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Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

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Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#121

Post by pjmlp »

jdmichal wrote: post #34
Const-me wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Microsoft has UWP. No, UWP and .NET are orthogonal. When I need to, I’m using C++ to develop my UWP apps just fine. Edit: and even when using .NET, by default, UWP apps don’t run in the virtual machine. Instead, they’re compiled to native code with .NET Native.

This is correct. However, it's important to point out that the .NET native compilation can also target ARM architectures. For native development in C++, one would need to build and distribute ARM-targeted binaries also in order to actually be "universal".

It is no different for .NET Native.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#122

Post by gravypod »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #104
gravypod wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 96 core 1U server is going to bear a high price The server market only cares about price/watt and size. 1U is very small for such a parallel system, no need to write your code for Phis or anything like that, and low power in comparison to Intel. Win, win, and win.

Does the market care much about size? I thought there were lots of datacenters that reached their limits on power and cooling despite having floor space available for more racks.

It depends on place to place but sometimes space is limited. I know some places need "off-site" backups that are within walking distance (not really too off site). For companies in NYC or populated areas space is a factor.

Also if a machine was half as power consuming, twice as powerful, but you could only fit one in your entire datacenter, I don't think many would go for it.

Having many systems is a failure tolerance assurance. Being able to increse your power efficiency, processing ability, AND capacity all by switching to a single system that's priced competativly/cheaper to the market standard? That's a wining combo.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#123

Post by gravypod »

cat199 wrote: post #90
gravypod wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot wait for ThumbEE to make it into the "main stream" ARM server market. Think about the huge speed boosts we could see? I don't know why Oracle/Python/Microsoft aren't pushing this harder. Having your JIT-ed code running directly on the CPU? What could be better then that?

Not an expert, since your statement triggered a goog .. but : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Thumb_Executi... Says: "On 23 November 2011, ARM Holdings deprecated any use of the ThumbEE instruction set,[77] and ARMv8 removes support for ThumbEE."

DARN! That's too bad! That would have been really cool. I know that there are a few in-hardware JVM systems that are used in cellphones that could be made use of. That would be cool.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#124

Post by kbenson »

sjellis wrote: post #105
mtgx wrote: post #19

Payback time? https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-off... Okay, obviously this partnership started years back, but it's nice to see that not everyone is willing to encourage Intel's monopoly, as Google often does (in Chromebooks, too, even though Intel's chips are virtually unnecessary there). Although, to be fair, the "Wintel" name didn't come out of nowhere. Microsoft obviously played its part i…

Google have been doing something with POWER CPUs for a few years now, at least on an experimental basis. 2016, Power 9: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3052951/cloud-computing... 2014, Power 8: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2149080/google-shows-homegrow...

Each time Google looks into POWER, it seems to be when it's time to renegotiate with Intel. This is a tried and true tactic for better Intel pricing at this point. I was even talking about it (and got somewhat of a corroboration) a few days ago[1].

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13786170

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#125

Post by deepnotderp »

nomel wrote: post #108
vvanders wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty par for the course in a lot of HW companies(esp SoC selection). Where it gets tricky is when you've pulled that move a couple times and then it turns out AMD/ARM/etc actually have the good chips. At that point you've burned the other company so many times by changing at the last minute that it becomes hard to get real support and engagement where you actually need it.

> actually have the good chips. Has that ever been the case yet, for ARM servers? There's no "magic" in ARM. The reduced power comes from the reduced complexity. Heck, branch prediction is fairly new in ARM. I have trouble seeing a time when an Intel chip will ever fall behind even a bucket full of ARM chips, unless workloads ever fall near zero.

There are a lot of nice things in arm. Ie slightly less register renaming.

For example, Jim Keller estimates a fully developed arm chip will be 15-30% more efficient than an equivalent x86. Now, this development hasn't happened yet, but with giants like Qualcomm, it will happen eventually.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#126

Post by freehunter »

toyg wrote: post #113
ptrptr wrote: post #111

Question - is this a sign of maturity of ARM architecture? Can we really expect desktop OS to move to ARM? Could Apple start transitioning Apple AX into their laptops?

Servers and desktops have very different requirements, just ask the linux guys. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't see that happening for another 5 years at least. Apple in particular is already getting a lot of flak for underpowering laptops, switching to Arm now would basically kill the entirety of their remaining high-end offering on desktop.

On the other hand, their A10 chip is roughly on par with the performance of the Intel chip they include in the 12" MacBook. They're not going to replace an i7 with an A10, but maybe replace the M3 or M5 with an A10, replace the i5 with an A11, and shoot for the i7 with an A12 or A13. Why else would they dump so much money into making the fastest ARM chip on the market? The iPhone doesn't need that much power, but they keep pumping it up anyway.

We all know OSX will run on ARM, they just use a different WM and call it iOS.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#127

Post by the_af »

gnarbarian wrote: post #116
nacs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit Any sources to back up this claim? 10% performance hit compared to what? Windows? A different Linux distro? I've found that for native games, Linux can actually offer better performance in many cases than the Windows version. Someone also did a test recently (full video on Youtube) with the Windows version of the new Doom running on Linux through the WINE emulation (yes…

My personal anecdotal evidence is that many of the games available for Linux on steam are really terrible ports. Gang beasts for example couldn't even find the binary. Once I fixed that, I was lucky to get 5 fps with lowest settings on my 6 core i7 with a Titan x. Yes I had the latest Nvidia drivers. Chivalry medieval warfare was another unplayable performance offender. This isn't necessarily valve's fault though. It…

That's completely different to my own experience. In my experience, there tend to be minor issues with graphically intensive games but they mostly work fine with good performance. For example, I'm playing Alien Isolation on a Lenovo Ideapad laptop, with most settings at max, and I'm impressed by how well it runs.

There are some problems and glitches unrelated to the games, in my experience (like how newer nvidia GPUs have screen tearing on Ubuntu -- unrelated to vsync, by the way -- and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it for the time being)

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#128

Post by cperciva »

nomel wrote: post #108
vvanders wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty par for the course in a lot of HW companies(esp SoC selection). Where it gets tricky is when you've pulled that move a couple times and then it turns out AMD/ARM/etc actually have the good chips. At that point you've burned the other company so many times by changing at the last minute that it becomes hard to get real support and engagement where you actually need it.

> actually have the good chips. Has that ever been the case yet, for ARM servers? There's no "magic" in ARM. The reduced power comes from the reduced complexity. Heck, branch prediction is fairly new in ARM. I have trouble seeing a time when an Intel chip will ever fall behind even a bucket full of ARM chips, unless workloads ever fall near zero.

Reduced power comes from reduced complexity, and that has a performance cost, yes -- but it takes far more than a 10% increase in power to get a 10% increase in performance.

Intel's designs, being tuned for high sequential performance, are significantly better for that purpose; but if you look at VPS services which currently only get a fraction of a CPU each, I'm sure they could run more power-efficiently with a larger fraction of a punier CPU.

Re: Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

#129

Post by [deleted] »

nomel wrote: post #108
vvanders wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty par for the course in a lot of HW companies(esp SoC selection). Where it gets tricky is when you've pulled that move a couple times and then it turns out AMD/ARM/etc actually have the good chips. At that point you've burned the other company so many times by changing at the last minute that it becomes hard to get real support and engagement where you actually need it.

> actually have the good chips. Has that ever been the case yet, for ARM servers? There's no "magic" in ARM. The reduced power comes from the reduced complexity. Heck, branch prediction is fairly new in ARM. I have trouble seeing a time when an Intel chip will ever fall behind even a bucket full of ARM chips, unless workloads ever fall near zero.

[deleted]
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