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I think the Azul Vega line has been beaten by commodity x86-64 hardware and it's a legacy system, this bit I just noticed at the end of the company's page on th

by hga 11y ago

I think the Azul Vega line has been beaten by commodity x86-64 hardware and it's a legacy system, this bit I just noticed at the end of the company's page on the Vega3 reinforces that (https://www.azul.com/products/vega/ https://www.azul.com/products/vega/): "Choose Vega 3 for high-capacity JDK 1.4 and 1.5-based workloads. For applications built in Java SE 8, 7 or 6, check out Zing, a highly cost-effective 100% software-based solution containing Azul’s C4 and ReadyNow! technology, optimized for commodity Linux servers." Much the same fate as custom Lisp processors.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Shit... doesn't surprise me. Except that's not a total loss. We don't know why it lost in the market. I'm guessing it's because a niche player tried to differentiate against Intel's silicon on performance and something they optimize for. That's fail for sure. However, differentiating on acceptable performance with better reliability, analysis, security, and so on might work. The embedded stuff does this with success in terms of Java CPU's and high-security VM's. An old trick that might help is to implement the CPU at microcode on top of ultra-optimized stuff like Intel's while hiding the ugliness. Basically, the semi-custom stuff again. A lot of potential there.
alblue 11y ago
I interviewed Gil Tene at QConLondon this week (founder of Azul and designer of the Vega). One of the advantages was that the hardware transactional memory support was built in, which meant that it could perform optimistic locking on gaining synchronised methods, leading to reduced contention in a mega multi core/multi threaded way. It worked by tracking which memory areas were loaded into the cache like and only permitting write back once the transaction was committed but using the chip's existing cache coherency protocols along the way. When they pivoted to commodity x86/64 chips the HTM code couldn't be ported over with it due to lack of support with the chips. However Moore's law meant that the Intel processors were faster than the Vega, in the same way that an iPhone is more powerful than the Cray-1 was. So it's still a win. He was particularly excited in Intel's latest generation of server CPUs which now have this (in the form of the TXC instruction if I remember correctly). He predicted that as these became available they might be re-integrated back into Zing - though of course this was speculation rather than promise. His talk on hardware transactional memory is here, and the slides/video will be available later on InfoQ: https://qconlondon.com/presentation/understanding-hardware-transactional-memory https://qconlondon.com/presentation/understanding-hardware-t... Obviously the talk/interview isn't there yet (was only done Mon:Tue this week) but this will be where it is in the coming months: http://www.infoq.com/author/Gil-Tene http://www.infoq.com/author/Gil-Tene Disclaimer: I believe that Azul was a sponsor of QCon, but I am writing this and interviewed Gil because I'm a technology nerd and write for InfoQ because I want to share. Apologies if this comes over as an advert, which is not the intent.

by hga 11y ago

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Shit... doesn't surprise me. Except that's not a total loss. We don't know why it lost in the market. I'm guessing it's because a niche player tried to differentiate against Intel's silicon on performance and something they optimize for. That's fail for sure. However, differentiating on acceptable performance with better reliability, analysis, security, and so on might work. The embedded stuff does this with success in terms of Java CPU's and high-security VM's. An old trick that might help is to implement the CPU at microcode on top of ultra-optimized stuff like Intel's while hiding the ugliness. Basically, the semi-custom stuff again. A lot of potential there.

alblue 11y ago

I interviewed Gil Tene at QConLondon this week (founder of Azul and designer of the Vega). One of the advantages was that the hardware transactional memory support was built in, which meant that it could perform optimistic locking on gaining synchronised methods, leading to reduced contention in a mega multi core/multi threaded way. It worked by tracking which memory areas were loaded into the cache like and only permitting write back once the transaction was committed but using the chip's existing cache coherency protocols along the way. When they pivoted to commodity x86/64 chips the HTM code couldn't be ported over with it due to lack of support with the chips. However Moore's law meant that the Intel processors were faster than the Vega, in the same way that an iPhone is more powerful than the Cray-1 was. So it's still a win. He was particularly excited in Intel's latest generation of server CPUs which now have this (in the form of the TXC instruction if I remember correctly). He predicted that as these became available they might be re-integrated back into Zing - though of course this was speculation rather than promise. His talk on hardware transactional memory is here, and the slides/video will be available later on InfoQ: https://qconlondon.com/presentation/understanding-hardware-transactional-memory https://qconlondon.com/presentation/understanding-hardware-t... Obviously the talk/interview isn't there yet (was only done Mon:Tue this week) but this will be where it is in the coming months: http://www.infoq.com/author/Gil-Tene http://www.infoq.com/author/Gil-Tene Disclaimer: I believe that Azul was a sponsor of QCon, but I am writing this and interviewed Gil because I'm a technology nerd and write for InfoQ because I want to share. Apologies if this comes over as an advert, which is not the intent.