4 ms·

I don't see how Graviton/custom ARM chips are evidence of this predicted trend. ARM chips tend to have even higher thread counts and poorer per-core performance

I don't see how Graviton/custom ARM chips are evidence of this predicted trend. ARM chips tend to have even higher thread counts and poorer per-core performance. The biggest security difference is the absence of SMT/hyper-threading. I think it will come down to what you are willing to call 'individual' processors. But actually having physically distinct memory seems like a lot of overhead for attacks that won't matter for 90% of users. Also I would think that the on-board ECC of DDR5 would protect it against these types of attacks.

015a 5y ago
Graviton is not a prediction of the trend; its a signal that Amazon is willing to make very deep investment into custom, customer-facing hardware if Intel/AMD can't deliver what they need. The trend is yet to come. My statement is that, if AMD/Intel doesn't adapt, Amazon has the hardware investment to leave them behind, just like Apple did. But to be clear on two points: They will probably adapt. And Amazon/etc will probably never leave them behind fully. DCs, especially public cloud, are not all-or-nothing like Apple's Mac Lineup is. Then the question follows, why would they want something Intel/AMD isn't offering right now? The trend is System-on-Chip. Beyond Security (this isn't the last electrical interference/speculative execution-like attack we'll see). SoCs are easier to service (easier != cheaper. holistic replacement versus per-component debugging. servers are cattle, not pets). Denser. More vertically integrated. Capable of far higher IO performance. Lots of benefits. Mega-servers with 256 cores and 4 terabytes of memory still have a huge place in all DCs; but not when multiple untrusted workloads are running simultaneously. They're not for EC2/Fargate/Lambda/etc; they're for S3. Highly managed, trusted workloads.

4 ms·

I don't see how Graviton/custom ARM chips are evidence of this predicted trend. ARM chips tend to have even higher thread counts and poorer per-core performance

by KingMachiavelli 5y ago

015a 5y ago
Graviton is not a prediction of the trend; its a signal that Amazon is willing to make very deep investment into custom, customer-facing hardware if Intel/AMD can't deliver what they need. The trend is yet to come. My statement is that, if AMD/Intel doesn't adapt, Amazon has the hardware investment to leave them behind, just like Apple did. But to be clear on two points: They will probably adapt. And Amazon/etc will probably never leave them behind fully. DCs, especially public cloud, are not all-or-nothing like Apple's Mac Lineup is. Then the question follows, why would they want something Intel/AMD isn't offering right now? The trend is System-on-Chip. Beyond Security (this isn't the last electrical interference/speculative execution-like attack we'll see). SoCs are easier to service (easier != cheaper. holistic replacement versus per-component debugging. servers are cattle, not pets). Denser. More vertically integrated. Capable of far higher IO performance. Lots of benefits. Mega-servers with 256 cores and 4 terabytes of memory still have a huge place in all DCs; but not when multiple untrusted workloads are running simultaneously. They're not for EC2/Fargate/Lambda/etc; they're for S3. Highly managed, trusted workloads.