The Ampere Altra Review: 2x 80 Cores Arm Server Performance Monster

Post by spamizbad » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

ipodopt wrote: post #82

elteto wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD should see the writing on the wall and start designing ARM CPUs. I think that would be very exciting because they have the engineering expertise and talent necessary to compete against Apple's M1. I don't know of any other company that can do that (besides Intel, but you know...). Additionally, there is a huge hole open right now for ARM on everything else that is not an Apple product. Apple normalized ARM on con…

The RISC-V ISA would be the better bet. a. They start investing now and they can have some leverage in the spec. b. The spec is minimal and open to expansion that it sets itself up for more domain specific processors. Which we will be seeing alot more of thanks to the slowing of transistors per dollar growth. c. There is a pretty big theme of moving toward more open and democratized standards in tech. d. They would b…

Post by wmf » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

elteto wrote: post #75

cameron_b wrote: post #42

This line is the kicker for me: "Intel’s current Xeon offering simply isn’t competitive in any way or form at this moment in time." The rest of the paragraph twists the knife more, and declares there to be an open market on server hardware for AMD and Ampere to fight it out. With application stacks being what they are and optimizations for Xeon so deeply integrated, it's unlikely that folks running private datacenter…

AMD should see the writing on the wall and start designing ARM CPUs. I think that would be very exciting because they have the engineering expertise and talent necessary to compete against Apple's M1. I don't know of any other company that can do that (besides Intel, but you know...). Additionally, there is a huge hole open right now for ARM on everything else that is not an Apple product. Apple normalized ARM on con…

Post by wmf » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #90

elteto wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD should see the writing on the wall and start designing ARM CPUs. I think that would be very exciting because they have the engineering expertise and talent necessary to compete against Apple's M1. I don't know of any other company that can do that (besides Intel, but you know...). Additionally, there is a huge hole open right now for ARM on everything else that is not an Apple product. Apple normalized ARM on con…

I hope somebody will come up with a standard and open way to boot an ARM board and to enumerate devices on it, much like BIOS does for x86 boards. Possibly the makers of Pine64 and Raspberry Pi could cooperate and offer something in this area, because they collectively control most of the market of hobby / general-purpose ARM system boards. If they set a common standard (or even two standards), other producers in thi…

Post by klelatti » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #95

klelatti wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the big issues for Intel will be avoiding getting into a vicious circle of uncompetitive performance -> lower margins -> less investment in process /fabs -> uncompetitive performance In part AMD broke out of this by using TSMC, but Intel relying on (not just using) TSMC would be a huge step.

I bet there will be enough interest in keeping a top-tier fab facility and expertise on the US soil. If I were DoD, I would be very interested, for instance.

Post by sitkack » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

TheCondor wrote: post #21

mhh__ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't they build the architecture and then chuck it?

I think they grafted 4 and 8 cortex a57 in to a package and it didn’t seem to have much market interest. I too have heard that they have their own ARM micro architecture project though