9 ms·

Macs are still a relatively small (but profitable) chunk of the computing world. The ground Intel has lost in desktop and mobile is more than made up for by the

Macs are still a relatively small (but profitable) chunk of the computing world. The ground Intel has lost in desktop and mobile is more than made up for by their utter dominance in server. Intel also has a lot of plays that should bear fruit in holding or retaking ground on consumer compute in the next few years: 1) Arc GPUs. Looks like they will be seriously disruptive. 2) Hedging their process node bets by using TSMC too. The only magic in the wins AMD and Apple have had the last few years have been in them being effectively a manufacturing process node ahead of Intel. 3) Intel will likely be first to market with getting a large set of on-package memory that serves as a bridge between CPU cache and DRAM in terms of latency. Think 8GB+ I am no Intel partisan. My core interest is actually more in seeing performant, open (that is, blob-free [1][2]) hardware. RISC-V and Power10 [3][4] are what I am looking at in that regard. I expect the reports of Intel's impending descent to be largely exaggerated. Still, it is good drama to fuel a hearty compute war. That is to the benefit of all, so have at it. 1: https://raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html 2: https://www.osnews.com/story/133093/review-blackbird-secure-desktop-a-fully-open-source-modern-power9-workstation-without-any-proprietary-code/ 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power10 4: https://www.hpcwire.com/2021/09/08/ibm-introduces-power10-based-server-the-power-e1080-targets-hybrid-cloud/

dustintrex 5y ago
ARM and AMD are both making steady gains in the server space as well though. AMD is already offered by all the hyperscalers, and AWS recently introduced ARM as well.
rjzzleep 5y ago
From what I'm seeing, I think assuming that RISC-V CPUs being blob free and open, just because the ISA is open is illusory at best and wilfully lying at worst.
- brucehoult 5y ago
  When you have the complete verilog source code for the CPU core it's pretty hard to hide anything. Following the source code for the C910 core upload 24 hours ago, Olof Kindgren is live-tweeting getting it going in an FPGA using the existing FuseSoC framework. He made significant progress in the first session before going to bed. It would not surprise me if it's working in the next 24 hours.
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    > When you have the complete verilog source code for the CPU core That's a big "when". The road from an ISA to a core is long, and unless the core is copylefted (this isn't), then you aren't going to get the source code for something someone else manufactured either.
    - bildung 5y ago
      Copyleft won't help you there either if the license issuer is also the producer of the physical chip: Licenses are regulating what third parties can do with the source, they don't restrict the issuer.
      - keonix 5y ago
        They do actually restrict issuer in most cases. Linus can't just strip Linux of other developers parts because they are tightly interconnected. He could relicense 30 year old version of Linux, but it would be useless
        bildung 5y ago
        I just have been more precise and say copyright holder instead of issuer. Linus doesn't hold the copyright for most of the Linux source, hence he can't relicense without explicit oks from the other developers.
  - jmnicolas 5y ago
    But how can I be sure the chip I have in my hand is built upon this code and that no blob has been added?
    - gnramires 5y ago
      By (1) purchasing anonymously from retail sources, and (2) having researchers with anonymous retail samples verify through decapping and inspection. I believe der8auer in Germany does die shots -- it would not be a bad idea to kick start this kind of research for community assurance purposes. It's difficult to prove there's no hidden logic, but it's also not trivial to hide complex logic needed to introduce covert undetectable vulnerabilities (probably around things the RNG source or crypto). Also assuming you're a high value target, otherwise this is mostly going too far.
- easygenes 5y ago
  Well, if they wind up with blobs I think they will at least be more limited. The "Management Engine" style ones are the most egregious. Ones for the sake of hardware video encode/decode are a bit more forgivable, though still regrettable. And there is certainly growing interest in blob-free computing [1], so some at least will exist to fill that demand. There is some hope for video with Linux landing blob-free hardware encode/decode very quickly the last couple of years [2]. 1: https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform/updates/post-campaign-orders 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9JLxjYlIWg
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  I agree that open ISA does not equate to blob free hardware. And many RISC-V designs out there will have royalties, and devices blobs. But the open ISA levels the playing field and allows for upstart hardware designers to make compatible hardware that is royalty and/or blob free.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Iolaum 5y ago
  It still removes a serious obstacle to getting a blob free cpu where user can have control over what it does. The ISA is no more a "magic sauce" to be protected and patented and therefore hidden behind closed source.
PeterisP 5y ago
IMHO server marketshare is much more fickle than the consumer one. For consumers, compatibility is a big issue and hard to switch unless a myriad of things work properly. For servers, if just a single commonly used system (e.g. mariadb or wordpress) works and you can do it 10% cheaper, companies can replace large quantities of hardware to a completely different architecture.
- loeg 5y ago
  Server marketshare has been fairly sticky -- despite AMD offering low-risk, same ISA migration, and attractive pricing, the server market was relatively slow to adopt Zen.
  - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
    OTOH, new HPC systems have been quick to adopt Zen in the form of dual-socket EPYC nodes. Actually if you look at the current top 10 supercomputers, only 2 are Intel. The rest are custom ARM or RISC CPUs (in Japan and China), IBM Power9, or AMD EPYC.
    - freemint 5y ago
      HPC is a special industry in that regard. HPC is know to take well managed technical risks such as building custom CPUs (A64FX in Fugaku) or using less popular architectures (SPARC, Power). If one can be certain that with enough coding hours codes can be adapted to run on those platforms and they will end up faster more exotic hardware will be bought or considered. Nation level HPC projects are not conservative, Industrial HPC maybe a bit more so.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    My take at this is because of inertia. I have a large fleet of servers that have been Intel since forever. I see no reason to migrate them today as things work reasonably well. We upgrade the hardware every 4-5 years. So during the next upgrade for sure I'll choose AMD, there is no question of that. ARM will be a serious competitor and RISC-V, too, that's for sure - but they are just not there yet when we talk about maximum performance (in our case, energy consumption is not the main concern)
forgotmyoldname 5y ago
Macs are a small market, but Apple definitely sets trends. Once they adopt a technology, people "know" it works and it's safe to switch. If servers can run on cheap ARM hardware that uses less electricity and runs far cooler without much of a performance difference, that's a massive improvement. Electricity savings would more than justify a switch. Apple has shown that it's possible at the desktop/laptop level. Now they or someone else can prove it works at the server level as well.
- easygenes 5y ago
  For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns. Server compute is expensive. It is all about performance. ARM is just starting to get competitive in that ballpark. So we will see. All of these ARM server chips are going to be very low on the pecking order for TSMC fab time, so they won't have the edge that Apple had by buying up the first slot on the latest manufacturing node. Even being a process node ahead, M1 only just squeaks by with comparable single threaded performance to Zen 3 cores, so ARM still has some catching up to do in the performance realm.
  - hencoappel 5y ago
    As far as I'm aware, efficiency is key for datacenters. It can lower direct electricity costs, but also the cost of cooling. I've always been under the impression that the cost of running is much more than the cost of the hardware which is why they are willing to pay so much for the best/most efficient hardware?
  - tdrdt 5y ago
    "For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns." I don't think this is true. It is not only power consumption but also power backup. If you can use smaller diesel engines and smaller battery packs this will lower the cost. And why do you think datacenters have been raising temperatures? It saves a ton of money: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14/google-raise-your-data-center-temperature https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14/goog... HP estimated they saved 8 million. That is not a rounding error. A server that uses less power will also generate less heat. I have to admit it is years ago I worked for a company owning datacenters but at that time the highest costs were always: power and connectivity.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Did you forget about Amazon and Google Arm servers? It's not just Apple, everyone is moving away from x86.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  Indeed. AWS launched their own ARM based processor, Graviton a while ago. Now they have begun nudging them to serverless fleet by making them available at a lower price point. Not too different from their parent, Amazon, pushing their own branded products, cutting out the middleman.
girvo 5y ago
> The only magic in the wins AMD and Apple have had the last few years have been in them being effectively a manufacturing process node ahead of Intel. While I mostly agree with that, the fact that Intel are also moving to a chiplet-style architecture that AMD adopted beforehand means I think there is at least _some_ other bits AMD was ahead of Intel on aside from purely the process node. I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable about this stuff as others, but from my understanding from Dr Ian Cutress' articles and YouTube channel, Intel is somewhat following AMD in this area. I could be misunderstanding, of course.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- easygenes 5y ago
  No, that's pretty accurate. Though it could be argued that it was only the move to the smaller process node that necessitated a chiplet architecture (as a means of spreading the thermal density, and to improve yield in a more hostile process). Also, Intel's tiling tech is more versatile than chiplets. Though AMD is adopting TSMC's SoIC, which should be comparable. https://www.hardwaretimes.com/intel-believes-its-tiles-are-a-better-approach-to-the-mcm-design-than-amds-chiplets/ https://www.hardwaretimes.com/intel-believes-its-tiles-are-a...
caskstrength 5y ago
I agree with your assessment in general, but why do think Arc GPUs will be "seriously disruptive"? If anything, they seem to be too late to the party.
klelatti 5y ago
> The ground Intel has lost in desktop and mobile is more than made up for by their utter dominance in server. Intel also has a lot of plays that should bear fruit in holding or retaking ground on consumer compute in the next few years. The basic problem is that Intel hasn't lost ground in mobile, it's not even on the playing field, a huge strategic blunder. That leaves it defending its dominant positions on server and desktop / laptop. At the same time billions of $ pour into TSMC from mobile and those same facilities are now being used to make desktop and server CPUs that compete with Intel. Its execution has been poor too but this massive strategic issue is a bigger problem.
londons_explore 5y ago
Intel can also play the "government please help us, we're critical to national security" card...
raverbashing 5y ago
> 1) Arc GPUs I've been hearing the same story for 10+ yrs on how Intel is going to disrupt the GPU market any day now. For real. Remember Larrabee? It's not going to happen. Intel is not good at disruption. They're good at several things. But not disruption.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  "This time fer sure, Rocky!" Seriously. "More cache on die?" reminds me of the scene in "Smokin' Aces" ... "we did that. all of it." Intel is ossified so totally that the top i dunno how many layers will have to be brutaly cleaved off it before the remaining pieces can hope to be productive again.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Arc is way more conventional than Larrabee though. All they have to do is bring these to market without bugs and they'll sell like hotcakes.
krageon 5y ago
> utter dominance in server Things are hesitantly shifting towards a more AMD-oriented lineup now. The enormous kickbacks and discounts don't (always) weigh up to the increasing performance differences.
whimsicalism 5y ago
Ctrl+F'd Graviton and found disappointingly few results. The server marketplace is shifting, slowly, but it is happening.
giantrobot 5y ago
> The only magic in the wins AMD and Apple have had the last few years have been in them being effectively a manufacturing process node ahead of Intel. Except for all the features on the chips, differing design philosophies, and peripheral interconnects, sure the only difference is manufacturing node. But what have the Romans ever done for us?
aphistic 5y ago
> 1) Arc GPUs. Looks like they will be seriously disruptive. I'm curious to read more about this. Everything I've seen about Intel's new discrete GPUs makes it sound like it'll be more of the same when compared to AMD and nvidia, and potentially not even as powerful.

dustintrex 5y ago

ARM and AMD are both making steady gains in the server space as well though. AMD is already offered by all the hyperscalers, and AWS recently introduced ARM as well.

rjzzleep 5y ago

From what I'm seeing, I think assuming that RISC-V CPUs being blob free and open, just because the ISA is open is illusory at best and wilfully lying at worst.

brucehoult 5y ago
When you have the complete verilog source code for the CPU core it's pretty hard to hide anything. Following the source code for the C910 core upload 24 hours ago, Olof Kindgren is live-tweeting getting it going in an FPGA using the existing FuseSoC framework. He made significant progress in the first session before going to bed. It would not surprise me if it's working in the next 24 hours.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  > When you have the complete verilog source code for the CPU core That's a big "when". The road from an ISA to a core is long, and unless the core is copylefted (this isn't), then you aren't going to get the source code for something someone else manufactured either.
  - bildung 5y ago
    Copyleft won't help you there either if the license issuer is also the producer of the physical chip: Licenses are regulating what third parties can do with the source, they don't restrict the issuer.
    - keonix 5y ago
      They do actually restrict issuer in most cases. Linus can't just strip Linux of other developers parts because they are tightly interconnected. He could relicense 30 year old version of Linux, but it would be useless
      - bildung 5y ago
        I just have been more precise and say copyright holder instead of issuer. Linus doesn't hold the copyright for most of the Linux source, hence he can't relicense without explicit oks from the other developers.
- jmnicolas 5y ago
  But how can I be sure the chip I have in my hand is built upon this code and that no blob has been added?
  - gnramires 5y ago
    By (1) purchasing anonymously from retail sources, and (2) having researchers with anonymous retail samples verify through decapping and inspection. I believe der8auer in Germany does die shots -- it would not be a bad idea to kick start this kind of research for community assurance purposes. It's difficult to prove there's no hidden logic, but it's also not trivial to hide complex logic needed to introduce covert undetectable vulnerabilities (probably around things the RNG source or crypto). Also assuming you're a high value target, otherwise this is mostly going too far.
easygenes 5y ago
Well, if they wind up with blobs I think they will at least be more limited. The "Management Engine" style ones are the most egregious. Ones for the sake of hardware video encode/decode are a bit more forgivable, though still regrettable. And there is certainly growing interest in blob-free computing [1], so some at least will exist to fill that demand. There is some hope for video with Linux landing blob-free hardware encode/decode very quickly the last couple of years [2]. 1: https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform/updates/post-campaign-orders 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9JLxjYlIWg
CameronNemo 5y ago
I agree that open ISA does not equate to blob free hardware. And many RISC-V designs out there will have royalties, and devices blobs. But the open ISA levels the playing field and allows for upstart hardware designers to make compatible hardware that is royalty and/or blob free.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Iolaum 5y ago
It still removes a serious obstacle to getting a blob free cpu where user can have control over what it does. The ISA is no more a "magic sauce" to be protected and patented and therefore hidden behind closed source.

PeterisP 5y ago

IMHO server marketshare is much more fickle than the consumer one. For consumers, compatibility is a big issue and hard to switch unless a myriad of things work properly. For servers, if just a single commonly used system (e.g. mariadb or wordpress) works and you can do it 10% cheaper, companies can replace large quantities of hardware to a completely different architecture.

loeg 5y ago
Server marketshare has been fairly sticky -- despite AMD offering low-risk, same ISA migration, and attractive pricing, the server market was relatively slow to adopt Zen.
- semi-extrinsic 5y ago
  OTOH, new HPC systems have been quick to adopt Zen in the form of dual-socket EPYC nodes. Actually if you look at the current top 10 supercomputers, only 2 are Intel. The rest are custom ARM or RISC CPUs (in Japan and China), IBM Power9, or AMD EPYC.
  - freemint 5y ago
    HPC is a special industry in that regard. HPC is know to take well managed technical risks such as building custom CPUs (A64FX in Fugaku) or using less popular architectures (SPARC, Power). If one can be certain that with enough coding hours codes can be adapted to run on those platforms and they will end up faster more exotic hardware will be bought or considered. Nation level HPC projects are not conservative, Industrial HPC maybe a bit more so.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  My take at this is because of inertia. I have a large fleet of servers that have been Intel since forever. I see no reason to migrate them today as things work reasonably well. We upgrade the hardware every 4-5 years. So during the next upgrade for sure I'll choose AMD, there is no question of that. ARM will be a serious competitor and RISC-V, too, that's for sure - but they are just not there yet when we talk about maximum performance (in our case, energy consumption is not the main concern)

forgotmyoldname 5y ago

Macs are a small market, but Apple definitely sets trends. Once they adopt a technology, people "know" it works and it's safe to switch. If servers can run on cheap ARM hardware that uses less electricity and runs far cooler without much of a performance difference, that's a massive improvement. Electricity savings would more than justify a switch. Apple has shown that it's possible at the desktop/laptop level. Now they or someone else can prove it works at the server level as well.

easygenes 5y ago
For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns. Server compute is expensive. It is all about performance. ARM is just starting to get competitive in that ballpark. So we will see. All of these ARM server chips are going to be very low on the pecking order for TSMC fab time, so they won't have the edge that Apple had by buying up the first slot on the latest manufacturing node. Even being a process node ahead, M1 only just squeaks by with comparable single threaded performance to Zen 3 cores, so ARM still has some catching up to do in the performance realm.
- hencoappel 5y ago
  As far as I'm aware, efficiency is key for datacenters. It can lower direct electricity costs, but also the cost of cooling. I've always been under the impression that the cost of running is much more than the cost of the hardware which is why they are willing to pay so much for the best/most efficient hardware?
- tdrdt 5y ago
  "For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns." I don't think this is true. It is not only power consumption but also power backup. If you can use smaller diesel engines and smaller battery packs this will lower the cost. And why do you think datacenters have been raising temperatures? It saves a ton of money: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14/google-raise-your-data-center-temperature https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14/goog... HP estimated they saved 8 million. That is not a rounding error. A server that uses less power will also generate less heat. I have to admit it is years ago I worked for a company owning datacenters but at that time the highest costs were always: power and connectivity.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Did you forget about Amazon and Google Arm servers? It's not just Apple, everyone is moving away from x86.

vishnugupta 5y ago
Indeed. AWS launched their own ARM based processor, Graviton a while ago. Now they have begun nudging them to serverless fleet by making them available at a lower price point. Not too different from their parent, Amazon, pushing their own branded products, cutting out the middleman.

girvo 5y ago

> The only magic in the wins AMD and Apple have had the last few years have been in them being effectively a manufacturing process node ahead of Intel. While I mostly agree with that, the fact that Intel are also moving to a chiplet-style architecture that AMD adopted beforehand means I think there is at least _some_ other bits AMD was ahead of Intel on aside from purely the process node. I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable about this stuff as others, but from my understanding from Dr Ian Cutress' articles and YouTube channel, Intel is somewhat following AMD in this area. I could be misunderstanding, of course.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
easygenes 5y ago
No, that's pretty accurate. Though it could be argued that it was only the move to the smaller process node that necessitated a chiplet architecture (as a means of spreading the thermal density, and to improve yield in a more hostile process). Also, Intel's tiling tech is more versatile than chiplets. Though AMD is adopting TSMC's SoIC, which should be comparable. https://www.hardwaretimes.com/intel-believes-its-tiles-are-a-better-approach-to-the-mcm-design-than-amds-chiplets/ https://www.hardwaretimes.com/intel-believes-its-tiles-are-a...

caskstrength 5y ago

I agree with your assessment in general, but why do think Arc GPUs will be "seriously disruptive"? If anything, they seem to be too late to the party.

klelatti 5y ago

> The ground Intel has lost in desktop and mobile is more than made up for by their utter dominance in server. Intel also has a lot of plays that should bear fruit in holding or retaking ground on consumer compute in the next few years. The basic problem is that Intel hasn't lost ground in mobile, it's not even on the playing field, a huge strategic blunder. That leaves it defending its dominant positions on server and desktop / laptop. At the same time billions of $ pour into TSMC from mobile and those same facilities are now being used to make desktop and server CPUs that compete with Intel. Its execution has been poor too but this massive strategic issue is a bigger problem.

londons_explore 5y ago

Intel can also play the "government please help us, we're critical to national security" card...

raverbashing 5y ago

> 1) Arc GPUs I've been hearing the same story for 10+ yrs on how Intel is going to disrupt the GPU market any day now. For real. Remember Larrabee? It's not going to happen. Intel is not good at disruption. They're good at several things. But not disruption.

h2odragon 5y ago
"This time fer sure, Rocky!" Seriously. "More cache on die?" reminds me of the scene in "Smokin' Aces" ... "we did that. all of it." Intel is ossified so totally that the top i dunno how many layers will have to be brutaly cleaved off it before the remaining pieces can hope to be productive again.
mhh__ 5y ago
Arc is way more conventional than Larrabee though. All they have to do is bring these to market without bugs and they'll sell like hotcakes.

krageon 5y ago

> utter dominance in server Things are hesitantly shifting towards a more AMD-oriented lineup now. The enormous kickbacks and discounts don't (always) weigh up to the increasing performance differences.

whimsicalism 5y ago

Ctrl+F'd Graviton and found disappointingly few results. The server marketplace is shifting, slowly, but it is happening.

giantrobot 5y ago

> The only magic in the wins AMD and Apple have had the last few years have been in them being effectively a manufacturing process node ahead of Intel. Except for all the features on the chips, differing design philosophies, and peripheral interconnects, sure the only difference is manufacturing node. But what have the Romans ever done for us?

aphistic 5y ago

> 1) Arc GPUs. Looks like they will be seriously disruptive. I'm curious to read more about this. Everything I've seen about Intel's new discrete GPUs makes it sound like it'll be more of the same when compared to AMD and nvidia, and potentially not even as powerful.