11 ms·
A 20nm 32-Core 64MB L3 Cache SPARC M7 Processor
- DiabloD3 12y agoWhat I want: 64 or more lanes of PCI-E 3.0, 4 or more channels of DDR3-1866 or DDR4-2133 or faster... combined into a chip with few but very fast cores. My closest option? E5v3-1620 or 1630. It'd be nice if someone started producing non-x86 options for that.
- rwmj 12y agoThe interesting thing about ARMv8 is that if there's a niche of users with your problem, someone can go ahead and make a SoC. They don't have to ask permission from anyone, just pay the license fees. If you wanted an x86-based SoC, there's no way Intel would make it. Discussions about ARM vs x86 tend to miss this point. They tend to get stuck on performance or software or process size, missing that the revolutionary thing is the licensing. [To head off some replies: 64 bit ARMv8 has fast single-thread performance, unlike 32 bit ARMv7]
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- userbinator 12y agoIf you wanted an x86-based SoC, there's no way Intel would make it. Intel has made several x86 SoCs, and there's also a few others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_x86_manufacturers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_x86_manufacturers This one in particular is interesting since it contains most of a standard PC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex86 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex86 However the current market for x86 SoCs is in industrial/embedded where performance is not a main concern, so these are not particularly fast.
- MBCook 12y agoI think they meant 'if you have a custom requirement Intel won't make it, you can only choose between predefined options' as opposed to ARM or others where people will build custom configurations of cores and modules for you.
- xorcist 12y agoThere are a handful of x86 licensees out there. It's not remotely the same as AMDs eco system of course, as they are competing in someone else's market. But perhaps it's comparable to making software for Apple or Microsoft's platforms. (There is an incomplete list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_x86_manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_x86_manufacturers )
- asb 12y agoPowerPC is in the same situation, with 'OpenPOWER' (I think the Open must stand for "we're Open for business"?). Of course, open instruction sets like RISC-V http://riscv.org/ http://riscv.org/ require no license fee. At lowRISC we're aiming to build a complete open source SoC using RISC-V http://www.lowrisc.org/ http://www.lowrisc.org/. I'll note that getting a license for an existing architecture and core implementation isn't as straight-forward as you say. You do need to negotiate and enter an agreement with ARM/MIPS/... (and ARM/Imagination/... need to decide it's worth their while going through that process).
- russell 12y agoMy girlfriend (your typical first time builder: grandmother, artist, refusing my help) selected the E5v3-1650 which really screams at 8 GHz and can be overclocked. The build came in under $2K. She did it all herself and it booted the first time.
- semi-extrinsic 12y agoThose are nice chips, yeah. Have you tried out any of the new DDR4 CPUs? I'm very curious as to how the combination of higher memory bandwidth and higher memory latency affects real-world applications. My first guess is that it turns out the same as DDR3-1866. Anyone benched it?
- DiabloD3 12y agoI have DDR3-2133 in my workstation now. The new DDR4-2133 won't be any faster.
- semi-extrinsic 12y agoBut will it be slower for real-world applications? I've seen numbers indicating a ~ 10% worse memory latency. Don't know how that will be felt.
- DiabloD3 12y agoDDR4 in of itself will not perform slower in memory latency in any usefully measurable way. Memory latency in the real world is almost entirely governed by the pre-fetch engine in the CPU (which exists to hide the fact how slow system RAM is to begin with). I would like to see a test between the Haswell E5v3s that support both DDR3 and DDR4 and see what the real world difference is on that specific implementation (which could not be generalized to other implementations of memory controllers by other vendors).
- apaprocki 12y agoI'll probably get to play with some of these at some point and hope they can make the systems I use a bit faster. The T5s don't cut it against equivalent code running on IBM chips. It's unfortunate, because Solaris is a decent OS.
- kjs3 12y agoOh...AIX isn't the worst thing in the world if you don't try and pretend it's going to be Unix like you want Unix to be and do things the AIX way. In return, Power8 does crush T5 for most things. If only we'd make a Power 7 or 8 workstation...
- apaprocki 12y agoSadly even if the only "unix" thing you want to do is compile a bunch of standard open source packages, you're in for a world of hurt. Need to use xlc on top of that? Better have your seppuku knife ready. At least IBM took our "suggestion" and now maintains modern gdb so at least you aren't stuck with quirky dbx tracking down issues. There's still some bizarre stuff though. You can set separate text/data page sizes via env variables that differ from the system wide settings. Take a guess which override, if either, will be reported through POSIX calls? Neither! Fun when someone changes how they invoke your app. Just an example...
- wmf 12y agoIf you want Linux, it is available for Power.
- kev009 12y agoTake a look at http://www.perzl.org/aix/ http://www.perzl.org/aix/. Not only for the packages, but the porting patterns in the SRPMs.
- kjs3 12y agoMany open source packages don't compile out of the box? Like on many of them don't on *BSD? Dbx, the debugger many of us have been using successfully for the last 2 decades, is "quirky", but gdb isn't? You can tweak weird things in opaque ways? Compilers have differences? AIX is not Linux, so you don't like it. Exactly my point. If these are your use cases, use Linux; don't bitch about AIX because it isn't. You can even use Power blissfully without ever having to use AIX. But then we'd have to hear about Power sucking when a linux developer baked the assumption that Linux == Intel ISA into some "standard" open source packages.
- Symmetry 12y agoIf you're interested in the M7 the Hot Chips conference talk was pretty interesting. It starts at the 33 minute mark in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4f62FJGVcE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4f62FJGVcE If you're interested in CPU architecture the Hot Chips talks are generally worthwhile. They're available for free a few months after the conference.
- e12e 12y agoWithout access to the full PDF, this blurb from Oracle gives some more information: https://blogs.oracle.com/rajadurai/entry/sparc_m7_chip_32_cores https://blogs.oracle.com/rajadurai/entry/sparc_m7_chip_32_co...
- listic 12y agoIt's been almost 8 months since this blog post. How's it been since? Is the CPU released already? (whatever that means for that kind of decidedly non-consumer-grade hardware) EDIT: The CPU is 'scheduled to be available sometime in calendar year 2015' according to http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-m7/index.html http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-m7/index.h... So, barring rumors and insider information, I gest this is it.
- nullc 12y agoDoes it come with a free spurious patent infringement lawsuit over replicating the API of software its vendor previously released under the GPL?
- damm 12y agoThat can only be yours for just 150,000 downpayment. SPARC has been pretty long track history and I admit I really used to love Sun Sparc Servers; now I just look at them and think of the cost and cry.
- neilmovva 12y agoMan, even at 20nm, the die size must be a bear. Especially the L3$... I know TSMC has a ~600mm^2 max (for remotely reasonable yields), even on the highly mature 28nm process. Thus, I doubt this would be a viable chip for deployment today, rather a proof of concept. Need more details to be sure though.
- wmf 12y agoCache is repairable and bad cores can be disabled, so yield might not be too bad. I doubt Oracle is concerned about cost, though.
- mrbill 12y agoI run a community-oriented Sun/SPARC site, since 1997 (and was invited to be part of the private prerelase testing/eval of OpenSolaris) and it's really sad what Oracle has done to the enthusiast community. The "old" Sun gave me a loaded T1000, gratis, to run the site on (I'd actually asked for one for a review, and they said "Keep it for the site."). The "new" Sun/Oracle gave me the finger. I had to move everything off the T1K and onto a Debian box hosted at home because I couldn't afford a support contract for it (required to get any patches/updates, even for the OS install that came on it). I've often likened Oracle's treatment of the hobbyist/enthusiast community as "they shot it in the face and said unless you're going to spend $XXXX with us, we don't care about you. Period." The "old" Sun recognized that if sysadmin types played with older gear at home and enjoyed it, they were more likely to recommend it for purchases at work, and they encouraged it.
- dman 12y agoThe "old" Sun went out of business following the practices it did. I dislike Oracle as much as anyone else, but Sun isnt a great role model in terms of savvy business practices.
- tormeh 12y agoBut in this case I think Sun was right. The marginal cost of making a processor is pretty low, I imagine, and it's not like enthusiast sites can be pumped for much money anyway.
- jsprogrammer 12y agoLarry's yachts don't manifest themselves.
- mrbill 12y agoI was able to, at different times, email both Scott McNealy and Jonathan Schwartz directly, and got personal responses from both of them. In the grand scale of things, I'm a relative nobody, just a dude who runs a web site that talked about their products. I can't imagine being able to have a 2-3 message conversation with Ellison at all, as I don't spend enough with Oracle to be worth a microsecond of his attention.