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I really wish AMD would focus on its tooling. The Intel VTune Amplifier is a fantastic multi-platform profiler that can help understand how effectively your sof

I really wish AMD would focus on its tooling. The Intel VTune Amplifier is a fantastic multi-platform profiler that can help understand how effectively your software is using the hardware (Pipelining, micro-ops efficiency, cache usage, etc.). If AMD could come up with something similar, it'd make their offering a no-brainer. > https://software.intel.com/en-us/vtune https://software.intel.com/en-us/vtune

wjnc 7y ago
I think (without too much knowledge in this field) that AMD has had to play catch-up for so long in silicon that now the catch-up is complete, it will take some time to recognise organisationally that more focus on non-silicon is overdue. Silicon lives in an ecosphere, but without competitive products there's little use in investing in that ecosphere. If you suddenly get there, you need to change your game quite drastically.
- stingraycharles 7y ago
  But wasn’t the same the case that last time they “disrupted” Intel with their amd64 and dual core CPUs? They caught up, but never really invested in the tooling. And then they lost market share again. Why would this time be different?
  - SkyMarshal 7y ago
    Different leadership this time, maybe the new crew understands this better.
  - c0nfused 7y ago
    There was the whole ftc sued Intel for anti competitive behavior thing last time where they locked oems out of buying Intel and AMD. Hopefully without that things will be more diverse in the market going forward. https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-to-pay-amd-1-25-billion-in-antitrust-settlement/ https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-to-pay-amd-1-25-billion-in-a... Lll https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/08/ftc-settles-charges-anticompetitive-conduct-against-intel https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/08/ftc-s...
- aogl 7y ago
  I remember back in the day (circa 2000) I was all about AMD and all my custom-built machines had this emphasis on AMD chips due to the floating-point calculations be that much faster than Intel's at the time. Intel really wiped the floor with them over the next bunch of years... It will be interesting should AMD have their comeback now :) Oh how the tables turn!
effie 7y ago
I doubt tooling is the problem that is slowing down AMD adoption. Compiler or special applications writers care about that. These are not the ones who pay AMD for their platform. It's the big businesses - most care about stability, predictability, reliability hence they stay with Intel. Those that are interested mostly in bang/buck, like Cloudflare, choose to go with AMD, tooling or no tooling. You don't need tooling to check that AMD is far more efficient now, you just do some basic load tests and the result is easy to understand.
- mlyle 7y ago
  If you have crappy tooling, the software other people write -- in house or commercial software-- runs crappier on your hardware.
  - dpacmittal 7y ago
    But it's irrelevant if it works faster than intel
    - hamandcheese 7y ago
      It’s not irrelevant if Intel has tools to let you close that gap easily.
      - jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
        Tools can't close a gap of entire cores, much less twice or more of them.
        mlyle 7y ago
        Extreme example: MKL on AMD is 3x slower than on Intel. Meanwhile, if you lie to it and say you're an Intel part, MKL is 20% faster than Intel...
        kohtatsu 7y ago
        It's a matter of principle. Some people don't want cores that you can't gather insight into how you are spending/wasting their time. I'm not a direct customer of Intel or AMD, but in general I would trade off clock speed/cores/cost for insight into what my software is doing.
tssva 7y ago
I personally have not used it but AMD does have a cross platform profiler available, AMD uProf. Thought I would post in case it was a situation of not knowing it exists instead of having used it and found it severely lacking vs vTune.

wjnc 7y ago

I think (without too much knowledge in this field) that AMD has had to play catch-up for so long in silicon that now the catch-up is complete, it will take some time to recognise organisationally that more focus on non-silicon is overdue. Silicon lives in an ecosphere, but without competitive products there's little use in investing in that ecosphere. If you suddenly get there, you need to change your game quite drastically.

stingraycharles 7y ago
But wasn’t the same the case that last time they “disrupted” Intel with their amd64 and dual core CPUs? They caught up, but never really invested in the tooling. And then they lost market share again. Why would this time be different?
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  Different leadership this time, maybe the new crew understands this better.
- c0nfused 7y ago
  There was the whole ftc sued Intel for anti competitive behavior thing last time where they locked oems out of buying Intel and AMD. Hopefully without that things will be more diverse in the market going forward. https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-to-pay-amd-1-25-billion-in-antitrust-settlement/ https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-to-pay-amd-1-25-billion-in-a... Lll https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/08/ftc-settles-charges-anticompetitive-conduct-against-intel https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/08/ftc-s...
aogl 7y ago
I remember back in the day (circa 2000) I was all about AMD and all my custom-built machines had this emphasis on AMD chips due to the floating-point calculations be that much faster than Intel's at the time. Intel really wiped the floor with them over the next bunch of years... It will be interesting should AMD have their comeback now :) Oh how the tables turn!

effie 7y ago

I doubt tooling is the problem that is slowing down AMD adoption. Compiler or special applications writers care about that. These are not the ones who pay AMD for their platform. It's the big businesses - most care about stability, predictability, reliability hence they stay with Intel. Those that are interested mostly in bang/buck, like Cloudflare, choose to go with AMD, tooling or no tooling. You don't need tooling to check that AMD is far more efficient now, you just do some basic load tests and the result is easy to understand.

mlyle 7y ago
If you have crappy tooling, the software other people write -- in house or commercial software-- runs crappier on your hardware.
- dpacmittal 7y ago
  But it's irrelevant if it works faster than intel
  - hamandcheese 7y ago
    It’s not irrelevant if Intel has tools to let you close that gap easily.
    - jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
      Tools can't close a gap of entire cores, much less twice or more of them.
      - mlyle 7y ago
        Extreme example: MKL on AMD is 3x slower than on Intel. Meanwhile, if you lie to it and say you're an Intel part, MKL is 20% faster than Intel...
      - kohtatsu 7y ago
        It's a matter of principle. Some people don't want cores that you can't gather insight into how you are spending/wasting their time. I'm not a direct customer of Intel or AMD, but in general I would trade off clock speed/cores/cost for insight into what my software is doing.

tssva 7y ago

I personally have not used it but AMD does have a cross platform profiler available, AMD uProf. Thought I would post in case it was a situation of not knowing it exists instead of having used it and found it severely lacking vs vTune.