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Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

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Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#21

Post by tonysdg »

I've run experiments/developed on both Applied Micro's X-Gene 1 and Cavium's ThunderX (the original). Both of these have been touted as "ARM servers".

The X-Gene was complete crap in terms of both performance and power consumption. The ThunderX was only really useful for highly-parallel applications that don't require a lot of horsepower, and even then it's a power hog.

I'm cautiously optimistic with Qualcomm's Centriq and Cavium's ThunderX2, but unless they can make a compelling argument in terms of power consumption, I'm skeptical of them making any inroads into the market. Sure, Intel Xeons and IBM Power8s may suck power, but they're _damn_ fast, so you can execute your workloads quickly and then just shut the machine down or enter idle power states.

Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#22

Post by hawski »

Cyberdog wrote: post #11
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The iMac Pro will have an ARM co-processor: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/19/imac-pro-a10-chip-hey-s... . - Arguably for "Hey Siri" and other mobile-inspired functionality, but wouldn't it be interesting if it were also an ARM-on-the-desktop beachhead? The current MBP already has ARM: https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/apples-new-intel-driven-ma... But this is similar to ARM (or MIPS or whatever) cores that alre…

I care about performance in my phone too, so where can I buy an Intel phone? The truth is that my phone doesn't have to be the fastest; it just has to be fast enough in balance with other factors important to me (size, battery life, etc). And the same goes with my laptop. I currently have an MBP with an i7 processor, and I'm a web developer - it's overkill. I also play games with it now and then, but it's clear that…

Why you bought a laptop with an i7 then in the first place? There are already more energy efficient alternatives - i5, i3, core m.

I have a theory that probably when Apple will release a laptop with their own SoC it will be more expensive...

Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#23

Post by hawski »

pm90 wrote: post #16
Cyberdog wrote: post #3

Yesterday: ARM in your phones Today: ARM in your toys (RasPI, Nintendo Switch) Tomorrow: ARM in your servers Next week: ARM in your desktop/laptop? The iMac Pro will have an ARM co-processor: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/19/imac-pro-a10-chip-hey-s... - Arguably for "Hey Siri" and other mobile-inspired functionality, but wouldn't it be interesting if it were also an ARM-on-the-desktop beachhead? I, for one, welco…

I'm very happy about this development as well. Especially looking at Intel's fiasco with ME... I just don't trust proprietary chip makers anymore. And yes, I am willing to trade in performance, for more security. My MacBook should be every bit as power conserving as my iPhone, perhaps with a GPU for multi screen and playing videos.

Who will make the SoC if not the proprietary chip maker? ARM does not make this thing better.

Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#24

Post by hawski »

nine_k wrote: post #14
Cyberdog wrote: post #3

Yesterday: ARM in your phones Today: ARM in your toys (RasPI, Nintendo Switch) Tomorrow: ARM in your servers Next week: ARM in your desktop/laptop? The iMac Pro will have an ARM co-processor: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/19/imac-pro-a10-chip-hey-s... - Arguably for "Hey Siri" and other mobile-inspired functionality, but wouldn't it be interesting if it were also an ARM-on-the-desktop beachhead? I, for one, welco…

Finally, a chance to have a desktop CPU without a black-box coprocessor like Intel ME? (A quick web search did not find anything definitive about its presence / absence in Cavium.)

Every ARM SoC is already a black-box containing black-boxes. That's one of the reasons why almost all SoCs are on some ancient version of Linux kernel. They will never be mainlined.

Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#25

Post by melling »

nine_k wrote: post #17
melling wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM has been in Chromebooks for a while. 90% of the desktop has been Microsoft Windows for about 2 decades so it's really up to Microsoft to try again. Ideally, Android and iOS will evolve so phones and tablets replace the desktop for more people.

ChromeOS is already capable of running Android apps. What makes a laptop a laptop is a decent keyboard and a reasonably large screen. There is a fundamental mismatch between the screen size comfortable for the eyes, keyboard size comfortable for typing, and device size comfortable for holding in hand. Because of this, I don't think phones and laptops will ever converge; tablets and laptops are already actively conver…

So, you simply need to add an optional large screen, keyboard, and mouse to your phone. It has already been done. Now it just needs to be done a little better?

https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/dex/

Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#26

Post by philipkglass »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #8
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The iMac Pro will have an ARM co-processor: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/19/imac-pro-a10-chip-hey-s... . - Arguably for "Hey Siri" and other mobile-inspired functionality, but wouldn't it be interesting if it were also an ARM-on-the-desktop beachhead? The current MBP already has ARM: https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/apples-new-intel-driven-ma... But this is similar to ARM (or MIPS or whatever) cores that alre…

"Intel maintains the pure-performance lead everywhere else" The point of the article is that ThunderX is claimed to be faster than Xeon Gold for HPC applications.

I see one HPC application where ThunderX 30% is faster (TeaLeaf). For the others shown, it's neck-and-neck with the Xeon. Reaching parity with Xeon is admittedly impressive even on this subset of applications, but it doesn't look consistently faster based on the information presented. I'm personally interested in how this system stacks up for quantum chemistry (GAMESS, NWChem, PySCF, Psi4...) and I hope that more benchmarks will become available soon.

Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#27

Post by hawski »

Cyberdog wrote: post #3

Yesterday: ARM in your phones Today: ARM in your toys (RasPI, Nintendo Switch) Tomorrow: ARM in your servers Next week: ARM in your desktop/laptop? The iMac Pro will have an ARM co-processor: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/19/imac-pro-a10-chip-hey-s... - Arguably for "Hey Siri" and other mobile-inspired functionality, but wouldn't it be interesting if it were also an ARM-on-the-desktop beachhead? I, for one, welco…

Next week + 1 day: your laptop is no longer supported

Which ARM SoC has mainlined drivers in Linux kernel? I fear that the ARM trend will only help to make the the e-waste mountain higher.

Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#28

Post by Cyberdog »

hawski wrote: post #22
Cyberdog wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care about performance in my phone too, so where can I buy an Intel phone? The truth is that my phone doesn't have to be the fastest; it just has to be fast enough in balance with other factors important to me (size, battery life, etc). And the same goes with my laptop. I currently have an MBP with an i7 processor, and I'm a web developer - it's overkill. I also play games with it now and then, but it's clear that…

Why you bought a laptop with an i7 then in the first place? There are already more energy efficient alternatives - i5, i3, core m. I have a theory that probably when Apple will release a laptop with their own SoC it will be more expensive...

Because it checked the other boxes I was looking for with regards to screen size, memory, and so on.

Perhaps an A-series laptop would be more expensive for consumers (damn it, Apple), but I don't think it would cost more for Apple to manufacture, since they can do so much more of it in house.

Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#29

Post by pm90 »

hawski wrote: post #23
pm90 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very happy about this development as well. Especially looking at Intel's fiasco with ME... I just don't trust proprietary chip makers anymore. And yes, I am willing to trade in performance, for more security. My MacBook should be every bit as power conserving as my iPhone, perhaps with a GPU for multi screen and playing videos.

Who will make the SoC if not the proprietary chip maker? ARM does not make this thing better.

I guess my point is that the market would punish anyone for being foolish enough to do that in the form of competitors without egregious backdoors. Whereas with Intel... it is hard if not impossible to design/make competitors (AMD being possibly the sole exception)

Re: Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender

#30

Post by aseipp »

hawski wrote: post #27
Cyberdog wrote: post #3

Yesterday: ARM in your phones Today: ARM in your toys (RasPI, Nintendo Switch) Tomorrow: ARM in your servers Next week: ARM in your desktop/laptop? The iMac Pro will have an ARM co-processor: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/19/imac-pro-a10-chip-hey-s... - Arguably for "Hey Siri" and other mobile-inspired functionality, but wouldn't it be interesting if it were also an ARM-on-the-desktop beachhead? I, for one, welco…

Next week + 1 day: your laptop is no longer supported Which ARM SoC has mainlined drivers in Linux kernel? I fear that the ARM trend will only help to make the the e-waste mountain higher.

ARM64, at least, is moving towards UEFI/ACPI for booting/peripheral support, so ideally a lot of things will "just work" once people are shipping mobos/silicon with it enabled (and they already are).

That said it's unclear what the volume on those parts will be once higher-grade CPUs come out, which will impact pricing/availability. And newer parts are going to be necessary for competitive performance/power. If the only place you can get a 14nm Thunder X2 is some high-end SuperMicro workstation, it'll be somewhat limiting in the end, anyway. (You can buy a Thunder X1 prebuilt desktop on the order of $1500 USD right now, at least.)

ARMv7 of course is a different bag of worms; Mali tends to ruin everything. But if you can avoid it, a lot of systems can get by with upstream U-Boot and upstream Linux... You can even get some cheap Asus chromebook laptops that can run libreboot and upstream everything (including WiFi if you buy a dongle.)

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