4 ms·

Yes, epyc will be competitive, but xeon will still dominate. Mild price drops, or Intel "discovers" (coffee lake/8086k) extra cores/ghz under a mattress. A lot

by berbec 8y ago

Yes, epyc will be competitive, but xeon will still dominate. Mild price drops, or Intel "discovers" (coffee lake/8086k) extra cores/ghz under a mattress. A lot of budget gets spent under the "nobody gets fired for buying xxxx" principal. 10nm changes none of this, sadly. Amd has had better hardware before.

daveguy 8y ago
They've also had close to 50% of the market before. And the "No one gets fired for buying xxxx" works more with software than with hardware. x86 CPUs are essentially a commodity. The best price / performance + performance density + energy efficiency will probably win. Previously Intel had 2/3 (perf density and energy efficiency). With the new EPYC they will probably have 0/3.
- lev99 8y ago
  Performance isn't a one dimensional metric that you treat it as. Different CPUs have different comparative benchmarks depending on the tests.
  - daveguy 8y ago
    I treated it that way for simplicity. In the increasingly virtualized environments at data centers the performance of many more cores will be even more favorable to single core performance. Also, more pci bandwidth with 128 lanes. Not sure if the memory bandwidth is better, but you get the picture.
- sitkack 8y ago
  Some shops will literally buy from the same vendor even if perf/$ is 3x higher going another route. The IT director at place years ago would only go with the most expensive HP stuff, we literally could have had 3x the compute and 4x the storage for going super micro. Even if if his ridiculous MTBF numbers for SM were true, we still would have had 1.5x compute and 3x storage after 3 years for the same price. So yes, if EPYC isn't offered on the right vendor platforms, they will be shutout even if perf and density are better.
  - mmt 8y ago
    > Some shops will literally buy from the same vendor even if perf/$ is 3x higher going another route. How many is "some", though? More specifically, what portion of the market do they represent? I'm actually genuinely curious as to whether anyone has a feel for this, as, if the proportion is particularly high, it would explain why even AWS's prices seem competitive to some managers who I would have otherwise thought would have an idea of how cheap commodity hardware is. Previously, I thought only "enterprise" shops suffered from this, where the multiplier can easily be 10x for the most vendor-locked-in enterprisey hardware like storage, network, and support (where the multiplier can be infinity!) even if they pay no premium on the commodity compute.
lev99 8y ago
> A lot of budget gets spent under the "nobody gets fired for buying xxxx" principal. I do not think "Nobody gets fired for buying xxxx" applies to Intel server CPUs. Almost everyone I know that purchases or approves large hardware purchases take a lot of time considering specs and price. AMD and Intel's CPUs are completely interchangeable for anyone writing in a language level C or higher. In the case of cloud providers I am completely ignorant of what CPU my cloud servers are using, and only a vague notion that it's the X86 architecture.
- berbec 8y ago
  I see "buys xxx" doesn't seem to resonate with hardware purchases. Others have commented similarly. What are the places that's true? Cisco switches & routers, Dell servers, Microsoft Exchange? Hrm... This could make an interesting ask HN. As for your cloud provider, it's Intel. Almost guaranteed. The server market has been so run by Intel for years now, EPYC just launched leading to the chances of you having amd and it not being fairly big news story is unlikely. [1] 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15851470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15851470
  - lev99 8y ago
    > I see "buys xxx" doesn't seem to resonate with hardware purchases. Oh, "Nobody gets fired for buying xxxx" applies to some hardware purchases, just not server CPUs.

by berbec 8y ago

daveguy 8y ago

They've also had close to 50% of the market before. And the "No one gets fired for buying xxxx" works more with software than with hardware. x86 CPUs are essentially a commodity. The best price / performance + performance density + energy efficiency will probably win. Previously Intel had 2/3 (perf density and energy efficiency). With the new EPYC they will probably have 0/3.

lev99 8y ago
Performance isn't a one dimensional metric that you treat it as. Different CPUs have different comparative benchmarks depending on the tests.
- daveguy 8y ago
  I treated it that way for simplicity. In the increasingly virtualized environments at data centers the performance of many more cores will be even more favorable to single core performance. Also, more pci bandwidth with 128 lanes. Not sure if the memory bandwidth is better, but you get the picture.
sitkack 8y ago
Some shops will literally buy from the same vendor even if perf/$ is 3x higher going another route. The IT director at place years ago would only go with the most expensive HP stuff, we literally could have had 3x the compute and 4x the storage for going super micro. Even if if his ridiculous MTBF numbers for SM were true, we still would have had 1.5x compute and 3x storage after 3 years for the same price. So yes, if EPYC isn't offered on the right vendor platforms, they will be shutout even if perf and density are better.
- mmt 8y ago
  > Some shops will literally buy from the same vendor even if perf/$ is 3x higher going another route. How many is "some", though? More specifically, what portion of the market do they represent? I'm actually genuinely curious as to whether anyone has a feel for this, as, if the proportion is particularly high, it would explain why even AWS's prices seem competitive to some managers who I would have otherwise thought would have an idea of how cheap commodity hardware is. Previously, I thought only "enterprise" shops suffered from this, where the multiplier can easily be 10x for the most vendor-locked-in enterprisey hardware like storage, network, and support (where the multiplier can be infinity!) even if they pay no premium on the commodity compute.

lev99 8y ago

> A lot of budget gets spent under the "nobody gets fired for buying xxxx" principal. I do not think "Nobody gets fired for buying xxxx" applies to Intel server CPUs. Almost everyone I know that purchases or approves large hardware purchases take a lot of time considering specs and price. AMD and Intel's CPUs are completely interchangeable for anyone writing in a language level C or higher. In the case of cloud providers I am completely ignorant of what CPU my cloud servers are using, and only a vague notion that it's the X86 architecture.

berbec 8y ago
I see "buys xxx" doesn't seem to resonate with hardware purchases. Others have commented similarly. What are the places that's true? Cisco switches & routers, Dell servers, Microsoft Exchange? Hrm... This could make an interesting ask HN. As for your cloud provider, it's Intel. Almost guaranteed. The server market has been so run by Intel for years now, EPYC just launched leading to the chances of you having amd and it not being fairly big news story is unlikely. [1] 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15851470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15851470
- lev99 8y ago
  > I see "buys xxx" doesn't seem to resonate with hardware purchases. Oh, "Nobody gets fired for buying xxxx" applies to some hardware purchases, just not server CPUs.