41–50 of 214 posts
I've been benchmarking these against Haswell and Broadwells. Despite being 300 MHz slower, we're getting between 5 and 45% faster benchmarks on linear algebra functions that we run a lot, even without doing much work to tailor to AVX512 instructions yet. The cache is also a whopping 56 MB.
Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
Just for reference, since you don't choose your processor explicitly on GCP, but instead choose your zone with homogenous processors, here is their current processor/zone layout: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones/regions-... Since some GCP engineers are watching: Presumably we'll see some new zones to provide these processors, or will it be a limited release within existing zones? And if so, will yo…
Good question! We've made it possible for this whitelisted (Alpha) to let you make sure you're creating Skylakes. We'll hopefully have more details to share at NEXT in a few weeks (or immediately if you sign up!). Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
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Good question! We've made it possible for this whitelisted (Alpha) to let you make sure you're creating Skylakes. We'll hopefully have more details to share at NEXT in a few weeks (or immediately if you sign up!). Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
Where's the form to apply for Alpha? :)
I'd rather wait for Ryzen. You won't know which Skylake processor you're getting - the gimped one or the non-gimped one. AMD tends to keep their features consistent across the line.
Does Google provide machines with AMD processors?
Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
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Not really. AMD's Phenom was a flop and the initial batch had a horrible TLB bug. Their FX processors were also hugely hyped and hugely disappointing.
OP said "will [they] even work?". That's a very different thing from a TLB bug. Although I concede that depending on the nature of the TLB bug, it may lead to a significant performance hit. Regarding your criticisms of AMD's past processors, are you coming at this from a consumer standpoint, or are you just disappointed with their architecture and/or implementation? I ask because the Phenom II seems quite loved by it…
Another commenter already brought that issue up, but thanks for pointing it out again. I still think that it's quite silly to claim that Ryzen Rev. A may end up being a paperweight based on a mistake that took place a decade ago. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
And from what I read, it seems like it was an extreme edge case, so the TLB error was triggered only during specific workloads. Sucks to be AMD back then.
I would be quite nice if they actually advertised the particular type of CPU core you rent, rather than some abstract unit of computation. Or at least some kind of performance baseline.
We do! As mentioned up thread, each zone (today) has a consistent CPU platform: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones/regions-... For example, in us-west1-a, you're getting a 2.2 GHz base clock E5 Broadwell. Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
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Intel's FDIV bug was an outlier. Besides, nowadays most of the ISA is implemented in microcode[1]. There are two advantages to this approach: 1) it is much easier to verify the microcode unit (it's simpler/smaller), and 2) it allows CPU vendors to "fix" ISA implementation issues post-release by issuing microcode updates. [1]: ISA => microcode is equivalent in some respects to C => LLVM IR
Outlier? I would say uncommon but not an outlier. Here's a non-exhaustive list. http://wiki.osdev.org/CPU_Bugs There was also an issue with transaction memory with both Haswel & Broadwell. The fix was to disable TSX support via micro code update. I wouldn't call disabling a fix personally. I doubt Intel even compensated the folks who bought it for the TSX support.
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Does Google provide machines with AMD processors?
No, we don't provide any machines with AMD processors in Cloud, today. Fun historical fact though: the 'N' in n1 meant 'Intel'. Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.