6 ms·

Japanese CPU threatens to make Nvidia, Intel and AMD obsolete in HPC market

45 points by fraqed 6y ago

ksec 6y ago
I read the headline and I thought it is going to be Fujitsu A64FX. And it is, but the article completely lack any detail info. Anandtech [1] has a basic run down of features. The most important thing was SVE 512bit SIMD, which I believe was developed together with ARM. And as far as I am aware it seems to be the only commercial chip that has SVE. Unfortunately knowing the Japanese culture and Fujitsu's intention with A64FX I dont think it will bring any competition to Intel / AMD or Nvidia. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15169/a-success-on-arm-for-hpc-we-found-a-fujitsu-a64fx-wafer https://www.anandtech.com/show/15169/a-success-on-arm-for-hp...
- wmf 6y ago
  I figured the A64FX would never been seen outside Japan but Sandia is trying it. https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/sandia-to-receive-fujitsu-green-processor/ https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/sandia-to-receive-fujit...
- abc_lisper 6y ago
  What about Japanese culture would do injustice to the potential of this chip? I’m curious..
  - ksec 6y ago
    Extreme Bureaucracy. Any type of bureaucracy in US or EUR are viewed as quiet flexible in the view of Japanese culture. And even more so from an old traditional Japanese enterprise like Fujitsu.
- saltedonion 6y ago
  So what did Fujitsu do to innovate here? Partner with arm on design? Who manufactured it? After the us tries to cut off Huaweis chip supplies, can Huawei come up with something similar?
  - wmf 6y ago
    The A64FX is a combination of known technologies (wide SIMD, HBM2, torus interconnect, etc.) in a way that's balanced for HPC instead of servers (like Intel/AMD CPUs) or games/ML (like GPUs). It's manufactured by TSMC.
  - to11mtm 6y ago
    My guess would be that at minimum they were involved with the SIMD modules. At most, they designed the entire CPU from the ground up. I'm guessing it's somewhere in between; this CPU provides equivalent extensions to what Fujitsu gave in their SPARC series. If other parts of ARM's core IP were suitable for other pieces they probably used that. > Who manufactured it? Based on Wikipedia, probably TSMC. > After the us tries to cut off Huaweis chip supplies, can Huawei come up with something similar? (Short answer at the bottom, I went on quite the tangent here :) Well let's talk about what that would mean right now. HiSilicon is a fabless Semiconductor design company fully owned by Huawei. If you look at the comparison of ARMv8-A cores out there [0], thankfully both HiSilicon and Fujitsu's offerings are grouped together at the bottom (at least for me as I write this.) That said, what benchmarks I found indicated that HiSilicon's CPU doesn't seem to compete, especially with wider workloads (Fujitsu can do 512-bit vectors, I think HiSilicon is limited to 128 on these.) I'm assuming that their setups are being pieced together more thoughtfully; one should note HS also makes AI Processors that are tailored separately for inference and training. As far as making a more proper 'server' GP core, if they're not playing dirty there's some catch-up to be done, but there's nothing stopping the State from stepping in and throwing more resources at the problem. While having multiple design teams working on the same parts of a CPU probably won't get an implementation done any faster, having multiple designs in parallel when you're trying to catch up to the latest tech may lead to better insight and options down the road; case in point would be Netburst vs Evolved P6 arch. Really, China's bigger problem at the moment is Fab technology; They have HSMC which can do 7nm, but I don't know at what kind of volume, and whether it's a bulk process or something with all the fancy tech you'd need to make a server cpu at a fast clock rate. There's a few things they're probably lacking in that area; just getting started into process tech research (in the vein of SOI, copper interconnects, etc.) but that will probably ramp up quickly. Optics are another huge factor; I'm starting to realize that the increase in higher-quality Camera glass from China in the last few years is no coincidence. Let's look at the main Lithography EQ manufacturers out there: - Canon - Nikon - Ultratech - ASML You can see that two of ASMLs biggest competitors also happen to be the two biggest/best mass producers of Glass out there. Notice Samsung isn't on the list; AFAIK they still get their equipment from ASML, although my understanding is it's some level of 'partnership.' I'm guessing they trade glass, since Samsung is pretty good at that. To wit: Samsung recently got caught with their hand in ASML's source code cookie jar. I was immediately reminded of a post on HN [1] where ASML's testing scheme is described; If someone has a spare machine and a copy of the source code, they can start playing with it, possibly introducing their own fixes to optimize yields, either for their use case or for more general cases that for reasons described in aforementioned post aren't incorporated into ASML's codebase. Anywho, went on a tangent there, but it shows how competitive the industry is even without political pressures at play. But it also shows that it's -possible- that with the right pieces China could make incremental improvements to what they already have while they work on the next big thing. Short Answer: I think China wants to be caught up sometime between 2023 and 2025 for fabs, but everyone else is trying to push it back to 2025-2030. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv8-A_cores https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv8-A_cores [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181
- freemint 6y ago
  If you looked into their marketing material they mentioned they will sell them to cloud vendors all over the world. Also on premise installation is not out of the question. Cray will also bring out their own product using A64FX. Fujitsu sells two types: PrimeHPC 700 PrimeHPC 1000 The 700 one is made from lower binned silicon, clocks a bit lower and has a few cores disabled (the management cores). It fits in a standard U form factor and is available out side of Japan the a minimum order of 2. The 1000 is better clocked,comes with 4 additional "management cores" which can take care of waiting for IO/MPI etc. It comes in a custom form factor that includes water cooling and the proprietary TOFU interconnect. You also get access to another tier of software support i think. Minimum order overseas 192 i think. Those were used in the number one entry of the Green Top500 giving you the most LinPack per Watt. This SoC isn't really geared toward compute as it has more memory per compute than current or next gen offerings the GPU space (current or next gen) and also has more bandwidth per compute. This is what gathered from looking into it.
jacques_chester 6y ago
Also of interest, they'll be running a specialised kernel: https://github.com/RIKEN-SysSoft/mckernel https://github.com/RIKEN-SysSoft/mckernel
m463 6y ago
The headline reminds me of 5th generation computers, which were supposed to supplant all current-generation computing of the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer

45 points by fraqed 6y ago

ksec 6y ago

I read the headline and I thought it is going to be Fujitsu A64FX. And it is, but the article completely lack any detail info. Anandtech [1] has a basic run down of features. The most important thing was SVE 512bit SIMD, which I believe was developed together with ARM. And as far as I am aware it seems to be the only commercial chip that has SVE. Unfortunately knowing the Japanese culture and Fujitsu's intention with A64FX I dont think it will bring any competition to Intel / AMD or Nvidia. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15169/a-success-on-arm-for-hpc-we-found-a-fujitsu-a64fx-wafer https://www.anandtech.com/show/15169/a-success-on-arm-for-hp...

wmf 6y ago
I figured the A64FX would never been seen outside Japan but Sandia is trying it. https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/sandia-to-receive-fujitsu-green-processor/ https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/sandia-to-receive-fujit...
abc_lisper 6y ago
What about Japanese culture would do injustice to the potential of this chip? I’m curious..
- ksec 6y ago
  Extreme Bureaucracy. Any type of bureaucracy in US or EUR are viewed as quiet flexible in the view of Japanese culture. And even more so from an old traditional Japanese enterprise like Fujitsu.
saltedonion 6y ago
So what did Fujitsu do to innovate here? Partner with arm on design? Who manufactured it? After the us tries to cut off Huaweis chip supplies, can Huawei come up with something similar?
- wmf 6y ago
  The A64FX is a combination of known technologies (wide SIMD, HBM2, torus interconnect, etc.) in a way that's balanced for HPC instead of servers (like Intel/AMD CPUs) or games/ML (like GPUs). It's manufactured by TSMC.
- to11mtm 6y ago
  My guess would be that at minimum they were involved with the SIMD modules. At most, they designed the entire CPU from the ground up. I'm guessing it's somewhere in between; this CPU provides equivalent extensions to what Fujitsu gave in their SPARC series. If other parts of ARM's core IP were suitable for other pieces they probably used that. > Who manufactured it? Based on Wikipedia, probably TSMC. > After the us tries to cut off Huaweis chip supplies, can Huawei come up with something similar? (Short answer at the bottom, I went on quite the tangent here :) Well let's talk about what that would mean right now. HiSilicon is a fabless Semiconductor design company fully owned by Huawei. If you look at the comparison of ARMv8-A cores out there [0], thankfully both HiSilicon and Fujitsu's offerings are grouped together at the bottom (at least for me as I write this.) That said, what benchmarks I found indicated that HiSilicon's CPU doesn't seem to compete, especially with wider workloads (Fujitsu can do 512-bit vectors, I think HiSilicon is limited to 128 on these.) I'm assuming that their setups are being pieced together more thoughtfully; one should note HS also makes AI Processors that are tailored separately for inference and training. As far as making a more proper 'server' GP core, if they're not playing dirty there's some catch-up to be done, but there's nothing stopping the State from stepping in and throwing more resources at the problem. While having multiple design teams working on the same parts of a CPU probably won't get an implementation done any faster, having multiple designs in parallel when you're trying to catch up to the latest tech may lead to better insight and options down the road; case in point would be Netburst vs Evolved P6 arch. Really, China's bigger problem at the moment is Fab technology; They have HSMC which can do 7nm, but I don't know at what kind of volume, and whether it's a bulk process or something with all the fancy tech you'd need to make a server cpu at a fast clock rate. There's a few things they're probably lacking in that area; just getting started into process tech research (in the vein of SOI, copper interconnects, etc.) but that will probably ramp up quickly. Optics are another huge factor; I'm starting to realize that the increase in higher-quality Camera glass from China in the last few years is no coincidence. Let's look at the main Lithography EQ manufacturers out there: - Canon - Nikon - Ultratech - ASML You can see that two of ASMLs biggest competitors also happen to be the two biggest/best mass producers of Glass out there. Notice Samsung isn't on the list; AFAIK they still get their equipment from ASML, although my understanding is it's some level of 'partnership.' I'm guessing they trade glass, since Samsung is pretty good at that. To wit: Samsung recently got caught with their hand in ASML's source code cookie jar. I was immediately reminded of a post on HN [1] where ASML's testing scheme is described; If someone has a spare machine and a copy of the source code, they can start playing with it, possibly introducing their own fixes to optimize yields, either for their use case or for more general cases that for reasons described in aforementioned post aren't incorporated into ASML's codebase. Anywho, went on a tangent there, but it shows how competitive the industry is even without political pressures at play. But it also shows that it's -possible- that with the right pieces China could make incremental improvements to what they already have while they work on the next big thing. Short Answer: I think China wants to be caught up sometime between 2023 and 2025 for fabs, but everyone else is trying to push it back to 2025-2030. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv8-A_cores https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ARMv8-A_cores [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181
freemint 6y ago
If you looked into their marketing material they mentioned they will sell them to cloud vendors all over the world. Also on premise installation is not out of the question. Cray will also bring out their own product using A64FX. Fujitsu sells two types: PrimeHPC 700 PrimeHPC 1000 The 700 one is made from lower binned silicon, clocks a bit lower and has a few cores disabled (the management cores). It fits in a standard U form factor and is available out side of Japan the a minimum order of 2. The 1000 is better clocked,comes with 4 additional "management cores" which can take care of waiting for IO/MPI etc. It comes in a custom form factor that includes water cooling and the proprietary TOFU interconnect. You also get access to another tier of software support i think. Minimum order overseas 192 i think. Those were used in the number one entry of the Green Top500 giving you the most LinPack per Watt. This SoC isn't really geared toward compute as it has more memory per compute than current or next gen offerings the GPU space (current or next gen) and also has more bandwidth per compute. This is what gathered from looking into it.

jacques_chester 6y ago

Also of interest, they'll be running a specialised kernel: https://github.com/RIKEN-SysSoft/mckernel https://github.com/RIKEN-SysSoft/mckernel

m463 6y ago

The headline reminds me of 5th generation computers, which were supposed to supplant all current-generation computing of the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer