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In my small universe, this was the week of ARM. I submitted multiple PRs to OS projects to get ARM compilations working. I started moving AWS instances off of I

In my small universe, this was the week of ARM. I submitted multiple PRs to OS projects to get ARM compilations working. I started moving AWS instances off of Intel instances to the new Graviton2 instances. I'm still surprised there isn't more server takeup of ARM considering the incredible power numbers. Cloudflare announced their current builds and it's all Epyc2 and no ARM. What about Azure and Google Cloud? Are ARM servers easy to launch and superior on a cost/performance perspective?

Xevi 6y ago
Scaleway tried ARM and failed: https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/21/scaleway_arm64_cloud_end_of_life/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/21/scaleway_arm64_cloud_... But as you can see at the end of the article, other providers are considering/using ARM more.
- marmaduke 6y ago
  I tried ARM on Scaleway and the main benefit was network capacity. Performance was not so good.
  - bklyn11201 6y ago
    Seems like they were just too early and didn't have the capability of an AWS-scale company to work directly with ARM? It seems like the first-gen of Graviton wasn't great, but then they seem to have made huge leaps with Graviton2. https://pages.awscloud.com/rs/112-TZM-766/images/2020_0501-CMP_Slide-Deck.pdf https://pages.awscloud.com/rs/112-TZM-766/images/2020_0501-C...
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  Hmm, I was trying to rent some arm servers on scaleway but they were always out of stock. The article mentioned difficulties operating those servers reliably and they can't just buy hardware from different vendor because there is no other vendor that sells arm server at that moment (pretty much only thunderx server was available for purchase). Maybe things will be different this time and a bunch of new arm server vendors would show up due to renewed interest in arm servers.
Thaxll 6y ago
Performance on ARM is bad compare to intel on GCP / AWS. The "incrediable" numbers are on M1 for Apple only which cloud provider don't have, also on servers Intel / AMD are still faster, no one cares about power consuption when renting a server.
- bklyn11201 6y ago
  AWS claims far superior performance per dollar with the Graviton2 processors vs the Intel equivalent processors. Look at the SPEC cpu2017 charts in this presentation: https://pages.awscloud.com/rs/112-TZM-766/images/2020_0501-CMP_Slide-Deck.pdf https://pages.awscloud.com/rs/112-TZM-766/images/2020_0501-C... This will catalyze giant migrations of workloads away from AWS Intel instances to the Graviton2 processors. Additionally, it seems clear that AWS will begin running all of the managed services (e.g., RDS, caches, mail, load balancers) with the superior ARM processors. The world is changing!
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    > This will catalyze giant migrations of workloads away from AWS Intel instances to the Graviton2 processors. Or just from Intel instances to Epyc Rome instances. Which is a less significant migration with basically all of the same advantages.
    - bklyn11201 6y ago
      I assume it's almost zero migration for 99% of use cases from an Intel instance to an Epyc Rome instance. But if they figured out performance with Graviton2, what makes you think ARM isn't the clear future for server performance per dollar?
      - kllrnohj 6y ago
        What makes you think ARM is the clear future? It's easier to do a wide decoder thanks to ARMv8's fixed-length instructions, but that's more or less the only difference that results from the ISA. And only Apple is even taking advantage of that currently - all the ARM CPU designs are 4-wide decode. Same as pretty much every modern x86 CPU. Do you think Amazon will be better at design & fabrication than Intel (when they get their shit together) or AMD? Do you expect Amazon to actually throw Apple's level of R&D money & acquisitions at the problem? And when/if they do, why would you expect any meaningful difference at the end of the day on anything? People love to talk about supposed ARM power efficiency, but the 64-core Epyc Rome at 200w is around 3w per CPU core. Which is half the power draw of an M1 firestorm core. The M1's firestorm is also faster in such a comparison, but the point is power isn't a magical ARM advantage, and x86 isn't inherently some crazy power hog. Phoronix put Graviton2 to the test vs. Epyc Rome and the results ain't pretty: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc-vs-graviton2&num=8 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc-vs-... "When taking the geometric mean of all these benchmarks, the EPYC 7742 without SMT enabled was about 46% faster than the Graviton2 bare metal performance. The EPYC 7742 with SMT (128 threads) increased the lead to about 51%, due to not all of the benchmarks being multi-thread focused." Graviton2 being a bit cheaper doesn't mean much when you need 50% more instances. But right now there's only a single company that makes ARM look good and that's Apple. And Apple hasn't been in the server game for a long, long time now. Everyone else's ARM CPU cores pretty much suck. Maybe Nvidia's recent acquisition will change things, who knows. But at the end of the day if AMD keeps things up, or Intel gets back on track, there really doesn't look to be a bright future for ARM outside of Apple's ecosystem and the existing ARM markets.
ajsfoux234 6y ago
The blog post that announces Cloudflare's current builds [1] says they "looked very seriously at ARM-based CPUs and continue to keep our software up to date for the ARM architecture so that we can use ARM-based CPUs when the requests per watt is interesting to us" [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-of-why-cloudflare-chose-amd-epyc-for-gen-x-servers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-of-why-cloudfl...
- bklyn11201 6y ago
  Is this about availability? Meaning that purchasing the Arm Neoverse that Graviton2 is based on, is too difficult if not operating at massive scale? This Anandtech review has a page called "An X86 Massacre": https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-graviton2-arm-against-intel-and-amd/9 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-grav... Are giants like Apple and AWS just making it impossible for a player like Cloudflare to buy enough of the leading-edge Arm processors? And Epyc performs so well, and it's easy to buy, so they wait another year?
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Availability of ARM servers is trending down to zero. It's pretty funny to see all these people talk about meaningless things like benchmarks when ARM vendors can't even get the business side to work out.
  - neurostimulant 6y ago
    Is there any vendor that sell pre-build arm neoverse right now? I only found thunderx2 arm servers, but can't seem to find any arm neoverse server sold anywhere. Thunderx3 is using neoverse architecture, but I can't find it sold anywhere right now.
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    > This Anandtech review has a page called "An X86 Massacre": Note that Anandtech was only comparing against chips that had already been replaced. They did that comparison like a few days before Amazon started offering Epyc Rome instances. See https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc-vs-graviton2&num=8 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc-vs-... for a more like for like comparison, and the results are brutal for the N1: "When taking the geometric mean of all these benchmarks, the EPYC 7742 without SMT enabled was about 46% faster than the Graviton2 bare metal performance. The EPYC 7742 with SMT (128 threads) increased the lead to about 51%, due to not all of the benchmarks being multi-thread focused."
bredren 6y ago
I did not realize AWS had its own ARM chipset, so thanks for bringing Graviton to my attention. I was wondering how other companies will compete with Apple's data center advantage--presumably Apple will replace most x86 infrastructure with cheaper, lower power, faster Apple Silicon. Even if Graviton2 work is far behind the M1, it seems like Amazon can catch up. Particularly if they are able to hire away engineers from Apple's team. Even if Amazon trails Apple by years in performance per watt, it can still likely offer a compelling change from what Intel or AMD may be able to accomplish in the same time period.

Xevi 6y ago

Scaleway tried ARM and failed: https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/21/scaleway_arm64_cloud_end_of_life/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/21/scaleway_arm64_cloud_... But as you can see at the end of the article, other providers are considering/using ARM more.

marmaduke 6y ago
I tried ARM on Scaleway and the main benefit was network capacity. Performance was not so good.
- bklyn11201 6y ago
  Seems like they were just too early and didn't have the capability of an AWS-scale company to work directly with ARM? It seems like the first-gen of Graviton wasn't great, but then they seem to have made huge leaps with Graviton2. https://pages.awscloud.com/rs/112-TZM-766/images/2020_0501-CMP_Slide-Deck.pdf https://pages.awscloud.com/rs/112-TZM-766/images/2020_0501-C...
neurostimulant 6y ago
Hmm, I was trying to rent some arm servers on scaleway but they were always out of stock. The article mentioned difficulties operating those servers reliably and they can't just buy hardware from different vendor because there is no other vendor that sells arm server at that moment (pretty much only thunderx server was available for purchase). Maybe things will be different this time and a bunch of new arm server vendors would show up due to renewed interest in arm servers.

Thaxll 6y ago

Performance on ARM is bad compare to intel on GCP / AWS. The "incrediable" numbers are on M1 for Apple only which cloud provider don't have, also on servers Intel / AMD are still faster, no one cares about power consuption when renting a server.

bklyn11201 6y ago
AWS claims far superior performance per dollar with the Graviton2 processors vs the Intel equivalent processors. Look at the SPEC cpu2017 charts in this presentation: https://pages.awscloud.com/rs/112-TZM-766/images/2020_0501-CMP_Slide-Deck.pdf https://pages.awscloud.com/rs/112-TZM-766/images/2020_0501-C... This will catalyze giant migrations of workloads away from AWS Intel instances to the Graviton2 processors. Additionally, it seems clear that AWS will begin running all of the managed services (e.g., RDS, caches, mail, load balancers) with the superior ARM processors. The world is changing!
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  > This will catalyze giant migrations of workloads away from AWS Intel instances to the Graviton2 processors. Or just from Intel instances to Epyc Rome instances. Which is a less significant migration with basically all of the same advantages.
  - bklyn11201 6y ago
    I assume it's almost zero migration for 99% of use cases from an Intel instance to an Epyc Rome instance. But if they figured out performance with Graviton2, what makes you think ARM isn't the clear future for server performance per dollar?
    - kllrnohj 6y ago
      What makes you think ARM is the clear future? It's easier to do a wide decoder thanks to ARMv8's fixed-length instructions, but that's more or less the only difference that results from the ISA. And only Apple is even taking advantage of that currently - all the ARM CPU designs are 4-wide decode. Same as pretty much every modern x86 CPU. Do you think Amazon will be better at design & fabrication than Intel (when they get their shit together) or AMD? Do you expect Amazon to actually throw Apple's level of R&D money & acquisitions at the problem? And when/if they do, why would you expect any meaningful difference at the end of the day on anything? People love to talk about supposed ARM power efficiency, but the 64-core Epyc Rome at 200w is around 3w per CPU core. Which is half the power draw of an M1 firestorm core. The M1's firestorm is also faster in such a comparison, but the point is power isn't a magical ARM advantage, and x86 isn't inherently some crazy power hog. Phoronix put Graviton2 to the test vs. Epyc Rome and the results ain't pretty: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc-vs-graviton2&num=8 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc-vs-... "When taking the geometric mean of all these benchmarks, the EPYC 7742 without SMT enabled was about 46% faster than the Graviton2 bare metal performance. The EPYC 7742 with SMT (128 threads) increased the lead to about 51%, due to not all of the benchmarks being multi-thread focused." Graviton2 being a bit cheaper doesn't mean much when you need 50% more instances. But right now there's only a single company that makes ARM look good and that's Apple. And Apple hasn't been in the server game for a long, long time now. Everyone else's ARM CPU cores pretty much suck. Maybe Nvidia's recent acquisition will change things, who knows. But at the end of the day if AMD keeps things up, or Intel gets back on track, there really doesn't look to be a bright future for ARM outside of Apple's ecosystem and the existing ARM markets.

ajsfoux234 6y ago

The blog post that announces Cloudflare's current builds [1] says they "looked very seriously at ARM-based CPUs and continue to keep our software up to date for the ARM architecture so that we can use ARM-based CPUs when the requests per watt is interesting to us" [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-of-why-cloudflare-chose-amd-epyc-for-gen-x-servers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-of-why-cloudfl...

bklyn11201 6y ago
Is this about availability? Meaning that purchasing the Arm Neoverse that Graviton2 is based on, is too difficult if not operating at massive scale? This Anandtech review has a page called "An X86 Massacre": https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-graviton2-arm-against-intel-and-amd/9 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-grav... Are giants like Apple and AWS just making it impossible for a player like Cloudflare to buy enough of the leading-edge Arm processors? And Epyc performs so well, and it's easy to buy, so they wait another year?
- imtringued 6y ago
  Availability of ARM servers is trending down to zero. It's pretty funny to see all these people talk about meaningless things like benchmarks when ARM vendors can't even get the business side to work out.
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  Is there any vendor that sell pre-build arm neoverse right now? I only found thunderx2 arm servers, but can't seem to find any arm neoverse server sold anywhere. Thunderx3 is using neoverse architecture, but I can't find it sold anywhere right now.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  > This Anandtech review has a page called "An X86 Massacre": Note that Anandtech was only comparing against chips that had already been replaced. They did that comparison like a few days before Amazon started offering Epyc Rome instances. See https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc-vs-graviton2&num=8 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc-vs-... for a more like for like comparison, and the results are brutal for the N1: "When taking the geometric mean of all these benchmarks, the EPYC 7742 without SMT enabled was about 46% faster than the Graviton2 bare metal performance. The EPYC 7742 with SMT (128 threads) increased the lead to about 51%, due to not all of the benchmarks being multi-thread focused."

bredren 6y ago

I did not realize AWS had its own ARM chipset, so thanks for bringing Graviton to my attention. I was wondering how other companies will compete with Apple's data center advantage--presumably Apple will replace most x86 infrastructure with cheaper, lower power, faster Apple Silicon. Even if Graviton2 work is far behind the M1, it seems like Amazon can catch up. Particularly if they are able to hire away engineers from Apple's team. Even if Amazon trails Apple by years in performance per watt, it can still likely offer a compelling change from what Intel or AMD may be able to accomplish in the same time period.