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Amazon Talks Up Big Performance Gains For Their 7nm Graviton2 CPUs

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  • coder
    replied
    Originally posted by _Alex_ View Post
    To wake up x86 manufacturers that there are better alternatives in terms of cost and perf/watt.
    $350M - $370M is a very expensive wakeup call. And that was just Annapurna Labs' supposed purchase price. Add in the costs to run the group for nearly 5 years and produce several generations of silicon and you're talking about some significant fraction (or more than) $1B.

    Companies don't spend that kind of money "to send a message". They do it because there's a business case -- a return-on-investment -- some way they can not only recoup the cost, but further enhance their profitability. And not by simply betting on the reactions of their suppliers, but in a way they can control more directly.

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  • coder
    replied
    Originally posted by milkylainen View Post
    So I guess the big question will be raw computing power vs power consumption vs cost as usual?
    Well, their pricing it at "40% better price/performance than x86 instances". How that translates into the underlying costs we'll probably never know. However, the intrinsic perf/W advantages of ARM vs. x86 have been long- and well- established.

    Originally posted by milkylainen View Post
    Also. Why would Amazon do this? I'm not sure I understand a why.
    Between purchase cost and power efficiency, perhaps it's actually cheaper for them to make their own chips? They're using off-the-shelf ARM IP for the cores & probably most of the rest of it.

    The chips were designed by Annapurna Labs, which Amazon bought in January 2015. Back then, there weren't really compelling ARM-based server options readily-available. If they were eyeing such an acquisition today, I wonder if they wouldn't instead just source off-the-shelf chips like Cavium's Thunder X2 or Ampere's eMAG.

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  • _Alex_
    replied
    Originally posted by milkylainen View Post
    Why would Amazon do this? I'm not sure I understand a why.
    To wake up x86 manufacturers that there are better alternatives in terms of cost and perf/watt. If they start losing clients maybe they'll start making better CPUs.

    Leave a comment:


  • milkylainen
    replied
    So I guess the big question will be raw computing power vs power consumption vs cost as usual?

    Also. Why would Amazon do this? I'm not sure I understand a why.
    They have shitloads of cash to spend on fun projects?
    Lessen reliance on Intel and AMD?
    Implementation introspection for security purposes?

    Leave a comment:


  • CommunityMember
    replied
    Unfortunately, still no lightsail graviton instances available for people to easily get their feet wet with minimal friction (sure, anyone with a bit of experience with AWS can spin up a full new instance with storage and networking in minutes, but lightsail makes it much easier, and often cheaper, too, for small sandboxes).

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  • bridgman
    replied
    but their next-gen Gravin2 CPUs that are "coming soon"
    Minor typo...

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  • uid313
    replied
    Sounds cool, I wish these were available for consumers to buy instead of just rent in the cloud.

    Leave a comment:


  • Amazon Talks Up Big Performance Gains For Their 7nm Graviton2 CPUs

    Phoronix: Amazon Talks Up Big Performance Gains For Their 7nm Graviton2 CPUs

    We weren't too enthusiastic about the performance of Amazon's initial Graviton ARM-based CPU cores offered via their Elastic Compute Cloud, but their next-gen Gravin2 CPUs that are "coming soon" should be much more capable for good ARM Linux performance...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite
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