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"it shows to me that they are willing to consider bold moves and that they aren’t afraid to be different" Because they benchmarked a drop-in-place commodity re

"it shows to me that they are willing to consider bold moves and that they aren’t afraid to be different" Because they benchmarked a drop-in-place commodity replacement as being a better performance-per-dollar for their operation? I'm not sure what's bold about that. I find the notion that they posted a blog entry about this pretty bizarre -- almost rinky-dink. It seems like it's pandering to the AMD fanbase (which I am right now, just as anyone who is paying attention is, but I can still recognize it) EDIT: Sorry, I didn't realize I stepped into a Cloudflare circlejerk. Apologies and carry on. So brave!

sounds 7y ago
There's a ton, just a ton of intel-specific integrations and Cloudflare's switch to AMD was not just a "drop-in-place" move.
- endorphone 7y ago
  What "intel-specific integrations"? Cloudflare specifically talks about how they keep their stack runnable across a wide-range of platforms, including even entirely different instruction sets (e.g. ARM). Their own words support my statement. I'm pretty sure it was a "drop-in place" move, and they say absolutely nothing to the contrary. They benchmarked a system that performed better than their existing system for whatever criteria they targeted, and chose it. Story at 11. Saying they "abandoned" Intel is uproarious given that if Intel pushes out a new 128-core Xeon at a decent price, they'd as easily "abandon" AMD for Intel.
  - jgrahamc 7y ago
    As I say in another comment... AMD makes sense for us today because of the performance per watt. We continue to keep our software ARM-ready and look at ARM-based solutions. We also continue to look at Intel. We'll use what gives us the best requests per watt. But it is notable that these are our first servers wit NO Intel components at all.
    - ohyeshedid 7y ago
      Don't mean to hijack, but I'm definitely curious. Since you're the CTO of Cloudflare, and you posted the OP; Why did you replace the word 'Chose', in the linked title, with the word 'abandoned' here? That comes across as real click-baity.
    - jjeaff 7y ago
      I'm curious why requests per watt is an important metric? Are you running up against some sort of heat limit or optimizing for electricity cost? Seems like requests per amortized dollar all in would make more sense. Or requests per cubic foot of data center space if that is your limitation.
      - fierarul 7y ago
        This is a good question and I would like to learn the answer too. According to some napkin calculations, the CPU is $5000 and will be kept in service, I guess, 5 years. The US average price is 13 cents / kWh so this 225 watts CPU will cost $1280 in electricity over those 5 years. Colocation price is probably low, let's say $50 / 1U server / month. So that's another $3000. Why is electricity the most important here? I guess because you can't lower the other 2 costs very much? But isn't the CPU price itself based on the power savings it does provide?
        tbyehl 7y ago
        Data center space is generally plentiful. Power and cooling, which for most purposes can be considered equivalent, are the scarce resource. CloudFlare is trading half their server density[0] for a ~25% gain in performance-per-watt and performance-per-node[1]. Power is the whole ball-game at scale. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-tour-inside-cloudflares-g9-servers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-tour-inside-cloudflares-g9-ser... [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/an-epyc-trip-to-rome-amd-is-cloudflares-10th-generation-edge-server-cpu/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/an-epyc-trip-to-rome-amd-is-clou...
        fierarul 7y ago
- Keverw 7y ago
  intel-specific? I thought AMD was just a drop in replacement for Intel since both same architecture and AMD was a clone of X86 originally, but I guess Intel licensed them the tech so they wouldn't be a monopoloy... but I know that's a bit of a history lesson. Or did you confuse ARM and AMD? ARM I know you need to recompile your code but possibly other changes depending on what... and I believe there's even compatibility difference between ARM chip versions like 6 and 7, etc. but I guess that's why Apple created bitcode to try to help with that.
iforgotpassword 7y ago
Oh, have you ever worked at a traditional tech company? Bureaucracy, contracts, silly guidelines often lead to very stifled vendor lock in. Even if the whole tech department says. "hey we should go AMD" giving every manager involved enough time to make themselves important over the issue can cost you half a decade.
- endorphone 7y ago
  At a pure tech company, moves across architectures and platforms is an absolute non-story unless the company is broken: Choose and implement hardware to achieve desired goals at the right price points. Reassess as the industry changes. That service you are talking to might be running on a Xeon Windows Server instance on vmware, or a Neoverse N1 Linux instance over KVM. Whatever was right. Cloudflare specifically say that they try to operate this way, and probably have since day, as does any competent tech company. It's more the tech-as-a-cost-center company that has such restrictions. The accounting shop or traditional bank where "We use X, Y and Z! We're an Intel and Dell company!", where the desktops are all running Windows 7.
  - iforgotpassword 7y ago
    We should maybe define pure and traditional better, but yes, I was mostly thinking companies which (heavily) rely on tech, but more as a commodity driving their actual business, and never tried to push the tech to its limits.
syshum 7y ago
>>>I didn't realize I stepped into a Cloudflare circlejerk. Yea you dont want to Criticize CloudFlare or a few other companies around here CloudFlare can literally sensor the internet and consolidate all traffic to a single point of failure breaking the purpose fo networking and still be thought of as the greatest company ever, not evil at all

sounds 7y ago

There's a ton, just a ton of intel-specific integrations and Cloudflare's switch to AMD was not just a "drop-in-place" move.

endorphone 7y ago
What "intel-specific integrations"? Cloudflare specifically talks about how they keep their stack runnable across a wide-range of platforms, including even entirely different instruction sets (e.g. ARM). Their own words support my statement. I'm pretty sure it was a "drop-in place" move, and they say absolutely nothing to the contrary. They benchmarked a system that performed better than their existing system for whatever criteria they targeted, and chose it. Story at 11. Saying they "abandoned" Intel is uproarious given that if Intel pushes out a new 128-core Xeon at a decent price, they'd as easily "abandon" AMD for Intel.
- jgrahamc 7y ago
  As I say in another comment... AMD makes sense for us today because of the performance per watt. We continue to keep our software ARM-ready and look at ARM-based solutions. We also continue to look at Intel. We'll use what gives us the best requests per watt. But it is notable that these are our first servers wit NO Intel components at all.
  - ohyeshedid 7y ago
    Don't mean to hijack, but I'm definitely curious. Since you're the CTO of Cloudflare, and you posted the OP; Why did you replace the word 'Chose', in the linked title, with the word 'abandoned' here? That comes across as real click-baity.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    I'm curious why requests per watt is an important metric? Are you running up against some sort of heat limit or optimizing for electricity cost? Seems like requests per amortized dollar all in would make more sense. Or requests per cubic foot of data center space if that is your limitation.
    - fierarul 7y ago
      This is a good question and I would like to learn the answer too. According to some napkin calculations, the CPU is $5000 and will be kept in service, I guess, 5 years. The US average price is 13 cents / kWh so this 225 watts CPU will cost $1280 in electricity over those 5 years. Colocation price is probably low, let's say $50 / 1U server / month. So that's another $3000. Why is electricity the most important here? I guess because you can't lower the other 2 costs very much? But isn't the CPU price itself based on the power savings it does provide?
      - tbyehl 7y ago
        Data center space is generally plentiful. Power and cooling, which for most purposes can be considered equivalent, are the scarce resource. CloudFlare is trading half their server density[0] for a ~25% gain in performance-per-watt and performance-per-node[1]. Power is the whole ball-game at scale. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-tour-inside-cloudflares-g9-servers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-tour-inside-cloudflares-g9-ser... [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/an-epyc-trip-to-rome-amd-is-cloudflares-10th-generation-edge-server-cpu/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/an-epyc-trip-to-rome-amd-is-clou...
        fierarul 7y ago
Keverw 7y ago
intel-specific? I thought AMD was just a drop in replacement for Intel since both same architecture and AMD was a clone of X86 originally, but I guess Intel licensed them the tech so they wouldn't be a monopoloy... but I know that's a bit of a history lesson. Or did you confuse ARM and AMD? ARM I know you need to recompile your code but possibly other changes depending on what... and I believe there's even compatibility difference between ARM chip versions like 6 and 7, etc. but I guess that's why Apple created bitcode to try to help with that.

iforgotpassword 7y ago

Oh, have you ever worked at a traditional tech company? Bureaucracy, contracts, silly guidelines often lead to very stifled vendor lock in. Even if the whole tech department says. "hey we should go AMD" giving every manager involved enough time to make themselves important over the issue can cost you half a decade.

endorphone 7y ago
At a pure tech company, moves across architectures and platforms is an absolute non-story unless the company is broken: Choose and implement hardware to achieve desired goals at the right price points. Reassess as the industry changes. That service you are talking to might be running on a Xeon Windows Server instance on vmware, or a Neoverse N1 Linux instance over KVM. Whatever was right. Cloudflare specifically say that they try to operate this way, and probably have since day, as does any competent tech company. It's more the tech-as-a-cost-center company that has such restrictions. The accounting shop or traditional bank where "We use X, Y and Z! We're an Intel and Dell company!", where the desktops are all running Windows 7.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  We should maybe define pure and traditional better, but yes, I was mostly thinking companies which (heavily) rely on tech, but more as a commodity driving their actual business, and never tried to push the tech to its limits.

syshum 7y ago

>>>I didn't realize I stepped into a Cloudflare circlejerk. Yea you dont want to Criticize CloudFlare or a few other companies around here CloudFlare can literally sensor the internet and consolidate all traffic to a single point of failure breaking the purpose fo networking and still be thought of as the greatest company ever, not evil at all