Similar techniques have led to rapid improvement in other areas: fibre-optic-based Fibre Channel technology, used to connect the various parts of a datacentre's storage area network (SAN), has rapidly improved from 1Gbps to 2Gbps, 4Gbps and now 8Gbps without requiring a cabling upgrade. Pushing this technology into server designs will improve performance substantially in coming decades, all the while reducing power consumption in a trend that can't help but become fundamental to datacentre design.
Given the efficiency of computing at atomic scale, it's worth noting two areas that will also figure in the future: nanotechnology and quantum physics. Nanotech is already driving major innovation in a variety of industries, and will certainly be leveraged in coming years to build computing and storage systems from large numbers of incredibly small components.
As manufacturing processes improve, nanotech innovation is likely to provide mechanical complements to the optical interconnects that will become widespread in server technologies.
Quantum computers have long been mainly theoretical, but recent progress in controlling qubits — the quantum analogue to electrical bits — has suggested a growing role for quantum computers that could eventually be many times more powerful than existing systems.
It's like buying a car which could be a Ferrari for taking a girlfriend out on a date, but change to a ute when the owner needed to go shopping.
Last November, D-Wave Systems demonstrated a 28-qubit quantum computer that it plans to scale up considerably in coming years; if it is successful, even optical systems could become obsolete within two generations of datacentre.
Polymorphic datacentre — made to measure computing
Within the next five years, datacentres could contain stockpiles of components — such as memory and processors — that could be configured in real time in order to manage unusual workloads, which is a concept HP calls polymorphic computing.
The computing needs of a business change every day, said Martin Fink, senior VP and general manager of business critical systems at HP. The next generation of datacentres, according to Fink, will contain a generic system that could morph into whatever was required to solve a specific problem. It's like buying a car which could be a Ferrari for taking a girlfriend out on a date, but change to a ute when the owner needed to go shopping, according to Fink.
In a polymorphic computing datacentre, Fink said, there will be a bunch of CPUs on one wall, communications infrastructure on another, storage on another and so on. These components can then be assembled in real time to solve a workload problem, using only the computing resources required for the job. If, while the workloads are being processed, there is pressure on any one group of components — such as memory — more can be sourced, he said.
Fink believes this type of functionality will be available in as soon as five years, and he has research teams in the US and the UK working on it. However, before it can become a reality, two barriers need to be overcome, he said.
The first is one touched upon earlier — in order for various components such as CPU and memory to be able to work together while being physically separated by a significant distance, optical connectivity needs to be improved.
The second barrier to HP's polymorphic computing dream is the creation of software required to organise which components need to link together to process a workload. HP has already made good progress on this, according to Fink. "We think we are delivering parts of that with the Insight Dynamics VSE."
Jerry Bautista, Intel director of technology management and teraflops management
Software was also highlighted as a problem by Intel's Bautista, who asked "can the software keep up?"
Developers who have long been used to formulating computing processes in serial-based problem solving manner are having to get used to rebuilding their data crunching systems around massively parallel architectures — which used to be the exclusive domain of HPC systems but are rapidly moving towards commodity status thanks to ever denser multi-core systems.
Expect a major change in the way applications are designed in the future, as developers rush to adapt their thinking processes to the significant architectural changes coming down the track.
Alternatively, at the Intel Developers Forum in Shanghai earlier this year, the chipmaker touted a programming model called Ct that allows developers to use their C++ programs for parallel computing applications "without having to modify a single line of code".
The datacentre of tomorrow
So what will servers and datacentres look like one or two generations from now?
Expect an all-optical design that extends from the processor core to remote sites, leveraging various types of optical network switches to route data at speeds that would make current network engineers' heads spin. Hard drives will still be around, but will have higher density and play second fiddle to memory-based storage. And through it all, continuous innovation in design and manufacturing will keep the industry well ahead of the predictions of Moore's Law.
"Manufacturing is continually delivering phenomenal process innovation that continues to drive down the critical dimensions we're working with.
"They're not only delivering a higher performance process, but they appear to be doing a better job of the fundamentals of the process, moving us down the path of smaller and smaller critical dimensions," added Bautista.
Suzanne Tindal from ZDNet.com.au contributed to this article.
