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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

#101

Post by Mo3 »

boulos wrote: post #92
Mo3 wrote: post #90

Hahaha. Meanwhile I've been running 2 machines with Skylake and a combined 24 cores/48 threads, 256GB DDR4, 6x512G SSDs, unmetered 1Gbit/s public and 2,5Gbit/s internal for over half a year for a combined $150 total, in complete privacy and in full control of my hosts.. go dedicated, people.

The consumer Skylakes are not even in the same league as what we're announcing today. The easiest analogy is comparing a laptop to a beefy two-socket server. Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (and of course want you to pay us to use Skylake)

Well, we're talking Xeon E5. I frankly don't care if your stuff is 20% faster because I would pay at least 5 times the amount I do now on GCE and the hosts are not under my control. I could get 8 more cores for the price of one of your cores.

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

#102

Post by gkop »

zbjornson wrote: post #94
phonon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS has a better compliance story. Compare https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/ to https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance

As far as HIPAA compliance goes, though, AWS EC2 requires dedicated tenancy, whereas GCE allows HIPAA workloads on any VM, including preemptible VMs.

This is true, however Amazon's standard BAA is a bit more robust than Google's. This didn't stop my HIPAA-compliant company from choosing Google, but it does make it more difficult to compare the two clouds on HIPAA-friendliness.

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

#103

Post by clhodapp »

bonzini wrote: post #82
codinghorror wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purley is the big Skylake based server platform chipset reset for Xeon E5 and higher so Google must have early access to it. Skylake Xeon E3 is on the current older server chipsets.. Purley is supposed to be a significant improvement.

E3 is not a server SKU, it's meant for workstations and it's more similar to i7 than E5. It lacks various features including ECC RAM which, I suppose, is a no-starter for cloud hosting. Also some virtualization capabilities are missing, notably accelerated interrupt injection (APICv+posted interrupts).

I believe that the ability to use ECC RAM is actually the main differentiator between i7 and E3.

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

#104

Post by puzzle »

mtanski wrote: post #34
Cyph0n wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, that list is far from exhaustive. Years and years ago, Google's websearch cluster validation suite found a tricky bug that isn't on that list. The exchange with the CPU manufacturer was amusing.

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

#106

Post by boulos »

rattray wrote: post #89
heh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, that's not the only good stuff on GCE: * Instances have sustained use discounts - you don't need to pay in advance and reserve them and the discounts are applied very, very fairly. * Pre-emptable instances are cheap as all hell, and they are perfect for batchwork, celery workers, etc (anything disposable). You don't have to bid for them so automation is easier. * Up to 2 Gbits/second/core, depending on your wor…

Heh, I know you don't want to talk about Azure, but perhaps others can share -- what's so bad about it? It's superior for running Windows at least, right?

I don't want to fork the thread to discuss other providers (take a look at GitLab's experience on Azure if you'd like), but I will say that we support Windows Server, SQL Server, .NET, and Powershell throughout GCP [1].

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (so I want to sell you our services).

[1] https://cloud.google.com/windows/

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

#107

Post by youdontknowtho »

Did Intel actually enable the TSX extensions in Skylake? If I'm not mistaken, they shipped it in the last couple of generations but disabled it after release. (Something like that?)

It's something that I've wanted to play with for sometime. It's cool that GCE has them available as a service.

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

#108

Post by boulos »

gcp wrote: post #105

Whenever I want to try GCP, during signup I get stuck at "Account type Business" and the need to enter a VAT number. It hints there's Individual Accounts, but I see no way how to set it to that?

The issue is VAT in each country in the EU (which I assume you're based in). We don't (currently) collect VAT, but as businesses are required to represent that they'll pay it in their home countries, we can allow you to use it as a business. It pains me (and others) deeply that we "block" individuals like this, but that's how it is today.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

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

#109

Post by vgt »

phonon wrote: post #63
rattray wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's persuasive... is the only reason people are choosing AWS the sheer number of products they provide? (eg; Postgres RDS & Aurora)

AWS has a better compliance story. Compare https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/ to https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance

I know security is not compliance, and I'm not here to compare the two, but Google goes to great lengths to protect security. [0]

TL;DR:

- Google's global SDN is ultra-secure, and Google carries your packets on its network rather than dumping them onto public web. Google's undersea cables are shark bite-proof! [1]

- Google Data Centers are mostly homogeneous and rely on Google-build hardware rather than vendors. This greatly helps with securing infra - only one vendor (Google) to trust, only one set of best practices to follow, lower risk of misconfiguration, and exposure risk is minimal.

- > 600 security engineers.

- Encryption-at-rest and in-transit is ubiquitous.

[0] https://cloud.google.com/security/whitepaper

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMxkRh7sx84

(work on Google Cloud, not in marketing :) )

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

#110

Post by heh »

rattray wrote: post #89
heh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, that's not the only good stuff on GCE: * Instances have sustained use discounts - you don't need to pay in advance and reserve them and the discounts are applied very, very fairly. * Pre-emptable instances are cheap as all hell, and they are perfect for batchwork, celery workers, etc (anything disposable). You don't have to bid for them so automation is easier. * Up to 2 Gbits/second/core, depending on your wor…

Heh, I know you don't want to talk about Azure, but perhaps others can share -- what's so bad about it? It's superior for running Windows at least, right?

> "Heh, I know you don't want to talk about Azure, but perhaps others can share -- what's so bad about it?" This is what I will say:

I'm working on a migration to it, so I'm not very experienced with it, but so far, it's been very painful compared to GCE or AWS, in which I've run production stacks. I'd rather not comment further, simply due to my relative new-ness to the service and the chance that it's just lack of experience. The customer service is, at best, run at a glacial pace.

> "It's superior for running Windows at least, right?"

I'm a Linux guy running a platform agnostic Linux stack, but I'd assume so. I get the feeling so far that it's really good if you want to run MS-SQL and .net, and garbage otherwise.

The only reason we're migrating from GCE to Azure is because our GCE credits are expiring, and Microsoft gave us the YC Credits offer for Azure. We'd rather stay on GCE if we could. Also, postgres RDS/CloudSQL is the one thing we miss from AWS

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