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Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

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Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#61

Post by classichasclass »

philipkglass wrote: post #55
berkut wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For well-optimised floating point calculations, this is generally true (even taking into account the SMT capabilities of Power8). Intel also has 8-wide (and more) SIMD in terms of intrinsics (AVX/AVX512), whilst Power is still limited to 4-wide with AltiVec, although with Power9 VSX should allow wider (I think). Where Power8/9 really shines is memory bandwidth - it's orders of magnitude faster than leading edge Intel…

Where Power8/9 really shines is memory bandwidth - it's orders of magnitude faster than leading edge Intel stuff currently. But if you're not memory constrained, Intel machines can still have a bit of an edge. That makes Power sound very appealing. I've never met a real life scientific simulation that wasn't often constrained by memory bandwidth. I'm sure they exist, but they aren't all that plentiful. I'd love to tr…

gcc is perfectly cromulent on Power (speaking from experience with my own PowerPC and POWER6 systems, and when I had time on one of Raptor's POWER8 systems). The speed differential between that and IBM xlc is pretty small IME nowadays, too.

I'm more hesitant to say the same about clang/llvm but it's been awhile and I'm probably not current.

Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#62

Post by rbanffy »

marshray wrote: post #32
kev009 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not any worse than the past decade of arm server "promise" Bootstrapping an alt arch is hard, it really needs a loss leader OR a significant performance delta (which they now have with accelerator workloads). Google deploying it in prod is a major milestone and will help with volume and confidence. Supermicro has a P8 and P9 line. It is price competitive with x86. If you are interested, send their sales a note.

But it is worse. Over 12 million Ras Pis have been sold, I see them just lying around on developer's desks all the time. I don't think I've ever even seen a bootable Power system.

I have a couple RS/6000's in storage...

But yes... Vintage computing doesn't count.

Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#63

Post by rbanffy »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #34
marshray wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM will never understand this but few, if any, architectures have made it into the datacenter that were not first affordable for experimenters and enthusiasts. The burden of proof is on those claiming the pricing does not present a barrier to entry to the ecosystem. I am curious about developing for Power. Please link me to an entry-level system I can buy on the web.

Well there are some counter examples, network switches, fiber channel, and Infiniband come to mind. And of course IBM "invented" the data center by defining environmental requirements for their machines in the 50's and 60's. Setting that aside though, its true that easy experimental access can allow a technology to "sneak in" to a market that previously ignored it, but that isn't really the case here. (nor was it the…

This is an excellent way to cater to the legacy app market, but not a very good way to ride the next wave.

The next wave is probably running on commodity x86 hardware running Linux and using gamer-grade GPUs. They'll probably be first deployed to production on x86 virtual hardware in a cloud provider.

If you want companies to adopt your technology, make their developers adopt it first. That's how most of the current enterprise DevOps tools happened.

Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#64

Post by walrus01 »

I will believe it when I can pull out my visa card, go to some online stores (such as those that resell Supermicro, Tyan, MSI, Quanta, etc), buy a Power9 capable ATX motherboard from one of the top-ten taiwanese motherboard manufacturers for $350, put a $300 CPU in it, $300 to $400 of RAM and build a 1U server with it. Until that happens it will not get into the hands of enough developers/sysadmin/devops/engineers to matter.

Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#65

Post by rbanffy »

marshray wrote: post #59
aidenn0 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SPARC?

Entry level workstations were readily available and all over universities.

It's worth noting that even entry-level machines were quite expensive compared to midrange PCs and were more or less in the same price range as high-end machines.

If, however, IBM can get me a 32GB single-core/8-thread POWER9 machine for the same price Lenovo can give me a performance-equivalent 4-core/4-tread Xeon, I'll be tempted. Worst case scenario, I'll still run my x86 workloads on my trusty Lenovo and use the POWER9 as a nice X terminal.

Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#66

Post by Quequau »

dragontamer wrote: post #52
slededit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cores are not directly comparable. The Power chip has significantly more hyper threads (and the resources to back them).

For those not in the know: Each Power9 is consisting of either 2-super slices or 4-super slices, depending on which Power9 you get. (Corresponding to 4x SMT or 8x SMT respectively). Threadripper has 4x integer pipelines, 4x floating point pipelines, and 2x load/store units (called AGUs by AMD) and supports 2-threads (aka: 2x SMT). So Threadripper definitely is "broad", but Power9 is "broader". The 8x SMT Power9 can p…

The last presentation on Power at Hotchips left me with the impression that "Core" in IBM terms is 9/10ths marketing speak and whatever Power might have that their engineers might think of as "cores" probably has little to do with what their marketing people are telling their customers and software vendors who do their licensing "per core".

Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#67

Post by classichasclass »

marshray wrote: post #60
classichasclass wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than the one in my house, you mean?

Have I been to your house?!

Does that mean it doesn't boot?

I will concede one point: it was not easy to purchase. I prefer to host my personal site on Power hardware; I started with AIX in the 3.2.5 days and I ran Floodgap on an Apple Network Server 500 for the better part of 14 years. I wanted to get a POWER7 to replace it in 2010, I budgeted $15k for it, and IBM wouldn't take my money. I couldn't find _any_ IBM VAR who would do an end-user sale because I wasn't going to buy the service contract.

Eventually I found a reseller who was more than happy to take $10K of my budget for a decent 2-year-old POWER6. It had a backplane burp a couple years ago but otherwise has been pretty damn spiffy.

I'll concede IBM has to do a lot more to get these systems into people's hands to achieve a critical mass and it certainly wouldn't hurt to make them cheaper up to a point, but the systems are out there, and you can get them (and find them).

As a postscript, in my current job (a large local government agency) I was in the CIO's office one day and the regional IBM salesdroid dropped by. Just to needle him I told him this story and he gave me his card and told him to call him with any parts requests, any time. I still buy from the reseller, though. They've earned my personal business.

Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#68

Post by flamedoge »

berkut wrote: post #48
kev009 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AVX512 will severely clock throttle an intel chip. I only want to see real world tests on a workload when comparing the two.

Yes, but even when throttled, it can often be faster than full-clock less wide instructions, if your workload allows for it. So it's sometimes worth it and there is a benefit.

It's power throttled by design. I don't think it's heat throttled. I'm sure Intel could push for higher power or optimize power to allow full bandwidth performance, perhaps there isn't a strong demand for sustained, full-width vector execution, yet.

Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#69

Post by walrus01 »

rbanffy wrote: post #58
Twirrim wrote: post #13

One thing I think IBM has failed to grasp about POWER architecture is how to get people to use it. Lots of people in tech talk about being interested in trying it, it has a number of interesting characteristics, but the barrier for entry is fairly high. It's possible to get a POWER8 based server on Softlayer, IBM's cloud product, but not as a VM. You can get one as a bare metal server, but you can't get one for an ho…

This. A million times this. There are no entry-level POWER machines, SPARC machines. There is no entry-level IBM i or Z. There isn't even a software emulator for i (and even for Z, where there is a very nice emulator, you can't legally run anything remotely current on non-IBM hardware). You can get a cheap POWER or SPARC on Ebay, with a sharp price drop when the equipment is EOL'ed, but that's no way to entice people…

Seconding what you just said, and another thing is that the cost barrier to entry to developing x86-64 software on a very current Linux platform is almost zero. If you are a curious 15 year old who wants to learn Linux stuff you can get an older Core 2 Duo desktop PC for free, or almost free ($20) from a number of recycling places and install the latest debian-testing AMD64 on it. Put it on your home LAN, ssh into it, and start doing whatever you want.

I know of companies that regularly throw away second generation core i5 dual and quad core systems with 8GB of RAM.

The same software you develop on your $20 headless desktop PC can be easily moved over onto a $15/month KVM virtual machine somewhere in hosting. Or onto a used $250 1U server that you can pay to colocate somewhere for $65-100/month with bandwidth. All x86-64 platform.

The massive, massive economies of scale for x86-64 platform stuff are going to be very hard to get people to move away from unless there is an amazingly compelling reason. The ability to cannibalize random recycled computers to make one working computer out of "free" parts is a big thing for the developing world.

Re: Power 9 May Dent X86 Servers: Alibaba, Google, Tencent Test IBM Systems

#70

Post by jiqiren »

bluedino wrote: post #11

I can see China running with ARM and POWER, ditching Intel entirely. Google, on the other hand would need a reason to switch. Somewhere there's a spreadsheet with a number for energy cost savings that would make it worth it for Google to switch architectures. I've heard it's as low as 10%.

> Somewhere there's a spreadsheet with a number for energy cost savings that would make it worth it for Google

of all places you think Google does this kind of cost-analysis in a spreadsheet?

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