5 ms·

A bit sad that while POWER9 processors were used in then-SoTA supercomputers, as far as I can tell POWER10 (which I worked on more) is not being used for scient

A bit sad that while POWER9 processors were used in then-SoTA supercomputers, as far as I can tell POWER10 (which I worked on more) is not being used for scientific/industrial HPC.

chasil 3y ago
I understand that POWER9 was much more open than its successor. Is that a factor?
- wmf 3y ago
  No, I think IBM just gave up on HPC.
  - stonogo 3y ago
    Can confirm; supercomputers don't slot neatly enough into quartly EPS goals.
    - datameta 3y ago
      I can see the humor, but the thing is server and mainframe sales already fluctuate based on hardware generation cycles (~3 yrs start to finish, sometimes server overlapping with mainframe or memory controller).
      - stonogo 3y ago
        Those contracts are reliable in that the customer is extremely unlikely to move to a different product line. Especially when you've got a customer locked in, refresh timescales are pretty predictable. HPC contracts are generally borne of federal-agency RFPs, and are extremely competitive, and they only 'pay out' upon a passed acceptance test, so it's not trivially possible to predict which quarter your revenue will land for a given sale. You wind up with sales teams putting tons of work into a contract that didn't get selected, which sucks, but even if you win you might wind up missing sales goals, and then overshooting the mark the following quarter. In a company less hidebound this obviously wouldn't be a problem, but IBM has been run by the beancounters for long enough that the prestige isn't worth the murky forecast.
        datameta 3y ago
        Makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
  - datameta 3y ago
    It would seem to some that the focus is on servers and mainframes. But the thing is the very same reasons the P10 chip excels in a high-end server apply to massively parallel processing. So I don't see a technological or implementation barrier.
- datameta 3y ago
  As my own opinion, I believe the OpenPower project went strong with P10. I was not around to hear the contrast in decisions between P9 and P10 strategy, so I can't quite compare.

A bit sad that while POWER9 processors were used in then-SoTA supercomputers, as far as I can tell POWER10 (which I worked on more) is not being used for scientific/industrial HPC.

chasil 3y ago

I understand that POWER9 was much more open than its successor. Is that a factor?

wmf 3y ago
No, I think IBM just gave up on HPC.
- stonogo 3y ago
  Can confirm; supercomputers don't slot neatly enough into quartly EPS goals.
  - datameta 3y ago
    I can see the humor, but the thing is server and mainframe sales already fluctuate based on hardware generation cycles (~3 yrs start to finish, sometimes server overlapping with mainframe or memory controller).
    - stonogo 3y ago
      Those contracts are reliable in that the customer is extremely unlikely to move to a different product line. Especially when you've got a customer locked in, refresh timescales are pretty predictable. HPC contracts are generally borne of federal-agency RFPs, and are extremely competitive, and they only 'pay out' upon a passed acceptance test, so it's not trivially possible to predict which quarter your revenue will land for a given sale. You wind up with sales teams putting tons of work into a contract that didn't get selected, which sucks, but even if you win you might wind up missing sales goals, and then overshooting the mark the following quarter. In a company less hidebound this obviously wouldn't be a problem, but IBM has been run by the beancounters for long enough that the prestige isn't worth the murky forecast.
      - datameta 3y ago
        Makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
- datameta 3y ago
  It would seem to some that the focus is on servers and mainframes. But the thing is the very same reasons the P10 chip excels in a high-end server apply to massively parallel processing. So I don't see a technological or implementation barrier.
datameta 3y ago
As my own opinion, I believe the OpenPower project went strong with P10. I was not around to hear the contrast in decisions between P9 and P10 strategy, so I can't quite compare.