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> "Intel’s current Xeon offering simply isn’t competitive in any way or form at this moment in time." What? That makes so little sense. Is this chip x86 or som

> "Intel’s current Xeon offering simply isn’t competitive in any way or form at this moment in time." What? That makes so little sense. Is this chip x86 or something? Because the architecture is a pretty big deal for me when I decide which chip to invest in.

jeffbee 6y ago
Right? "This platform does/does not run my software" is a huge checkbox when buying computers. The viewpoint of people who actually specify, buy, and operate servers at scale is severely underrepresented in these discussions.
- coder543 6y ago
  Keep in mind that Intel also has to compete with AMD... and AMD is also x86_64. AMD and Altra are trading blows at the high end of performance, as seen in this article, while Intel is... not, except in extremely specialized applications. Intel servers don't even offer PCIe 4.0 at this time, which is just a bad joke when it comes to building out servers with lots of high performance storage and networking. For now, Intel offers (relatively) poor CPU performance and poor peripheral performance. So, if your software can't run on Altra, the other choice for high performing servers is AMD, not Intel, unless you're just locked into Intel for historical reasons. Intel does have some nice budget offerings for cheap servers, though, such as Xeon D.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Ironically Xeon-D seems to have been quietly cancelled.
- klelatti 6y ago
  So you're never going to consider moving to another architecture because your software (currently) doesn't run on it? So Amazon made a huge mistake with Graviton then? Last time I checked Amazon 'specify, buy, and operate servers at scale'.
  - waynesonfire 6y ago
    I don't know if it's a mistake, the competition is welcome. I spun up some arm servers because they were lower cost but then ended up having to worry about software availability issues. It's non-trivial and I don't think it was worth the savings at this time and went back to x86. Regardless, the claim that there is no value in Intel let alone x86 is a stretch.
  - SlipperySlope 6y ago
    Like many developers, I will be trialing my software stack on Graviton2 instances at AWS next year, in hopes of saving 20-40% costs. The stack should all work on ARM: Ubuntu (check), Java (check), MySQL (check), Grafana (check), Kafka (check).
pinewurst 6y ago
What they mean (IMHO) is that Intel pricing on Xeon Platinum SKUs is so disproportional to their comparative performance that they would be foolish to purchase.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Xeon Platinum supports 8-socket machines. 6x memory channels x 8-sockets == 48x DIMMs for your massive 6TB RAM servers. Platinum is crazy priced for a crazy reason: its a building block to truly massive computers that only IBM matches. Supercomputers don't even typically use Platinum: Platinum is for the most vertically-oriented systems. --------- Xeon Gold is your more typical 2-socket or 4-socket machines: same performance, but fewer sockets supported.
  - coder543 6y ago
    > Xeon Platinum supports 8-socket machines. 6x memory channels x 8-sockets == 48x DIMMs for your massive 6TB RAM servers. Both AMD Epyc Rome and Ampere Altra can support 8TB of RAM in dual socket machines, so that spec isn't particularly impressive anymore. > Platinum is crazy priced for a crazy reason: its a building block to truly massive computers that only IBM matches. Meh. A dual-socket Rome system with 128 cores (256 threads), 8TB of RAM, and 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes is an enormous machine. A full 8 socket Platinum system is going to cost an order of magnitude (or two) more, and the performance improvement is going to be less than 2x. An 8-socket system is going to consume an enormous amount of power, cost an unbelievable amount of money, and the complex NUMA domain combined with Intel's interconnect isn't going to "just work" for almost any software, so you're likely going to put a lot of effort into making that system barely work. Intel Platinum is priced crazy because Intel is building monolithic processors (which means low yields) and Intel likes to have a substantial profit margin. Together, those mean high prices. At a certain point, you're better off investing in making your application work on an accelerator of some kind, in the form of a GPU or an FPGA or task-specific ASIC, rather than giving Intel all your money in the hopes of eeking out a marginal performance improvement. Alternatively, finding software that can scale to more than one machine. Maybe IBM has truly large systems that are worth considering. Intel doesn't right now, unless you're using some software that demands Intel for contractual reasons no one can argue with.

jeffbee 6y ago

Right? "This platform does/does not run my software" is a huge checkbox when buying computers. The viewpoint of people who actually specify, buy, and operate servers at scale is severely underrepresented in these discussions.

coder543 6y ago
Keep in mind that Intel also has to compete with AMD... and AMD is also x86_64. AMD and Altra are trading blows at the high end of performance, as seen in this article, while Intel is... not, except in extremely specialized applications. Intel servers don't even offer PCIe 4.0 at this time, which is just a bad joke when it comes to building out servers with lots of high performance storage and networking. For now, Intel offers (relatively) poor CPU performance and poor peripheral performance. So, if your software can't run on Altra, the other choice for high performing servers is AMD, not Intel, unless you're just locked into Intel for historical reasons. Intel does have some nice budget offerings for cheap servers, though, such as Xeon D.
- monocasa 6y ago
  Ironically Xeon-D seems to have been quietly cancelled.
klelatti 6y ago
So you're never going to consider moving to another architecture because your software (currently) doesn't run on it? So Amazon made a huge mistake with Graviton then? Last time I checked Amazon 'specify, buy, and operate servers at scale'.
- waynesonfire 6y ago
  I don't know if it's a mistake, the competition is welcome. I spun up some arm servers because they were lower cost but then ended up having to worry about software availability issues. It's non-trivial and I don't think it was worth the savings at this time and went back to x86. Regardless, the claim that there is no value in Intel let alone x86 is a stretch.
- SlipperySlope 6y ago
  Like many developers, I will be trialing my software stack on Graviton2 instances at AWS next year, in hopes of saving 20-40% costs. The stack should all work on ARM: Ubuntu (check), Java (check), MySQL (check), Grafana (check), Kafka (check).

pinewurst 6y ago

What they mean (IMHO) is that Intel pricing on Xeon Platinum SKUs is so disproportional to their comparative performance that they would be foolish to purchase.

dragontamer 6y ago
Xeon Platinum supports 8-socket machines. 6x memory channels x 8-sockets == 48x DIMMs for your massive 6TB RAM servers. Platinum is crazy priced for a crazy reason: its a building block to truly massive computers that only IBM matches. Supercomputers don't even typically use Platinum: Platinum is for the most vertically-oriented systems. --------- Xeon Gold is your more typical 2-socket or 4-socket machines: same performance, but fewer sockets supported.
- coder543 6y ago
  > Xeon Platinum supports 8-socket machines. 6x memory channels x 8-sockets == 48x DIMMs for your massive 6TB RAM servers. Both AMD Epyc Rome and Ampere Altra can support 8TB of RAM in dual socket machines, so that spec isn't particularly impressive anymore. > Platinum is crazy priced for a crazy reason: its a building block to truly massive computers that only IBM matches. Meh. A dual-socket Rome system with 128 cores (256 threads), 8TB of RAM, and 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes is an enormous machine. A full 8 socket Platinum system is going to cost an order of magnitude (or two) more, and the performance improvement is going to be less than 2x. An 8-socket system is going to consume an enormous amount of power, cost an unbelievable amount of money, and the complex NUMA domain combined with Intel's interconnect isn't going to "just work" for almost any software, so you're likely going to put a lot of effort into making that system barely work. Intel Platinum is priced crazy because Intel is building monolithic processors (which means low yields) and Intel likes to have a substantial profit margin. Together, those mean high prices. At a certain point, you're better off investing in making your application work on an accelerator of some kind, in the form of a GPU or an FPGA or task-specific ASIC, rather than giving Intel all your money in the hopes of eeking out a marginal performance improvement. Alternatively, finding software that can scale to more than one machine. Maybe IBM has truly large systems that are worth considering. Intel doesn't right now, unless you're using some software that demands Intel for contractual reasons no one can argue with.