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

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

#171

Post by kccqzy »

axaxs wrote: post #91
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 think Chromebooks did ARM years before Apple, no?

Apple is not known to do things first, but do things better than the competitive in some way.

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

#172

Post by buran77 »

klelatti wrote: post #154
random5634 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD is doing fine. "The writing on the wall". Zen3 is going to very competitive, their interconnect on chip is great. Sure, add a line for ARM. What's interesting to me, I feel like a lot of this started when intel wouldn't do the chip for the iphone. All of a sudden you had this leading edge mfg pushing arm hard which drove volumes through the roof, and all the copycats (android etc) copied the chip selection, scree…

I don't think that Intel producing the iPhone chip was ever likely to happen - sure Jobs had to ask Intel as a courtesy for a partner but it was never realistic. - Arm has dominated low power / mobile segment from well before the iPhone due to its superior power consumption; - The non Arm IP (eg Imagination GPU) was also important and it was unlikely that Intel would have been integrated that on their SoCs. I had an…

> I had an Atom tablet [...] and it really wasn't a great device - ran hot and very short battery life.

In all honesty the implementation and OS also matter. Most Atom tablets weren't particularly great (or even good) devices overall. And running Windows on a contemporary ARM SoC wouldn't have resulted in a better experience.

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

#173

Post by Ivoah »

ur-whale wrote: post #16
kumarvvr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Never knew Linux architecture allowed it to scale on hardware in such a way. Edit : I know Linux is customized to run on a variety of hardware, I was just pointing out that I never knew you could install Ubuntu on the mentioned hardware and have it take advantage of the available hardware, given that it has specialized hardware.

Linux has been running on 2000+ core machines for longer than a decade (at least): https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4507/how-many-cores...

https://xkcd.com/619/

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

#174

Post by klelatti »

buran77 wrote: post #172
klelatti wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that Intel producing the iPhone chip was ever likely to happen - sure Jobs had to ask Intel as a courtesy for a partner but it was never realistic. - Arm has dominated low power / mobile segment from well before the iPhone due to its superior power consumption; - The non Arm IP (eg Imagination GPU) was also important and it was unlikely that Intel would have been integrated that on their SoCs. I had an…

> I had an Atom tablet [...] and it really wasn't a great device - ran hot and very short battery life. In all honesty the implementation and OS also matter. Most Atom tablets weren't particularly great (or even good) devices overall. And running Windows on a contemporary ARM SoC wouldn't have resulted in a better experience.

It was Android and much, much worse than contemporary Arm tablets.

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

#175

Post by ksec »

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…

>.....With application stacks being what they are and optimizations for Xeon so deeply integrated......

That is of course in the context of Server CPU design. Your mileage will vary depending your usage.

With the announcement from Marvell's exit [1] of ARM Server CPU it is now all but confirmed that Microsoft and Google are also working on their own ARM Server CPU. Which means all HyperScaler will now have a common interest to have Software running on ARM. And this will trickle down to every part of the industry.

It will take some time, depending on your scale, the cost benefits of switching over may be different. But there is no denying that Intel doesn't have a short term ( 2-3 years ) answer. And I dont see their medium term ( 4 - 5 years ) are any better. Their new Optane SSD is really exciting though [2].

And I am willing to bet all of these New Server CPU comers has absolutely zero experience in CPU forecasting, and risk averse enough to put down commitment on capacity, which ultimately leads to TSMC getting a bad name yet again for "Not Enough Capacity".

[1] https://www.servethehome.com/impact-of-marvell-thunderx3-gen...

[2] https://www.servethehome.com/new-intel-optane-p5800x-100-dwp...

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

#176

Post by flyinghamster »

my123 wrote: post #117
flyinghamster wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's encouraging to see an effort like this, but unless it can become a first-class citizen on M1 hardware, it will be at best like trying to keep an iDevice jailbroken, or having a custom Android ROM that lacks important basic functionality like VoLTE. One can hope, I guess. If I could be sure I could run Linux without it being hobbled, and that Apple wouldn't pull the rug out from under me, I could actually see mys…

That was a restriction for 32-bit Arm Windows devices, which were indeed locked down. (I ended up breaking the Secure Boot implementation for Windows RT devices later on, and they didn't bother to fix it) For 64-bit Arm Windows devices, they had the security policies of a conventional PC since the very beginning.

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I've long viewed that as one of the storm clouds on the horizon, as it was.

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

#177

Post by sipjca »

a2tech wrote: post #13
corty wrote: post #11

Nice hardware, but if I order a hundred, how many will I get? Arm servers so far have been vaporware, only available in single-digit quantities after a very long wait. There is a new announcement every half year or so by one firm or the other. But we've never managed to get beyond getting a sample, and not for a lack of trying. Numbers just aren't available, models change extremely fast, producers go bancrupt. Maybe…

Like Amazon? You know you can get an ARM server there any day of the week for extremely reasonable prices? Edit: to clarify, I mean on AWS, not from the Amazon store.

To be fair it is using their own hardware (Graviton2, mentioned in the article). Other than Ampere are there any other hardware vendors offering ARM based server CPU's that are commercially available?

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

#178

Post by my123 »

pjmlp wrote: post #127
my123 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows on arm64 systems aren't locked down. Meanwhile for arm64 Macs, they aren't either. Yesterday, https://twitter.com/xenokovah/status/1339914714055368704?s=2... was released to run unsigned kernels.

When Windows 10X gets release it might be different, as the original before COVID happened was for it to be the introduction of Win32 sandboxing as well. Now with Reunion merging both worlds, and Windows 10X only planned for 2021, it might be a different story.

Windows 10X is launching for Intel SoCs first, hopefully without locked BLs.

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

#179

Post by SoSoRoCoCo »

wmf wrote: post #97
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait to see if the engineering teams from Cavium push Marvel back into the ring. Cavium was designing an Arm server to compete with Intel for years before they switched to HPC. The market is primed. Intel is in serious trouble (I know, people have been saying this since NexGen in 1995, but for real real this time!)

Marvell/Cavium just canceled their server processors.

I thought they cancelled years ago and switched to HPC. Something recent?

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

#180

Post by MikeKusold »

Sebb767 wrote: post #2

These things look awesome, but are pretty expensive, still. I'd love to put an ARM server in my homelab, but the price range between 100$ (RPi & Co) and 10000$ (enterprise server) seems pretty empty right now :/

Just like with xeon server hardware, you will need to wait 4-6 years for companies to retire their fleets. r730s are currently reasonably priced (under $1K) but those were released new in 2014. R740s are still a few thousand dollars.
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