Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Flying Fox, morphine
JustAnEngineer wrote:Folks were water-cooling big iron 40+ years ago.
ronch wrote:Say, am I the only guy who thinks AMD should also try its hand in the Power space? I know they're practically penniless these days but hey, they may be able to pull it off. Plus, they have a long history with IBM, trading tech as well as their very employees, who seem to be like electrons zipping in and out between the likes of AMD, Samsung, Nvidia, and IBM (and probably Intel too).They should really focus on ARM and something real to sell in the server space if they're really bent on ditching x86. They've helped Intel enough already, and have lost enough blood too doing it.
Captain Ned wrote:JustAnEngineer wrote:Folks were water-cooling big iron 40+ years ago.
Like the Crays with the wrap-around seats. I was wondering if Power8 had moved beyond the limits of water cooling and needed direct refrigeration/evaporative cooling.
just brew it! wrote:ronch wrote:Say, am I the only guy who thinks AMD should also try its hand in the Power space? I know they're practically penniless these days but hey, they may be able to pull it off. Plus, they have a long history with IBM, trading tech as well as their very employees, who seem to be like electrons zipping in and out between the likes of AMD, Samsung, Nvidia, and IBM (and probably Intel too).They should really focus on ARM and something real to sell in the server space if they're really bent on ditching x86. They've helped Intel enough already, and have lost enough blood too doing it.
While the idea of hedging their bets by putting a foot in each camp has some merit, I think attempting ARM and POWER at the same time would spread them too thin at a time when they really need to focus if they want to survive.
Going the POWER route has the advantage of being a SOI-based design, and AMD probably has the most experience with SOI outside of IBM; but they'd be competing head-to-head with IBM in the server space. That doesn't sound like a winning strategy to me.
AMD's Hypertransport expertise and experience working with vendors of massively parallel systems (Cray) uniquely positions them to pull off a strategy where they harness massive farms of ARM cores to do something useful in the server space. IMO if they need to pick one, ARM is probably it. It's still a long shot, but less of a long shot than POWER.
Crayon Shin Chan wrote:So I really hope POWER8 gains traction and more software/driver support, so I can run that exotic CPU again for a practical purpose.
TwistedKestrel wrote:Wow, that thing's a monster!
TDP of 250 watts?! Would like to see the chassis that this gets deployed in, hah!
ronch wrote:Yeah, it's a monster, alright. IBM wants to be the ARM of servers, as the article mentions. It's interesting to note that while ARM is planning to make a go for it in the server space, IBM's already well-positioned in that space and may actually stand a better chance of succeeding. Say, am I the only guy who thinks AMD should also try its hand in the Power space? They should really focus on ARM and something real to sell in the server space if they're really bent on ditching x86.
just brew it! wrote:Crayon Shin Chan wrote:So I really hope POWER8 gains traction and more software/driver support, so I can run that exotic CPU again for a practical purpose.
Well, it sounds like IBM has partnered with Canonical on the software front, so if things go according to plan there should be a viable Linux ecosystem for it.
Chrispy_ wrote:Does Power8 run ESX and Hyper-V?
I only deal with things in my immediate scope which means Windows and Linux servers running on x86-64.
ARM, RISC, ASIC - I have no idea what sort of SMB sofware would work or require these architectures.
I only use Xeons and Opterons at the moment, though I'm keeping an eye on the new Avoton 8C Atoms.
slowriot wrote:You won't find ESX or Hyper-V running on Power hardware. IBM has their PowerVM suite of virtualization technologies which tightly integrate with the Power processors. You can run several of IBM's own OSes (AIX, i aka OS/400, etc) and several flavors of Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu, SLES).
Chrispy_ wrote:Does this mean they can't run Microsoft servers as VM's, or just that they're unsuitable from a value perspective?
Crayon Shin Chan wrote:This was back in 2002, before virtualization.
Chrispy_ wrote:I'm not so worried about the hypervisor IBM use to create VM's or hardware divide, I'm more interested in what guest OSes you can actually run on these chips
Chrispy_ wrote:I must be phrasing the question too indirectly, let me retry:
Is there any point getting excited about these new chips if you need Windows Server (representative of a majority of all companies) or is this niche hardware for datacenter/specialised environments?
The article is headlined with "Intel’s x86 server monopoly" so if these can't run the most popular x86 software on the market (Windows) then what's the point?
just brew it! wrote:I agree. But, what if one has to rethink then recode their job's work-flow to exploit the efficiency? Hundreds of threads in one address space is different than 4 or 16. For very large complex applications, the cost of software, including development, test, maintenance, often far outstrips the hardware cost. Not to mention that programmers who can grok that level of scalability cost more than those who can't.Power efficiency -- not x86 compatibility -- is the overriding concern when you start talking about deploying hundreds of thousands of servers. If Power8 can beat x86 on performance per watt IBM will have customers for these chips.
Chrispy_ wrote:I must be phrasing the question too indirectly, let me retry:
Is there any point getting excited about these new chips if you need Windows Server (representative of a majority of all companies) or is this niche hardware for datacenter/specialised environments?
The article is headlined with "Intel’s x86 server monopoly" so if these can't run the most popular x86 software on the market (Windows) then what's the point?
MarkG509 wrote:just brew it! wrote:Power efficiency -- not x86 compatibility -- is the overriding concern when you start talking about deploying hundreds of thousands of servers. If Power8 can beat x86 on performance per watt IBM will have customers for these chips.
I agree. But, what if one has to rethink then recode their job's work-flow to exploit the efficiency? Hundreds of threads in one address space is different than 4 or 16. For very large complex applications, the cost of software, including development, test, maintenance, often far outstrips the hardware cost. Not to mention that programmers who can grok that level of scalability cost more than those who can't.
Chrispy_ wrote:Ta. That makes a bit more sense.
Power8 is completely useless to me/my companies directly, but will impact the market in a way that might drive Intel/Microsoft prices down eventually.
vargis14 wrote:I wish IBM would partner up with AMD for the x86 market and make 22nm SOI cpu chips for AMD.
A 22nm high end AMD CPU would breath a little life into AMD with a improved memory controller and other improvements like a shorter execution pipeline.