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Cortex X2: ARM aims high
- the__alchemist 3y agoThe article implies this is beefier than A-series. Can we assume it's intended for Linux vice bare metal?
- sweetjuly 3y agoThe switch from A to X is really just marketing. They call them X-series cores but they're just larger and more powerful application processors. It's 100% intended to run full operating systems, it implements the ARMv9-A ISA :)
- moffkalast 3y ago> ARMv9 Ah yes already looking forward to everyone cutting support for armv7 package building on apt, just like they did for v6 when v8 was 'the thing'. This rolling cycle of incompatibility and obsolescence is so goddamn infuriating.
- saagarjha 3y agoDo note that ARMv6 and ARMv8 are entirely incompatible ISAs; one is 32-bit and another is 64-bit. Generally one doesn’t cut ARMv6 because ARMv8 exists, they drop all 32-bit support all at once.
- moffkalast 3y agoIt was dropping 32 bit builds this gen, the next one will be maybe some secure boot nonsense like Windows required for 11, or whatever-thing compatibility. There's always some random excuse.
- digdugdirk 3y agoAgreed. If we'd just stuck with the Motorola 68000, we wouldn't have to worry about any of this nonsense.
- moffkalast 3y agoYou joke, but the MC68000 is actually still in wide use haha. At some point we'll have 32 bit microcontrollers that are fast enough and have enough memory to run what will then be modern linux distros and we'll be sorry that we deprecated everything related to it. Or maybe everything will just be 64 bit from now onward, idk.
- cesarb 3y ago> Do note that ARMv6 and ARMv8 are entirely incompatible ISAs; one is 32-bit and another is 64-bit. IIRC, ARMv8 has both 32-bit (AArch32) and 64-bit (AArch64); yes, ARM's naming is confusing. What's being dropped is 32-bit (AArch32), similar to what's happening in the x86 world (and AFAIK also the Linux on mainframe world), and for similar reasons.
- sweetjuly 3y agoAArch32 mode has been optional in ARMv8-A the whole time too, I don't believe cores like Apple's M1 even support it at all.
- MrRolleyes 3y ago[dead]
- AlotOfReading 3y agoPhones and other high performance systems are one of the intended use cases, so Linux is implied. Support for the X2 is already upstreamed as well.
- em500 3y agoThe Cortex X2 has already been shipping in phones for more than a year (in the form of the big core in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1). On Geekbench 6 it scores around 1500-1600 single core, which makes it comparable to a Intel 11th gen laptop core or a low power (U series) AMD Zen 3 core. Even the successor Cortex X3 is already available phones (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 or Dimensity 9200). It benches around 1800 on Geekbench, which is comparable to a Zen3+ low power U laptop core, or an lower clocked Intel 12th gen U laptop core. Fro comparison, the latest Raspberry Pi 5 features A76 cores, which benches around 900 in phone implementations, comparable to 8th gen Intel cores. Apple's A13 scores around 1600, the M1 around 2200.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- geek_at 3y agoAre there any viable ARM Servers available in a homelab price range? Every time I look I only see the 2000$ enterprise 2U servers. I have outgrown the Raspberry Pis but still love the idea of moving my homelab to ARM
- lewurm 3y agoMac Mini running Asahi Linux might be an option
- qwertox 3y agoHow solid does it run? Is it able to make use of all what is currently making the Mac Studio so interesting for LLMs? And does it handle all the power management as it should? These are honest questions, as I'm in the need of a new workstation and eying a Mac Studio even if I have never used any Apple products before (with the exception for the iPods).
- geerlingguy 3y agoYou can also just run macOS and use Tart, Docker, or UDM and run VMs/containers for your services. Asahi isn't bad either, but for some people it's a bit more hassle to set it up and maintain versus macOS.
- Wytwwww 3y agoIf it for a server you can just probably run it on a VM which would provide a better experience?
- mratsim 3y agoSelf-hosted? Mac Mini Cloud? Oracle free-tier and otherwise Hetzner.
- adrian_b 3y agoThe fastest ARM-based computers that are not more expensive than better Intel or AMD based computers, which means that a complete fully-equipped computer with DRAM and SSD should not exceed the $200 to $250 range (where computers with Intel N100 or with older Zen 3 Ryzen 5 mobile CPUs can be found), are the computers with CPUs having Cortex-A76 cores (like the smartphones from 2019). In this class, there are many models with RK3588, having e.g. dual 2.5 Gb/s Ethernet ports (with the possibility of attaching more Ethernet NICs on USB 3 or on PCIe M.2 adapters) and supporting PCIe 3 x4 M.2 SSDs and/or eMMC (and the attachment of more SSDs on USB). (The model that I like most is NanoPC-T6, which exploits best all the interfaces of RK3588, but without adding things that should better be added externally, only when they are needed, like the additional USB hub present in many other models.) A cheaper option, but with much slower peripheral interfaces, is the new Raspberry Pi 5 model. Nevertheless, a homelab server with an ARM CPU makes sense only for developing Aarch64 applications. For just doing the job there are many small and cheap fanless computers with Intel N100 (4 E-cores) and 4 to 8 2.5 Gb/s Ethernet ports (typically sold on Amazon as firewall appliances). For only a few dollars extra it is possible to find much faster cheap small computers (from companies like Minisforum or Beelink) with older AMD Zen 3 CPUs, like the 6-core Ryzen 5 5600H. For a higher price of $500 to $600, there are small computers with AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, which can support e.g. dual M.2 PCIe 4 x4 SSDs and SATA SSDs, and dual 10 Gb/s Ethernet NICs (on Thunderbolt), dual 2.5 Gb/s ports on the MB + many other 2.5 Gb/s ports on USB, while being faster than big and expensive servers from some years ago.
- RetroTechie 3y agoCould use some TDP figures for SoCs this core appears in. And benchmarks on those (other than synthetic benchmarks to show L1/L2 cache behaviour etc). Design looks good & beefy. But implementation is the other part of the equation. Or thermal throttling depending on device it's in.
- poisonborz 3y agoIt's crazy how even X3 is still so much behind M1 in most raw performance metrics.
- Varloom 3y agoAgreed, generic ARM cores are weak. The solution is to go custom like Apple did and soon Qualcomm with Oryon Cores.
- vGPU 3y agoGoogle is trying that and it’s not working out so well.
- acdha 3y agoYes, but that says you can’t phone it in. Google’s senior managers are not sweating Pixel performance unless it will lead to a decline in ad revenues - contrast with AI where they very quickly realized that people asking ChatGPT questions would mean zero ad sales.
- wyldfire 3y agoIf you're referring to the Tensor SoCs, no they're not using custom ARM cores. They're using the reference Cortex codes from ARM because Tensor is pretty similar to the Exynos.
- zamalek 3y agoIt's also still a phone chip, so I guess it actually isn't about speed over efficiency.
- IshKebab 3y agoDo you have any actual numbers on that? Are they even remotely the same area? E.g. Wikipedia says X3 has 512-1024kB of L2 cache per core, M1 has 3MB.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
- wslh 3y agoIt is always the time to read again the book "Only the Paranoid Survive" [1] where Andy Grove, CEO of Intel at the book time, has a specific chapter about RISC/CISC. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grove#Only_the_Paranoid_Survive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grove#Only_the_Paranoid...
- pavlov 3y agoThe paranoid culture doesn’t seem to have served Intel very well for the past 10-15 years.
- Handprint4469 3y agoSounds to me like they weren't paranoid enough
- nine_k 3y agoIsn't it because it had ceased to exist before these troubles began? Grove has left Intel 19 years ago, and cessed to be its CEO 25 years ago.
- synergy20 3y agoit is, ever since he left, intel is anything but paranoid
- knodi 3y agoi think we're forgetting Intel's backdoor https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/disabling-intels-backdoors-on-modern-laptops/ https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/disabling-intels-backdoors-o...
- wslh 3y agoThe paranoid culture cannot predict the future. BTW Andy was not the CEO in times of this inflection point.
- ksec 3y agoThe ones that were lead by Andy Grove wasn't there at Intel.
- nikoisi 3y agoDoes anyone know a good resource at explaining what each of the components in the cpu diagrams does? For example what are the main functions and differences between rename/dispatch, reorder buffer, scheduler? chipandcheese does a very good job comparing architectures but sometimes I struggle to really understand the meaning of their diagrams.
- Szpadel 3y agowikichip.org was good for me with explaining a lot of those low level functionality and how those improvements in new CPU work
- yaantc 3y agoMaybe it's more than you want, but "Computer Architecture - A Quantitative Approach" from Hennessy and Patterson is a very good reference. If your main interest is CPU cores even a relatively old version will be enough. From memory recent versions (5 and 6, 6 being the latest) have mostly added content on GPU and data center computing, but the sections on CPU architecture are rather stable.
- markhahn 3y agoyou've got to pick up the basics of modern processor design (such as from H&P). without understanding basic pipelining, all the prediction, OoO, and superscalar stuff won't make any sense. and I think you probably need to try some asm programming for any of this to really click.
- leonheld 3y agoI strongly recommend you to pick up H&P's Computer Organization and Design: the Hardware/Software Interface. I think you can really only appreciate their other great book, "A Quantitative Approach" if you properly learn a new architecture, then the big ideas behind "A Quantitative Approach" will really speak to you. Organization and Design has different editions for RISC-V, aarch64 and MIPS. The MIPS one is what I learned computer architecture on and it's super solid.
- markhahn 3y agoSo little about chip success is down to just the core. Sure, some basic performance aspects, clock range, area and thus cores/chip. What about inter-core performance? Memory interface? There's still no real synergy between CPUs and GPUs, even though they get less different with time. No one seems to have a decent plan for how to balance local memory resources with cache-coherency over CXL. Inter-system networking seems to be frozen in 1980 (just with faster serdes). Does in-chip and inter-chip optical change anything, or does it just mean littering the place with tranceivers?
- aklju90709 3y agoIs that where AMD is innovating? Getting in early (for x86) on chiplet design, pushing Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) etc?
- beebeepka 3y agoThey've been pushing the HSA buttons since they acquired ATi back in 2006. Are we there yet?
- markhahn 3y agohave they? I haven't noticed it in recent years. it seems like everyone settles for ugly, barely usable interfaces like CUDA, OpenCL, and then scabs them over with a higher-level interface like tensorflow.
- Salgat 3y agoIt's a real shame that AMD didn't embrace HSA for the long term, it's the future of computing. Intel's QuickSync is very popular with certain folks for streaming, and HSA would have taken that a step further.
- gigatexal 3y agoSeems this is the approach Apple has taken with the M chips. Everything is unified more or less. Myabe one day in the future the CPU will just be one fpga that recompiles itself for a given usecase and codepaths become hardware paths and then goes back to general for the next task.
- Symmetry 3y agoAm I right in thinking that the larger load and store queues compared to a Zen core are enabled partially by more relaxed memory ordering rules for A64 compared to x86?
- fidotron 3y agoThis all makes me wonder whatever happened to the neural network based branch prediction in the Exynos?
- bri3d 3y agoHashed perceptron branch prediction is pretty much industry standard and has been since the 2010s (it arrived in academia around 2000 and in AMD Piledriver in 2012), it’s just up to marketing whether it’s a “neural network” or not.
- photonbeam 3y agoARM will always struggle to do high perf without trying to directly sell a silicon product, it forces focus on the true result
- chris_j 3y agoWhat differences do you think you'd see if ARM directly sold a silicon product?
- photonbeam 3y agoUpper management seeing a really straight line between performance and dollars. Right now there are steps in between which means they care more about selling the design and its variations. If there is a PPA miss you could point the finger in a few directions