3 ms·

> AMD recent processors are still great on the desktop, and an absolute blast on the server Yes they are truly great but point to consider is they are just com

> AMD recent processors are still great on the desktop, and an absolute blast on the server Yes they are truly great but point to consider is they are just competing against Intel. Don't get wrong I love what AMD has done recently with Ryzen but we need ARM based servers which has perf per watt competing with M1/M2

babypuncher 4y ago
AMD is also stuck on TSMC's 7nm node while Apple hogs up all their 5nm capacity for M1/2 and A15. Intel has no real excuse since they use their own fabs and spun their wheels on 14nm for half a decade.
- pulse7 4y ago
  You can not compare TSMC's "7nm" with Intels "14 nm". These numbers are just marketing...
  - out_of_protocol 4y ago
    Can't we go with MT? (millions of transistors per square millimeter)
    - nomel 4y ago
      Power and speed isn't just about transistor density. The construction of the transistors also has an impact. See FinFET and GAAFET.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  Their excuse is that they were ambitious with 10nm and it didn't work for them
- distances 4y ago
  The Ryzen 7000 series will be on 5nm, right? So not too stuck, while that of course isn't shipping yet.
smoldesu 4y ago
> we need ARM based servers which has perf per watt competing with M1/M2 We have them? Graviton instances are priced pretty competitively compared to similar x86 EC2 instances. A lot of people don't use Graviton though (myself included) for a number of reasons. A lot of software hasn't been ported over to aarch64 yet, and even when it is it can lack the optimization that x86 enjoys (especially with programs leveraging AVX et. al). Furthermore, the CPUs that Amazon use seem to be bottlenecked by low IO bandwidth, which makes for some janky benchmarks when comparing simple database operations. I think we'll eventually see a return to RISC architectures, but ARM's value proposition hasn't made a lot of sense on the server. It's still encumbered with proprietary licenses that make it extremely hard for CPU manufacturers to compete in the server market. It still hasn't figured out all of it's hardware-acceleration quirks, and you don't get any Rosetta 2 fairy dust on Linux (not that you'd want to use it in prod anyways). All in all, x86 is still the set-and-forget king, and probably more stable than ARM alternatives. I'm hopeful that RISC-V will finally put x86 in it's grave, but that's going to be a couple years out...
- Shorel 4y ago
  The ARM Graviton instances in AWS are at best 5% cheaper per equivalent process when writing to a DB. In my own workloads. Which are not burst, but first sustained CPU, and then sustained I/O, at about 5MB/s. So, it is cheaper for Amazon, as they use half the power, but not cheaper for end users.
- dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
  I was excited when Hetzner announced their RX line only to discover the entry server is a few more times more expensive than any other entry level server in their offering. But I'm tempted to try it out anyway.

babypuncher 4y ago

AMD is also stuck on TSMC's 7nm node while Apple hogs up all their 5nm capacity for M1/2 and A15. Intel has no real excuse since they use their own fabs and spun their wheels on 14nm for half a decade.

pulse7 4y ago
You can not compare TSMC's "7nm" with Intels "14 nm". These numbers are just marketing...
- out_of_protocol 4y ago
  Can't we go with MT? (millions of transistors per square millimeter)
  - nomel 4y ago
    Power and speed isn't just about transistor density. The construction of the transistors also has an impact. See FinFET and GAAFET.
mhh__ 4y ago
Their excuse is that they were ambitious with 10nm and it didn't work for them
distances 4y ago
The Ryzen 7000 series will be on 5nm, right? So not too stuck, while that of course isn't shipping yet.

smoldesu 4y ago

> we need ARM based servers which has perf per watt competing with M1/M2 We have them? Graviton instances are priced pretty competitively compared to similar x86 EC2 instances. A lot of people don't use Graviton though (myself included) for a number of reasons. A lot of software hasn't been ported over to aarch64 yet, and even when it is it can lack the optimization that x86 enjoys (especially with programs leveraging AVX et. al). Furthermore, the CPUs that Amazon use seem to be bottlenecked by low IO bandwidth, which makes for some janky benchmarks when comparing simple database operations. I think we'll eventually see a return to RISC architectures, but ARM's value proposition hasn't made a lot of sense on the server. It's still encumbered with proprietary licenses that make it extremely hard for CPU manufacturers to compete in the server market. It still hasn't figured out all of it's hardware-acceleration quirks, and you don't get any Rosetta 2 fairy dust on Linux (not that you'd want to use it in prod anyways). All in all, x86 is still the set-and-forget king, and probably more stable than ARM alternatives. I'm hopeful that RISC-V will finally put x86 in it's grave, but that's going to be a couple years out...

Shorel 4y ago
The ARM Graviton instances in AWS are at best 5% cheaper per equivalent process when writing to a DB. In my own workloads. Which are not burst, but first sustained CPU, and then sustained I/O, at about 5MB/s. So, it is cheaper for Amazon, as they use half the power, but not cheaper for end users.
dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
I was excited when Hetzner announced their RX line only to discover the entry server is a few more times more expensive than any other entry level server in their offering. But I'm tempted to try it out anyway.