31–40 of 46 posts
An A64FX CPU has 48 cores. 1 CPU/node means 96 cores on 2 nodes for $40k and ~6TFLOPS (3 per). Meanwhile the 128 thread Threadripper 3990X costs $3.6k, and benchs put it at 1.5TFLOPS in Linpack, which is less but not 10x less, and I don't know what the benchmark basis for the A64FX value is, so I suspect it's closer, especially since it says theoretical peak performance. ... Am I missing something?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're comparing the price of a consumer CPU to an entire rackable unit. There's a whole bunch of more stuff that goes into making a good server than just stuffing a good CPU into a beige box.
then look at those 2U, 4x2 socket supermicros and think again. 512 epyc cores and 4TB of memory + Infiniband sell for USD 100k. but you're probably right that noone buys 2 of these at that price. Probably only japanese companies proud of their country or whatever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
then look at those 2U, 4x2 socket supermicros and think again. 512 epyc cores and 4TB of memory + Infiniband sell for USD 100k. but you're probably right that noone buys 2 of these at that price. Probably only japanese companies proud of their country or whatever.
Yeah, these computers can be spec with 32gb of HBM also.
My personal opinion: this is some randomly fixed "we are selling these"-price to show they are not IBMs-"ask for a 6 figure-quote" price. So they might very well be very interesting if you have a budget in the upper six figures (because, the 40k won't be the final offer for sure...); everyone else (like the lower half of the 6-figures) knows: nice, but not my price.
What is up with the price? 40k for only 2 x 48 cores and a mediocre 2 ghz clock rate. Modern processors are way more efficient than older processors but I simply can't imagine the efficiency adds up to (simplistically) $416 per core... Very interesting memory bus though... 1 TB / s? That is cool, but I would still much rather get a crap load more cores at a reasonable price then be able to send around data that effic…
What’s the SHA256 hash rate and power consumption? Only partially joking btw!
Doesn't matter that none of these critics ever address a single use-case beyond what little info they can gleam from memes. It's particularly obnoxious. But whatever. People who use this tech are all idiots, right, and couldn't possibly know how to add up a balance sheet. Lol, it use lotssa powerr. BRRRRRrrrrrrrr. soo stupid of them to waste that much power for absolutely no reason.
Only partially joking btw!
An A64FX CPU has 48 cores. 1 CPU/node means 96 cores on 2 nodes for $40k and ~6TFLOPS (3 per). Meanwhile the 128 thread Threadripper 3990X costs $3.6k, and benchs put it at 1.5TFLOPS in Linpack, which is less but not 10x less, and I don't know what the benchmark basis for the A64FX value is, so I suspect it's closer, especially since it says theoretical peak performance. ... Am I missing something?
Enterprise shills back in full force
An A64FX CPU has 48 cores. 1 CPU/node means 96 cores on 2 nodes for $40k and ~6TFLOPS (3 per). Meanwhile the 128 thread Threadripper 3990X costs $3.6k, and benchs put it at 1.5TFLOPS in Linpack, which is less but not 10x less, and I don't know what the benchmark basis for the A64FX value is, so I suspect it's closer, especially since it says theoretical peak performance. ... Am I missing something?
Your implication is correct however. x86 is more in line with "typical" consumers, and even businesses, who need this kind of compute.
Dell's C6525 quad-node dual-socket EPYC is a good example of what a typical compute-oriented build: https://www.servethehome.com/dell-emc-poweredge-c6525-review...
-------------
A64FX is an HBM2 box. Its a normal CPU (not a GPU), with access to that stupid-high bandwidth RAM. There's probably a few use cases where the high-bandwidth becomes a major advantage.
A64FX compares against the NVidia V100 on a memory-bandwidth and memory-capacity basis (and is approaching GPU-level FLOPs thanks to SVE 512-bit SIMD units). Except its running the ARM instruction set. As others have pointed out, this thing is like Xeon Phi 2.0, except with the notable niche that its the #1 supercomptuer in the world right now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that a useful way of seeing this is to compare car engines: From wikipedia, a Ford Flex Limited can have a V6 turbocharged 3.6L engine (max torque 350 lb-ft), while a Formula One has a V6 turbocharged with only 1.6L (max torque 214 lb-ft). The Formula One engine has lower specs, and cost orders of magnitude more. I think that the answer is that this comparison doesn't make much sense, when the use cases and t…
Keep in mind that the F1 engine can pump out 1000HP almost instantly and is more than 50% thermally efficient (Approximately double a road car)
An A64FX CPU has 48 cores. 1 CPU/node means 96 cores on 2 nodes for $40k and ~6TFLOPS (3 per). Meanwhile the 128 thread Threadripper 3990X costs $3.6k, and benchs put it at 1.5TFLOPS in Linpack, which is less but not 10x less, and I don't know what the benchmark basis for the A64FX value is, so I suspect it's closer, especially since it says theoretical peak performance. ... Am I missing something?
A64FX has HBM2 RAM. This means it will be relatively low (32GBs RAM), but extremely high performance RAM. Literally the highest-bandwidth RAM in the market, directly wired onto the chip itself over an interposer (PCB is too slow! Direct interposer connections only mm away from the cores). Your implication is correct however. x86 is more in line with "typical" consumers, and even businesses, who need this kind of comp…
For example, SVE has mask partitioning and speculative vector load instructions to accelerate data-dependent loop termination. You can do a vector-length-agnostic strncpy on SVE without too much effort.
An A64FX CPU has 48 cores. 1 CPU/node means 96 cores on 2 nodes for $40k and ~6TFLOPS (3 per). Meanwhile the 128 thread Threadripper 3990X costs $3.6k, and benchs put it at 1.5TFLOPS in Linpack, which is less but not 10x less, and I don't know what the benchmark basis for the A64FX value is, so I suspect it's closer, especially since it says theoretical peak performance. ... Am I missing something?
A64FX has HBM2 RAM. This means it will be relatively low (32GBs RAM), but extremely high performance RAM. Literally the highest-bandwidth RAM in the market, directly wired onto the chip itself over an interposer (PCB is too slow! Direct interposer connections only mm away from the cores). Your implication is correct however. x86 is more in line with "typical" consumers, and even businesses, who need this kind of comp…
The basic operation they perform is fast fourier transform on large (number of electrons of the system ^ 2) matrices.
An A64FX CPU has 48 cores. 1 CPU/node means 96 cores on 2 nodes for $40k and ~6TFLOPS (3 per). Meanwhile the 128 thread Threadripper 3990X costs $3.6k, and benchs put it at 1.5TFLOPS in Linpack, which is less but not 10x less, and I don't know what the benchmark basis for the A64FX value is, so I suspect it's closer, especially since it says theoretical peak performance. ... Am I missing something?
A64FX has HBM2 RAM. This means it will be relatively low (32GBs RAM), but extremely high performance RAM. Literally the highest-bandwidth RAM in the market, directly wired onto the chip itself over an interposer (PCB is too slow! Direct interposer connections only mm away from the cores). Your implication is correct however. x86 is more in line with "typical" consumers, and even businesses, who need this kind of comp…