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Here is one thing we can do about it: make public service announcement to our users that we no longer recommend Intel CPUs because of security holes, censorship

Here is one thing we can do about it: make public service announcement to our users that we no longer recommend Intel CPUs because of security holes, censorship and crippled performance. I am going to do that today. While we only have several thousand users they do CPU intensive work, buy a lot of new CPUs and rent a lot of servers. My small contribution will likely amount to low-mid 6 figures out of Intel pocket in coming 2-3 years. Please consider such announcement if you could do some damage as well.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
That's one of the best ways to actually make a change.
eps 8y ago
This amounts to little more than making a statement at the expense of your users. It would've carried that much more weight if it were _your_ low-mid 6 figures that were redirected away from Intel.
- harry8 8y ago
  It's Intel's policy and silliness that is at the expense of this person's users. Making those users aware of it is absolutely defensible on the grounds of it being the right thing to do. Intel are relying on customers ignorance, in fact they're trying to contractually ensure it! The Streisand effect is exactly what they deserve.
- Jonnax 8y ago
  Intel isn't really that much far ahead to say that users are going to be negatively affected.
  - bluecalm 8y ago
    Intel is actually behind in performance/price ration by a wide margin at least on workloads which can make use of many cores. The margin is likely getting bigger after the latest patches.
- nalllar 8y ago
  It will likely benefit their users. AMD's EPYC processors are cheaper for the same performance as intel's, as well as allowing more memory per processor. As they allow more cores per socket this can also often massively reduce per-socket licensing cost, if you have the misfortune of using software which requires that.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Well, AMD currently has better CPUs for high-performance computing, so OP's users would benefit from this public service announcement, if anything.
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    I thought it was the opposite of that? That is, AMD chips are currently great for most workloads but Intel still has a definite edge in working with big vectors of floating point numbers of the sort you usually encounter in HPC. Mostly because their core's vector units are 512 instead of 256 bits wide.
    - celrod 8y ago
      Skylake-X and certain Xeons have avx-512 (which includes two 512 bit fma units). The rest only have 256 bit wide vectors, like Ryzen. But they still have the advantage of two 256 bit fma units, while Ryzen instead relies on two 128 bit fma units, meaning the fma instructions critical to matrix operations are faster on Intel. I think the idea for HPC though is that you want to offload these highly vectorizable operations to a GPU. Or maybe you're doing a lot of Monte Carlo that it is hard to vectorize. I really do like avx-512 though. If you're writing a lot of your own code, and that code involves many small-scale operations and has control flow (like in many Monte Carlo simulations), it's a lot easier than mucking with a GPU. If you're using gcc though, be sure to add `-mprefer-vector-width=512`, otherwise it will default to 256 bit vectors (clang and Julia use 512 by default).
tomp 8y ago
Honest question: is AMD any better? Do they somehow manage to avoid Spectre / Meltdown without a slowdown?
- simion314 8y ago
  AMD is better, they are still affected by side channel attacks but they did not skipped on security checks and are not affected by speculative execution AFAIK https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/security-updates https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/security-updates
  - coherentpony 8y ago
    > ...and are not affected by speculative execution AMD's chips definitely speculatively execute instructions. It's a common performance trick. AMD's chips also definitely throw an exception at retirement (of course) for instructions that attempt to load a privileged address, just like Intel's chips do. The difference is that when AMD's chips see a load instruction, the load isn't executed until it knows that the address isn't privileged. Intel's chips do execute the load (but then throw away the result when it realises the address was privileged). The speculative part is for instructions that depend on the result of the load.
    - simion314 8y ago
      >The difference is that when AMD's chips see a load instruction, the load isn't executed until it knows that the address isn't privileged. Intel's chips do execute the load (but then throw away the result when it realises the address was privileged) Thank you for the detailed explanation, can't we conclude that AMD engineering is more defensive then Intel, this is what I concluded.
      - coherentpony 8y ago
        Based on this datapoint? I don't think so. They're vulnerable to other side-channel attacks. Both AMD and Intel hire really smart people, but this stuff is really, really hard.
dhimes 8y ago
I am in the market for a new rig- looks like I'll be going with AMD.
- holtalanm 8y ago
  same. i _was_ looking at getting an HP Spectre x360 with the i7 8550U. Now, I'm going to look explicitly at laptops with Ryzen chips. I think the Spectre might have a Ryzen model, but don't know.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    AMD is severely behind on the Laptop space. In the Desktop space, I can definitely recommend AMD. But Laptops are totally Intel right now. There are AMD Laptops, but they are hard to recommend. Most are low-end offerings at best (laptop manufacturers don't put the high-end stuff with AMD). As long as high-end HP / Dell / Lenovo / Asus / Acer / Apple / Microsoft Surface are all Intel-based, you're basically forced to use an Intel Laptop. Desktops... you can build your own. And even if you couldn't, there are a ton of custom computer builders out there making great AMD Desktop rigs. ------------- With that being said, AMD laptops are competitive in the $500 to $750 space. Low-end to mid-tier laptops... the ones with poor mouse controls, driver issues, bad keyboards, low-end screens and such. But hey, they're cheap. Its not really AMD's fault. But in any case, its hard for me to find a good AMD laptop. So... that's just how it is.
    - holtalanm 8y ago
      the new HP Envy x360 13z doesn't look bad. Kind of waiting to see what the Lenovo ThinkPad A285 looks like, as well.
      - dragontamer 8y ago
        The HP Envy x360 has a noticeably worse screen though. Its definitely not the same class or caliber as the Spectre x360. That's what I'm talking about: most laptop manufacturers offer a "premium" Intel laptop. But then they have a lower-quality AMD one on the side. Nothing AMD has done wrong per se, just laptop manufacturers refuse to sell AMD on the high-end.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

That's one of the best ways to actually make a change.

eps 8y ago

This amounts to little more than making a statement at the expense of your users. It would've carried that much more weight if it were _your_ low-mid 6 figures that were redirected away from Intel.

harry8 8y ago
It's Intel's policy and silliness that is at the expense of this person's users. Making those users aware of it is absolutely defensible on the grounds of it being the right thing to do. Intel are relying on customers ignorance, in fact they're trying to contractually ensure it! The Streisand effect is exactly what they deserve.
Jonnax 8y ago
Intel isn't really that much far ahead to say that users are going to be negatively affected.
- bluecalm 8y ago
  Intel is actually behind in performance/price ration by a wide margin at least on workloads which can make use of many cores. The margin is likely getting bigger after the latest patches.
nalllar 8y ago
It will likely benefit their users. AMD's EPYC processors are cheaper for the same performance as intel's, as well as allowing more memory per processor. As they allow more cores per socket this can also often massively reduce per-socket licensing cost, if you have the misfortune of using software which requires that.
gnulinux 8y ago
Well, AMD currently has better CPUs for high-performance computing, so OP's users would benefit from this public service announcement, if anything.
- Symmetry 8y ago
  I thought it was the opposite of that? That is, AMD chips are currently great for most workloads but Intel still has a definite edge in working with big vectors of floating point numbers of the sort you usually encounter in HPC. Mostly because their core's vector units are 512 instead of 256 bits wide.
  - celrod 8y ago
    Skylake-X and certain Xeons have avx-512 (which includes two 512 bit fma units). The rest only have 256 bit wide vectors, like Ryzen. But they still have the advantage of two 256 bit fma units, while Ryzen instead relies on two 128 bit fma units, meaning the fma instructions critical to matrix operations are faster on Intel. I think the idea for HPC though is that you want to offload these highly vectorizable operations to a GPU. Or maybe you're doing a lot of Monte Carlo that it is hard to vectorize. I really do like avx-512 though. If you're writing a lot of your own code, and that code involves many small-scale operations and has control flow (like in many Monte Carlo simulations), it's a lot easier than mucking with a GPU. If you're using gcc though, be sure to add `-mprefer-vector-width=512`, otherwise it will default to 256 bit vectors (clang and Julia use 512 by default).

tomp 8y ago

Honest question: is AMD any better? Do they somehow manage to avoid Spectre / Meltdown without a slowdown?

simion314 8y ago
AMD is better, they are still affected by side channel attacks but they did not skipped on security checks and are not affected by speculative execution AFAIK https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/security-updates https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/security-updates
- coherentpony 8y ago
  > ...and are not affected by speculative execution AMD's chips definitely speculatively execute instructions. It's a common performance trick. AMD's chips also definitely throw an exception at retirement (of course) for instructions that attempt to load a privileged address, just like Intel's chips do. The difference is that when AMD's chips see a load instruction, the load isn't executed until it knows that the address isn't privileged. Intel's chips do execute the load (but then throw away the result when it realises the address was privileged). The speculative part is for instructions that depend on the result of the load.
  - simion314 8y ago
    >The difference is that when AMD's chips see a load instruction, the load isn't executed until it knows that the address isn't privileged. Intel's chips do execute the load (but then throw away the result when it realises the address was privileged) Thank you for the detailed explanation, can't we conclude that AMD engineering is more defensive then Intel, this is what I concluded.
    - coherentpony 8y ago
      Based on this datapoint? I don't think so. They're vulnerable to other side-channel attacks. Both AMD and Intel hire really smart people, but this stuff is really, really hard.

dhimes 8y ago

I am in the market for a new rig- looks like I'll be going with AMD.

holtalanm 8y ago
same. i _was_ looking at getting an HP Spectre x360 with the i7 8550U. Now, I'm going to look explicitly at laptops with Ryzen chips. I think the Spectre might have a Ryzen model, but don't know.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  AMD is severely behind on the Laptop space. In the Desktop space, I can definitely recommend AMD. But Laptops are totally Intel right now. There are AMD Laptops, but they are hard to recommend. Most are low-end offerings at best (laptop manufacturers don't put the high-end stuff with AMD). As long as high-end HP / Dell / Lenovo / Asus / Acer / Apple / Microsoft Surface are all Intel-based, you're basically forced to use an Intel Laptop. Desktops... you can build your own. And even if you couldn't, there are a ton of custom computer builders out there making great AMD Desktop rigs. ------------- With that being said, AMD laptops are competitive in the $500 to $750 space. Low-end to mid-tier laptops... the ones with poor mouse controls, driver issues, bad keyboards, low-end screens and such. But hey, they're cheap. Its not really AMD's fault. But in any case, its hard for me to find a good AMD laptop. So... that's just how it is.
  - holtalanm 8y ago
    the new HP Envy x360 13z doesn't look bad. Kind of waiting to see what the Lenovo ThinkPad A285 looks like, as well.
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      The HP Envy x360 has a noticeably worse screen though. Its definitely not the same class or caliber as the Spectre x360. That's what I'm talking about: most laptop manufacturers offer a "premium" Intel laptop. But then they have a lower-quality AMD one on the side. Nothing AMD has done wrong per se, just laptop manufacturers refuse to sell AMD on the high-end.