6 ms·

Exactly. Yes, some people need memory and multi-core speeds, but for most, it's the cost per "good enough" instance, and that's CapEx and power, both of which c

Exactly. Yes, some people need memory and multi-core speeds, but for most, it's the cost per "good enough" instance, and that's CapEx and power, both of which could be much lower with ARM.

dannyw 6y ago
If you need multi-core speeds, you'd be silly to not go AMD Epyc (~50% cheaper), or ARM. People paid the IBM tax for decades. Intel is the new IBM. Wherever you look, Intel's lineup is not competitive and it is only surviving due to inertia.
- bgorman 6y ago
  It isn't quite that simple, Intel has way more engineering resources than AMD and for some complicated setups like data centers, Intel really does have good arguments that their systems are better tested than the competition, and Intel does have better ability to bundle products together than AMD.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    > their systems are better tested than the competition Yes, Spectrum and Meltdown definitely proves that... I think I heard that argument already, in the 90's. But instead of Intel it was Sun, it was SGI, it was Digital, etc The truth is that money wins and while there is an inertia, it's more like a Cartoon inertia where your guy won't fall from the cliff until he looks down. But then it's too late.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Intel is behind in fab technology. I don't think the problem is that Intel's chip designs are what's holding them back. AMD offered better multi core performance and Intel responded with more cores as well. However, I do believe that Intel suffers from an awful corporate environment. There was a story about ISPC [0] with one chapter [1] talking about the culture at the company. [0] https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/30/ispc-all.html https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/30/ispc-all.html [1] https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/28/ispc-talks-and-departure.html https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/28/ispc-talks-and-depart...
  - delfinom 6y ago
    If by tested you mean, getting eaten alive by vulnerability reports monthly and furthering degrading performance, sure. There isn't much rocket science otherwise to "better tested" in a server platform. Either it passes benchmarks of use case scenarios or it doesn't.
    - bgorman 6y ago
      Yes there is. Server platforms are connected to more storage, higher bandwidth networking and more exotic sockets (more than one CPU). It is one thing to support lots of PCI express lots on paper. It is another thing to have a working solution that doens't suffer degraded performance when all the PCI express slots are in use at the same time. None of this is rocket science but it takes money and engineers time to make these things happen. Intel has more of both at the moment.
- lend000 6y ago
  There are plenty of applications where single-threaded clock speed matters, and Intel still wins by a wide margin there. Cache size is also a factor, and high end Xeon's have more cache than any competing CPU I've seen.
  - tobz1000 6y ago
    Given the IPC gains of Zen 2, the single-threaded gap is closing, and even reversed in some workloads. And I think Xeon L3 cache tops out at about 40MB, whereas Threadripper & Epyc go up to 256MB.
  - AaronFriel 6y ago
    The just announced Intel Xeon Cooper Lake top end processor has about 38.5MB of cache. The AMD Rome top end has 256MB of cache. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/205684/intel-xeon-platinum-8380hl-processor-38-5m-cache-2-90-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/205684/... https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-epyc-7h12 https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-epyc-7h12
    - lend000 6y ago
      Interesting, that's news to me. Guess Intel just has clock speed then. That's why I still pay a premium to run certain jobs on z1d or c5 instances. As another commenter pointed out, though, not all caches are equal. Unfortunately, I was not able to easily find access speeds for specific processors, so single-threaded benchmarks are the primary quantitative differentiator.
    - rckoepke 6y ago
      I'm not sure this is the whole story, Intel has twice the L2 cache as AMD but I'm not sure that's enough to make a huge difference. Epyc 7H12[1]: - L1: two 32KiB L1 cache per core - L2: 512KiB L2 cache per core - L3: 16MiB L3 cache per core, but shared across all cores. The L1/L2 cache aren't yet publicly available for any Cooper Lake processors, however the previous Cascade Lake architecture provided: All Xeon Cascade Lakes[2]: - L1: two 32 KiB L1 cache per core - L2: 1 MiB L2 cache per core - L3: 1.375 MiB L3 cache per core (shared across all cores) Normally I'd expect the upcoming Cooper Lake to surpass AMD in L1, and lead further in L2 cache. However it looks like they're keeping the 1.375MiB L3 cache per core in Cooper Lake, so maybe L1/L2 are also unchanged. 0: https://www.hardwaretimes.com/cpu-cache-difference-between-l1-l2-and-l3-cache-explained-and-a-look-at-memory-mapping/ https://www.hardwaretimes.com/cpu-cache-difference-between-l... 1: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/epyc/7h12 https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/epyc/7h12 2: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_platinum/9282 https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_platinum/9282 Edit: Previously I showed EPYC having twice the L1 as Cascade Lake, this was a typo on my part, they're the same L1 per core.
- KMag 6y ago
  Even worse for Intel, there are lots of important server workloads that aren't CPU intensive, but rely on the CPU coordinating DMA transfers between specialized chips (SSD/HDD controller, network controller, TPU/GPU) and not using much power or CapEx to do so.
- projektfu 6y ago
  If the operating margins in the article are realistic then there is a lot of room for undercutting Intel if you can convince the customer to take the plunge. That is, if you’re not in an IBM-vs-Amdahl situation where the lower price is not enough.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > If you need multi-core speeds, you'd be silly to not go AMD Epyc (~50% cheaper), or ARM. But Amdhal's Law shows us this doesn't make sense for most people.

Exactly. Yes, some people need memory and multi-core speeds, but for most, it's the cost per "good enough" instance, and that's CapEx and power, both of which could be much lower with ARM.

dannyw 6y ago

If you need multi-core speeds, you'd be silly to not go AMD Epyc (~50% cheaper), or ARM. People paid the IBM tax for decades. Intel is the new IBM. Wherever you look, Intel's lineup is not competitive and it is only surviving due to inertia.

bgorman 6y ago
It isn't quite that simple, Intel has way more engineering resources than AMD and for some complicated setups like data centers, Intel really does have good arguments that their systems are better tested than the competition, and Intel does have better ability to bundle products together than AMD.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  > their systems are better tested than the competition Yes, Spectrum and Meltdown definitely proves that... I think I heard that argument already, in the 90's. But instead of Intel it was Sun, it was SGI, it was Digital, etc The truth is that money wins and while there is an inertia, it's more like a Cartoon inertia where your guy won't fall from the cliff until he looks down. But then it's too late.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Intel is behind in fab technology. I don't think the problem is that Intel's chip designs are what's holding them back. AMD offered better multi core performance and Intel responded with more cores as well. However, I do believe that Intel suffers from an awful corporate environment. There was a story about ISPC [0] with one chapter [1] talking about the culture at the company. [0] https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/30/ispc-all.html https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/30/ispc-all.html [1] https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/28/ispc-talks-and-departure.html https://pharr.org/matt/blog/2018/04/28/ispc-talks-and-depart...
- delfinom 6y ago
  If by tested you mean, getting eaten alive by vulnerability reports monthly and furthering degrading performance, sure. There isn't much rocket science otherwise to "better tested" in a server platform. Either it passes benchmarks of use case scenarios or it doesn't.
  - bgorman 6y ago
    Yes there is. Server platforms are connected to more storage, higher bandwidth networking and more exotic sockets (more than one CPU). It is one thing to support lots of PCI express lots on paper. It is another thing to have a working solution that doens't suffer degraded performance when all the PCI express slots are in use at the same time. None of this is rocket science but it takes money and engineers time to make these things happen. Intel has more of both at the moment.
lend000 6y ago
There are plenty of applications where single-threaded clock speed matters, and Intel still wins by a wide margin there. Cache size is also a factor, and high end Xeon's have more cache than any competing CPU I've seen.
- tobz1000 6y ago
  Given the IPC gains of Zen 2, the single-threaded gap is closing, and even reversed in some workloads. And I think Xeon L3 cache tops out at about 40MB, whereas Threadripper & Epyc go up to 256MB.
- AaronFriel 6y ago
  The just announced Intel Xeon Cooper Lake top end processor has about 38.5MB of cache. The AMD Rome top end has 256MB of cache. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/205684/intel-xeon-platinum-8380hl-processor-38-5m-cache-2-90-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/205684/... https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-epyc-7h12 https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-epyc-7h12
  - lend000 6y ago
    Interesting, that's news to me. Guess Intel just has clock speed then. That's why I still pay a premium to run certain jobs on z1d or c5 instances. As another commenter pointed out, though, not all caches are equal. Unfortunately, I was not able to easily find access speeds for specific processors, so single-threaded benchmarks are the primary quantitative differentiator.
  - rckoepke 6y ago
    I'm not sure this is the whole story, Intel has twice the L2 cache as AMD but I'm not sure that's enough to make a huge difference. Epyc 7H12[1]: - L1: two 32KiB L1 cache per core - L2: 512KiB L2 cache per core - L3: 16MiB L3 cache per core, but shared across all cores. The L1/L2 cache aren't yet publicly available for any Cooper Lake processors, however the previous Cascade Lake architecture provided: All Xeon Cascade Lakes[2]: - L1: two 32 KiB L1 cache per core - L2: 1 MiB L2 cache per core - L3: 1.375 MiB L3 cache per core (shared across all cores) Normally I'd expect the upcoming Cooper Lake to surpass AMD in L1, and lead further in L2 cache. However it looks like they're keeping the 1.375MiB L3 cache per core in Cooper Lake, so maybe L1/L2 are also unchanged. 0: https://www.hardwaretimes.com/cpu-cache-difference-between-l1-l2-and-l3-cache-explained-and-a-look-at-memory-mapping/ https://www.hardwaretimes.com/cpu-cache-difference-between-l... 1: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/epyc/7h12 https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/epyc/7h12 2: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_platinum/9282 https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_platinum/9282 Edit: Previously I showed EPYC having twice the L1 as Cascade Lake, this was a typo on my part, they're the same L1 per core.
KMag 6y ago
Even worse for Intel, there are lots of important server workloads that aren't CPU intensive, but rely on the CPU coordinating DMA transfers between specialized chips (SSD/HDD controller, network controller, TPU/GPU) and not using much power or CapEx to do so.
projektfu 6y ago
If the operating margins in the article are realistic then there is a lot of room for undercutting Intel if you can convince the customer to take the plunge. That is, if you’re not in an IBM-vs-Amdahl situation where the lower price is not enough.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> If you need multi-core speeds, you'd be silly to not go AMD Epyc (~50% cheaper), or ARM. But Amdhal's Law shows us this doesn't make sense for most people.