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Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

cloudplatform.googleblog.com

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Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#71

Post by acdha »

brianwawok wrote: post #55
jscipione wrote: post #49

Why is it important to offer Intel Skylake on cloud platforms? Is there some specific processor extensions present in Skylake that make them particularly compelling in a cloud environment for a particular industry or a particular set of needs?

Yes it's in the article.

Your wording on this seems unnecessarily harsh: the article mentions AVX-512 but doesn't go into much detail about that or mention anything else. Some people may immediately know that their code will benefit from AVX-512 but that's only relevant to a subset of workloads.

Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#72

Post by Cyph0n »

stuckagain wrote: post #67
Cyph0n wrote: post #46

Oh, so now I can't voice my opinion until I've been "in the business" for x amount of years? Yeah, nice try. 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…

All I'm saying is it would be better if you knew what you were talking about. AMD has been outsourcing verification to its customers for many years.

> AMD has been outsourcing verification to its customers for many years

You have no idea what you're talking about if you think for a second that a large CPU vendor like AMD would delegate verification to "its customers". It's like saying that Boeing just builds planes and tells airlines to make sure they fly correctly before allowing passengers to board them.

Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#73

Post by boulos »

zbjornson wrote: post #69
boulos wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skylake is an amazing upgrade, more so than even the Haswell bump. Beyond just the clock-for-clock kind of improvements, AVX512 is a huge win for many vectorized workloads (see my other comment about waiting nearly 10 years for it...). Linear algebra (or ML if you prefer), rendering, and even string operations (operating on 512-bits per instruction is a win over 256) are all a lot faster.

The other fundamental change is that most instructions now have masked variants, so you can apply an operation to only specific elements in a vector based on a mask register. This avoids branch mispredictions, which are a big performance hit in some workloads.

Yes, I started syrah (https://github.com/boulos/syrah) in 2009 precisely because I loved the masking of LRBni and wanted to "use it" even from SSE, AVX and (later) AVX2. Once I played with NEON though, I realized I had screwed up the format for it.

Sadly, (because KNL doesn't have nearly the same volume) until Skylake became a real thing, I had no reason to update this. I'm planning on dusting it off now!

Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#74

Post by en4bz »

jscipione wrote: post #49

Why is it important to offer Intel Skylake on cloud platforms? Is there some specific processor extensions present in Skylake that make them particularly compelling in a cloud environment for a particular industry or a particular set of needs?

MPX (hardware bounds checking)

SGX (secure enclaves)

TSX (Hardware Transactional Memory)

SGX can store SSL keys in a hardware protected enclave that can't be accessed by hypervisors/AMT so that can be useful for security sensitive stuff.

Cloudflare probably could have used MPX to prevent their recent leak with minimal performance overhead.

TSX is cool.

Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#75

Post by doczoidberg »

boulos wrote: post #59
jscipione wrote: post #49

Why is it important to offer Intel Skylake on cloud platforms? Is there some specific processor extensions present in Skylake that make them particularly compelling in a cloud environment for a particular industry or a particular set of needs?

Skylake is an amazing upgrade, more so than even the Haswell bump. Beyond just the clock-for-clock kind of improvements, AVX512 is a huge win for many vectorized workloads (see my other comment about waiting nearly 10 years for it...). Linear algebra (or ML if you prefer), rendering, and even string operations (operating on 512-bits per instruction is a win over 256) are all a lot faster.

what do I have to consider as a software developer to benefit from these upgrade? Do I need special tools/libraries?

Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#76

Post by mr_luc »

briankereszturi wrote: post #52
rattray wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why would you prefer Google Cloud to AWS?

Managed Kubernetes.

Agreed. I'm on GCP whenever I get to pick.

For anyone else who is on AWS (maybe because of rds postgres, or because it's client work that needs to be on AWS), you can go outside of vanilla AWS to get a similarly great dev UX. I've used Convox + the Weave ECS AMI on a project, and it was pleasant.

Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#77

Post by boulos »

doczoidberg wrote: post #75
boulos wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skylake is an amazing upgrade, more so than even the Haswell bump. Beyond just the clock-for-clock kind of improvements, AVX512 is a huge win for many vectorized workloads (see my other comment about waiting nearly 10 years for it...). Linear algebra (or ML if you prefer), rendering, and even string operations (operating on 512-bits per instruction is a win over 256) are all a lot faster.

what do I have to consider as a software developer to benefit from these upgrade? Do I need special tools/libraries?

For the "clock-for-clock" improvements: nothing. For AVX512, various numerical libraries will be adding support for you over time. However, just as with Haswell and earlier generations, even AVX2 will run better on Skylake.

Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#78

Post by bonzini »

en4bz wrote: post #74
jscipione wrote: post #49

Why is it important to offer Intel Skylake on cloud platforms? Is there some specific processor extensions present in Skylake that make them particularly compelling in a cloud environment for a particular industry or a particular set of needs?

MPX (hardware bounds checking) SGX (secure enclaves) TSX (Hardware Transactional Memory) SGX can store SSL keys in a hardware protected enclave that can't be accessed by hypervisors/AMT so that can be useful for security sensitive stuff. Cloudflare probably could have used MPX to prevent their recent leak with minimal performance overhead. TSX is cool.

I don't think Google provides SGX on their cloud instances (SGX is extremely limited right now, since any code your placing in an enclave must be signed by Intel).

Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#79

Post by bonzini »

ctz wrote: post #60

No mention of SGX; a major Skylake feature for cloud computing. Is it enabled? Is it accessible?

They use KVM, and considering that not even host support is available on mainline Linux, I doubt so.

It would also be mentioned in the article if it were.

Re: Google Cloud Platform is the first cloud provider to offer Intel Skylake

#80

Post by bonzini »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #50
boulos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any plans on doing that in the future?

Based on public talks by GCP engineers, it's very unlikely. Maybe SEV (encrypted VMs) might change that. However, the small glimpse into GCP that you get from looking at their work on KVM would suggest no.
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