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The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

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Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#21

Post by rbanffy »

LIV2 wrote: post #3
metaphor wrote: post #2

First impression was single onboard VGA output and DE-9 serial port...typical enterprise. Second impression was damn does that first socket look like a peripheral hog. EDIT: Removed remark that erroneously referenced this comment[1] as a 2U chassis being applicable to the motherboard in question. [1] https://www.anandtech.com/comments/15783/the-supermicro-h11d...

The VGA output would be part of the IPMI solution for remote management, serial would be for out of band management too. Both are useful if you don't want to drive to the datacenter

For a very long time I joked that no self-respecting server had a VGA, keyboard or mouse ports. Serious metal should have serial ports for the operator console.

That didn't age too well...

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#22

Post by rcxdude »

rbanffy wrote: post #20
posix_me_less wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same processors should be used, I would be surprised if different one would work together. The processor model has to support two socket operation, those are more expensive. Speedup happens only if the running system benefits from more cores. The expected speedup is Gaming builds usually cannot take advantage of so many cores. Even if the machine is running the game and streaming, single 6-core or 8-core processo…

> The same processors should be used This is an interesting thing. I should be possible to be smarter about different timings. ARM has very mature asymmetric core support for quite some time now. Intel will soon launch their own in the mobile space. > Gaming builds usually cannot take advantage of so many cores Indeed. Games have long been limited in their support for multiple cores. It's a bit surprising because con…

It's mostly that the kind of CPU work games are doing is quite hard to parallelise (physics simulations, NPC 'AI', loading and decompressing model data). It's a lot of fairly complex code and getting a synchronisation strategy which actually produces speedup is hard. And when it is done it's usually still limited to e.g. 1 thread doing physics, 1-2 threads doing rendering (it took a while for graphics APIs to support any kind of multi-threaded rendering), etc so it only scales to 3-4 cores max (and there are games which do this, so core count is not completely irrelevant).

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#23

Post by raphaelj »

rcxdude wrote: post #22
rbanffy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same processors should be used This is an interesting thing. I should be possible to be smarter about different timings. ARM has very mature asymmetric core support for quite some time now. Intel will soon launch their own in the mobile space. > Gaming builds usually cannot take advantage of so many cores Indeed. Games have long been limited in their support for multiple cores. It's a bit surprising because con…

It's mostly that the kind of CPU work games are doing is quite hard to parallelise (physics simulations, NPC 'AI', loading and decompressing model data). It's a lot of fairly complex code and getting a synchronisation strategy which actually produces speedup is hard. And when it is done it's usually still limited to e.g. 1 thread doing physics, 1-2 threads doing rendering (it took a while for graphics APIs to support…

Could it explain why we are seeing more improvements in rendering quality compared to physics and AI?

As you said, AI and physics are inherently not really parallelizable while rendering is. AI and physics from the Athlon 64/Pentium 4 era (e.g. Half-Life 2, Crysis) are similar to what we get now, while visual quality greatly improved (better textures, more detailed objects, longer visibility range).

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#24

Post by wtallis »

chx wrote: post #10

Anandtech. I called this guy out on Twitter eventually challenging him to show me any article (in this PC area) of theirs and I will find mistakes. I offered my editorial services for one dollar. I've been, long ago, one of the editors of the largest computer monthly in Hungary and was on the editorial board. This wouldn't have been my first rodeo. In this particular article there's not a lot of technical explanation…

> I called this guy out on Twitter eventually challenging him to show me any article (in this PC area) of theirs and I will find mistakes. I offered my editorial services for one dollar. I've been, long ago, one of the editors of the largest computer monthly in Hungary and was on the editorial board. This wouldn't have been my first rodeo.

Do you honestly think anyone would hire you with an approach like that? You'd have to pay people to put up with that attitude.

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#25

Post by rcxdude »

raphaelj wrote: post #23
rcxdude wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly that the kind of CPU work games are doing is quite hard to parallelise (physics simulations, NPC 'AI', loading and decompressing model data). It's a lot of fairly complex code and getting a synchronisation strategy which actually produces speedup is hard. And when it is done it's usually still limited to e.g. 1 thread doing physics, 1-2 threads doing rendering (it took a while for graphics APIs to support…

Could it explain why we are seeing more improvements in rendering quality compared to physics and AI? As you said, AI and physics are inherently not really parallelizable while rendering is. AI and physics from the Athlon 64/Pentium 4 era (e.g. Half-Life 2, Crysis) are similar to what we get now, while visual quality greatly improved (better textures, more detailed objects, longer visibility range).

I think for AI the core reason is more sophisticated AI isn't particularly great from a game design POV. In a game, predictability is key, both because a) it allows the game designers to actually change the AI behaviour to balance it and be able to incorporate it into their game design, and b) if the players can't predict the AI they can't plan around it, and the ability to make a plan around a game's systems and try to execute it is a key part of non-frustrating gameplay in most games. The more state-of-the-art AI systems tend to become less predictable and for the most part that makes the games less fun.

In terms of physics usually the issue is if you have a rich physics envrionment it gets more fragile: it's easier for players to break it, intentionally or unintentionally. I've played some games with physics systems far in advance in terms of number of objects than could be achieved previously and they are all pretty much just 'buggy', not necessarily in terms of coding quality, just in terms of how rigid body physics is really prone to creating edge cases which create massive forces, velocities, and/or accelerations from apparently benign arrangements of objects.

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#26

Post by jnwatson »

nullc wrote: post #17

I have this board with 7742s. I like it generally, though most of my affection is due to the CPUs. I wish it had PCI-E 4. I've found it to be unreliable with memory running faster than 2933MHz but that might be the memory I was using. When I did have memory corruption problems running at higher memory speeds I didn't get a single ECC error, which I found surprising and concerning. I also had issues with Kernel 5.4 no…

"When I did have memory corruption problems running at higher memory speeds I didn't get a single ECC error, which I found surprising and concerning."

How is this possible?

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#27

Post by chx »

wtallis wrote: post #24
chx wrote: post #10

Anandtech. I called this guy out on Twitter eventually challenging him to show me any article (in this PC area) of theirs and I will find mistakes. I offered my editorial services for one dollar. I've been, long ago, one of the editors of the largest computer monthly in Hungary and was on the editorial board. This wouldn't have been my first rodeo. In this particular article there's not a lot of technical explanation…

> I called this guy out on Twitter eventually challenging him to show me any article (in this PC area) of theirs and I will find mistakes. I offered my editorial services for one dollar. I've been, long ago, one of the editors of the largest computer monthly in Hungary and was on the editorial board. This wouldn't have been my first rodeo. Do you honestly think anyone would hire you with an approach like that? You'd…

Sigh. People missed the word "eventually". The discussion was more pleasant. I have pointed out some mistake in an article politely and offered to help. He was quite adamant they need no help and was, in fact, quite arrogant and that's when I told him that a) everyone knows Anandtech is sloppy, actually linking a HN comment form a few months back b) I challenged him to show me anything that I can't find a mistake in.

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#28

Post by mshook »

rbanffy wrote: post #21
LIV2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VGA output would be part of the IPMI solution for remote management, serial would be for out of band management too. Both are useful if you don't want to drive to the datacenter

For a very long time I joked that no self-respecting server had a VGA, keyboard or mouse ports. Serious metal should have serial ports for the operator console. That didn't age too well...

Well technically you can often ssh to the BMC and connect to the OS through an emulated serial link...

Serial port is awesome to me just because you can copy/paste...

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#29

Post by steerablesafe »

raphaelj wrote: post #23
rcxdude wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly that the kind of CPU work games are doing is quite hard to parallelise (physics simulations, NPC 'AI', loading and decompressing model data). It's a lot of fairly complex code and getting a synchronisation strategy which actually produces speedup is hard. And when it is done it's usually still limited to e.g. 1 thread doing physics, 1-2 threads doing rendering (it took a while for graphics APIs to support…

Could it explain why we are seeing more improvements in rendering quality compared to physics and AI? As you said, AI and physics are inherently not really parallelizable while rendering is. AI and physics from the Athlon 64/Pentium 4 era (e.g. Half-Life 2, Crysis) are similar to what we get now, while visual quality greatly improved (better textures, more detailed objects, longer visibility range).

I have no experience with game development, but I have some experience in HPC physics simulations. Many physics simulations are embarrassingly parallelizable. I suspect that this is mostly a latency/throughput kind of balance for real time simulations. In games the results have to be ready the next frame.

Re: The Supermicro H11DSi Motherboard Mini-Review: The Sole Dual EPYC Solution

#30

Post by jeffbee »

jnwatson wrote: post #26
nullc wrote: post #17

I have this board with 7742s. I like it generally, though most of my affection is due to the CPUs. I wish it had PCI-E 4. I've found it to be unreliable with memory running faster than 2933MHz but that might be the memory I was using. When I did have memory corruption problems running at higher memory speeds I didn't get a single ECC error, which I found surprising and concerning. I also had issues with Kernel 5.4 no…

"When I did have memory corruption problems running at higher memory speeds I didn't get a single ECC error, which I found surprising and concerning." How is this possible?

It's possible because many motherboards and even integrated systems fail to setup EDAC properly at boot time.
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