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Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

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Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#91

Post by iorrus »

easygenes wrote: post #71
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs are a small market, but Apple definitely sets trends. Once they adopt a technology, people "know" it works and it's safe to switch. If servers can run on cheap ARM hardware that uses less electricity and runs far cooler without much of a performance difference, that's a massive improvement. Electricity savings would more than justify a switch. Apple has shown that it's possible at the desktop/laptop level. Now t…

For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns. Server compute is expensive. It is all about performance. ARM is just starting to get competitive in that ballpark. So we will see. All of these ARM server chips are going to be very low on the pecking order for TSMC fab time, so they won't have the edge that Apple had by buying up the first slot on the latest manufactu…

In Ireland the national grid is under strain due to electricity usage from data centres, so much so that there is discussion to deny permission for new ones. I very much doubt that the electricity costs are negligible, it’s also one of the reason data centres are in Ireland as due to the relatively mild climate it reduces hearing/cooling costs.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/data-centres-could-...

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#92

Post by easygenes »

tdrdt wrote: post #76
easygenes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns. Server compute is expensive. It is all about performance. ARM is just starting to get competitive in that ballpark. So we will see. All of these ARM server chips are going to be very low on the pecking order for TSMC fab time, so they won't have the edge that Apple had by buying up the first slot on the latest manufactu…

"For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns." I don't think this is true. It is not only power consumption but also power backup. If you can use smaller diesel engines and smaller battery packs this will lower the cost. And why do you think datacenters have been raising temperatures? It saves a ton of money: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14…

That article cites a 100,000 sq. ft. data-center as the source for that $8 million savings estimate, along with roughly a 30% power savings figure. No mention on the period, so presumably it would be a TCO for the servers going into the initial buildout.

100,000 sq. ft. is roughly enough space for about 250,000 1U servers. Say conservatively the servers are in the ballpark of $2,000 each. That's $500 million just in server hardware costs. If the total electric cost is around 3*$8 = ~$24 million over their lifetime, then we're talking about So maybe not a rounding error, but way down the priorities list.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#93

Post by Symbiote »

iorrus wrote: post #91
easygenes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns. Server compute is expensive. It is all about performance. ARM is just starting to get competitive in that ballpark. So we will see. All of these ARM server chips are going to be very low on the pecking order for TSMC fab time, so they won't have the edge that Apple had by buying up the first slot on the latest manufactu…

In Ireland the national grid is under strain due to electricity usage from data centres, so much so that there is discussion to deny permission for new ones. I very much doubt that the electricity costs are negligible, it’s also one of the reason data centres are in Ireland as due to the relatively mild climate it reduces hearing/cooling costs. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/data-centres-could-...

Isn't more of the reason political (taxes etc)?

The same climate benefits apply to northern England and Scotland, but Great Britain's grid's capacity has around 10 times the capacity.

(Ireland's grid's peak demand was 6.8GW, Great Britain's 63GW.)

Although the same argument then applies for siting the datacentres in continental Europe, where the grid is around 667GW. Perhaps this is part of Facebook's reasoning for a second datacentre in Denmark.

(Most of Denmark, including Facebook's existing datacentre, is connected to the continental European grid. The eastern islands are part of the Scandinavian grid.)

[1] https://www.thelocal.dk/20211013/facebook-eyes-second-danish...

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#94

Post by marcodiego »

maxpert wrote: post #5

Intel is gonna be in deep trouble in couple of years. They are the PowerPC of modern era. IDK what held them back from reimagining the architecture for less power hungry processors and tooling. With Mac mainstream switching to ARM and Microsoft doing something similar, I think within next 5 - 10 years ARM is gonna take over Intel architecture in general.

Apple is using their own cores, Google is using thei own cores, Amazon is using their own cores, I bet Microsoft is next... Eventually these new chips will hit the desktop and then we'll see the x86 start to sink.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#95

Post by [deleted] »

easygenes wrote: post #92
tdrdt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns." I don't think this is true. It is not only power consumption but also power backup. If you can use smaller diesel engines and smaller battery packs this will lower the cost. And why do you think datacenters have been raising temperatures? It saves a ton of money: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14…

That article cites a 100,000 sq. ft. data-center as the source for that $8 million savings estimate, along with roughly a 30% power savings figure. No mention on the period, so presumably it would be a TCO for the servers going into the initial buildout. 100,000 sq. ft. is roughly enough space for about 250,000 1U servers. Say conservatively the servers are in the ballpark of $2,000 each. That's $500 million just in…

[deleted]

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#96

Post by Symbiote »

easygenes wrote: post #71
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs are a small market, but Apple definitely sets trends. Once they adopt a technology, people "know" it works and it's safe to switch. If servers can run on cheap ARM hardware that uses less electricity and runs far cooler without much of a performance difference, that's a massive improvement. Electricity savings would more than justify a switch. Apple has shown that it's possible at the desktop/laptop level. Now t…

For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns. Server compute is expensive. It is all about performance. ARM is just starting to get competitive in that ballpark. So we will see. All of these ARM server chips are going to be very low on the pecking order for TSMC fab time, so they won't have the edge that Apple had by buying up the first slot on the latest manufactu…

The average consumer cost for 1kWh of electricity in the EU is 20¢. A well-used server might consume 500W on average.

  units '500W * 1 year * 0.20 €/kWh' '€'
  € 876
I'm sure businesses get a discount, but we haven't paid for cooling yet. This is hardly a rounding error.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#97

Post by klelatti »

easygenes wrote: post #92
tdrdt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For most purposes, electricity is almost a rounding error in datacenter asset management concerns." I don't think this is true. It is not only power consumption but also power backup. If you can use smaller diesel engines and smaller battery packs this will lower the cost. And why do you think datacenters have been raising temperatures? It saves a ton of money: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14…

That article cites a 100,000 sq. ft. data-center as the source for that $8 million savings estimate, along with roughly a 30% power savings figure. No mention on the period, so presumably it would be a TCO for the servers going into the initial buildout. 100,000 sq. ft. is roughly enough space for about 250,000 1U servers. Say conservatively the servers are in the ballpark of $2,000 each. That's $500 million just in…

These are AC costs not total costs and the $8m is probably an annual figure - although it's not clear.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#99

Post by reacharavindh »

maxpert wrote: post #5

Intel is gonna be in deep trouble in couple of years. They are the PowerPC of modern era. IDK what held them back from reimagining the architecture for less power hungry processors and tooling. With Mac mainstream switching to ARM and Microsoft doing something similar, I think within next 5 - 10 years ARM is gonna take over Intel architecture in general.

I wonder if Intel would see the obvious from a safe distance and play to their strengths instead of a death for pride.

Imagine, if Intel would swallow their pride and start building ARM SOCs… they could show their engineering prowess, and use X86 synergies to their advantage. As a buyer, I’d buy ARM cpus from intel if they also provided me a slow path for legacy x86 workloads that I haven’t migrated yet. Also, ADM is just the ISA, so, once a customer locks in to intel’s ARM cpu ecosystem, I’m sure they’ll come up with lots of special additions that then the customer would be hesitant to walk away from.

Or, they could be this decade’s IBM and make x86 look like the next generation’s mainframes - niche, even great in some dimensions but out of mainstream use.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#100

Post by brucehoult »

eunos wrote: post #98

What does it mean by open sourcing chips? Does that mean I can bring the source to fabs and fabricate them out?

It's not a chip, it's a CPU core. You still need to add a lot of things to make a chip: interface for DRAM, something like PCIe for input and output. And you have to do layout, timing calculations, and all that kind of thing.

But yes, if you have sufficient funding and expertise you can take their CPU core -- approximately as good as the performance cores in the Samsung Galaxy S8 or the Raspberry Pi 4 -- and without permission or payment or even notification use them in your own chips.

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