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Not low power, but lower power. 110W (Graviton2 64 physical cores) vs 180W (AMD EPYC 7571, 32 physical cores / 64 HT cores) vs 210W (Intel Xeon Platinum 8259CL)

Not low power, but lower power. 110W (Graviton2 64 physical cores) vs 180W (AMD EPYC 7571, 32 physical cores / 64 HT cores) vs 210W (Intel Xeon Platinum 8259CL); source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-graviton2-arm-against-intel-and-amd https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-grav... Also, please do remember that Graviton2 is a 2018 design, and EPYC Rome is a 2019 design. At the cloud data centre scale, the difference of 110W (Graviton2) vs 180W (AMD) is substantial as bills pile up quickly. I am not sure what your point is, anyway. As a business customer, if it is going to cost me 30% less money to run the same workload regardless of the ISA, I will take it. A lesser power bill for the cloud provider that results from a more efficient ISA is a mere comforting thought. No more no less (to an extent). Philosophically and ethically, yes, I would rather run my workload on an ISA of my choice, but we can't have that anymore, and Intel is at blame here why. Not that I personally have the intention to blame anyone.

kllrnohj 6y ago
> 180W (AMD EPYC 7571, 32 physical cores / 64 HT cores) Wrong CPU, that's the old Zen1 14nm Epyc. The one that Graviton2 is going up against is the 64-core Epyc 7742 (or any of the other Zen 2 7nm Epycs). And you can't call Graviton2 110W when you need 50% more of them vs. everyone else, and you can't ignore the power from the rest of the system. You need 50% more machines. That's going to be equivalent if not more total power usage for Graviton2 than Epyc 7742 for equivalent compute performance. Baseline power usage of a server is fairly high. It's not the rounding error it is on a laptop or even desktop. EDIT: also as far as comforting thoughts go, manufacturing 50% more machines is vastly more environmental impactful than the power difference. > I am not sure what your point is, anyway. As a business customer, if it is going to cost me 30% less money to run the same workload regardless of the ISA, I will take it. I'm saying that 30% less cost is a temporary fantasy since all signs point to the Graviton2 being more expensive to manufacturer & deploy vs. the competition. If you're not coupled to ISA, sure take it while it lasts. Why not be subsidized by Amazon for a bit? But if you're talking long-term trends, which we are, it's not a pretty picture. Pace of improvement isn't compelling, either. The CPU core in the N1 is basically a Cortex A76. ARM claims a 20% increase in IPC going from an A76 to an A77. Not bad. But AMD just delivered a 20% IPC increase going from Zen 2 to Zen 3, too. So... the gap ain't shrinking. Although 30% less per instance but you need 50% more instances also doesn't work out. That ends up being overall more expensive. Depending on your workload that it might be even less close. In things like PostgreSQL & OpenSSL graviton2 gets absolutely slaughtered.

kllrnohj 6y ago

> 180W (AMD EPYC 7571, 32 physical cores / 64 HT cores) Wrong CPU, that's the old Zen1 14nm Epyc. The one that Graviton2 is going up against is the 64-core Epyc 7742 (or any of the other Zen 2 7nm Epycs). And you can't call Graviton2 110W when you need 50% more of them vs. everyone else, and you can't ignore the power from the rest of the system. You need 50% more machines. That's going to be equivalent if not more total power usage for Graviton2 than Epyc 7742 for equivalent compute performance. Baseline power usage of a server is fairly high. It's not the rounding error it is on a laptop or even desktop. EDIT: also as far as comforting thoughts go, manufacturing 50% more machines is vastly more environmental impactful than the power difference. > I am not sure what your point is, anyway. As a business customer, if it is going to cost me 30% less money to run the same workload regardless of the ISA, I will take it. I'm saying that 30% less cost is a temporary fantasy since all signs point to the Graviton2 being more expensive to manufacturer & deploy vs. the competition. If you're not coupled to ISA, sure take it while it lasts. Why not be subsidized by Amazon for a bit? But if you're talking long-term trends, which we are, it's not a pretty picture. Pace of improvement isn't compelling, either. The CPU core in the N1 is basically a Cortex A76. ARM claims a 20% increase in IPC going from an A76 to an A77. Not bad. But AMD just delivered a 20% IPC increase going from Zen 2 to Zen 3, too. So... the gap ain't shrinking. Although 30% less per instance but you need 50% more instances also doesn't work out. That ends up being overall more expensive. Depending on your workload that it might be even less close. In things like PostgreSQL & OpenSSL graviton2 gets absolutely slaughtered.