4 ms·

I'd rather wait for Ryzen. You won't know which Skylake processor you're getting - the gimped one or the non-gimped one. AMD tends to keep their features consis

I'd rather wait for Ryzen. You won't know which Skylake processor you're getting - the gimped one or the non-gimped one. AMD tends to keep their features consistent across the line.

zbjornson 10y ago
What do you mean by "gimped?" As in the consumer chips without AVX512 vs. the server chips with AVX512?
- lightedman 10y ago
  Yea, meanwhile AMD tends to keep the features across both desktop and server lines of CPU the same. And the pre-release Skylake server procs seems to be gimped as it's missing a few features versus the actual official release Skylake server procs.
reitzensteinm 10y ago
Depends on the workload. A compute bound vectorizable problem could be four times faster on Skylake.
- petra 10y ago
  Why 4 and not 2 (512/256)?
  - jackmott 10y ago
    the masks on avx 512 can lead to more than a 2x improvement sometimes
the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
Does Google provide machines with AMD processors?
- boulos 10y ago
  No, we don't provide any machines with AMD processors in Cloud, today. Fun historical fact though: the 'N' in n1 meant 'Intel'. Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
  - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
    Any plans on doing that in the future?
    - bonzini 10y ago
      Based on public talks by GCP engineers, it's very unlikely. Maybe SEV (encrypted VMs) might change that. However, the small glimpse into GCP that you get from looking at their work on KVM would suggest no.
    - snuxoll 10y ago
      During the Ryzen launch announcement GCP was listed on their partners, this may only be due to the availability of AMD GPU's but considering this was a CPU-specific talk I'd guess the magic 8-ball says "outlook good".
  - rey12rey 10y ago
    Interesting to know about the 'N'. How about g1 & f1? Any history behind those?
    - jbeda 10y ago
      I came up with the naming scheme here. We picked n for Intel as I could be confused with i3/i5/i7. Early work was done in AMD and we had an a1 series pre launch. IIRC, g is for Google or Generic where there are no promises on architecture. And f was for fractional. I've been out of Google for 2+ years now so reality may have drifted from that original scheme.
dogma1138 10y ago
Zen doesn't even have full width AVX2 (256bit) units the comparison is quite invalid.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  And Ryzen isn't AMD's server product.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Naples doesn't have it either, it's the same CCX.

I'd rather wait for Ryzen. You won't know which Skylake processor you're getting - the gimped one or the non-gimped one. AMD tends to keep their features consistent across the line.

zbjornson 10y ago

What do you mean by "gimped?" As in the consumer chips without AVX512 vs. the server chips with AVX512?

lightedman 10y ago
Yea, meanwhile AMD tends to keep the features across both desktop and server lines of CPU the same. And the pre-release Skylake server procs seems to be gimped as it's missing a few features versus the actual official release Skylake server procs.

reitzensteinm 10y ago

Depends on the workload. A compute bound vectorizable problem could be four times faster on Skylake.

petra 10y ago
Why 4 and not 2 (512/256)?
- jackmott 10y ago
  the masks on avx 512 can lead to more than a 2x improvement sometimes

the_mitsuhiko 10y ago

Does Google provide machines with AMD processors?

boulos 10y ago
No, we don't provide any machines with AMD processors in Cloud, today. Fun historical fact though: the 'N' in n1 meant 'Intel'. Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  Any plans on doing that in the future?
  - bonzini 10y ago
    Based on public talks by GCP engineers, it's very unlikely. Maybe SEV (encrypted VMs) might change that. However, the small glimpse into GCP that you get from looking at their work on KVM would suggest no.
  - snuxoll 10y ago
    During the Ryzen launch announcement GCP was listed on their partners, this may only be due to the availability of AMD GPU's but considering this was a CPU-specific talk I'd guess the magic 8-ball says "outlook good".
- rey12rey 10y ago
  Interesting to know about the 'N'. How about g1 & f1? Any history behind those?
  - jbeda 10y ago
    I came up with the naming scheme here. We picked n for Intel as I could be confused with i3/i5/i7. Early work was done in AMD and we had an a1 series pre launch. IIRC, g is for Google or Generic where there are no promises on architecture. And f was for fractional. I've been out of Google for 2+ years now so reality may have drifted from that original scheme.

dogma1138 10y ago

Zen doesn't even have full width AVX2 (256bit) units the comparison is quite invalid.

TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
And Ryzen isn't AMD's server product.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Naples doesn't have it either, it's the same CCX.