3 ms·

For data center operators the choice between AMD and Intel in this space comes down to power efficiency. Ignoring the performance improvements for real workloa

by davvid 5y ago

For data center operators the choice between AMD and Intel in this space comes down to power efficiency. Ignoring the performance improvements for real workloads, the #1 driving factor is performance per watt. By going with AMD that metric improves ~2x over comparable Intel offerings. There are facilities where physical space to expand is available but the building has effectively run out of additional power that can be provided by the utility company. Scaling up on performance per watt is the last frontier.

spoonjim 5y ago
Even if the facility can supply more power, as electricity prices go up and CPU cycle prices go down, the power becomes the primary driver of the cost to operate the chip over its lifetime. Already electricity costs are much greater than CPU purchase costs over the lifespan.
- kaliszad 5y ago
  The comment in general may be true but I don't see electricity costs being "much greater than CPU purchase costs over the lifespan" at least not for a data center operator. The AWS M4 EC2 instance uses "2.3 GHz Intel Xeon® E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell) processors or 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon® E5-2676 v3 (Haswell) processors" [0] so about 4-6 years old and may approach 7 years. A comparable processor Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2670 v3 costs about $ 1600 [1] in bulk. Average US home electricity price is ~ 0.13 $/month [2], this would probably be much lower for a data center operator. The mentioned processors probably consume ~ 150 W at full load, which will probably not be the case most of the time. Anyway, let's see: CPU cost over its life time may be on the order of 1600 USD, which is quite cheap as today's top processors cost usually between 4000 and 8000 USD. [3] The electricity cost would probably be: 24 hours * 365 days * 7 years * 0.13 $/kWh * 0.15 kW ~ 1200 USD which seems about right. We can observe the electricity cost per CPU to be significantly lower than the purchase price of a rather cheap processor even assuming very generous CPU load and electricity price, while assuming rather low CPU cost. This of course doesn't include the mainboard, RAM, NIC, power conversion, cooling and other hardware that is needed to operate a modern data center. On the other hand, the cost of this hardware wasn't included in the calculation either. Of course, I am not the only one to do the calculations. James Hamilton from AWS has done them too: https://youtu.be/kHW-ayt_Urk?t=333 https://youtu.be/kHW-ayt_Urk?t=333 [0] https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ [1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/81709/intel-xeon-processor-e5-2670-v3-30m-cache-2-30-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/81709/i... [2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46276 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46276 [3] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16529/amd-epyc-milan-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/16529/amd-epyc-milan-review

by davvid 5y ago

spoonjim 5y ago

Even if the facility can supply more power, as electricity prices go up and CPU cycle prices go down, the power becomes the primary driver of the cost to operate the chip over its lifetime. Already electricity costs are much greater than CPU purchase costs over the lifespan.

kaliszad 5y ago
The comment in general may be true but I don't see electricity costs being "much greater than CPU purchase costs over the lifespan" at least not for a data center operator. The AWS M4 EC2 instance uses "2.3 GHz Intel Xeon® E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell) processors or 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon® E5-2676 v3 (Haswell) processors" [0] so about 4-6 years old and may approach 7 years. A comparable processor Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2670 v3 costs about $ 1600 [1] in bulk. Average US home electricity price is ~ 0.13 $/month [2], this would probably be much lower for a data center operator. The mentioned processors probably consume ~ 150 W at full load, which will probably not be the case most of the time. Anyway, let's see: CPU cost over its life time may be on the order of 1600 USD, which is quite cheap as today's top processors cost usually between 4000 and 8000 USD. [3] The electricity cost would probably be: 24 hours * 365 days * 7 years * 0.13 $/kWh * 0.15 kW ~ 1200 USD which seems about right. We can observe the electricity cost per CPU to be significantly lower than the purchase price of a rather cheap processor even assuming very generous CPU load and electricity price, while assuming rather low CPU cost. This of course doesn't include the mainboard, RAM, NIC, power conversion, cooling and other hardware that is needed to operate a modern data center. On the other hand, the cost of this hardware wasn't included in the calculation either. Of course, I am not the only one to do the calculations. James Hamilton from AWS has done them too: https://youtu.be/kHW-ayt_Urk?t=333 https://youtu.be/kHW-ayt_Urk?t=333 [0] https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ [1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/81709/intel-xeon-processor-e5-2670-v3-30m-cache-2-30-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/81709/i... [2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46276 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46276 [3] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16529/amd-epyc-milan-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/16529/amd-epyc-milan-review