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AMD lands Google, Twitter as customers with newest server chip

837 points by jonbaer 7y ago

walrus01 7y ago
Reminds me of many years ago when the absolute best $ per performance setup was a rackmount dual socket opteron. Right when the opteron first became a thing.
koolba 7y ago
I hope this puts AMD in stable footing for many years to come. Having newer and faster chips is great, but whats even better is long term competition in this space.
- samfisher83 7y ago
  Opteron was crushing it back in the day. I think Tech is just cyclical. It seemed like AMD was in a lull for a while which basically made intel not really compete. Hopefully this forces Intel to step its game up. Competition is always good for the consumer.
  - godzillabrennus 7y ago
    Intel has such a poor track record in recent years of expanding into new markets and hasn’t had to compete in their core market for so long that it’s questionable if they can.
    - gameswithgo 7y ago
      we just got done saying that about AMD, so..
  - uncletaco 7y ago
    Was AMD in a lull or just making longterm bets on technology? I've only followed casually in the last decade+ but I was under the impression that the ATI merger was meant to support a long term bet on better chips by AMD and we're starting to see the fruit of that labor.
    - faitswulff 7y ago
      As a layperson, I never understood that merger. How does buying a graphics card company make for better chips in general?
      - addicted 7y ago
        Integrating graphics card into their chips is what Intel seems to want to do as well. So it would appear AMD was ahead of the game. I guess, at the time, the thinking was that GPUs were a core threat to the CPU business itself, since a lot of the buzz was around using the GPU to do CPU activities.
        sanxiyn 7y ago
        Yes, there was this thing called HSA(Heterogeneous System Architecture). Does anyone remember that now?
        consp 7y ago
        Yes, parts of it now present in IOMMU(v2)
        throwaway2048 7y ago
        Zen in many ways is still moving towards that model, The concept of an IO die that all cores hook into, along with all of PCI-E lanes, no need for complicated cross core linking. It would be relatively "easy" to introduce specialized accelerator cores or beefy GPU chips into this mix on a separate chip, and not massively complicate the CPU design, or massively bloat its cost as a specialist die.
        jorvi 7y ago
        The PS4 is an example of that. It's an APU with GDDR5 acting as both system and video memory. To be honest for a while I thought that was where everything but servers would be going. You can tune your OS and applications around the slower GDDR5 and it seemed a no brainer: instead of 8GB of system memory topping out and then 4GB of VRAM doing jack shit you could have 12GB that could be dynamically assigned to whatever you wanted! Alas, that dream was never meant to be. Edit: I posted about this a while a back and apparently Arch Linux has a hacky way to use your VRAM as system RAM. Good stuff.
  - cronix 7y ago
    Would it have been a lull if all of intels flaws and security issues were known at the time? Those go back many years but weren't discovered til fairly recently and AMD didn't have most of them.
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      Not all of them were known back then obviously, but there were definitely known timing-info-leak flaws with Pentium 4 hyper threading[1], its remarkable on that basis that the modern class of execution timing exploits has taken so long to arise, considering their approach and concept really isn't fundamentally any different. [1] http://www.daemonology.net/papers/htt.pdf http://www.daemonology.net/papers/htt.pdf by none other than our resident cpercival!
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Back during the Opteron era, their chips had good compute, but higher heat output and power consumption. I use to run dual AthlonXPs on their older dual-MP boards back in University. It's crazy we now have 8~16 cores on a single board; on consumer (or I guess prosumer/developer) targeted hardware.
  - ant6n 7y ago
    In 2016, AMD was near bankruptcy, after many years of mediocre tech and bad decisions. At that time it looked like they were never going to compete with Intel again in any meaningful way, didn't have the resources to pull ahead, had a negative balance sheet, and the best hope was that they could survive on some cheaper x86 niches, on the grace of people wanting some x86 competition to exist.
- redleggedfrog 7y ago
  "...even better is long term competition in this space." I hope that's the biggest outcome from this. My inside sources tell me that Intel has their briefs in a bind over AMDs latest technology, and are certainly kerfuffling over it, but I'm not sure how quickly they can respond. It seems like the disparity in this cycle has grown wider than in the past. But that is just my subjective take - I'm not really conversant on the manufacturing part. I'm just historically reviewing the power consumption and benchmarks.
  - close04 7y ago
    > but I'm not sure how quickly they can respond AMD won't be in the position to just rest on their laurels for years to come. So the fact that Intel is scrambling to come up with a competitive response shouldn't be a concern as far as competition goes in the short-medium term. I'd say we have at least a few CPU generations coming from AMD without worrying that they become complacent, even if Intel still comes up short.
  - philjohn 7y ago
    Especially as the top dual socket Epyc BEATS the top dual socket Xeon in a workload heavily optimised for AVX-512 and using the Intel ICC compiler. True, it has more cores, but it seems Xeon's have to clock down when executing AVX-512 ops to stay within their power budget. It's also doing this at almost half the cost and consuming less power ... that's nothing short of astounding. Xeon's do have a benefit for workloads that can stay in L3 cache as their mesh means latency is stable, whereas Epyc is 16MB per CCX. Overall memory latency is also lower, which is the tradeoff with the IO die, but it will be interesting to see what real world numbers for DB's etc. say about that.
    - stochastic_monk 7y ago
      There’s a hit that comes from “frequency scaling” on avx512 and avx2 instructions on Intel (worse for 512), so a total of fewer instructions isn’t always worth it. IIRC, AMD doesn’t pay a cost for avx2, but I don’t know how it works.
- ksec 7y ago
  > but whats even better is long term competition in this space. One thing missing from discussions as the results of Zen 2 EPYC is ARM on Server is now pretty much dead. I don't think any HyperScaler really want ARM on server per se, they simply want better pricing. And having AMD competing with Intel will provide just that. I don't see ARM Server being a viable alternative in the next 5 years.
  - floatboth 7y ago
    Looks like Intel's 10nm is still failing spectacularly, so I can totally see the 7nm Marvell ThunderX3 being EPYC Rome's real competition :P Ampere has a chance too, if they get big gains from 7nm and/or massively improve their microarchitecture while keeping the current prices, they'll be unbeatable in price/performance. > I don't think any HyperScaler really want ARM on server per se There definitely seems to be a concern with the AMD/Intel duopoly, and Amazon clearly just wants absolute control, since they've already deployed in-house chips that mix ARM cores with <s>Bezos Backdoors</s> fancy cloudy networking and verified boot stuff.
  - tuananh 7y ago
    why Rome is very impressive, I wouldn't cross ARM from the race just yet.
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    5/7 use AMD now ( not facebook and Alibaba). Seems AMD is back
sunseb 7y ago
I love that! This AMD/Intel competition is bringing us faster and cheaper cpu!
ps101 7y ago
Genuinely asking, since I have little to no concept of this space - how does the prevalence of either Intel or AMD affect developers?
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  AMD being competitive means faster and / or cheaper CPUs for everyone, short term from AMD and medium term from both AMD and Intel. People have been frustrated with slow CPU performance progress resulting from diminishing returns of process improvement and lack of competition for Intel ("four cores should be enough for everyone and also expensive").
- robmccoll 7y ago
  For most developers, it doesn't. They're both making x86_64 chips with coherent caches of similar size, similar core and thread counts, and a lot of overlap in instruction set extensions. For people doing very high performance work (heavy data processing, simulations, etc.) or performance critical work (think hand coding optimized crypto library routines in assembly), the subtle differences in those categories might affect how they lay out data and access it, how many threads they use and how they use them, and preferences for the availability of instruction set extensions that are specific to the kind of workloads they have (vector processing extensions, native crypto operations, unusual bit twiddling patterns).
  - sanxiyn 7y ago
    Another difference is that Intel and AMD virtualization (vmx and svm) are incompatible with each other.
  - hitpointdrew 7y ago
    >For most developers, it doesn't. They're both making x86_64 chips This is true for the vast majority, but there are niche cases were there are differences even though both are both x86_64(like Intel's FlexMigration and AMD-V Extended Migration).
- sremani 7y ago
  Developers will be more indirect beneficiaries since the cost of compute may go down since they will have leverage against Intel and even AMD. Other benefits may include faster refresh cycle and/or hardware bugs effecting the dominant chip maker does not have to drag down the entire ecosystem etc.
stupidcar 7y ago
I'm curious, since I don't follow hardware that closely: Is the current battle really best framed as a fight between Intel and AMD, or between Intel and TSMC? I.e. is AMD's recent resurgence due to better chip design, or because Intel's fabrication is struggling, whereas TMSC isn't?
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  Most of AMD's improvement is due to better chip design. The last 10% or so are from fabrication process.
  - gnode 7y ago
    There's also fabrication cost and yield which factors into the pricing and profitability of Intel and AMD products. In this respect Intel is competing against TSMC and GlobalFoundries (for the IO die).
- neogodless 7y ago
  Both. AMD made a good decision to divest from Global Foundries. They have also made some great strides in chip design which improve instructions per clock (IPC) as well as increasing cache size and improving the various interconnects. The switch from a monolithic die design to chiplets which puts I/O at the center is an important change as well. But then TMSC enabling AMD to make a successful switch to 7nm adds to the efficiency equation and is likely key for clock speed targets.
  - sanxiyn 7y ago
    As I understand, AMD pretty much couldn't divest from GlobalFoundries due to a contract, WSA(Wafer Supply Agreement), which is not public. In 2019 AMD announced that WSA got amended to allow AMD to use TSMC.
    - fireattack 7y ago
      What did they use before?
rohan1024 7y ago
This must be one of the reasons https://i.redd.it/181enxirv6f31.jpg https://i.redd.it/181enxirv6f31.jpg Edit: source https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-epyc-7502-7742&num=4 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-epyc...
- phkahler 7y ago
  Beating Intel using their own codec! That's gotta hurt.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    AV1 is not Intel's codec, though they have released an encoder for it.
    - basilgohar 7y ago
      AV1 is a video format. SVT-AV1 [0] is a codec, and it is (co-)authored by Intel. [0] https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1 https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1
      - BubRoss 7y ago
        That is actually just an encoder and not a (co)der (dec)oder.
  - Teknoman117 7y ago
    Looks like the dual socket systems don't really fare well in that benchmark. Either way, it's really funny that we need a state-of-art 64 core CPU to exceed 60 fps in AV1 encode. Jokes aside, I know H.264 was at this point in the past, I just wonder how long it's going to be before we see AV1 hardware encoders that produce good quality video (and hell, hardware decoders at that as well).
    - notathing 7y ago
      > Either way, it's really funny that we need a state-of-art 64 core CPU to exceed 60 fps in AV1 encode. When H.264 was introduced, you needed a state of the art CPU just to play it back... You can imagine how slow encoding it was.
jacquesm 7y ago
Intel stock has dropped quite a bit in the last month.
- jdhn 7y ago
  I remember when AMD's stock was a running joke on WallStreetBets. Doesn't seem like much of a joke now.
  - one2zero 7y ago
    Would love to see someone who YOLO'd @ $2.00 and HODL'd till now...what a bet that would've been.
    - kmlx 7y ago
      bought at 8 sold at 32 (reached it months ago or so). when it was 2 we would bet on whether it dies or gets bought. incredibly unstable stock with decades of underperforming. hope this new trend will continue well into the future, as everything seems to be working out for them.
    - gct 7y ago
      I bought at $5.75 and held for the past 11 years...
    - phkahler 7y ago
      I seriously considered it just under $2. If I believed all I read about zen it would have been a sure thing to double or triple my money on an AMD comeback. But I couldnt tell if that was my intuition or just hope, so no bet. If I had bought there's no way I would have held all this time either (maybe some shares but not all). But with what's happening now it looks like $40 is entirely possible. That will be 20x in just a few years, but I didnt play...
    - rootbear 7y ago
      Bought at $2.02, four years ago. Not all that many shares, sadly, but I'm happy. :) It somewhat makes up for me stupidly selling the cheap Apple stock I had, just before the iPad came out. Oops.
agumonkey 7y ago
Weird sensation, I remember the struggling days of AMD. And now that they're about to become very successful (plausibly) ... I'm almost tempted to donate to them. Go AMD.
- theandrewbailey 7y ago
  Donate? Buy some of their products.
  - gnode 7y ago
    If their intention is to support AMD or reward their competitive technological investment, yet they don't need a new processor, then it would be more appropriate to buy AMD stock.
    - nesadi 7y ago
      I'm not sure how buying AMD stock benefits AMD in any meaningful way.
      - tomatocracy 7y ago
        I can think of a couple of indirect ways. 1. It pushes up the price which helps incentivize AMD executives and key employees who have an equity component to their remuneration 2. It makes it easier/cheaper for AMD to raise funding via equity or equity linked markets if they ever need to At scale, either or both of those could help them though sales might be better
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    I didn't imagine donating 100$ or anything near the price of one of their CPU. It's just that they cracked through years of hard work and it's great IMO.
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      Are you actually talking about giving away your money to a multi billion dollar public company? Buy some stock instead, don't just throw your money away. How would you even 'donate' to them?
Datenstrom 7y ago
> new Intel chip features for machine learning tasks and new Intel memory technology being with customers such as German software firm SAP SE (SAPG.DE) could give Intel an advantage in those areas. I hope AMD turns their attention to machine learning tasks soon not just against Intel but NVIDIA also. The new Titan RTX GPUs with their extra memory and Nvlink allow for some really awesome tricks to speed up training dramatically but they nerfed it by only selling without a blower style fan making it useless for multi-GPU setups. So the only option is to get Titan RTX rebranded as a Quadro RTX 6000 with a blower style fan for $2,000 markup. $2000 for a fan. The only way to stop things like this will be competition in the space.
- gruez 7y ago
  >So the only option is to get Titan RTX rebranded as a Quadro RTX 6000 with a blower style fan for $2,000 markup. $2000 for a fan for $2000, surely you can install an aftermarket cooler or watercooling loop?
  - Datenstrom 7y ago
    If I was doing a personal build in a tower I would probably look at a watercooling loop. The build is 8x GPU rackmount for a small business though and I have not found an aftermarket blower style cooler anywhere. I have found a discussion where someone brought a rackmount case to a machine shop and had custom airflow guides put in between the cards and a hole cut in the top of the case to direct airflow out of since the backplate prevents normal airflow [1]. [1]: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/cooling-8x-titan-rtx-in-a-server-chassis/138773 https://forum.level1techs.com/t/cooling-8x-titan-rtx-in-a-se...
  - 14 7y ago
    I am sure it is aimed at Intel fanboys if you know what I mean :). The people who live by Intel as a brand no matter what and will defend its superiority regardless of facts. And yes for 2000$ one could probably build a liquid cooled super rig. I for one am happy there is finally some competition.
- one2zero 7y ago
drewg123 7y ago
They need to build a server ecosystem. I'm hoping that this success will help with that so that things are better positioned for the next new server CPU launch. We've had engineering samples of Rome for quite a while. However, there are very few available boards with PCIe4 right now. The one we've tried (under NDA) has a busted BMC that won't accept network settings, which has really hampered Rome testing. We've actually done most of our Rome testing using 1st generation boards, with slower RAM and PCIe Gen3.
barkingcat 7y ago
The article is missing the largest elephant in the room for datacenter cpu's: the security issues Intel chips have had latent for the last decade, and the constant patching and bios updates (and re-updates as researchers discover new attacks) that are needed in order to make datacenter use sane. Intel really messed up, and has no one to blame but themselves.
- sq_ 7y ago
  Does anyone know of any benchmarks that go through the full impacts for all of Intel’s hardware-level security issues? I remember seeing the Linux kernel devs discussing some massive 10+% performance hits back around Meltdown/Spectre patch time, and I’m now wondering what the final impact has been.
  - okanesen 7y ago
    I don't know about full pre and post benchmarks but there is the latest benchmark from Phoronix which benchmarks the latest Spectre "SWAPGS" mitigations [0]. [0]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=swapgs-spectre-impact&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=swapgs-s...
  - mrep 7y ago
    10 percent? My teams RDS cpu usage spiked up by 40 percent after the initial patch [0]. [0]: https://m.imgur.com/a/khGxU https://m.imgur.com/a/khGxU
    - sq_ 7y ago
      Oh wow. That's a lot worse than I'd expected. Intel really royally screwed up, especially since so much of their current optimization relies on the same hardware functionality that makes these side-channel attacks possible.
    - hajile 7y ago
      Epic Games saw their CPU usage double after applying the meltdown patch. Things have gotten quite a bit slower since then. Turns out flushing every time you switch into kernel space carries a massive impact if you are realtime with lots of network calls. https://web.archive.org/web/20180106011413/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/forums/news/announcements/132642-epic-services-stability-update https://web.archive.org/web/20180106011413/https://www.epicg...
beeschlenker 7y ago
Obama rapes & kills 2 boys. DeBlasio 5, Buttgieg 5, Cuomo 4, Murray 3, Dorsey 3, Thiel 3. Trump $4 billion to cover. Pelosi $3 billion, Kamala Harris $1 billion, to help bring the boys over the border Having trouble getting traction. Getting censored. Billion in bribes paid to Trump, Pelosi, Schumer, Harris to enable a Soros funded child raping ring to operate in the USA. Please listen to the links below. Turn up the volume and put headphones on. You will hear these people, and many other high profile people, incriminate themselves in unbelievable fashion. Full 71 page document filled with red handed evidence like this at the bottom. Go to pages 18-23 of this document and you will hear Dorsey and Thiel raping children. You will hear their screams. They both rape and kill three. Also at the "rape party" of note: Bill DeBlasio, Andrew Cuomo, Bill Murray, Peter Buttgieg, George Soros, Barack Obama. Please copy and paste this post and repost it. I keep getting censored by these people. Peter Thiel and Jack Dorsey raping and killing three boys each. Turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_100-200.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzZrjobxhNIEf38M3xk-IeA5SeF4aUtB/view?usp=sharing Obama admits to raping and killing boys he{re, with commentary from Peter Thiel, George Soros, Matt Porter: https://s3.wasabisys.com/out2/Out2/15JanCh3_0545.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LCDoc1kT7cfSeKQ1vniP_sx32_bRsHau/view?usp=sharing Trump demands $4 billion to "take a blind eye" at 1015+ (link missing from report, unsure how). Here's pieces of dialogue: 1015 The President requests four billion and henry Porter agrees to it. Some dialogue below. 1017 Donald Trump: Why don't you think about it. 1017 Henry Porter: I don't need to think about it. I'm ready for you to find out what we're really about. 1017 Gigi Hadid: I don't think it's a good idea Henry. 1017 Henry Porter: ...no shit. Jelena just stop talking about it. 1018 Gigi Hadid: About what? 1018 Henry Porter: The child raping. 1018 Donald Trump: What the fuck are you talking about? 1018 Gigi Hadid: Mr. President we are child rapists. 1018 Donald Trump: You cannot be serious. 1018 Donald Trump: You're gonna need $4 billion for me to take a blind eye. 1019 ?: People are laughing because they think four billion is too much. I think it's not a problem when you have $35 billion. 1022 Donald Trump: You better have that $4 billion or you can kiss this shit goodbye. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv2/3Jan/3JanCh3_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing Trump wants $138 million to ensure smooth outcome for false judgment for a court case: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/10JanCh3/10JanCh3_951-1033.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iSeGHDToFRoRdIht50Wii0i30mlw9INp/view?usp=sharing Obama explains the Illuminati with Jack Dorsey: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_200-347.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ok1-9IvANULzKBOwADFgaiYCFi6yszfj/view?usp=sharing At 230 a conversation is occurring on the embedded Porter camera system with Jack Dorsey, Peter Thiel, Barack Obama, Bill M^urray, and the Porter's. Jack Dorsey provides a statement defining who their group is: "The Illum%inati is an underground organization of child rapists and homosexuals." Matthew Porter: "We have to thin the herd, so Barack is going to explain a few things." At 232 Barack Obama says the following: "You people have to realize we are child rapi'sts. The Illuminati are child rapists. As soon as you figure that out, you can decide what to do. Everybody is freaking out about what just happened [child raping event still going on]. This is who ^we are." Full 71 page document: https://s3.wasabisys.com/aviewmefirst/FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dXNjPQdQ8c-hFFLt9LT0GiSY5Vud0TzL/view?usp=sharing Please post this anywhere you can! Each google drive link is a backup to the wasabi link just in case one is "down". A word about the "faggot" usage: it was a necessary tool. It showed three things: they were not in control, if they were the usage would have be stopped. Everyone out there needed to see t%his. Two, it made it unpleasant for them to be in the headspace, which has obvious advantages. Three, it pointed out impersonators of BS because they would not call each other faggot, thus helping to mitigate the spread of false information. Apologies for those unintentionally offended. Of special interest to the LGBT community, I give you Barack Obama in a foursome with Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, and Matthew Porter. It is on page 12 of the document where you can download the video containing audio footage of the "event". Link is just above under "Full 71 page document".
mktmkr 7y ago
The historical context here is that AMD once had a monopoly inside Google's datacenters and pissed it away by shipping the horribly broken Barcelona followed by the not very broken, but also not very fast, Istanbul. This is a return to form for them, after a decade of poor form. The important thing for an operator like Google or Amazon is pricing power. As long as they can brandish a competing platform under the nose of Intel sales reps, they can get a better deal from Intel regardless of which they really prefer. You may have noted that a few years ago Google was showing a POWER platform at trade shows. That has the same purpose of putting Intel (and AMD) on notice that they have the capability to port their whole world to a different architecture if needed.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Must be strange to work on a huge technical project knowing your work will likely never be used and is there primarily to put pressure on someone else to lower their prices. I guess you get paid, and can think of it like a hobby project for your own technical chops. But still.
  - stefco_ 7y ago
    A lot of people love working on more esoteric technical things and get more satisfaction from the intellectual component than its direct utility (I certainly feel this way about some things, though trans-architectural portability is not one of them). I would imagine this type of person is better-represented in this sort of field. In addition, this kind of work does indirectly help keep Intel competitors viable, which helps keep Intel in check for everyone. Stuff like that is pretty exciting in its own way.
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      It’s an interesting concept to me. I do have a lot of “hobby work”, which is still meant to be used eventually. I just don’t apply a timeline, which enables me to focus on correctness. Then I have my professional work, where the timeline is the primary focus, and correctness can only be pursued where it moves the timeline forward. These projects you’re talking about are an interesting mixture. There is still a timeline that must be hit, because you need to do your demos, and you need to be ready to shift to a production timeline if negotiations go south. But since there are no customers the business model isn’t changing. And you don’t need to do any polish. So you can stay focused on the raw architectural problems. It’s like my hobby projects in that you can focus on readiness over completeness, but there still is some timeline pressure. Interesting to think about. Strange for me, but I guess it’s every day for others!
localhost 7y ago
It’s not just Google and Twitter, Azure is in as well: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-epyc-based-azure-virtual-machines/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-ep...
ChuckMcM 7y ago
This is a big win for AMD and for me it reconfirms that their strategy of pushing into the mainstream features that Intel is trying to hold hostage for the "high end" is a good one. Back when AMD first introduced the 64 bit extensions to the x86 architecture and directly challenged Intel who was selling 64 bits as a "high end" feature in their Itanium line, it was a place where Intel was unwilling to go (commoditizing 64 bit processors) That proved pretty successful for them. Now they have done it again by commoditizing "high core count" processors. Each time they do this I wonder if Intel will ever learn that you can't "get away" with selling something for a lot of money that can be made more cheaply forever. Processors are not a veblen good.
- gtirloni 7y ago
  > Each time they do this I wonder if Intel will ever learn that you can't "get away" with selling something for a lot of money that can be made more cheaply forever I think the keyword is "forever". They know they can get away with that for a long time though. Because they historically have.
- Tuna-Fish 7y ago
  > That proved pretty successful for them. Now they have done it again by commoditizing "high core count" processors. They've done much more than that. Intel's current server CPU lineup is tightly siloed into different segments to limit every feature that some customers would pay more for into it's own line priced to match. That's why they currently have Xeon Scalable {Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum}, Xeon {D, W, E} lines, with 402 different Xeon CPUs actively being sold. In contrast, AMD has two EPYC lines, P and non-P, only differing in that P is for 1-socket servers. The models in these lines differ in that they have more/less cores and different clocks, all those features that Intel gates and segments by, are found in every AMD CPU.
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  > Processors are not a veblen good Huh, TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good "Veblen goods are types of luxury goods for which the quantity demanded increases as the price increases"
dyeje 7y ago
What does Twitter have to do with any of this? Do they run their own data center?
- pavanky 7y ago
  Yes, more than one infact.
schainker 7y ago
I sit sometimes wondering how much energy is wasted from the intel security fixes and what that translates to in real dollars. IMO the market should gut punch Intel for causing such a wasteful problem if competitors bring the figurative heat.
AareyBaba 7y ago
It is worth pointing out the David versus two Goliaths situation here. AMD 10K employees and a $1 billion annual R&D budget. Intel 100K employees (including 10K just in software) and $20 billion R&D. Nvidia 11K employees and $2 billion R&D budget. AMD CPUs now surpass Intel and their GPUs are competitive with Nvidia except at the high end.
- kev009 7y ago
  AMD software ecosystem is pretty bad. They fired many of the Linux platform devs in ~2013 and never recovered. There is nothing like Intel's vtune and even the basic functions like performance counters, MCA support, ECC events etc are janky on AMD CPUs. Intel does a pretty good job all around there. Nvidia is leagues ahead on GPGPU with CUDA and general Linux driver stability.. sure it's a blob but if it works well in a commercial setting nobody cares. The Rome is a nice chip nonetheless, I hope they can rehire a big enough Linux team to get over these humps it isn't that much work on the CPU/platform side.
  - justsid 7y ago
    I work on game performance (or rather, I work on the underlying engines with an eye on performance) and that is the biggest reason why my computer has an Intel CPU. I would love the killing power of an Zen 2 machine, the compile time improvement alone would make ith worth every cent. Unfortunately I use VTune a lot for work and there just isn’t any alternative, so I’m stuck with whatever Intel gives me. Which is doubly sad, because I end up optimizing for Intel’s microarchitecture and can only hope that it runs decent enough on AMDs CPUs. On the GPU side though, at least with the modern APIs (Vulkan, D3D12 and Metal), AMD isn’t too far behind Nvidia. I actually prefer RenderDoc to Nvidias Nsight because I can capture multiple frames instead of pausing the application to look at one frame at a time. That being said though, the OpenGL tooling for AMD is abysmal and so is their OpenGL driver. All things being equal, just swapping an Nvidia card for an AMD card gives around 40-50% speed up when running OpenGL purely by getting rid of the driver overhead. Although with Vulkan AMD and Nvidia are actually on par, so at least that’s solving itself for us.
trilila 7y ago
One product i’ve been waiting for is the upcoming mac pro. But given it has an intel cpu, overpriced and less lower powerful than the amd, i am going to delay that purchase for the foreseeable future.
nafizh 7y ago
If only now I can use AMD GPUs for training neural networks. Nvidia badly needs some competition.
john37386 7y ago
Maybe it has something to do with all the recent speculative side channel attacks. Intel seems to have more hardware vulnerabilities than AMD.
bob1029 7y ago
How long do you guys think it will take Intel to come up with an Infinity Fabric equivalent architecture? I feel like Intel wasn't working on it until recently and that it might actually be a few years before they can produce competitive silicon, especially accounting for the possibility that AMD is going to keep releasing on this yearly cadence while simultaneously leveraging full node improvements @ TSMC/Samsung...

837 points by jonbaer 7y ago

Reminds me of many years ago when the absolute best $ per performance setup was a rackmount dual socket opteron. Right when the opteron first became a thing.

koolba 7y ago

I hope this puts AMD in stable footing for many years to come. Having newer and faster chips is great, but whats even better is long term competition in this space.

samfisher83 7y ago
Opteron was crushing it back in the day. I think Tech is just cyclical. It seemed like AMD was in a lull for a while which basically made intel not really compete. Hopefully this forces Intel to step its game up. Competition is always good for the consumer.
- godzillabrennus 7y ago
  Intel has such a poor track record in recent years of expanding into new markets and hasn’t had to compete in their core market for so long that it’s questionable if they can.
  - gameswithgo 7y ago
    we just got done saying that about AMD, so..
- uncletaco 7y ago
  Was AMD in a lull or just making longterm bets on technology? I've only followed casually in the last decade+ but I was under the impression that the ATI merger was meant to support a long term bet on better chips by AMD and we're starting to see the fruit of that labor.
  - faitswulff 7y ago
    As a layperson, I never understood that merger. How does buying a graphics card company make for better chips in general?
    - addicted 7y ago
      Integrating graphics card into their chips is what Intel seems to want to do as well. So it would appear AMD was ahead of the game. I guess, at the time, the thinking was that GPUs were a core threat to the CPU business itself, since a lot of the buzz was around using the GPU to do CPU activities.
      - sanxiyn 7y ago
        Yes, there was this thing called HSA(Heterogeneous System Architecture). Does anyone remember that now?
        consp 7y ago
        Yes, parts of it now present in IOMMU(v2)
        throwaway2048 7y ago
        Zen in many ways is still moving towards that model, The concept of an IO die that all cores hook into, along with all of PCI-E lanes, no need for complicated cross core linking. It would be relatively "easy" to introduce specialized accelerator cores or beefy GPU chips into this mix on a separate chip, and not massively complicate the CPU design, or massively bloat its cost as a specialist die.
        jorvi 7y ago
        The PS4 is an example of that. It's an APU with GDDR5 acting as both system and video memory. To be honest for a while I thought that was where everything but servers would be going. You can tune your OS and applications around the slower GDDR5 and it seemed a no brainer: instead of 8GB of system memory topping out and then 4GB of VRAM doing jack shit you could have 12GB that could be dynamically assigned to whatever you wanted! Alas, that dream was never meant to be. Edit: I posted about this a while a back and apparently Arch Linux has a hacky way to use your VRAM as system RAM. Good stuff.
- cronix 7y ago
  Would it have been a lull if all of intels flaws and security issues were known at the time? Those go back many years but weren't discovered til fairly recently and AMD didn't have most of them.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Not all of them were known back then obviously, but there were definitely known timing-info-leak flaws with Pentium 4 hyper threading[1], its remarkable on that basis that the modern class of execution timing exploits has taken so long to arise, considering their approach and concept really isn't fundamentally any different. [1] http://www.daemonology.net/papers/htt.pdf http://www.daemonology.net/papers/htt.pdf by none other than our resident cpercival!
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Back during the Opteron era, their chips had good compute, but higher heat output and power consumption. I use to run dual AthlonXPs on their older dual-MP boards back in University. It's crazy we now have 8~16 cores on a single board; on consumer (or I guess prosumer/developer) targeted hardware.
- ant6n 7y ago
  In 2016, AMD was near bankruptcy, after many years of mediocre tech and bad decisions. At that time it looked like they were never going to compete with Intel again in any meaningful way, didn't have the resources to pull ahead, had a negative balance sheet, and the best hope was that they could survive on some cheaper x86 niches, on the grace of people wanting some x86 competition to exist.
redleggedfrog 7y ago
"...even better is long term competition in this space." I hope that's the biggest outcome from this. My inside sources tell me that Intel has their briefs in a bind over AMDs latest technology, and are certainly kerfuffling over it, but I'm not sure how quickly they can respond. It seems like the disparity in this cycle has grown wider than in the past. But that is just my subjective take - I'm not really conversant on the manufacturing part. I'm just historically reviewing the power consumption and benchmarks.
- close04 7y ago
  > but I'm not sure how quickly they can respond AMD won't be in the position to just rest on their laurels for years to come. So the fact that Intel is scrambling to come up with a competitive response shouldn't be a concern as far as competition goes in the short-medium term. I'd say we have at least a few CPU generations coming from AMD without worrying that they become complacent, even if Intel still comes up short.
- philjohn 7y ago
  Especially as the top dual socket Epyc BEATS the top dual socket Xeon in a workload heavily optimised for AVX-512 and using the Intel ICC compiler. True, it has more cores, but it seems Xeon's have to clock down when executing AVX-512 ops to stay within their power budget. It's also doing this at almost half the cost and consuming less power ... that's nothing short of astounding. Xeon's do have a benefit for workloads that can stay in L3 cache as their mesh means latency is stable, whereas Epyc is 16MB per CCX. Overall memory latency is also lower, which is the tradeoff with the IO die, but it will be interesting to see what real world numbers for DB's etc. say about that.
  - stochastic_monk 7y ago
    There’s a hit that comes from “frequency scaling” on avx512 and avx2 instructions on Intel (worse for 512), so a total of fewer instructions isn’t always worth it. IIRC, AMD doesn’t pay a cost for avx2, but I don’t know how it works.
ksec 7y ago
> but whats even better is long term competition in this space. One thing missing from discussions as the results of Zen 2 EPYC is ARM on Server is now pretty much dead. I don't think any HyperScaler really want ARM on server per se, they simply want better pricing. And having AMD competing with Intel will provide just that. I don't see ARM Server being a viable alternative in the next 5 years.
- floatboth 7y ago
  Looks like Intel's 10nm is still failing spectacularly, so I can totally see the 7nm Marvell ThunderX3 being EPYC Rome's real competition :P Ampere has a chance too, if they get big gains from 7nm and/or massively improve their microarchitecture while keeping the current prices, they'll be unbeatable in price/performance. > I don't think any HyperScaler really want ARM on server per se There definitely seems to be a concern with the AMD/Intel duopoly, and Amazon clearly just wants absolute control, since they've already deployed in-house chips that mix ARM cores with <s>Bezos Backdoors</s> fancy cloudy networking and verified boot stuff.
- tuananh 7y ago
  why Rome is very impressive, I wouldn't cross ARM from the race just yet.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  5/7 use AMD now ( not facebook and Alibaba). Seems AMD is back

sunseb 7y ago

I love that! This AMD/Intel competition is bringing us faster and cheaper cpu!

ps101 7y ago

Genuinely asking, since I have little to no concept of this space - how does the prevalence of either Intel or AMD affect developers?

ahartmetz 7y ago
AMD being competitive means faster and / or cheaper CPUs for everyone, short term from AMD and medium term from both AMD and Intel. People have been frustrated with slow CPU performance progress resulting from diminishing returns of process improvement and lack of competition for Intel ("four cores should be enough for everyone and also expensive").
robmccoll 7y ago
For most developers, it doesn't. They're both making x86_64 chips with coherent caches of similar size, similar core and thread counts, and a lot of overlap in instruction set extensions. For people doing very high performance work (heavy data processing, simulations, etc.) or performance critical work (think hand coding optimized crypto library routines in assembly), the subtle differences in those categories might affect how they lay out data and access it, how many threads they use and how they use them, and preferences for the availability of instruction set extensions that are specific to the kind of workloads they have (vector processing extensions, native crypto operations, unusual bit twiddling patterns).
- sanxiyn 7y ago
  Another difference is that Intel and AMD virtualization (vmx and svm) are incompatible with each other.
- hitpointdrew 7y ago
  >For most developers, it doesn't. They're both making x86_64 chips This is true for the vast majority, but there are niche cases were there are differences even though both are both x86_64(like Intel's FlexMigration and AMD-V Extended Migration).
sremani 7y ago
Developers will be more indirect beneficiaries since the cost of compute may go down since they will have leverage against Intel and even AMD. Other benefits may include faster refresh cycle and/or hardware bugs effecting the dominant chip maker does not have to drag down the entire ecosystem etc.

stupidcar 7y ago

I'm curious, since I don't follow hardware that closely: Is the current battle really best framed as a fight between Intel and AMD, or between Intel and TSMC? I.e. is AMD's recent resurgence due to better chip design, or because Intel's fabrication is struggling, whereas TMSC isn't?

ahartmetz 7y ago
Most of AMD's improvement is due to better chip design. The last 10% or so are from fabrication process.
- gnode 7y ago
  There's also fabrication cost and yield which factors into the pricing and profitability of Intel and AMD products. In this respect Intel is competing against TSMC and GlobalFoundries (for the IO die).
neogodless 7y ago
Both. AMD made a good decision to divest from Global Foundries. They have also made some great strides in chip design which improve instructions per clock (IPC) as well as increasing cache size and improving the various interconnects. The switch from a monolithic die design to chiplets which puts I/O at the center is an important change as well. But then TMSC enabling AMD to make a successful switch to 7nm adds to the efficiency equation and is likely key for clock speed targets.
- sanxiyn 7y ago
  As I understand, AMD pretty much couldn't divest from GlobalFoundries due to a contract, WSA(Wafer Supply Agreement), which is not public. In 2019 AMD announced that WSA got amended to allow AMD to use TSMC.
  - fireattack 7y ago
    What did they use before?

rohan1024 7y ago

This must be one of the reasons https://i.redd.it/181enxirv6f31.jpg https://i.redd.it/181enxirv6f31.jpg Edit: source https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-epyc-7502-7742&num=4 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-epyc...

phkahler 7y ago
Beating Intel using their own codec! That's gotta hurt.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  AV1 is not Intel's codec, though they have released an encoder for it.
  - basilgohar 7y ago
    AV1 is a video format. SVT-AV1 [0] is a codec, and it is (co-)authored by Intel. [0] https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1 https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      That is actually just an encoder and not a (co)der (dec)oder.
- Teknoman117 7y ago
  Looks like the dual socket systems don't really fare well in that benchmark. Either way, it's really funny that we need a state-of-art 64 core CPU to exceed 60 fps in AV1 encode. Jokes aside, I know H.264 was at this point in the past, I just wonder how long it's going to be before we see AV1 hardware encoders that produce good quality video (and hell, hardware decoders at that as well).
  - notathing 7y ago
    > Either way, it's really funny that we need a state-of-art 64 core CPU to exceed 60 fps in AV1 encode. When H.264 was introduced, you needed a state of the art CPU just to play it back... You can imagine how slow encoding it was.

jacquesm 7y ago

Intel stock has dropped quite a bit in the last month.

jdhn 7y ago
I remember when AMD's stock was a running joke on WallStreetBets. Doesn't seem like much of a joke now.
- one2zero 7y ago
  Would love to see someone who YOLO'd @ $2.00 and HODL'd till now...what a bet that would've been.
  - kmlx 7y ago
    bought at 8 sold at 32 (reached it months ago or so). when it was 2 we would bet on whether it dies or gets bought. incredibly unstable stock with decades of underperforming. hope this new trend will continue well into the future, as everything seems to be working out for them.
  - gct 7y ago
    I bought at $5.75 and held for the past 11 years...
  - phkahler 7y ago
    I seriously considered it just under $2. If I believed all I read about zen it would have been a sure thing to double or triple my money on an AMD comeback. But I couldnt tell if that was my intuition or just hope, so no bet. If I had bought there's no way I would have held all this time either (maybe some shares but not all). But with what's happening now it looks like $40 is entirely possible. That will be 20x in just a few years, but I didnt play...
  - rootbear 7y ago
    Bought at $2.02, four years ago. Not all that many shares, sadly, but I'm happy. :) It somewhat makes up for me stupidly selling the cheap Apple stock I had, just before the iPad came out. Oops.

agumonkey 7y ago

Weird sensation, I remember the struggling days of AMD. And now that they're about to become very successful (plausibly) ... I'm almost tempted to donate to them. Go AMD.

theandrewbailey 7y ago
Donate? Buy some of their products.
- gnode 7y ago
  If their intention is to support AMD or reward their competitive technological investment, yet they don't need a new processor, then it would be more appropriate to buy AMD stock.
  - nesadi 7y ago
    I'm not sure how buying AMD stock benefits AMD in any meaningful way.
    - tomatocracy 7y ago
      I can think of a couple of indirect ways. 1. It pushes up the price which helps incentivize AMD executives and key employees who have an equity component to their remuneration 2. It makes it easier/cheaper for AMD to raise funding via equity or equity linked markets if they ever need to At scale, either or both of those could help them though sales might be better
- agumonkey 7y ago
  I didn't imagine donating 100$ or anything near the price of one of their CPU. It's just that they cracked through years of hard work and it's great IMO.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    Are you actually talking about giving away your money to a multi billion dollar public company? Buy some stock instead, don't just throw your money away. How would you even 'donate' to them?

Datenstrom 7y ago

> new Intel chip features for machine learning tasks and new Intel memory technology being with customers such as German software firm SAP SE (SAPG.DE) could give Intel an advantage in those areas. I hope AMD turns their attention to machine learning tasks soon not just against Intel but NVIDIA also. The new Titan RTX GPUs with their extra memory and Nvlink allow for some really awesome tricks to speed up training dramatically but they nerfed it by only selling without a blower style fan making it useless for multi-GPU setups. So the only option is to get Titan RTX rebranded as a Quadro RTX 6000 with a blower style fan for $2,000 markup. $2000 for a fan. The only way to stop things like this will be competition in the space.

gruez 7y ago
>So the only option is to get Titan RTX rebranded as a Quadro RTX 6000 with a blower style fan for $2,000 markup. $2000 for a fan for $2000, surely you can install an aftermarket cooler or watercooling loop?
- Datenstrom 7y ago
  If I was doing a personal build in a tower I would probably look at a watercooling loop. The build is 8x GPU rackmount for a small business though and I have not found an aftermarket blower style cooler anywhere. I have found a discussion where someone brought a rackmount case to a machine shop and had custom airflow guides put in between the cards and a hole cut in the top of the case to direct airflow out of since the backplate prevents normal airflow [1]. [1]: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/cooling-8x-titan-rtx-in-a-server-chassis/138773 https://forum.level1techs.com/t/cooling-8x-titan-rtx-in-a-se...
- 14 7y ago
  I am sure it is aimed at Intel fanboys if you know what I mean :). The people who live by Intel as a brand no matter what and will defend its superiority regardless of facts. And yes for 2000$ one could probably build a liquid cooled super rig. I for one am happy there is finally some competition.
one2zero 7y ago

drewg123 7y ago

They need to build a server ecosystem. I'm hoping that this success will help with that so that things are better positioned for the next new server CPU launch. We've had engineering samples of Rome for quite a while. However, there are very few available boards with PCIe4 right now. The one we've tried (under NDA) has a busted BMC that won't accept network settings, which has really hampered Rome testing. We've actually done most of our Rome testing using 1st generation boards, with slower RAM and PCIe Gen3.

barkingcat 7y ago

The article is missing the largest elephant in the room for datacenter cpu's: the security issues Intel chips have had latent for the last decade, and the constant patching and bios updates (and re-updates as researchers discover new attacks) that are needed in order to make datacenter use sane. Intel really messed up, and has no one to blame but themselves.

sq_ 7y ago
Does anyone know of any benchmarks that go through the full impacts for all of Intel’s hardware-level security issues? I remember seeing the Linux kernel devs discussing some massive 10+% performance hits back around Meltdown/Spectre patch time, and I’m now wondering what the final impact has been.
- okanesen 7y ago
  I don't know about full pre and post benchmarks but there is the latest benchmark from Phoronix which benchmarks the latest Spectre "SWAPGS" mitigations [0]. [0]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=swapgs-spectre-impact&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=swapgs-s...
- mrep 7y ago
  10 percent? My teams RDS cpu usage spiked up by 40 percent after the initial patch [0]. [0]: https://m.imgur.com/a/khGxU https://m.imgur.com/a/khGxU
  - sq_ 7y ago
    Oh wow. That's a lot worse than I'd expected. Intel really royally screwed up, especially since so much of their current optimization relies on the same hardware functionality that makes these side-channel attacks possible.
  - hajile 7y ago
    Epic Games saw their CPU usage double after applying the meltdown patch. Things have gotten quite a bit slower since then. Turns out flushing every time you switch into kernel space carries a massive impact if you are realtime with lots of network calls. https://web.archive.org/web/20180106011413/https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/forums/news/announcements/132642-epic-services-stability-update https://web.archive.org/web/20180106011413/https://www.epicg...

beeschlenker 7y ago

Obama rapes & kills 2 boys. DeBlasio 5, Buttgieg 5, Cuomo 4, Murray 3, Dorsey 3, Thiel 3. Trump $4 billion to cover. Pelosi $3 billion, Kamala Harris $1 billion, to help bring the boys over the border Having trouble getting traction. Getting censored. Billion in bribes paid to Trump, Pelosi, Schumer, Harris to enable a Soros funded child raping ring to operate in the USA. Please listen to the links below. Turn up the volume and put headphones on. You will hear these people, and many other high profile people, incriminate themselves in unbelievable fashion. Full 71 page document filled with red handed evidence like this at the bottom. Go to pages 18-23 of this document and you will hear Dorsey and Thiel raping children. You will hear their screams. They both rape and kill three. Also at the "rape party" of note: Bill DeBlasio, Andrew Cuomo, Bill Murray, Peter Buttgieg, George Soros, Barack Obama. Please copy and paste this post and repost it. I keep getting censored by these people. Peter Thiel and Jack Dorsey raping and killing three boys each. Turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_100-200.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzZrjobxhNIEf38M3xk-IeA5SeF4aUtB/view?usp=sharing Obama admits to raping and killing boys he{re, with commentary from Peter Thiel, George Soros, Matt Porter: https://s3.wasabisys.com/out2/Out2/15JanCh3_0545.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LCDoc1kT7cfSeKQ1vniP_sx32_bRsHau/view?usp=sharing Trump demands $4 billion to "take a blind eye" at 1015+ (link missing from report, unsure how). Here's pieces of dialogue: 1015 The President requests four billion and henry Porter agrees to it. Some dialogue below. 1017 Donald Trump: Why don't you think about it. 1017 Henry Porter: I don't need to think about it. I'm ready for you to find out what we're really about. 1017 Gigi Hadid: I don't think it's a good idea Henry. 1017 Henry Porter: ...no shit. Jelena just stop talking about it. 1018 Gigi Hadid: About what? 1018 Henry Porter: The child raping. 1018 Donald Trump: What the fuck are you talking about? 1018 Gigi Hadid: Mr. President we are child rapists. 1018 Donald Trump: You cannot be serious. 1018 Donald Trump: You're gonna need $4 billion for me to take a blind eye. 1019 ?: People are laughing because they think four billion is too much. I think it's not a problem when you have $35 billion. 1022 Donald Trump: You better have that $4 billion or you can kiss this shit goodbye. https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv2/3Jan/3JanCh3_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing Trump wants $138 million to ensure smooth outcome for false judgment for a court case: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/10JanCh3/10JanCh3_951-1033.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iSeGHDToFRoRdIht50Wii0i30mlw9INp/view?usp=sharing Obama explains the Illuminati with Jack Dorsey: https://s3.wasabisys.com/conv1/Overnight_14-17Jan/15JanCh3_200-347.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ok1-9IvANULzKBOwADFgaiYCFi6yszfj/view?usp=sharing At 230 a conversation is occurring on the embedded Porter camera system with Jack Dorsey, Peter Thiel, Barack Obama, Bill M^urray, and the Porter's. Jack Dorsey provides a statement defining who their group is: "The Illum%inati is an underground organization of child rapists and homosexuals." Matthew Porter: "We have to thin the herd, so Barack is going to explain a few things." At 232 Barack Obama says the following: "You people have to realize we are child rapi'sts. The Illuminati are child rapists. As soon as you figure that out, you can decide what to do. Everybody is freaking out about what just happened [child raping event still going on]. This is who ^we are." Full 71 page document: https://s3.wasabisys.com/aviewmefirst/FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dXNjPQdQ8c-hFFLt9LT0GiSY5Vud0TzL/view?usp=sharing Please post this anywhere you can! Each google drive link is a backup to the wasabi link just in case one is "down". A word about the "faggot" usage: it was a necessary tool. It showed three things: they were not in control, if they were the usage would have be stopped. Everyone out there needed to see t%his. Two, it made it unpleasant for them to be in the headspace, which has obvious advantages. Three, it pointed out impersonators of BS because they would not call each other faggot, thus helping to mitigate the spread of false information. Apologies for those unintentionally offended. Of special interest to the LGBT community, I give you Barack Obama in a foursome with Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, and Matthew Porter. It is on page 12 of the document where you can download the video containing audio footage of the "event". Link is just above under "Full 71 page document".

mktmkr 7y ago

The historical context here is that AMD once had a monopoly inside Google's datacenters and pissed it away by shipping the horribly broken Barcelona followed by the not very broken, but also not very fast, Istanbul. This is a return to form for them, after a decade of poor form. The important thing for an operator like Google or Amazon is pricing power. As long as they can brandish a competing platform under the nose of Intel sales reps, they can get a better deal from Intel regardless of which they really prefer. You may have noted that a few years ago Google was showing a POWER platform at trade shows. That has the same purpose of putting Intel (and AMD) on notice that they have the capability to port their whole world to a different architecture if needed.

erikpukinskis 7y ago
Must be strange to work on a huge technical project knowing your work will likely never be used and is there primarily to put pressure on someone else to lower their prices. I guess you get paid, and can think of it like a hobby project for your own technical chops. But still.
- stefco_ 7y ago
  A lot of people love working on more esoteric technical things and get more satisfaction from the intellectual component than its direct utility (I certainly feel this way about some things, though trans-architectural portability is not one of them). I would imagine this type of person is better-represented in this sort of field. In addition, this kind of work does indirectly help keep Intel competitors viable, which helps keep Intel in check for everyone. Stuff like that is pretty exciting in its own way.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    It’s an interesting concept to me. I do have a lot of “hobby work”, which is still meant to be used eventually. I just don’t apply a timeline, which enables me to focus on correctness. Then I have my professional work, where the timeline is the primary focus, and correctness can only be pursued where it moves the timeline forward. These projects you’re talking about are an interesting mixture. There is still a timeline that must be hit, because you need to do your demos, and you need to be ready to shift to a production timeline if negotiations go south. But since there are no customers the business model isn’t changing. And you don’t need to do any polish. So you can stay focused on the raw architectural problems. It’s like my hobby projects in that you can focus on readiness over completeness, but there still is some timeline pressure. Interesting to think about. Strange for me, but I guess it’s every day for others!

localhost 7y ago

It’s not just Google and Twitter, Azure is in as well: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-epyc-based-azure-virtual-machines/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-ep...

ChuckMcM 7y ago

This is a big win for AMD and for me it reconfirms that their strategy of pushing into the mainstream features that Intel is trying to hold hostage for the "high end" is a good one. Back when AMD first introduced the 64 bit extensions to the x86 architecture and directly challenged Intel who was selling 64 bits as a "high end" feature in their Itanium line, it was a place where Intel was unwilling to go (commoditizing 64 bit processors) That proved pretty successful for them. Now they have done it again by commoditizing "high core count" processors. Each time they do this I wonder if Intel will ever learn that you can't "get away" with selling something for a lot of money that can be made more cheaply forever. Processors are not a veblen good.

gtirloni 7y ago
> Each time they do this I wonder if Intel will ever learn that you can't "get away" with selling something for a lot of money that can be made more cheaply forever I think the keyword is "forever". They know they can get away with that for a long time though. Because they historically have.
Tuna-Fish 7y ago
> That proved pretty successful for them. Now they have done it again by commoditizing "high core count" processors. They've done much more than that. Intel's current server CPU lineup is tightly siloed into different segments to limit every feature that some customers would pay more for into it's own line priced to match. That's why they currently have Xeon Scalable {Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum}, Xeon {D, W, E} lines, with 402 different Xeon CPUs actively being sold. In contrast, AMD has two EPYC lines, P and non-P, only differing in that P is for 1-socket servers. The models in these lines differ in that they have more/less cores and different clocks, all those features that Intel gates and segments by, are found in every AMD CPU.
AceJohnny2 7y ago
> Processors are not a veblen good Huh, TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good "Veblen goods are types of luxury goods for which the quantity demanded increases as the price increases"

dyeje 7y ago

What does Twitter have to do with any of this? Do they run their own data center?

pavanky 7y ago
Yes, more than one infact.

schainker 7y ago

I sit sometimes wondering how much energy is wasted from the intel security fixes and what that translates to in real dollars. IMO the market should gut punch Intel for causing such a wasteful problem if competitors bring the figurative heat.

AareyBaba 7y ago

It is worth pointing out the David versus two Goliaths situation here. AMD 10K employees and a $1 billion annual R&D budget. Intel 100K employees (including 10K just in software) and $20 billion R&D. Nvidia 11K employees and $2 billion R&D budget. AMD CPUs now surpass Intel and their GPUs are competitive with Nvidia except at the high end.

kev009 7y ago
AMD software ecosystem is pretty bad. They fired many of the Linux platform devs in ~2013 and never recovered. There is nothing like Intel's vtune and even the basic functions like performance counters, MCA support, ECC events etc are janky on AMD CPUs. Intel does a pretty good job all around there. Nvidia is leagues ahead on GPGPU with CUDA and general Linux driver stability.. sure it's a blob but if it works well in a commercial setting nobody cares. The Rome is a nice chip nonetheless, I hope they can rehire a big enough Linux team to get over these humps it isn't that much work on the CPU/platform side.
- justsid 7y ago
  I work on game performance (or rather, I work on the underlying engines with an eye on performance) and that is the biggest reason why my computer has an Intel CPU. I would love the killing power of an Zen 2 machine, the compile time improvement alone would make ith worth every cent. Unfortunately I use VTune a lot for work and there just isn’t any alternative, so I’m stuck with whatever Intel gives me. Which is doubly sad, because I end up optimizing for Intel’s microarchitecture and can only hope that it runs decent enough on AMDs CPUs. On the GPU side though, at least with the modern APIs (Vulkan, D3D12 and Metal), AMD isn’t too far behind Nvidia. I actually prefer RenderDoc to Nvidias Nsight because I can capture multiple frames instead of pausing the application to look at one frame at a time. That being said though, the OpenGL tooling for AMD is abysmal and so is their OpenGL driver. All things being equal, just swapping an Nvidia card for an AMD card gives around 40-50% speed up when running OpenGL purely by getting rid of the driver overhead. Although with Vulkan AMD and Nvidia are actually on par, so at least that’s solving itself for us.

trilila 7y ago

One product i’ve been waiting for is the upcoming mac pro. But given it has an intel cpu, overpriced and less lower powerful than the amd, i am going to delay that purchase for the foreseeable future.

nafizh 7y ago

If only now I can use AMD GPUs for training neural networks. Nvidia badly needs some competition.

john37386 7y ago

Maybe it has something to do with all the recent speculative side channel attacks. Intel seems to have more hardware vulnerabilities than AMD.

bob1029 7y ago

How long do you guys think it will take Intel to come up with an Infinity Fabric equivalent architecture? I feel like Intel wasn't working on it until recently and that it might actually be a few years before they can produce competitive silicon, especially accounting for the possibility that AMD is going to keep releasing on this yearly cadence while simultaneously leveraging full node improvements @ TSMC/Samsung...