Move Over Mini-ITX, Here Comes The gigaQube

Jim Ethanol writes "Since there's been a lot of interest lately in Mini ITX based servers I thought the Slashdot crowd might enjoy checking out Project gigaQube. The gigaQube is a modified Cobalt Qube 2 server appliance with 240 Gigabytes of storage running NetBSD's Mips R5000 based Cobalt port. Cobalt Qube's are quiet, cool looking little (7.25 x 7.25 x 7.75 inch) servers that when modified, make a powerful home server solution. They also seem to have achieved 'fetish' status in Japan. See some gigaQube action shots here, or check its vitals here."

tiny storage is becoming more and more vital

[womby]

as more and more data is being stored (TV shows, Movies, Music and yes Pr0n too) the drives are being filled at an alarming rate

saving HDTV is killing my disks I don't know what it is like in the US but here in Japan its a 19 meg stream for each channel

Re:tiny storage is becoming more and more vital

[AIX-Hood]

Yep, about 8 gigabytes/hour here in the US with ATSC. I keep throwing hard drives in the general direction of my firewire raid, but it keeps saying "Feed me C-Moore!"

More like Mini-ITX is a replacement for these...

[jthorpe]

The /. article mentions that this could be a replacement for Mini-ITX, but in reality, I suspect that you could use (with quite a bit of modding) a Mini-ITX in one of these boxes intead of the existing board.

A Mini-ITX would offer a nice replacement for the Mips-based CPU and dependence on old SIMM modules for memory.

Not enough RAM

[Capt'n Hector]

128 MB is not enough to do anything useful. Why is it limited to such a small amount?

Neat

[Anonymous Coward]

This is neat. The MIPS is a nice processor with a much nicer programming model than x86 if you're working with assembly.

If I were Sun, I'd churn out MIPS boxes like this by the hundreds. I have a need for two machines (that I don't have money for right now). One is to be a file server, and the other is to be a firewall/router for my crappy dialup (which will one day be broadband of some sort). A machine like the Qube could fit the bill for both of these machines, with one being configured for RAID and having lots of storage, and the other being beefy enough to handle a home internet connection (better have a serial port so I can hook my USR ext modem to it!) I'd seriously consider a Qube that didn't need to be fan cooled and didn't consume a lot of power. Apple only makes one type of computer, and it's _way_ too expensive for home needs. I can build a Mini-ITX system with an x86 processor in it for not a lot of money, so there's Sun's starting point.

1. Design a system that'll run Linux and the BSDs easily, and release the full specifications for it. As long as it's low power and can use passive cooling, it's in there. Just a few options are really needed: hardware RAID for a fileserver, lots of RAM slots for a webserver, an option for a nice tuner card to turn it into a PVR, etc.
2. Buy parts in bulk to drive costs down.
3. Profit!

Supporting this thing would be a piece of cake. Compile a NetBSD distro or Linux distro for the machine, and include it with the machine. Guarantee good hardware, and this could be an easy cash cow. The OSS community would handle most of the rest.

Re:I'd rather have a Mini-ITX -- and I do!

[Anonymous Coward]

Half our colocated rack is filled with Mini-ITX servers now. We didn't need a boatload of CPU power, they're mostly static webservers. Give it plenty of memory and it's fine.

The wonderful thing is that they go two in a 1U and, in our configuration, together use less power and generate much less heat than the 1Us we were using before, even with two 160GB harddisks in RAID-1. Each.

A 5U power box has its place, but where it doesn't, Mini-ITX is useful.

Quiet PCs

[xyote]

Well, the passive cooled Via mini-ITX and nano-ITX mother boards are there but the power supplies for them aren't there yet. They have these whiney little 4cm or 6cm fans. No you need a nice slow rpm 12cm fan. Pulls lots of air and is quiet. Though I see Nexus and Papst have some really slow 8cm fans that might work. Silicon Acoustics [siliconacoustics.com] carries a lot of this kind of stuff including 12cm fan PSUs, though I haven't dealt with them yet. Unfortunately it's mostly for full sized P4 based systems which by definition have a whiney cpu fan.

Re:server?

[mackstann]

Cardboard [incise.org] beats tie-straps anyday! Yes, I built a computer in a cardboard box, in fact, it's serving you that image. Small [incise.org], cool, quiet, cheap, and fun to build (for the type of person who was a lego nerd when they were a kid, I guess).

Missing IO/Features

[repvik]

I can't see why this is going to replace the mini-itx in any way.
I'm using my mini-itx as my home entertainment centre, and as such connect it to my TV and Stereo. It also serves as the home for my iPod and Digital camera. In addition, it's my local fileserver, firewall, web and mail-server. It's even my local wireless access-point. It's so feature-packed, that I've probably missed a dozen services.

Does the cube do half that? Didn't think so.