4 ms·

Its interesting but I wouldn't say Graviton2 is likely to succeed. Every ARM based PC I've seen has been disappointingly slow, which I dont really understand b

by rb808 7y ago

Its interesting but I wouldn't say Graviton2 is likely to succeed. Every ARM based PC I've seen has been disappointingly slow, which I dont really understand because phones usually are amazingly quick. DEC Alpha, Sun Sparc, MIPS, PowerPC couldn't keep up with Intel in the recent past either. Intel CPUs aren't cheap, but they're a fraction of the cost of a server. All adds up to interesting innovation but not necessarily the future.

boramalper 7y ago
> Every ARM based PC I've seen has been disappointingly slow, which I dont really understand because phones usually are amazingly quick. Maybe it’s a latency vs throughput thing? As far as I know, ARM is great at balancing latency and power consumption, but behind x64 in throughput. [citation needed]
- PeterCorless 7y ago
  Better throughput. Our tests confirm: https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-dominance/ https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-...
kbenson 7y ago
> Intel CPUs aren't cheap, but they're a fraction of the cost of a server. Depending what what performance level you're looking at, they're a very large fraction of the server cost. Get a dual or quad socket board and buy the higher end CPUs and you might be looking at well over half the cost.
- StillBored 7y ago
  I think the point is that, if your buying a quad socket, the 2TB of ECC ram you stick in it will dwarf the core prices, or similarly its not hard to drop $50k on U.2 NVMe, etc. Its possible to shift this argument different ways depending on the part of the market your looking at.
jws 7y ago
I'm not sure about MIPS, but over the years there were times when Alpha, Sparc, and PowerPC were each ahead of x86 in performance. Intel outpaced them by using their huge volume sales to invest in fabrication improvement at a scale none of them could hope to match, going to ever more complicated internal architectures, and a dash of perfectly legal but slightly expensive tricks (like hiring away key designers). Intel stumbled in fabrication and complicated architecture is having a bit of a growing pain. The CPU market doesn't make revenue like it used it – very few desktop users feel the need to upgrade every two years and for many applications pretty much any CPU is fast enough. Growth in the cloud market could be good, but any thing that threatens their market share of the cloud is threat to Intel.
koolba 7y ago
The capital cost is only one part of the equation. These modern ARM cores have insane per-watt performance and that’s what adds up for horizontally scalable services.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  RISC-V chips will handily beat ARM on performance per watt, given similar specs and fabrication technology. The margin is not insanely large but it's definitely substantial in existing benchmarks.
  - __d 7y ago
    Which will be great, just as soon as someone comes out with a competitive server CPU + chipset. Surely these are in development, but based on the ARM experience, it'll be at least 5 years from availability of reasonable parts to any decent volume.
  - pertymcpert 7y ago
    Why?
viraptor 7y ago
> Every ARM based PC I've seen has been disappointingly slow Most recent ARM PCs were explicitly low-power low-performance. That was the goal, not a description of the architecture. The mobile part pretty much confirms that. The ARM chips that Amazon is putting in the servers is nothing like what you'll find in a consumer arm laptop.
- PeterCorless 7y ago
  Bingo. https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-dominance/ https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-...
Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
> Every ARM based PC I've seen has been disappointingly slow, The only ARM based PCs I've ever seen are the Raspberry Pi and other products intended to compete with the Pi, and one of the core features of these PCs is being a complete computer for under $100. Keeping the price low was always the top priority, not performance.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiscPC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiscPC
- PeterCorless 7y ago
  The Graviton2 is about performance. We did tests. This thing blitzes. https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-dominance/ https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-...

by rb808 7y ago

boramalper 7y ago

> Every ARM based PC I've seen has been disappointingly slow, which I dont really understand because phones usually are amazingly quick. Maybe it’s a latency vs throughput thing? As far as I know, ARM is great at balancing latency and power consumption, but behind x64 in throughput. [citation needed]

PeterCorless 7y ago
Better throughput. Our tests confirm: https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-dominance/ https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-...

kbenson 7y ago

> Intel CPUs aren't cheap, but they're a fraction of the cost of a server. Depending what what performance level you're looking at, they're a very large fraction of the server cost. Get a dual or quad socket board and buy the higher end CPUs and you might be looking at well over half the cost.

StillBored 7y ago
I think the point is that, if your buying a quad socket, the 2TB of ECC ram you stick in it will dwarf the core prices, or similarly its not hard to drop $50k on U.2 NVMe, etc. Its possible to shift this argument different ways depending on the part of the market your looking at.

jws 7y ago

I'm not sure about MIPS, but over the years there were times when Alpha, Sparc, and PowerPC were each ahead of x86 in performance. Intel outpaced them by using their huge volume sales to invest in fabrication improvement at a scale none of them could hope to match, going to ever more complicated internal architectures, and a dash of perfectly legal but slightly expensive tricks (like hiring away key designers). Intel stumbled in fabrication and complicated architecture is having a bit of a growing pain. The CPU market doesn't make revenue like it used it – very few desktop users feel the need to upgrade every two years and for many applications pretty much any CPU is fast enough. Growth in the cloud market could be good, but any thing that threatens their market share of the cloud is threat to Intel.

koolba 7y ago

The capital cost is only one part of the equation. These modern ARM cores have insane per-watt performance and that’s what adds up for horizontally scalable services.

zozbot234 7y ago
RISC-V chips will handily beat ARM on performance per watt, given similar specs and fabrication technology. The margin is not insanely large but it's definitely substantial in existing benchmarks.
- __d 7y ago
  Which will be great, just as soon as someone comes out with a competitive server CPU + chipset. Surely these are in development, but based on the ARM experience, it'll be at least 5 years from availability of reasonable parts to any decent volume.
- pertymcpert 7y ago
  Why?

viraptor 7y ago

> Every ARM based PC I've seen has been disappointingly slow Most recent ARM PCs were explicitly low-power low-performance. That was the goal, not a description of the architecture. The mobile part pretty much confirms that. The ARM chips that Amazon is putting in the servers is nothing like what you'll find in a consumer arm laptop.

PeterCorless 7y ago
Bingo. https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-dominance/ https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-...

Sohcahtoa82 7y ago

> Every ARM based PC I've seen has been disappointingly slow, The only ARM based PCs I've ever seen are the Raspberry Pi and other products intended to compete with the Pi, and one of the core features of these PCs is being a complete computer for under $100. Keeping the price low was always the top priority, not performance.

perl4ever 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiscPC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiscPC
PeterCorless 7y ago
The Graviton2 is about performance. We did tests. This thing blitzes. https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-dominance/ https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-...