5 ms·

Intel might find that these benchmarks achieve the opposite of what they intended. I had no idea that viable ARMv8 alternatives to Intel's architecture were on

by ryao 10y ago

Intel might find that these benchmarks achieve the opposite of what they intended. I had no idea that viable ARMv8 alternatives to Intel's architecture were on the market. There are likely others who were similarly ignorant. Intel has just informed all of us that these options are out there.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
I've been doing it a while with Cavium via Octeon's: https://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html https://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html Looked awesome. The ThunderX is the Octeon ported to ARM ISA far as I can tell. The Octeon II's with 16 cores plus Gbps I/O and crypto accelerators in PCI card form can be had on eBay for $200-300. Now, I have performance sheets from Intel confirming it performed as well as I hoped. Great news for Cavium. ;)
- imtringued 10y ago
  Just for the processor? I'm asking because that's enough to buy an AMD CPU + 8GB RAM + a mainboard + powersupply to get 70% of the multicore performance of a intel 6700k (again the cpu costs more than this setup).
  - sliken 10y ago
    I looked at that, but: * AMD no ECC, nor a similar chip with it. Intel has a Xeon E3 which is basically core as the 6700 with ECC enabled. Doesn't hurt that it's cheaper as well. * AMD had 70% of the throughput, but much less on anything single threaded. So many normal UI apps like say web browsing are slower. * the AMD solution runs hotter, so you need to either tolerate more noise or pay more for case/fans/power supplies * My use case includes running 24/7 so burning extra watts (and running the AC to cool them) adds up. After considering it all I went with the E3-1230v5. Near 6700k multicore performance, near 6700k single thread performance, max 80 watt TDP, and idles much lower. I also get a M.2 slot which allows pretty amazing performance (well above SATA) and a tiny footprint (gum stick or so). I don't buy systems often though, the machine it's replacing is a quad core 3.0 GHz machines (Q6600) with 8GB ram from 2007. So I don't mind spending a bit more if it's going to last. Hopefully with 32GB ram this new machine will last quite a while.
    - kornholi 10y ago
      AFAIK, all modern AMD CPUs support ECC. You just need motherboard support.
      - ryao 10y ago
        That was true on the AM3+ Processors with the 890FX and 990FX chipsets. I do not believe it is the case on AMD's modern CPU sockets, but I would be happy to be shown to be wrong.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      My machine is about as old given it's a Core Duo 2 with 4GB of RAM. One of the Dell laptops designed for Ubuntu. What do you use yours for where a quad-core 3GHz and 8GB RAM isn't enough now but was a while back? Just curious.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Intel and AMD are market leaders in raw price/performance. They drop mad money on custom designs at cutting-edge nodes to do it, too. The Cavium chips might be custom but probably standard cell. Cost way less. Further, you get 16 RISC cores with no x86 baggage, they run Linux, PCI form factor, and low power. Onboard are usually accelerators for TCP/IP, compression, encryption, and so on that run in Gbps that your processor cores don't have to handle. The CPU cores themselves run pretty fast. The hybrid seemed like one of the best designs. Probably why AMD started copying it with their semi-custom business followed by Intel. But those are still full-on x86 processors with all kinds of circuits you probably don't need plus maybe some backdoors for AMT, etc. Cavium's design is much more interesting and maybe safer. I've mainly encouraged people to clone it with RISC-V cores rather than straight-up buy them. ;) The newer ones are pretty impressive in performance and accelerators, though: https://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html https://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html
emn13 10y ago
Although given the relative performance, I can't imagine who'd pick the arm option currently, unless the pricing difference is truly extreme. There's just too many downsides to arm servers at this time: it's not just total overall performance, but particuarly single threaded performance (which affects e.g. latency that your readers experience), power usage (affects costs), and of course availability of software. It's getting close, that's for sure - and there may well be some niche where it already makes sense, but I wouldn't know which one. Probably the best value proposition is that the gap is likely to shrink, and investing now may help you prepare for a future switch when it makes more sense.
- ryao 10y ago
  > It's getting close, that's for sure - and there may well be some niche where it already makes sense, but I wouldn't know which one. Proprietary blobs such as Intel's ME that cannot be removed from Intel Xeon systems pose a security risk. If the ARM systems are found to lack them and they achieve the status of being good enough, security minded individuals and organizations will buy them because of that. As long as that happens, Cavium will be able to use the revenues to develop the next generation of chips to better compete on traditional metrics like Intel was able to do against the RISC vendors of the past. As a security minded individual myself, I am well aware of that and I look forward to supporting such developments by purchasing such hardware for applications where it can be used. There are others thinking this too. Some of them are watching the Talos workstation motherboard come to market with that in mind. The people behind it are even talking about IBM's executives being willing to make the POWER9 processor's microcode open source if the POWER8 model succeeds. https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
  - gpderetta 10y ago
    "Proprietary blobs such as Intel's ME that cannot be removed from Intel Xeon systems pose a security risk. If the ARM systems are found to lack them and they achieve the status of being good enough, security minded individuals and organizations will buy them because of that." Do you expect the above to be anything more than a rounding error of the total server market? I doubt Cavium is going to finance its development from that.
imtringued 10y ago
>I had no idea that viable ARMv8 alternatives to Intel's architecture were on the market. For some definitions of "on the market". The ARM server chips can be hard to get still.
- subway 10y ago
  Chips are easy to get. It's all that pesky supporting hardware everyone in the ARM world disagrees on that causes availability issues to end users.
mtgx 10y ago
Here's one more, which I think should be the most competitive one out there: https://www.apm.com/news/appliedmicro-announces-x-gene-3-the-industrys-first-armv8-a-finfet-server-s/ https://www.apm.com/news/appliedmicro-announces-x-gene-3-the... http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/28/arm-server-chips-xeon-class-matter/ http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/28/arm-server-chips-xeon... https://semiaccurate.com/2016/04/25/appliedmicros-x-gene-3-aims-for-intels-e5-xeons/ https://semiaccurate.com/2016/04/25/appliedmicros-x-gene-3-a...

by ryao 10y ago

nickpsecurity 10y ago

I've been doing it a while with Cavium via Octeon's: https://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html https://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html Looked awesome. The ThunderX is the Octeon ported to ARM ISA far as I can tell. The Octeon II's with 16 cores plus Gbps I/O and crypto accelerators in PCI card form can be had on eBay for $200-300. Now, I have performance sheets from Intel confirming it performed as well as I hoped. Great news for Cavium. ;)

imtringued 10y ago
Just for the processor? I'm asking because that's enough to buy an AMD CPU + 8GB RAM + a mainboard + powersupply to get 70% of the multicore performance of a intel 6700k (again the cpu costs more than this setup).
- sliken 10y ago
  I looked at that, but: * AMD no ECC, nor a similar chip with it. Intel has a Xeon E3 which is basically core as the 6700 with ECC enabled. Doesn't hurt that it's cheaper as well. * AMD had 70% of the throughput, but much less on anything single threaded. So many normal UI apps like say web browsing are slower. * the AMD solution runs hotter, so you need to either tolerate more noise or pay more for case/fans/power supplies * My use case includes running 24/7 so burning extra watts (and running the AC to cool them) adds up. After considering it all I went with the E3-1230v5. Near 6700k multicore performance, near 6700k single thread performance, max 80 watt TDP, and idles much lower. I also get a M.2 slot which allows pretty amazing performance (well above SATA) and a tiny footprint (gum stick or so). I don't buy systems often though, the machine it's replacing is a quad core 3.0 GHz machines (Q6600) with 8GB ram from 2007. So I don't mind spending a bit more if it's going to last. Hopefully with 32GB ram this new machine will last quite a while.
  - kornholi 10y ago
    AFAIK, all modern AMD CPUs support ECC. You just need motherboard support.
    - ryao 10y ago
      That was true on the AM3+ Processors with the 890FX and 990FX chipsets. I do not believe it is the case on AMD's modern CPU sockets, but I would be happy to be shown to be wrong.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    My machine is about as old given it's a Core Duo 2 with 4GB of RAM. One of the Dell laptops designed for Ubuntu. What do you use yours for where a quad-core 3GHz and 8GB RAM isn't enough now but was a while back? Just curious.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Intel and AMD are market leaders in raw price/performance. They drop mad money on custom designs at cutting-edge nodes to do it, too. The Cavium chips might be custom but probably standard cell. Cost way less. Further, you get 16 RISC cores with no x86 baggage, they run Linux, PCI form factor, and low power. Onboard are usually accelerators for TCP/IP, compression, encryption, and so on that run in Gbps that your processor cores don't have to handle. The CPU cores themselves run pretty fast. The hybrid seemed like one of the best designs. Probably why AMD started copying it with their semi-custom business followed by Intel. But those are still full-on x86 processors with all kinds of circuits you probably don't need plus maybe some backdoors for AMT, etc. Cavium's design is much more interesting and maybe safer. I've mainly encouraged people to clone it with RISC-V cores rather than straight-up buy them. ;) The newer ones are pretty impressive in performance and accelerators, though: https://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html https://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html

emn13 10y ago

Although given the relative performance, I can't imagine who'd pick the arm option currently, unless the pricing difference is truly extreme. There's just too many downsides to arm servers at this time: it's not just total overall performance, but particuarly single threaded performance (which affects e.g. latency that your readers experience), power usage (affects costs), and of course availability of software. It's getting close, that's for sure - and there may well be some niche where it already makes sense, but I wouldn't know which one. Probably the best value proposition is that the gap is likely to shrink, and investing now may help you prepare for a future switch when it makes more sense.

ryao 10y ago
> It's getting close, that's for sure - and there may well be some niche where it already makes sense, but I wouldn't know which one. Proprietary blobs such as Intel's ME that cannot be removed from Intel Xeon systems pose a security risk. If the ARM systems are found to lack them and they achieve the status of being good enough, security minded individuals and organizations will buy them because of that. As long as that happens, Cavium will be able to use the revenues to develop the next generation of chips to better compete on traditional metrics like Intel was able to do against the RISC vendors of the past. As a security minded individual myself, I am well aware of that and I look forward to supporting such developments by purchasing such hardware for applications where it can be used. There are others thinking this too. Some of them are watching the Talos workstation motherboard come to market with that in mind. The people behind it are even talking about IBM's executives being willing to make the POWER9 processor's microcode open source if the POWER8 model succeeds. https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
- gpderetta 10y ago
  "Proprietary blobs such as Intel's ME that cannot be removed from Intel Xeon systems pose a security risk. If the ARM systems are found to lack them and they achieve the status of being good enough, security minded individuals and organizations will buy them because of that." Do you expect the above to be anything more than a rounding error of the total server market? I doubt Cavium is going to finance its development from that.

imtringued 10y ago

>I had no idea that viable ARMv8 alternatives to Intel's architecture were on the market. For some definitions of "on the market". The ARM server chips can be hard to get still.

subway 10y ago
Chips are easy to get. It's all that pesky supporting hardware everyone in the ARM world disagrees on that causes availability issues to end users.

mtgx 10y ago

Here's one more, which I think should be the most competitive one out there: https://www.apm.com/news/appliedmicro-announces-x-gene-3-the-industrys-first-armv8-a-finfet-server-s/ https://www.apm.com/news/appliedmicro-announces-x-gene-3-the... http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/28/arm-server-chips-xeon-class-matter/ http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/28/arm-server-chips-xeon... https://semiaccurate.com/2016/04/25/appliedmicros-x-gene-3-aims-for-intels-e5-xeons/ https://semiaccurate.com/2016/04/25/appliedmicros-x-gene-3-a...