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The Phi project is not directly an answer to ARM, but it's a way of trying to escape the vice-like pressure from outrageously numerous cheap ARM cores on one si
by astrodust 10y ago
The Phi project is not directly an answer to ARM, but it's a way of trying to escape the vice-like pressure from outrageously numerous cheap ARM cores on one side and GPGPU cores on the other.
If they can't produce a cost-effective, power-efficient system with 64-256 cores then ARM will eat their lunch in a good chunk of the server market and NVidia will destroy any hope they had to get back in the supercomputer game.
I'm not saying Intel can't do it, but they sure are in a bind now. Their flagship product is a stupidly expensive 14 core Xeon that only appeals to a narrow market segment. They really don't have an answer for ARM when it comes to massively parallel server installations, and those companies, the Google and Facebook types, buy a lot of hardware.
- dogma1138 10y agoWhich is why they have the Xeon D SoCs, which are up to 45W TDP parts with up to 16 cores/32 threads. They come with PCIE lanes and 2 10Gig ethernet on board the SoC and you have CompactPCI form factor AIB cards with Xeon Ds already. https://www.men.de/products/cpu-boards/g25a/ https://www.men.de/products/cpu-boards/g25a/ This is what Intel has to combat the threat from ARM and beyond, these SOCs are quite popular now for both compute heavy industrial use (e.g. collision detection systems for aircraft, boats, and heavy duty vehicles) and for small form factor servers. SuperMicro for example offers Micro-Blade server where 56 Xeon-D SoCs are fit into a 6u chassis that's 896 cores / 1792 threads in a single 6U server or 6272c/12544t in a full 42u rack.
- astrodust 10y agoThat's the sort of thing I was expecting. What's the pricing like for those modules?
- Sanddancer 10y agoThe four core chips start at $200, the 16 core chips top out at about $1600 msrp. http://ark.intel.com/products/family/87041/Intel-Xeon-Processor-D-Family#@Server http://ark.intel.com/products/family/87041/Intel-Xeon-Proces...
- astrodust 10y agoI mean more for the server modules and their associated hardware. The chips themselves are useless without that.
- dogma1138 10y agoWhat modules? CompactPCI / AIB form factor are available but they are pretty custom. Wholeserver implementations are available from vendors like SuperMicro and HP. Small form factor barebones micro-ATX/flex-ATX are also available from vendors or as OEM parts. Google even google shopping has links for the more commercial general purpose parts.