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Phoronix Test Suite 10.2 M1 Brings Improvements For Apple Silicon M1, Altra + More

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  • Phoronix Test Suite 10.2 M1 Brings Improvements For Apple Silicon M1, Altra + More

    Phoronix: Phoronix Test Suite 10.2 M1 Brings Improvements For Apple Silicon M1, Altra + More

    Out this weekend is Phoronix Test Suite 10.2-Harstad Milestone 1 as the first development snapshot of this next quarterly feature update to our cross-platform, open-source benchmarking software...

    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

  • #2
    Looking forward to seeing how Ampere has done with the Altra. Ampere seems to be more transparent about their ARM goals than Marvell (Cavium) is. Also would like to see how they have scaled the N1 ARM reference, especially with Nuvia making a lot of noise. An exciting decade in CPU architecture is coming upon us.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by edwaleni View Post
      Looking forward to seeing how Ampere has done with the Altra. Ampere seems to be more transparent about their ARM goals than Marvell (Cavium) is. Also would like to see how they have scaled the N1 ARM reference, especially with Nuvia making a lot of noise. An exciting decade in CPU architecture is coming upon us.
      Overall, Altra has surpassed my expectations so far... Should have results up within a week or two.
      Michael Larabel
      https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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      • #4
        You need to take some time off every once in a while Michael.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by edwaleni View Post
          An exciting decade in CPU architecture is coming upon us.
          It really is looking that way.

          I can't help but wonder what AMD has up their sleeves. They've had hybrid ARM/x86 on their roadmap in some form or fashion since at least 2012 and now they have the x86 "big.LITTLE" patents and an FPGA company under their belt. With Apple's M1, Ampere, and other ARM solutions available or coming to fruition it'll be interesting to see what AMD's answer is since they have all that new stuff in conjunction with their HSA and APU work in regards to different components sharing memory and cache.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by skeevy420 View Post

            It really is looking that way.

            I can't help but wonder what AMD has up their sleeves. They've had hybrid ARM/x86 on their roadmap in some form or fashion since at least 2012 and now they have the x86 "big.LITTLE" patents and an FPGA company under their belt. With Apple's M1, Ampere, and other ARM solutions available or coming to fruition it'll be interesting to see what AMD's answer is since they have all that new stuff in conjunction with their HSA and APU work in regards to different components sharing memory and cache.

            Lisa Su, shortly after becoming CEO of AMD, shot the "baby" that was the ARM based K12 CPU in the head and made it explicit in an interview that x86 was all AMD was going to explore.

            She also killed off HSA APU's with the advent of ZEN and ZEN based APU's are now nothing more than a SoC with a integrated GPU which DOES NOT share the same memory address space, nor is cache coherent nor zero copy of memory. HSA as far as AMD goes is now dead and died with the Bristol Ridge APU in 2016.

            The only thing AMD has to do with ARM is the Trusted Zone ARM core inside their CPU's for security.

            AMD will not have ANYTHING close to HSA on the non APU front until late 2021 into 2022 with the rollout of ZEN 4 and it's server part Genoa along with the 3rd Generation holistic fabric and interconnect framework called Infinity Architecture which will bring zero copy, cache coherent, everything connected to everything. A ZEN 4 / 3rd Gen IA architected APU may not be seen until 2023 at the soonest and even then may be hobbled as AMD's APUs have always been by shitty boards and firmware and single memory channel bullshit from the likes of HP, Lenovo, Dell.
            Last edited by Jumbotron; 22 November 2020, 12:40 AM.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Michael View Post

              Overall, Altra has surpassed my expectations so far... Should have results up within a week or two.
              Dang, Michael, that WAS fast (speaking broadly about your ARM support in general and the M1 specifically) !!

              Well done !!

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              • #8
                I have written for a while and have gotten flamed like a Whopper hamburger for it, that the Age of ARM is upon us and that the FOSS and Linux world had better ball up and start acting like it.

                Now comes this very interesting article from someone who looks at tech monopolies but now sees a VERTICAL monopoly of sorts developing from within the Tech Giants. From this guy's perspective, the x86 world has failed to keep up with the increase in compute loads especially those compute loads that demand AI, Machine Learning or acceleration using FPGA's

                He sees all the Tech Giant building out custom chips and SoCs for THEIR specific needs and increasingly bypassing more generalized and non optimized for the compute needs offerings for Intel and AMD. I have been harping on this for years and also telling folks you had better wake up to what Apple was going to do and what they have just done which is permanently leave the x86 world and Intel specifically to go with ARM and their custom version of it.

                Here are some snippets. The link to the entire article is below. Enjoy.



                There is a shifting relationship between the largest software companies in the world and their suppliers, and as the leading software companies have become ever-larger portions of the compute pie, it’s kind of become the problem of the tech companies, and not the semiconductor companies that service them to push forward the natural limits of hardware. Software ate the world so completely that now the large tech companies have to deal with the actual hardware that underlies their stack.

                Especially as some companies like Intel have fallen behind.

                So clearly this is top of mind at many of the tech companies around the world. I had wanted to write about this in February of this year, but just a few months later and we’ve seen the thesis play out in a big way. Apple’s M1/AX chips, AWS’s Graviton, Azure’s Catapult, and heck even Facebook is rumored to be starting their own chip platform. I don’t see it stopping any time soon, in fact, I think this will accelerate.

                I believe that in a few years, most of the large tech companies will have a much tighter level of integration and we will likely see much less “commoditized” platforms. Yes, they might run on partially open stacks (think open networking roadmap and Facebook) but their differentiation is going to be not only software but also hardware. We are going back to the old patterns of integration of both Software and Hardware.

                Microsoft’s silicon plays are a lot quieter than the others, and I only have really started to peel the onion back after learning about Inphi. In particular, they have a relatively novel datacenter peering strategy dependent on ColorZ, but I also believe that they will start to walk the way of custom silicon very soon. An example of this is the ARM-based surface that Microsoft has been designing. This is pretty striking if you remember the Wintel alliance, as it seems that Microsoft is willing and ready to give the marriage up.

                In particular, the platform they have talked the most on, and have the most progress for custom silicon is the edge. Azure Sphere in particular is a new platform that is anchored by their Pluton chip to improve security and is a highly opinionated ARM-based ecosystem promising security and performance.

                Just imagine now that you are an entrant, trying to sell IaaS, maybe like Digital Ocean (huge fan). If Intel and AMD chips are all that you can use, you better pray and hope their roadmaps are strong, because now that your competitors are able to create and expand their own roadmaps faster than the large semiconductor platforms, you may be forced to eventually buy from them or just be at a structural gross margin disadvantage. You could offer identical services but make worse profits, just on the basis that you don’t make your own chips. If they lower prices, you could even lose money! You cannot compete.

                But before we cry wolf, there is a company that is pretty well aware of this and is now the largest post-Intel semiconductor company around; Nvidia. Their acquisition of ARM is really important, and while it was expensive, ARM is going to inevitably be embedded into every single roadmap I mentioned above. In fact, the majority of the custom products are ARM-based, and Nvidia knows this. Nvidia is positioning itself as a large and independent silicon platform in the AI age. Like the Intel of yesteryear. Nvidia now will be a relevant company no matter what happens with the tech platforms pushing forward.


                https://mule.substack.com/p/the-tech...es-go-vertical
                Last edited by Jumbotron; 21 November 2020, 08:44 PM.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Jumbotron View Post
                  I have written for a while and have gotten flamed like a Whopper hamburger for it, that the Age of ARM is upon us and that the FOSS and Linux world had better ball up and start acting like it.
                  I am not sure what you are specifically advocating. Linux distributions have targeted various ARM processed for a while. There is even an ARM Chromebook on the list of supported Libreboot devices. I used this ARM based Chromebook with Devuan Linux for years until the screen was physically damaged. I liked it and it worked well. There are other more accessible ARM devices like Pinebook and Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi continues to advance low-power, affordable computing solution.

                  What are you suggesting people do different?

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by creoflux View Post

                    I am not sure what you are specifically advocating. Linux distributions have targeted various ARM processed for a while. There is even an ARM Chromebook on the list of supported Libreboot devices. I used this ARM based Chromebook with Devuan Linux for years until the screen was physically damaged. I liked it and it worked well. There are other more accessible ARM devices like Pinebook and Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi continues to advance low-power, affordable computing solution.

                    What are you suggesting people do different?
                    Every major Linux program should have a crash program to port over to ARM, like yesterday. LibreOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, Openshot, Ardour, Blender, Skrooge, KMymoney, GNUCash, etc, etc.

                    Pick 3 platforms. One with straight ARM with Mail graphics. One with a recent Qualcomm SoC and one with a Mediatek SoC.

                    Make sure they are all touch aware and scale and resize properly when reoriented. Make sure they take advantage of any built in DSPs, Neural Processors, Visual Processors, GPS, Advanced Matrix Math processors if any, etc. etc.

                    Make versions of all of these apps, ( well...Blender maybe not..) that are phone friendly and optimized.

                    In other words....Get a Chromebook tablet, a Microsoft Surface, a Lenovo Duet, a Samsung Chromebook, an Acer Chromebook tablet and or laptop, A Rasperberry Pi and start hacking away.

                    There should be an ARM native version of EVERY major Linux app out there right along side their original x86 versions. And each and everyone should take advantage of every AI, ML, and DSP accelerated core on each SoC mentioned above.

                    In other words...every FOSS project should now begin with ARM and only THEN work out an x86 version.
                    Last edited by Jumbotron; 22 November 2020, 12:42 AM.

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