6 ms·

I didn’t press but it was along the lines of “everyone uses Intel” and surely would have ended with “no one was ever fired for choosing IBM”. In reality with A

I didn’t press but it was along the lines of “everyone uses Intel” and surely would have ended with “no one was ever fired for choosing IBM”. In reality with AMD, the cost was better, the ram/bus was faster, I liked the specs and options of the 7xxx vs the 7xx series better. They couldn’t give me a reason not to chose AMD, only that “Dell always uses Intel for a reason”

simonh 7y ago
>“Dell always uses Intel for a reason” Which is just as likely to be more to do with commercial arm twisting and incentives from Intel than anything technical.
redis_mlc 7y ago
There's 2 main valid reasons larger companies won't touch AMD for servers: 1) You don't know if a given linux kernel/other software will work unless you test it ... for each future version 2) The firmware updates for Intel and AMD are different. Additionally, the excellent Intel C compiler focuses on their own processors. The above doesn't mean you can't choose AMD, but don't assume they're interchangeable CPUs. Disclosure: I worked for Transmeta, whose entire DC was based an AMD servers. The reason was that Intel was a larger competitor for their code-morphing CPUs than AMD was. Coincidentally, Linus Torvalds entered the USA on a work visa from Transmeta after DEC bailed on his job offer. I bought CS22 at Transmeta's wind-down auction, which I will donate to the Computer Museum. Several large CPU designs during that era were verified on it because it was a 4 CPU Opteron with 64 GB RAM, and 32 GB RAM wasn't enough. Aside from Apple's A-series, that was the end of Silicon Valley being about silicon. (Many of the chip engineers on my last project ended up at Apple on the A-series.)
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Does Intel work without testing?
  - cookiecaper 7y ago
    Most kernel devs have Intel processors, and anecdotally, it does seem like you see more AMD-specific patches coming in the changelogs as people with the chips get new kernel versions and find new breakages. Another side effect of Intel's market penetration is that the Intel implementation of any given featureset is targeted first. Things like nested virtualization may work mostly-OK on Intel by now but are still in their infancy on AMD; for example, it appears that MS still blacklists AMD from nested virtualization. [0] [0] https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/Virtualization-Documentation/issues/1276 https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/Virtualization-Documentatio...
    - wtallis 7y ago
      > and anecdotally, it does seem like you see more AMD-specific patches coming in the changelogs as people with the chips get new kernel versions and find new breakages. You have to factor in how stagnant Intel's chips have been for many years. There's simply not much new stuff showing up on Intel platforms, and half of the new features are fundamentally incompatible with Linux anyways and thus will never lead to upstreamable patches. AMD catching up to Intel on feature support also necessarily means AMD is adding features at a faster rate that requires more feature enablement patches over the same time span.
    - jhasse 7y ago
      That will change though.
- harry8 7y ago
  >Additionally, the excellent Intel C compiler focuses on their own processors This is a new and creative use of the word "excellent" to mean Intel are so dishonest they have been caught out using their compiler as malware delivery to make /your/ compiled binary test for an Intel cpu when being run by /your/ customer and if it finds your executable binary being run on a competitor, eg amd, makes the code run every slow path despite the optimised code running fast on that cpu. Wildly dishonest. Malware delivery mechanism are somewhat more traditional uses of the English language to describe the Intel compiler. You cannot trust Intel. They've earned that reputation all by themselves.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    Malware? Are we just redefining words when we don’t like something? > malware (n) > software that is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system. How is a dispatch system (which GCC supports) malware? Yes, Intel “cripples” AMD by requiring an Intel processor, but it’s not malware.
    - wtallis 7y ago
      It's sneaky, it behaves badly and counter to the user's interests, and because it's a compiler, it propagates that bad behavior (though not in a self-reproducing viral fashion). It's fairly mild on the scale of malware—I'd rank it slightly less bad than adware, but roughly on par with AV software that deletes any tools it deems to be for piracy purposes.
    - harry8 7y ago
      I call stealing your customers cpu cycles without permission for marketing purposes malware. If you don't that's ok. We can disagree.
      - colejohnson66 7y ago
        I literally posted the definition of malware. Where is it gaining unauthorized access?
- anarazel 7y ago
  > 1) You don't know if a given linux kernel/other software will work unless you test it ... for each future version Huh? Sure, some software may break, but there's more than enough AMD out there to make sure that linux and other common software won't break. > Additionally, the excellent Intel C compiler focuses on their own processors. IME it's actually not that commonly used outside of benchmarking (among other reasons, it's fairly buggy - perhaps somehat of a chicken/egg issue).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Actually, if you want to run Wayland, and a more powerful GPU than Intel's integrated stuff, AMD has much better support, to the point that running Wayland isn't even an option on anything Nvidia (and Intel CPU + Radeon dGPU is relatively rare). Though I'm a bit confused about whether Wayland (as an experimental option) in upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is even supported. It should be, because X.org's universal trackpad driver sucks compared to what was available in Ubuntu 16.04, and overall gnome-shell feels clunky and a regression compared to Unity. Having just setup a ThinkPad E495 (Ryzen) over the weekend, I'm both impressed with easy out-of-the-box installation, but also seriously disappointed with gnome-shell and the state of Wayland that I'm considering alternatives to it.
  - antod 7y ago
    > Though I'm a bit confused about whether Wayland (as an experimental option) in upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is even supported. I've been using Wayland out of the box on 19.04 and 19.10 to get fractional scaling and independent DPIs on multiple monitors (Thinkpads of various ages with Intel GPUs). If it's experimental, they've certainly hid that well. It was just a login option on the display manager with no warnings about it during install or later.
    - tannhaeuser 7y ago
      That's encouraging to hear - I'll give it a try.
    - e12e 7y ago
      Appreciate the experience report. But non-lts releases are by some definitions all "experimental" - I had the impression canonical pushed for Wayland in 18.04,but then walked it back a bit. Hm, Wayland by default in 17.10, then back to optional in 18.04 - and so it might stay: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/01/xorg-will-default-display-server-ubuntu-18-04-lts https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/01/xorg-will-default-displa... https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=No-Wayland-Default-20.04-LTS https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=No-Wayla... I'm a little surprised, not default for 18.04 made a lot of sense, but I'm not sure why 20.04 won't see a switch.
maccam94 7y ago
> “Dell always uses Intel for a reason” That reason sometimes being that Intel paid them off to block AMD from competing in the market: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23dell.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23dell.html https://www.extremetech.com/computing/184323-intel-stuck-with-1-45-billion-fine-in-europe-for-unfair-and-damaging-practices-against-amd https://www.extremetech.com/computing/184323-intel-stuck-wit...
lonelappde 7y ago
If Dell went all in on AMD, could they produce enough chips to satisfy demand?
- jhasse 7y ago
  The chips are actually produced by TSMC. So my guess would be yes.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    Depends on what kind of pricing and lead time Dell gives AMD, because TSMC 7nm production capacity is definitely limited and their required lead time for wafer orders hit 6 months as of last fall. AMD has already experienced some shortages due to their supply being relatively unresponsive.
    - tracker1 7y ago
      In fairness, so has Intel themselves.
      - wtallis 7y ago
        Sure, but people expect that of Intel because they own their fabs and have to build a new fab if they want more capacity. AMD's only buying a slice of TSMC output, but that doesn't mean they're able to suddenly buy a much larger share of that output.
    - apodysophilia 7y ago
      Shouldn't be a huge problem right now since Apple is moving to 5nm.
Aperocky 7y ago
Another question.. what exactly are IT consultant's job description?
alfiedotwtf 7y ago
For one, AMD killed OpenCL support for Ryzen. Like wtf... I've got 24 hyperthreads and OpenCL doesn't work!!

simonh 7y ago

>“Dell always uses Intel for a reason” Which is just as likely to be more to do with commercial arm twisting and incentives from Intel than anything technical.

redis_mlc 7y ago

There's 2 main valid reasons larger companies won't touch AMD for servers: 1) You don't know if a given linux kernel/other software will work unless you test it ... for each future version 2) The firmware updates for Intel and AMD are different. Additionally, the excellent Intel C compiler focuses on their own processors. The above doesn't mean you can't choose AMD, but don't assume they're interchangeable CPUs. Disclosure: I worked for Transmeta, whose entire DC was based an AMD servers. The reason was that Intel was a larger competitor for their code-morphing CPUs than AMD was. Coincidentally, Linus Torvalds entered the USA on a work visa from Transmeta after DEC bailed on his job offer. I bought CS22 at Transmeta's wind-down auction, which I will donate to the Computer Museum. Several large CPU designs during that era were verified on it because it was a 4 CPU Opteron with 64 GB RAM, and 32 GB RAM wasn't enough. Aside from Apple's A-series, that was the end of Silicon Valley being about silicon. (Many of the chip engineers on my last project ended up at Apple on the A-series.)

lonelappde 7y ago
Does Intel work without testing?
- cookiecaper 7y ago
  Most kernel devs have Intel processors, and anecdotally, it does seem like you see more AMD-specific patches coming in the changelogs as people with the chips get new kernel versions and find new breakages. Another side effect of Intel's market penetration is that the Intel implementation of any given featureset is targeted first. Things like nested virtualization may work mostly-OK on Intel by now but are still in their infancy on AMD; for example, it appears that MS still blacklists AMD from nested virtualization. [0] [0] https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/Virtualization-Documentation/issues/1276 https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/Virtualization-Documentatio...
  - wtallis 7y ago
    > and anecdotally, it does seem like you see more AMD-specific patches coming in the changelogs as people with the chips get new kernel versions and find new breakages. You have to factor in how stagnant Intel's chips have been for many years. There's simply not much new stuff showing up on Intel platforms, and half of the new features are fundamentally incompatible with Linux anyways and thus will never lead to upstreamable patches. AMD catching up to Intel on feature support also necessarily means AMD is adding features at a faster rate that requires more feature enablement patches over the same time span.
  - jhasse 7y ago
    That will change though.
harry8 7y ago
>Additionally, the excellent Intel C compiler focuses on their own processors This is a new and creative use of the word "excellent" to mean Intel are so dishonest they have been caught out using their compiler as malware delivery to make /your/ compiled binary test for an Intel cpu when being run by /your/ customer and if it finds your executable binary being run on a competitor, eg amd, makes the code run every slow path despite the optimised code running fast on that cpu. Wildly dishonest. Malware delivery mechanism are somewhat more traditional uses of the English language to describe the Intel compiler. You cannot trust Intel. They've earned that reputation all by themselves.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Malware? Are we just redefining words when we don’t like something? > malware (n) > software that is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system. How is a dispatch system (which GCC supports) malware? Yes, Intel “cripples” AMD by requiring an Intel processor, but it’s not malware.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    It's sneaky, it behaves badly and counter to the user's interests, and because it's a compiler, it propagates that bad behavior (though not in a self-reproducing viral fashion). It's fairly mild on the scale of malware—I'd rank it slightly less bad than adware, but roughly on par with AV software that deletes any tools it deems to be for piracy purposes.
  - harry8 7y ago
    I call stealing your customers cpu cycles without permission for marketing purposes malware. If you don't that's ok. We can disagree.
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      I literally posted the definition of malware. Where is it gaining unauthorized access?
anarazel 7y ago
> 1) You don't know if a given linux kernel/other software will work unless you test it ... for each future version Huh? Sure, some software may break, but there's more than enough AMD out there to make sure that linux and other common software won't break. > Additionally, the excellent Intel C compiler focuses on their own processors. IME it's actually not that commonly used outside of benchmarking (among other reasons, it's fairly buggy - perhaps somehat of a chicken/egg issue).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tannhaeuser 7y ago
Actually, if you want to run Wayland, and a more powerful GPU than Intel's integrated stuff, AMD has much better support, to the point that running Wayland isn't even an option on anything Nvidia (and Intel CPU + Radeon dGPU is relatively rare). Though I'm a bit confused about whether Wayland (as an experimental option) in upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is even supported. It should be, because X.org's universal trackpad driver sucks compared to what was available in Ubuntu 16.04, and overall gnome-shell feels clunky and a regression compared to Unity. Having just setup a ThinkPad E495 (Ryzen) over the weekend, I'm both impressed with easy out-of-the-box installation, but also seriously disappointed with gnome-shell and the state of Wayland that I'm considering alternatives to it.
- antod 7y ago
  > Though I'm a bit confused about whether Wayland (as an experimental option) in upcoming Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is even supported. I've been using Wayland out of the box on 19.04 and 19.10 to get fractional scaling and independent DPIs on multiple monitors (Thinkpads of various ages with Intel GPUs). If it's experimental, they've certainly hid that well. It was just a login option on the display manager with no warnings about it during install or later.
  - tannhaeuser 7y ago
    That's encouraging to hear - I'll give it a try.
  - e12e 7y ago
    Appreciate the experience report. But non-lts releases are by some definitions all "experimental" - I had the impression canonical pushed for Wayland in 18.04,but then walked it back a bit. Hm, Wayland by default in 17.10, then back to optional in 18.04 - and so it might stay: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/01/xorg-will-default-display-server-ubuntu-18-04-lts https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/01/xorg-will-default-displa... https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=No-Wayland-Default-20.04-LTS https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=No-Wayla... I'm a little surprised, not default for 18.04 made a lot of sense, but I'm not sure why 20.04 won't see a switch.

maccam94 7y ago

> “Dell always uses Intel for a reason” That reason sometimes being that Intel paid them off to block AMD from competing in the market: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23dell.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23dell.html https://www.extremetech.com/computing/184323-intel-stuck-with-1-45-billion-fine-in-europe-for-unfair-and-damaging-practices-against-amd https://www.extremetech.com/computing/184323-intel-stuck-wit...

lonelappde 7y ago

If Dell went all in on AMD, could they produce enough chips to satisfy demand?

jhasse 7y ago
The chips are actually produced by TSMC. So my guess would be yes.
- wtallis 7y ago
  Depends on what kind of pricing and lead time Dell gives AMD, because TSMC 7nm production capacity is definitely limited and their required lead time for wafer orders hit 6 months as of last fall. AMD has already experienced some shortages due to their supply being relatively unresponsive.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    In fairness, so has Intel themselves.
    - wtallis 7y ago
      Sure, but people expect that of Intel because they own their fabs and have to build a new fab if they want more capacity. AMD's only buying a slice of TSMC output, but that doesn't mean they're able to suddenly buy a much larger share of that output.
  - apodysophilia 7y ago
    Shouldn't be a huge problem right now since Apple is moving to 5nm.

Aperocky 7y ago

Another question.. what exactly are IT consultant's job description?

alfiedotwtf 7y ago

For one, AMD killed OpenCL support for Ryzen. Like wtf... I've got 24 hyperthreads and OpenCL doesn't work!!