server applications. However, the processing power of ARM SoCs has rapidly increased to the point where they are "good enough" for a niche of the server market. And the upcoming A57s cores are promising much higher performance (twice the performance of the current A9), while the power usage remains very low. In other words, ARM based servers are a space to watch.

Saving Energy in the datacenter

Datacenters have been reducing their Power usage effectiveness (PUE) for years now. It has become an important factor, which can generate a lot of good PR. The PUE is defined as being equal to the sum of facility power and IT equipment power divided by IT equipment power.