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Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

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Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#81

Post by rleigh »

RandomOpinion wrote: post #71
rleigh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short. If you look at e.g. Linux or BSD distributions, the entire world is rebuilt for every architecture. Running Linux on powerpc, arm, amd64, I get the exact same experience across the board as x86 bar platform-specific bits like openfirmware/efi tools. Microsoft has never done this. The vast majority of their stuff remains x86 only, making arm and e…

> Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short. " Microsoft will continue to provide mainstream support for Itanium-based systems until July 2013, and extended support until July 2018. " -- http://www.computerworld.com/article/2516742/computer-hardwa... Itanium came out in 2001 and the above article is from 2010, so that would be about 9 years of product releases and 17 years of support over…

I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only.

When you say "there's no money to be made...so Micosoft has no reason to bother", this attitude is a major reason why ia64 failed, and why their previous arm attempt failed, and why their current arm attempt is also likely to fail. If the software isn't there, it's a poor proposition for most customers.

When I run Linux on ia64 or arm, I have an entire distribution's worth of software at my fingertips, and for the most part I'm not losing out compared with more popular architectures. With Windows, no matter how technically good the base platform may be, the ecosystem is a wasteland and will remain so until Microsoft put the effort in to support them properly.

Supporting multiple platforms is not expensive; it's simply a matter of having the build infrastructure in place. In Debian we had it build every package automatically built on 11 platforms. Microsoft could do the same for their applications. For example, see https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=okular&suite=... -- one package built for 22 platforms. Building for three or four is not a lot to ask...

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#82

Post by gravypod »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #70
hatsunearu wrote: post #57

Why though? ARM server chips haven't beat Intel just yet.

Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc. So depending on your workload, a 96 core 1U is going to save you a lot of U's and power. No idea how Windows Server and Azure services fall into this. Maybe they want to dump specialized tasks onto ARM instead of ch…

I cannot wait for ThumbEE to make it into the "main stream" ARM server market. Think about the huge speed boosts we could see?

I don't know why Oracle/Python/Microsoft aren't pushing this harder. Having your JIT-ed code running directly on the CPU? What could be better then that?

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#83

Post by stcredzero »

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #72
tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They introduced ARM to manage their fingerprint sensor and the TouchBar. Rumors had it that Apple is working on connecting the ARM chip to more subsystems so it can do background work like background refresh (or what that feature is called when the laptop is in sleep – PowerNap?). I see this as Apple slowly creating a hybrid (low energy ARM for easy tasks and faster x86 for speed). Maybe the goal is a complete transi…

I've been waiting for something like ever since I first got a Raspberry Pi. Keep the x86 CPU around for active, high powered use, and then use a low power ARM CPU to run downloads and software updates while the PC is in an off or idle state.

What about number crunching on the GPU?

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#84

Post by gravypod »

gonzo wrote: post #78
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc. So depending on your workload, a 96 core 1U is going to save you a lot of U's and power. No idea how Windows Server and Azure services fall into this. Maybe they want to dump specialized tasks onto ARM instead of ch…

> Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc. True, but that 96 core 1U server is going to bear a high price, and Intel CPUs also have instructions to accelerate AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

> 96 core 1U server is going to bear a high price

The server market only cares about price/watt and size. 1U is very small for such a parallel system, no need to write your code for Phis or anything like that, and low power in comparison to Intel.

Win, win, and win.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#85

Post by RandomOpinion »

rleigh wrote: post #81
RandomOpinion wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short. " Microsoft will continue to provide mainstream support for Itanium-based systems until July 2013, and extended support until July 2018. " -- http://www.computerworld.com/article/2516742/computer-hardwa... Itanium came out in 2001 and the above article is from 2010, so that would be about 9 years of product releases and 17 years of support over…

I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only. When you say "there's no money to be made...so Micosoft has no reason to bother", this attitude is a major reason why ia64 failed, and why their previous arm attempt failed, and why their current arm attempt is also likely to fail…

> I'm not referring to that type of support; this is merely support for the base platform. I'm referring to the entire ecosystem of Microsoft products, of which you'll find most are x86 only.

Windows Server comes with IIS and other services that would normally have been provided in a Linux environment by the Linux ecosystem. Also, as the article notes, SQL Server and Visual Studio were supported on Itanium as well.

As Itanium only succeeded as a server product, there's no business reason for Microsoft to have ported their desktop applications to it.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#86

Post by ClassyJacket »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #58
hollerith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung and Qualcomm aren't big proponents of ARM?

They're quite far behind Apple when it comes to perf. Aren't Apple's ARM chips in their iPad pro competitive with lower end modern x86_64 chips?

Yep, their best iPhone chip can out benchmark the 2015 Macbook or roughly equal the 2013 Macbook Pro.

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2016/09/15...

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#87

Post by drzaiusapelord »

gonzo wrote: post #78
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc. So depending on your workload, a 96 core 1U is going to save you a lot of U's and power. No idea how Windows Server and Azure services fall into this. Maybe they want to dump specialized tasks onto ARM instead of ch…

> Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc. True, but that 96 core 1U server is going to bear a high price, and Intel CPUs also have instructions to accelerate AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

You can pick up this 96 core server right now for $4,000. $4,000 is nothing in the world of DC servers.

https://www.avantek.co.uk/store/arm-servers.html

The 'big dog' avantek sells right now seems to be this 384 core 2U solution at around $15,000.

https://www.avantek.co.uk/store/avantek-384-core-cavium-thun...

These are very cheap pieces of hardware. Price up a HP Proliant with multiple 8 core Xenons and see how crazy that pricing gets, not to mention the power usage. Pricing is good right now for ARM. The question is does ARM work for what you're computing? According to this article, ARM is probably best for high thoroughput and high RAM solutions, not necessarily number crunching:

https://www.servethehome.com/exclusive-first-cavium-thunderx...

Mind you, those dual Xenons its competing against go for anywhere between $7,000 to $3,000 each. That's just the CPU street price before the HP/Dell markup and, of course, the rest of the server. Ask a VAR what a dual or quad E5-2699 v3 or current v4's goes for. You're probably looking at a $25,000 to maybe even $50,000 box here.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#88

Post by loeg »

pm90 wrote: post #55
mtgx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. They've been working together for a few years to do this. Qualcomm even based its motherboard design off of Microsoft's Project Olympus. > QDT has been working with Microsoft for several years on ARM-based server enablement and has onsite engineering at Microsoft to collaboratively optimize a version of Windows Server, for Microsoft’s internal use in its data centers, on Qualcomm Centriq 2400-based systems…

Why doesn't apple move macbooks to ARM processors?

They're far too wimpy today.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#89

Post by flamedoge »

rbanffy wrote: post #20
mtgx wrote: post #19

Payback time? https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-off... Okay, obviously this partnership started years back, but it's nice to see that not everyone is willing to encourage Intel's monopoly, as Google often does (in Chromebooks, too, even though Intel's chips are virtually unnecessary there). Although, to be fair, the "Wintel" name didn't come out of nowhere. Microsoft obviously played its part i…

Microsoft tried as much as it could to avoid being locked into Intel. They built Windows NT to be multi-platform and, at a given time, it ran on MIPS, PPC, Alpha and a later version on Itanium. Intel has been much more dependent on Microsoft's monopoly than the contrary.

So they translating asm to C?

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#90

Post by cat199 »

gravypod wrote: post #82
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc. So depending on your workload, a 96 core 1U is going to save you a lot of U's and power. No idea how Windows Server and Azure services fall into this. Maybe they want to dump specialized tasks onto ARM instead of ch…

I cannot wait for ThumbEE to make it into the "main stream" ARM server market. Think about the huge speed boosts we could see? I don't know why Oracle/Python/Microsoft aren't pushing this harder. Having your JIT-ed code running directly on the CPU? What could be better then that?

Not an expert, since your statement triggered a goog .. but :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Thumb_Executi...

Says:

"On 23 November 2011, ARM Holdings deprecated any use of the ThumbEE instruction set,[77] and ARMv8 removes support for ThumbEE."

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