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Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs

virtualizationpractice.com

1–10 of 59 posts

Re: Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs

#2
Meanwhile Azure and Office 365 still use Symantec issued SHA1 certificates which are insecure, Symantec owns bluecoat who sell interception technologies to governments and private enterprises, all to convenient given that Microsoft themselves are a CA and could have issued their own certs, handing that off to a company like Symantec means they aren't directly giving your data away and are avoiding direct blame as much as possible.

Re: Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs

#3
post #2

Meanwhile Azure and Office 365 still use Symantec issued SHA1 certificates which are insecure, Symantec owns bluecoat who sell interception technologies to governments and private enterprises, all to convenient given that Microsoft themselves are a CA and could have issued their own certs, handing that off to a company like Symantec means they aren't directly giving your data away and are avoiding direct blame as muc…

SSL Certificates are a legal tool these days, Microsoft doesn't want to deal with it, the insurance and validation is handled by Verisign/Symantec it's a business decision.

Bluecoat is hardly an "interception" technology it's a mid 90's enterprise grade proxy and internet policy management box that can do SSL interception their early boxes used SSL strip the newer ones probably still do. They don't have a magic backdoor to break SSL all you can do with a Bluecoat box is to install your own enterprise certificate and make it act as an SSL proxy to ensure that your employees do not surf pronhub over SSL at work.

So as far as tinfoil hat rants goes i give this one 3/10 it's not even that creative, you might want to look the "PRISM" partners slides again might give you some inspiration.

Re: Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs

#4
Not sure about the exact pricing shown here, but it looks like Azure blows AWS GPU pricing out of the water.

Comparing specs:

  AWS g2.2xlarge:
  * DRAM: 15GB
  * GPU processor: 1xGK104
    * 1536 CUDA cores
    * 2.29Tflops/s peak single precision throughput
  * GPU memory: 4GB
    * 160GB/s peak bandwidth
  * Price: $0.65/hr (US East, Linux)

  Azure NC6:
  * DRAM: 56GB
  * GPU processors: 2xGK210
    * 4992 CUDA cores
    * 8.73Tflops/s peak single precision throughput
  * GPU memory: 24 GB
    * 480GB/s peak bandwidth
  * Price: $0.66/hr
I expect AWS will introduce a new GPU fleet and reduce pricing of the existing G2 fleet, in response to Azure.

Re: Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs

#5
post #4

Not sure about the exact pricing shown here, but it looks like Azure blows AWS GPU pricing out of the water. Comparing specs: AWS g2.2xlarge: * DRAM: 15GB * GPU processor: 1xGK104 * 1536 CUDA cores * 2.29Tflops/s peak single precision throughput * GPU memory: 4GB * 160GB/s peak bandwidth * Price: $0.65/hr (US East, Linux) Azure NC6: * DRAM: 56GB * GPU processors: 2xGK210 * 4992 CUDA cores * 8.73Tflops/s peak single p…

I wish one of the main cloud platforms would significantly cut their per/GB bandwidth costs. It feels like there has been no adjustments in years.

Also funny story, I was 14 or 15 and was trying to figure out a name for a stupid little chat client I was trying to make in C#, and somehow azure popped into my head. Not surprisingly azure.com was taken and just had a generic microsoft landing page (this was a little before it was announced in 2008).

Re: Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs

#7
post #2

Meanwhile Azure and Office 365 still use Symantec issued SHA1 certificates which are insecure, Symantec owns bluecoat who sell interception technologies to governments and private enterprises, all to convenient given that Microsoft themselves are a CA and could have issued their own certs, handing that off to a company like Symantec means they aren't directly giving your data away and are avoiding direct blame as muc…

SSL Certificates are a legal tool these days, Microsoft doesn't want to deal with it, the insurance and validation is handled by Verisign/Symantec it's a business decision. Bluecoat is hardly an "interception" technology it's a mid 90's enterprise grade proxy and internet policy management box that can do SSL interception their early boxes used SSL strip the newer ones probably still do. They don't have a magic backd…

Upvoted for the timely Olympic scoring.

Re: Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs

#8
post #4

Not sure about the exact pricing shown here, but it looks like Azure blows AWS GPU pricing out of the water. Comparing specs: AWS g2.2xlarge: * DRAM: 15GB * GPU processor: 1xGK104 * 1536 CUDA cores * 2.29Tflops/s peak single precision throughput * GPU memory: 4GB * 160GB/s peak bandwidth * Price: $0.65/hr (US East, Linux) Azure NC6: * DRAM: 56GB * GPU processors: 2xGK210 * 4992 CUDA cores * 8.73Tflops/s peak single p…

it sure does. I hope AWS and GCE will step up their GPU instance game

Re: Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs

#9
This is pretty interesting from a video encoding point of view. We're currently using g2.2xlarge AWS instances which are Kepler based. All we really need from those instances is the GPU (more specifically, the NVENC H264 encoding chip), so other specs aren't too important.

It looks like the NV6 Azure instances use a newer Maxwell based chip, which can handle much more (concurrent, or higher bitrate/resolution) videos, compared to the 2 generation older AWS GPUs.

And the NV6 is virtually the same price as the g2.2xlarge... time to do some testing. Hopefully Amazon can catch up soon.

Re: Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs

#10
post #4

Not sure about the exact pricing shown here, but it looks like Azure blows AWS GPU pricing out of the water. Comparing specs: AWS g2.2xlarge: * DRAM: 15GB * GPU processor: 1xGK104 * 1536 CUDA cores * 2.29Tflops/s peak single precision throughput * GPU memory: 4GB * 160GB/s peak bandwidth * Price: $0.65/hr (US East, Linux) Azure NC6: * DRAM: 56GB * GPU processors: 2xGK210 * 4992 CUDA cores * 8.73Tflops/s peak single p…

Does Azure offer spot pricing? You can get those AWS instances for (iirc) 10-15 cents/hr without much interruption.
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