6 ms·

Given that amd has the lead in power consumption per performance, is it now the cpu of choice in the datacenter?

ItsTotallyOn 6y ago
It certainly is in terms of power, performance, and cost, but Intel's reputation for rock-solid reliability and a decade of optimization for its architectures, not to mention the established software/support ecosystem, means AMD has a very long haul ahead of it.
- cecja 6y ago
  Sorry, but especially on servers amd has a better track record with reliability. You are right with missing optimizations on some software stacks but that’s not a long haul it’s just that nobody saw the need to do it until now. Don’t forget all the loss of performance from spectre mitigation a lot of datacenters lost up too 25% performance overnight. Everyone is going amd. Google/Facebook/Disney/Pixar...
  - qqssccfftt 6y ago
    For the record, you're shadowbanned.
    - lukevp 6y ago
      How can you tell?
      - qqssccfftt 6y ago
        Every comment is [dead] automatically without being flagged.
      - mkl 6y ago
        Turn on "showdead" in your profile, then look at their comments. Usually it's easy to tell why it's happened, but if there are comments that don't deserve to be dead, you can "vouch" for them individually to help resurrect them (click on comment timestamp, then click "vouch"). That has happened here.
        lukevp 6y ago
        Thanks for the info!
StreamBright 6y ago
Depending on the use case. Some hyper scalers won't buy hardware just because of the CPU has the lower power consumption. It would be also not very wise to bet only on one vendor.
- ItsTotallyOn 6y ago
  The fact that the Super 7 don't want to rely upon one vendor actually gives AMD a better shot - all other serious contenders use different instruction sets, so AMD's x86 procs are compatible with existing software ecosystems, thus reducing qualification and validation results. A viable x86 alternative to Intel has been sorely needed, and AMD fills that role quite nicely.
madengr 6y ago
Some engineering software I use, uses Intel MPI libraries, and I suspect the math kernel also. The software runs 30% faster on an i7 versus a Ryzen 7, both with equivalent clock rate and number of cores. Given the forthcoming i9 will hit 5.3 GHz, I’m choosing Intel for my next build. Until AMD comes out with libraries and compilers targeting scientific computing, Intel may still have the lead.
- jrockway 6y ago
  Do Intel consumer chips support ECC memory now? Without ECC, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable doing any scientific computing or production serving. (I would consider using them for things like CI, though, because the price sure is good.)
  - madengr 6y ago
    No, and only 64 GB max of non-ECC at that. I typically don’t run simulation of more than 1 hour though, and I’ll know when the results are wrong. My use case is CAD/real-time design for RF and EM; multiple smaller simulations of parametric sweeps, Monte Carlo, and optimization. Ryzen does support ECC, and > 64 GB, so that is a plus.
    - jrockway 6y ago
      I don't care too much about the results of my own programs, but I do worry very much about OS-level data structures. If some bit gets flipped in memory while you're extracting an update, that program will just randomly be weird forever. If some bit gets flipped in your filesystem, your data randomly disappears. Given how frequent both auto-updates and bit flips are in practice, no doubt something on my computer is corrupted somewhere. Or maybe only my backup is corrupted. Maybe it will never cause a problem, or maybe my computer will just one day become unusable. I have spent so much time debugging random failures that I see ECC memory as at least avoiding one set of possibilities, reducing the inevitable system integration time that building your own computer requires.
- herbstein 6y ago
fragmede 6y ago
AWS and GCP, at least, have started offering them, and at a discount, so I'd say yes. https://www.amd.com/en/processors/amd-epyc-aws https://www.amd.com/en/processors/amd-epyc-aws https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-google-cloud https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-google-cloud and https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/amd-epyc-processors-come-to-google-and-to-google-cloud https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/amd-epyc-proc...

It certainly is in terms of power, performance, and cost, but Intel's reputation for rock-solid reliability and a decade of optimization for its architectures, not to mention the established software/support ecosystem, means AMD has a very long haul ahead of it.

cecja 6y ago
Sorry, but especially on servers amd has a better track record with reliability. You are right with missing optimizations on some software stacks but that’s not a long haul it’s just that nobody saw the need to do it until now. Don’t forget all the loss of performance from spectre mitigation a lot of datacenters lost up too 25% performance overnight. Everyone is going amd. Google/Facebook/Disney/Pixar...
- qqssccfftt 6y ago
  For the record, you're shadowbanned.
  - lukevp 6y ago
    How can you tell?
    - qqssccfftt 6y ago
      Every comment is [dead] automatically without being flagged.
    - mkl 6y ago
      Turn on "showdead" in your profile, then look at their comments. Usually it's easy to tell why it's happened, but if there are comments that don't deserve to be dead, you can "vouch" for them individually to help resurrect them (click on comment timestamp, then click "vouch"). That has happened here.
      - lukevp 6y ago
        Thanks for the info!

StreamBright 6y ago

Depending on the use case. Some hyper scalers won't buy hardware just because of the CPU has the lower power consumption. It would be also not very wise to bet only on one vendor.

ItsTotallyOn 6y ago
The fact that the Super 7 don't want to rely upon one vendor actually gives AMD a better shot - all other serious contenders use different instruction sets, so AMD's x86 procs are compatible with existing software ecosystems, thus reducing qualification and validation results. A viable x86 alternative to Intel has been sorely needed, and AMD fills that role quite nicely.

madengr 6y ago

Some engineering software I use, uses Intel MPI libraries, and I suspect the math kernel also. The software runs 30% faster on an i7 versus a Ryzen 7, both with equivalent clock rate and number of cores. Given the forthcoming i9 will hit 5.3 GHz, I’m choosing Intel for my next build. Until AMD comes out with libraries and compilers targeting scientific computing, Intel may still have the lead.

jrockway 6y ago
Do Intel consumer chips support ECC memory now? Without ECC, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable doing any scientific computing or production serving. (I would consider using them for things like CI, though, because the price sure is good.)
- madengr 6y ago
  No, and only 64 GB max of non-ECC at that. I typically don’t run simulation of more than 1 hour though, and I’ll know when the results are wrong. My use case is CAD/real-time design for RF and EM; multiple smaller simulations of parametric sweeps, Monte Carlo, and optimization. Ryzen does support ECC, and > 64 GB, so that is a plus.
  - jrockway 6y ago
    I don't care too much about the results of my own programs, but I do worry very much about OS-level data structures. If some bit gets flipped in memory while you're extracting an update, that program will just randomly be weird forever. If some bit gets flipped in your filesystem, your data randomly disappears. Given how frequent both auto-updates and bit flips are in practice, no doubt something on my computer is corrupted somewhere. Or maybe only my backup is corrupted. Maybe it will never cause a problem, or maybe my computer will just one day become unusable. I have spent so much time debugging random failures that I see ECC memory as at least avoiding one set of possibilities, reducing the inevitable system integration time that building your own computer requires.
herbstein 6y ago

fragmede 6y ago

AWS and GCP, at least, have started offering them, and at a discount, so I'd say yes. https://www.amd.com/en/processors/amd-epyc-aws https://www.amd.com/en/processors/amd-epyc-aws https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-google-cloud https://www.amd.com/en/processors/epyc-google-cloud and https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/amd-epyc-processors-come-to-google-and-to-google-cloud https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/amd-epyc-proc...