7 ms·

Finally it happened. Here's to hoping that after being exposed to this kind of risk, enterprises and regular customers start being more inquisitive about what c

Finally it happened. Here's to hoping that after being exposed to this kind of risk, enterprises and regular customers start being more inquisitive about what code gets embedded into their hardware and why.

nine_k 8y ago
I heard Google spends a lot of money and effort to (slowly) move to Power9. It does have a management processor but it's open for inspection and modification. Maybe other cloud providers, and/or private clouds, would consider that.
- scruffyherder 8y ago
  Source on that? I'd love to use that as a prodding stick to shove all my java/node stuff off of x86..
  - PeCaN 8y ago
    Google Confirms POWER9 Processor Data Center Deployment At OpenPOWER Summit 2018 https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/headed-into-its-fifth-year-openpower-has-momentum-into-the-power9-generation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/head... IBM Begins Power9 Rollout with Backing from DOE, Google https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/12/06/ibm-begins-power9-rollout-backing-doe-google/ https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/12/06/ibm-begins-power9-rollout... Google's Data Centers Now Have IBM Inside https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/22/googles-data-centers-now-have-ibm-inside.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/22/googles-data-cente... Introducing Zaius, Google and Rackspace’s open server running IBM POWER9 https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zaius-Google-and-Rackspaces-open-server-running-IBM-POWER9.html https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zai... They're also a platinum-level member of the OpenPOWER consortium (i.e. they have a position on the board of directors).
    - scruffyherder 8y ago
      Thanks! Time to poke the bees! What is crazy is that we sent people to Google about moving stuff to their cloud offering, and when I asked about the Power9 thing nobody knew anything!
- Aissen 8y ago
  I'd bet that Google has probably 10x more engineers working on improving the situation with their various Intel chipsets (being on laptops, or servers), than those working on "Plan B" (Power9), or "Plan C" (RISC-V) solutions.
- floatboth 8y ago
  Would be incredibly awesome to see POWER9 options on Google's public cloud VMs… Meanwhile, ARMv8 is already available to the public! packet.net offers access to a full dedicated dual ThunderX box for $0.5/hr (or 0.1 with spot instances). Scaleway offers KVM virtual machines (also on ThunderX) for as little as €2.99/month (€0.006/hr). First gen ThunderX kinda sucks at single-thread performance, but you get many cores and… well, you get to start using non-x86 machines, on public cloud, right now. If developers start actually using ARM boxes for their projects, the providers will be more likely to expand in this direction, and maybe in a year (or less?) we'll see the much more powerful ThunderX2 boxes available, and hopefully more providers will get into this…
turblety 8y ago
Finally? That ME thing should be nowhere near private and confidential data. There's constantly bugs being found in it [1][2]. Honestly if you are a large company, organisation, government, etc and you are using Intel or AMD products, then you are being very irresponsible. There is no excuse, enough information is out there that even a non-technical CTO should know better. 1. https://www.wired.com/story/intel-management-engine-vulnerabilities-pcs-servers-iot/ https://www.wired.com/story/intel-management-engine-vulnerab... 2. https://wccftech.com/intel-management-engine-not-fixed/ https://wccftech.com/intel-management-engine-not-fixed/
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  There is quite literally no viable alternative to x86 for 95% (more like 99.9%, but I am being generous) of the server and workstation market. Pretending like there is and anyone choosing x86 is irresponsible is just being a smug fool.
  - PeCaN 8y ago
    POWER is actually competitive on price/performance now.
    - floatboth 8y ago
      Eh… Not for the home enthusiast workstation market. The CPUs are actually kinda reasonable (Raptor sells the 8-core for $595, which is only $95 more than the launch price of the Ryzen 1800X). But the lite mainboard is $1,099. That's 5-10 times more that a board for Ryzen. And a lot is missing on the "lite".
      - PeCaN 8y ago
        Context here is "server and workstation market". The Ryzen 1800X is not a comparable CPU.
  - ianmunoz 8y ago
    The newest super computer, summit, ranked as the largest/fastest runs ppc64le which definitely creates an argument that there is an alternative to x86 for servers.

nine_k 8y ago

I heard Google spends a lot of money and effort to (slowly) move to Power9. It does have a management processor but it's open for inspection and modification. Maybe other cloud providers, and/or private clouds, would consider that.

scruffyherder 8y ago
Source on that? I'd love to use that as a prodding stick to shove all my java/node stuff off of x86..
- PeCaN 8y ago
  Google Confirms POWER9 Processor Data Center Deployment At OpenPOWER Summit 2018 https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/headed-into-its-fifth-year-openpower-has-momentum-into-the-power9-generation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/head... IBM Begins Power9 Rollout with Backing from DOE, Google https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/12/06/ibm-begins-power9-rollout-backing-doe-google/ https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/12/06/ibm-begins-power9-rollout... Google's Data Centers Now Have IBM Inside https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/22/googles-data-centers-now-have-ibm-inside.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/22/googles-data-cente... Introducing Zaius, Google and Rackspace’s open server running IBM POWER9 https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zaius-Google-and-Rackspaces-open-server-running-IBM-POWER9.html https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/10/introducing-Zai... They're also a platinum-level member of the OpenPOWER consortium (i.e. they have a position on the board of directors).
  - scruffyherder 8y ago
    Thanks! Time to poke the bees! What is crazy is that we sent people to Google about moving stuff to their cloud offering, and when I asked about the Power9 thing nobody knew anything!
Aissen 8y ago
I'd bet that Google has probably 10x more engineers working on improving the situation with their various Intel chipsets (being on laptops, or servers), than those working on "Plan B" (Power9), or "Plan C" (RISC-V) solutions.
floatboth 8y ago
Would be incredibly awesome to see POWER9 options on Google's public cloud VMs… Meanwhile, ARMv8 is already available to the public! packet.net offers access to a full dedicated dual ThunderX box for $0.5/hr (or 0.1 with spot instances). Scaleway offers KVM virtual machines (also on ThunderX) for as little as €2.99/month (€0.006/hr). First gen ThunderX kinda sucks at single-thread performance, but you get many cores and… well, you get to start using non-x86 machines, on public cloud, right now. If developers start actually using ARM boxes for their projects, the providers will be more likely to expand in this direction, and maybe in a year (or less?) we'll see the much more powerful ThunderX2 boxes available, and hopefully more providers will get into this…

turblety 8y ago

Finally? That ME thing should be nowhere near private and confidential data. There's constantly bugs being found in it [1][2]. Honestly if you are a large company, organisation, government, etc and you are using Intel or AMD products, then you are being very irresponsible. There is no excuse, enough information is out there that even a non-technical CTO should know better. 1. https://www.wired.com/story/intel-management-engine-vulnerabilities-pcs-servers-iot/ https://www.wired.com/story/intel-management-engine-vulnerab... 2. https://wccftech.com/intel-management-engine-not-fixed/ https://wccftech.com/intel-management-engine-not-fixed/

throwaway2048 8y ago
There is quite literally no viable alternative to x86 for 95% (more like 99.9%, but I am being generous) of the server and workstation market. Pretending like there is and anyone choosing x86 is irresponsible is just being a smug fool.
- PeCaN 8y ago
  POWER is actually competitive on price/performance now.
  - floatboth 8y ago
    Eh… Not for the home enthusiast workstation market. The CPUs are actually kinda reasonable (Raptor sells the 8-core for $595, which is only $95 more than the launch price of the Ryzen 1800X). But the lite mainboard is $1,099. That's 5-10 times more that a board for Ryzen. And a lot is missing on the "lite".
    - PeCaN 8y ago
      Context here is "server and workstation market". The Ryzen 1800X is not a comparable CPU.
- ianmunoz 8y ago
  The newest super computer, summit, ranked as the largest/fastest runs ppc64le which definitely creates an argument that there is an alternative to x86 for servers.