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Interesting article presenting a "war" between Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU. I'm curious where AMD falls in this war. While it's true GPU can provide really nice t

by vmarsy 10y ago

Interesting article presenting a "war" between Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU. I'm curious where AMD falls in this war. While it's true GPU can provide really nice theoritical TFLOPS, the cost of moving data in and out of the GPU's memory is a well known issue. This renders GPU much less attractive for real applications. The reason I mentioned AMD is that I read some time ago about their Heterogeneous system architecture [1]. One of the HSA's goal is to get rid of the particular issue of moving that data. I wonder if this was adopted in any HPC cluster or anywhere else. [1] http://developer.amd.com/resources/heterogeneous-computing/what-is-heterogeneous-system-architecture-hsa/ http://developer.amd.com/resources/heterogeneous-computing/w...

AlphaSite 10y ago
I realise it's not the most reliable resource but it shows something interesting regardless. It's a server grade apu, combining a cpu and GPU onto a single socket. With HBM for huge amounts of bandwidth. They also have HIP for converting CUDA code into performance cross platform code. http://wccftech.com/amd-exascale-heterogeneous-processor-ehp-apu-32-zen-cores-hbm2/ http://wccftech.com/amd-exascale-heterogeneous-processor-ehp...
magila 10y ago
Right now AMD is fighting for its life, it's in no position to take on Intel and Nvidia in the HPC space. If their consumer Zen processors flop then AMD will likely be heading for a buyout and/or bankruptcy. Only if both Zen and Vega (their upcoming high-end GPU) are huge successes will they have the resources to mount a serious effort to capture some of the HPC market.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > Right now AMD is fighting for its life, I thought so too, but looking at it stock recently it seems to be doing much better (especially in last year). Not sure how to interpret that. Wonder if it was mostly investors being happy they divested from that ARM microserver company, or there is genuine upswing and increased market share.
  - photogrammetry 10y ago
    The stock market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
  - gscott 10y ago
    AMD is too important for China to let it fail.
    - moyta 10y ago
      Huh? AMD is too important to Intel to let them fail, if AMD ever went broke, Intel would give them money just so they didn't have to deal with every country going at them for anti-trust law violations.
      - erelde 10y ago
        I found myself thinking about that a few times these last years. Would states really sue Intel for anti-trust when it's not really their fault if there was no competition? I mean you can't expect a new CPU founder company to just open and compete directly...
        ansible 10y ago
        I mean you can't expect a new CPU founder company to just open and compete directly... That's exactly what the Mill CPU folks are trying. I have hopes for a RISC-V vendor to do this too.
        vidarh 10y ago
        There's nothing illegal about being a monopolist. However, being a monopolist makes certain things illegal for you to do, and some of those things are things that are easy to suspect you of, but hard to prove you're not doing. As such, being a monopolist constrains you, as well as invites long, expensive, frustrating probes into your business that creates costs and risk (even if you're not intentionally violating anti-trust law, doesn't mean some business unit isn't inadvertently doing so). E.g. IBM was under an anti-trust probe from 1969 until 1982 over their mainframe business. The probe ended with the DOJ concluding the case was without merit, but it is widely considered to have had a big effect on IBMs decisionmaking for more than a decade.
- moyta 10y ago
  Eh, AMD has been doing that and custom cores as their bread and butter, seeing as they design the chips that power all the >$100 consoles from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, they have a good market niche that provides them with a decent market to keep the company viable. I'm not sure of cracking a new market space would be a good idea either, just like how they aren't trying to go toe to toe with Allwinner offering H3 SOCs for $1ea with a quadcore and H.265 hardware decoding, it might not make sense to get into a 3 way war with Intel, Nvidia, etc. Retaking or getting into another market with a single vendor or none presently would likely be more profitable, just as VIA did with their point of sale motherboards with crypto accelerators and tons of serial ports. AMD only has so much money and talent, getting into a pissing contest is not something they are looking to do. Intel can piss harder and longer than them (just look at the contra-revenue they did with the HP Stream 7 and the $50 Walmart android tablet, Intel charged the manufacturer for the chip $X and paid them $X+Y for using said chip to compete with ARM).
  - magila 10y ago
    The console business has razor-thin margins, there's not enough money being made there to sustain a company the size of AMD. Where that business might save them is if say Microsoft decided to buy them out to secure their supply of chips for the Xbox. The fact that it would force Sony to look elsewhere for their next-gen console wouldn't hurt I'm sure.
    - moyta 10y ago
      Sure, I'm not saying its something with huge margins, just like how Allwinner isn't getting rich with their dirt cheap SOCs. That being said, they have a few markets like that, and that is what sustains a company. I highly doubt Microsoft or anyone will buy AMD, as it would not make financial sense, AMD already builds these chips cheaper than any of them could build them on their own, and any kind of merger would revoke AMD's x86 license, and Intel's x86-64 license, thus destroying the ecosystem. On another note, a razor thin margin might not be glamorous, but you can run a business like that, though it will not be glamorous.
      - 10y ago
- goalieca 10y ago
  Nintendo chose nvidia for their next generation console. Going to be arm of all things.

by vmarsy 10y ago

AlphaSite 10y ago

I realise it's not the most reliable resource but it shows something interesting regardless. It's a server grade apu, combining a cpu and GPU onto a single socket. With HBM for huge amounts of bandwidth. They also have HIP for converting CUDA code into performance cross platform code. http://wccftech.com/amd-exascale-heterogeneous-processor-ehp-apu-32-zen-cores-hbm2/ http://wccftech.com/amd-exascale-heterogeneous-processor-ehp...

magila 10y ago

Right now AMD is fighting for its life, it's in no position to take on Intel and Nvidia in the HPC space. If their consumer Zen processors flop then AMD will likely be heading for a buyout and/or bankruptcy. Only if both Zen and Vega (their upcoming high-end GPU) are huge successes will they have the resources to mount a serious effort to capture some of the HPC market.

rdtsc 10y ago
> Right now AMD is fighting for its life, I thought so too, but looking at it stock recently it seems to be doing much better (especially in last year). Not sure how to interpret that. Wonder if it was mostly investors being happy they divested from that ARM microserver company, or there is genuine upswing and increased market share.
- photogrammetry 10y ago
  The stock market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
- gscott 10y ago
  AMD is too important for China to let it fail.
  - moyta 10y ago
    Huh? AMD is too important to Intel to let them fail, if AMD ever went broke, Intel would give them money just so they didn't have to deal with every country going at them for anti-trust law violations.
    - erelde 10y ago
      I found myself thinking about that a few times these last years. Would states really sue Intel for anti-trust when it's not really their fault if there was no competition? I mean you can't expect a new CPU founder company to just open and compete directly...
      - ansible 10y ago
        I mean you can't expect a new CPU founder company to just open and compete directly... That's exactly what the Mill CPU folks are trying. I have hopes for a RISC-V vendor to do this too.
      - vidarh 10y ago
        There's nothing illegal about being a monopolist. However, being a monopolist makes certain things illegal for you to do, and some of those things are things that are easy to suspect you of, but hard to prove you're not doing. As such, being a monopolist constrains you, as well as invites long, expensive, frustrating probes into your business that creates costs and risk (even if you're not intentionally violating anti-trust law, doesn't mean some business unit isn't inadvertently doing so). E.g. IBM was under an anti-trust probe from 1969 until 1982 over their mainframe business. The probe ended with the DOJ concluding the case was without merit, but it is widely considered to have had a big effect on IBMs decisionmaking for more than a decade.
moyta 10y ago
Eh, AMD has been doing that and custom cores as their bread and butter, seeing as they design the chips that power all the >$100 consoles from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, they have a good market niche that provides them with a decent market to keep the company viable. I'm not sure of cracking a new market space would be a good idea either, just like how they aren't trying to go toe to toe with Allwinner offering H3 SOCs for $1ea with a quadcore and H.265 hardware decoding, it might not make sense to get into a 3 way war with Intel, Nvidia, etc. Retaking or getting into another market with a single vendor or none presently would likely be more profitable, just as VIA did with their point of sale motherboards with crypto accelerators and tons of serial ports. AMD only has so much money and talent, getting into a pissing contest is not something they are looking to do. Intel can piss harder and longer than them (just look at the contra-revenue they did with the HP Stream 7 and the $50 Walmart android tablet, Intel charged the manufacturer for the chip $X and paid them $X+Y for using said chip to compete with ARM).
- magila 10y ago
  The console business has razor-thin margins, there's not enough money being made there to sustain a company the size of AMD. Where that business might save them is if say Microsoft decided to buy them out to secure their supply of chips for the Xbox. The fact that it would force Sony to look elsewhere for their next-gen console wouldn't hurt I'm sure.
  - moyta 10y ago
    Sure, I'm not saying its something with huge margins, just like how Allwinner isn't getting rich with their dirt cheap SOCs. That being said, they have a few markets like that, and that is what sustains a company. I highly doubt Microsoft or anyone will buy AMD, as it would not make financial sense, AMD already builds these chips cheaper than any of them could build them on their own, and any kind of merger would revoke AMD's x86 license, and Intel's x86-64 license, thus destroying the ecosystem. On another note, a razor thin margin might not be glamorous, but you can run a business like that, though it will not be glamorous.
    - 10y ago
goalieca 10y ago
Nintendo chose nvidia for their next generation console. Going to be arm of all things.