6 ms·

> One thing I think IBM has failed to grasp about POWER architecture is how to get people to use it. I don't think IBM cares about people using it, especially

> One thing I think IBM has failed to grasp about POWER architecture is how to get people to use it. I don't think IBM cares about people using it, especially people who can't afford $1000 dollars. They are only interested in high margin corp/gov pork barrel deals and need something that they can plausibly claim is superior in order to charge 10X for it.

marshray 9y ago
Sales-commission driven product development.
aseipp 9y ago
They definitely aren't charging 10X for it, it's very much in line and competitive at the Xeon level in terms of pricing, and they shine for certain workloads, especially with the new interconnects (CAPI, NVLink). POWER8 was harder to find, but the performance characteristics were good (in my experiments). And now the software is better (more solid ports) and cost is down. I'm eagerly awaiting the chips to hit this year and trying to find access to some. Plus IBM licenses the design these days (through OpenPOWER), so several of these players are building their own chips, boards, etc. Someone could inevitably enter the low-end market but lower-end devices have thinner margins and a lot more competitors. Even right now you can get real chips to go on a board on pre-order, just under $400 (TALOS II preorders) -- the mobo is the pricier part, but part of that is likely due to the BOM choices on that piece from Raptor Engineering. A smaller form factor motherboard (maybe with 1 socket) could land in the sub $2000 range for a whole mobo+cpu -- which is certainly competitive with similar HEDT/workstation prices[1]... [1] I just dropped $1,500 on a 1950X threadripper and associated mobo earlier this year, so this price range is certainly alive and kicking, IMHO.
- opencl 9y ago
  The mobo+single quad core CPU is $2,475, that's way more than the threadripper setup and the threadripper has 4x the core count.
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    Threadripper also only has 8MB of L3 cache per CCX, and you can't hold more than 8MB of data. (true, there are 4x CCX per chip, but you can't "combine" the datasets. You're effectively limited to 8MB per 4-cores. To communicate cross-CCX requires an expensive ping to main-memory) Its a great architecture, but cross-CCX communication is relatively slow and definitely is a concern for some work problems. Power9 has 120MB of L3 cache that's shared between all cores. Which means you can ACTUALLY have a full 120MB-sized problem set and share all that information between cores. In short: Threadripper is great for sure, but its not necessarily a fair comparison. In an apples-to-apples comparison (ie: Monero Mining), it seems like a Power9 server is 3x better than Threadripper (Power9 gets ~3000 hash/sec, while Threadripper is roughly 1000 hash/sec). https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=POWER9-Crypto-Mining https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=POWER9-C... > Using the xmr-stak-power PPC64LE-focused Monero miner, they are seeing great performance with it running on dual pre-production 16-core POWER9 processors. There's a hash rate of 2945H/s while this POWER9 system is pulling 350 Watts DC power. And mind you: Monero / Cryptonight only uses 2MB of L3 per core. So that's practically Threadripper's ideal problem. Imagine if you actually had a dataset that was larger than the 8MB per CCX that Threadripper is limited to. Not to hate on Threadripper at all. Its cheap and high performance. I'm seriously considering a Threadripper system myself. But these Power9 specs are incredible, and I'd definitely like to test one if I could afford one.
    - dman 9y ago
      I really hope AMD releases a 7601 variant that is clocked similarly to the threadripper chips.
    - opencl 9y ago
      That's a dual socket system with 16 cores per socket. Dual socket Epyc 7351 (also 16 core per socket) is faster and more power efficient than that. 3200H/s at 332W. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=226&v=CS7M392Ia_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=226&v=CS7M392Ia_... I'm sure there are workloads that really do benefit from the huge unified L3, but it seems like a pretty small niche.
    - 9y ago

marshray 9y ago

Sales-commission driven product development.

aseipp 9y ago

They definitely aren't charging 10X for it, it's very much in line and competitive at the Xeon level in terms of pricing, and they shine for certain workloads, especially with the new interconnects (CAPI, NVLink). POWER8 was harder to find, but the performance characteristics were good (in my experiments). And now the software is better (more solid ports) and cost is down. I'm eagerly awaiting the chips to hit this year and trying to find access to some. Plus IBM licenses the design these days (through OpenPOWER), so several of these players are building their own chips, boards, etc. Someone could inevitably enter the low-end market but lower-end devices have thinner margins and a lot more competitors. Even right now you can get real chips to go on a board on pre-order, just under $400 (TALOS II preorders) -- the mobo is the pricier part, but part of that is likely due to the BOM choices on that piece from Raptor Engineering. A smaller form factor motherboard (maybe with 1 socket) could land in the sub $2000 range for a whole mobo+cpu -- which is certainly competitive with similar HEDT/workstation prices[1]... [1] I just dropped $1,500 on a 1950X threadripper and associated mobo earlier this year, so this price range is certainly alive and kicking, IMHO.

opencl 9y ago
The mobo+single quad core CPU is $2,475, that's way more than the threadripper setup and the threadripper has 4x the core count.
- dragontamer 9y ago
  Threadripper also only has 8MB of L3 cache per CCX, and you can't hold more than 8MB of data. (true, there are 4x CCX per chip, but you can't "combine" the datasets. You're effectively limited to 8MB per 4-cores. To communicate cross-CCX requires an expensive ping to main-memory) Its a great architecture, but cross-CCX communication is relatively slow and definitely is a concern for some work problems. Power9 has 120MB of L3 cache that's shared between all cores. Which means you can ACTUALLY have a full 120MB-sized problem set and share all that information between cores. In short: Threadripper is great for sure, but its not necessarily a fair comparison. In an apples-to-apples comparison (ie: Monero Mining), it seems like a Power9 server is 3x better than Threadripper (Power9 gets ~3000 hash/sec, while Threadripper is roughly 1000 hash/sec). https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=POWER9-Crypto-Mining https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=POWER9-C... > Using the xmr-stak-power PPC64LE-focused Monero miner, they are seeing great performance with it running on dual pre-production 16-core POWER9 processors. There's a hash rate of 2945H/s while this POWER9 system is pulling 350 Watts DC power. And mind you: Monero / Cryptonight only uses 2MB of L3 per core. So that's practically Threadripper's ideal problem. Imagine if you actually had a dataset that was larger than the 8MB per CCX that Threadripper is limited to. Not to hate on Threadripper at all. Its cheap and high performance. I'm seriously considering a Threadripper system myself. But these Power9 specs are incredible, and I'd definitely like to test one if I could afford one.
  - dman 9y ago
    I really hope AMD releases a 7601 variant that is clocked similarly to the threadripper chips.
  - opencl 9y ago
    That's a dual socket system with 16 cores per socket. Dual socket Epyc 7351 (also 16 core per socket) is faster and more power efficient than that. 3200H/s at 332W. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=226&v=CS7M392Ia_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=226&v=CS7M392Ia_... I'm sure there are workloads that really do benefit from the huge unified L3, but it seems like a pretty small niche.
  - 9y ago