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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

#111

Post by jcims »

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

AWS did a lot of work to improve how they share compliance information over the past year. It wasn't much better than Google's reference before that. Azure beats both of them in my opinion, as you can access many of the raw compliance reports without an NDA.

It's also important to pay attention to which services you consume, as not all of them are certified to the same degree.

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

#112

Post by mike_hearn »

bonzini wrote: post #78
en4bz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

But I'd be interested to know if there are any plans to do so. Google Cloud people reading this - are you there?

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

#113

Post by gcp »

boulos wrote: post #108
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.

That is a weird restriction given that I can buy from the Play Store, etc. But thanks for your response.

Back to AWS it is.

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

#114

Post by ssambros »

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?

I think if you are trying to create a trial account while being logged in into your personal Google account, it should give you that option.

disclaimer: personal opinion. I work at Google but not related to this area.

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

#115

Post by mikecb »

gkop wrote: post #102
zbjornson wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's been a lot of talk in the compliance gcp slack on this, seems like a lot of products are being audited and announcements will be made at Next.

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

#116

Post by flamedoge »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #107

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.

mobile chips have them disabled I believe

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

#117

Post by gkop »

mikecb wrote: post #115
gkop wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's been a lot of talk in the compliance gcp slack on this, seems like a lot of products are being audited and announcements will be made at Next.

Let's hope they are building the managed Postgres product from the ground up with an eye toward compliance!

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

#118

Post by gcp »

ssambros wrote: post #114
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?

I think if you are trying to create a trial account while being logged in into your personal Google account, it should give you that option. disclaimer: personal opinion. I work at Google but not related to this area.

This is what I tried (logged in via private browsing window), but no luck.

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

#120

Post by jdf »

boulos wrote: post #73
zbjornson wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Not asking you to reveal any internal plans, but do you think there's any chance that some form of KNL could show up on GCP in the near future?

FWIW we're currently using GCP, generally love it, and I'm looking forward to trying out Skylake...

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