Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Someday, I hope to see AMD dominate servers all over.
They did for a long time, and I think that they still do outside of the Windows world. Windows and SMB licensing with their low cost count thing is really the only thing keeping Intel procs in the server game. If you are running a non-Windows workload, Intel procs make essentially no sense unless you have a very special purpose machine.
And in those special cases, Power tends to be the answer rather than Intel.
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
And in those special cases, Power tends to be the answer rather than Intel.
What do you mean by that?
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
But hey, they just came out with Hyperthreading in what, 2017? Yay!
SMT I believe is their version.HT is an industry term, but an implementation. So it is HT with AMD, too. Same as with IBM, Oracle, and others.
HT can be good, or bad. It's only good if your processor has a deep pipeline.
Well you mentioned threads earlier, aren't threads insignificant without HT?
No, not at all. HT is a way to get more "visible threads" out of fewer "real threads". HT threads are weaker (sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot) than true threads. We often disable them because they can cause performance problems.
Threading on its own is super important for performance. HT is one of many methods to attempt to increase performance for certain workloads for a given processor design. True threading is actually more useful without HT, but no one makes HT without also doing threading. But they used to.
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
But hey, they just came out with Hyperthreading in what, 2017? Yay!
SMT I believe is their version.HT is an industry term, but an implementation. So it is HT with AMD, too. Same as with IBM, Oracle, and others.
HT can be good, or bad. It's only good if your processor has a deep pipeline.
Well you mentioned threads earlier, aren't threads insignificant without HT?
No, not at all. HT is a way to get more "visible threads" out of fewer "real threads". HT threads are weaker (sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot) than true threads. We often disable them because they can cause performance problems.
Threading on its own is super important for performance. HT is one of many methods to attempt to increase performance for certain workloads for a given processor design. True threading is actually more useful without HT, but no one makes HT without also doing threading. But they used to.
Ohhhh wow, interesting
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
And in those special cases, Power tends to be the answer rather than Intel.
What do you mean by that?
Cases where Intel tends to really stand out above its key competitors like AMD and ARM for servers, it tends to be crushed by Power. Single threaded performance has always been Power's key strong point. No one comes close to it. For huge thread performance, ARM tends to be best (RISK-V is going to come after it, though.) AMD, Intel and Sparc are all "middle ground, blended performance" choices.
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
And in those special cases, Power tends to be the answer rather than Intel.
What do you mean by that?
Cases where Intel tends to really stand out above its key competitors like AMD and ARM for servers, it tends to be crushed by Power. Single threaded performance has always been Power's key strong point. No one comes close to it. For huge thread performance, ARM tends to be best (RISK-V is going to come after it, though.) AMD, Intel and Sparc are all "middle ground, blended performance" choices.
Hmmm, never heard of Power.
I mean other than Power PC, which I presume is way past dead. -
Now Windows doesn't run on Power. So if you have a workload that needs huge single threaded performance (say, a really big math engine doing crazy calculations that can't be split up), and it has to run on Windows, then Intel is the obvious choice.
But if you can run on something other than Windows... nearly everything else runs on Power. So Power is the more obvious choice whether you want to use Linux, BSD, AIX, System i, System z, etc.
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@scottalanmiller OH DUH....IBM right???
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Hmmm, never heard of Power.
Power is the only remaining processor made by or available for IBM customers. IBM sold everything that used Intel or AMD to Lenovo so that they could focus 100% on their Power products. Power is what powers mainfraimes, the majority of mini-computers, anything AIX, and many others.
Power also does other things and is very common in RAID controllers and other small items. But not made by IBM in those cases.
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller OH DUH....IBM right???
Yup. IBM makes the majority of Power processors and all of the high performance ones. Power is open source, so others can make it. Motorola made a low end Power proc family called PowerPC that Apple used to buy. Lots of chip makes use Power designs to make small 64bit chips these days. You find them in all kinds of appliances. But they are not nearly as popular as ARM for that.
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Hmmm, never heard of Power.
Power is the only remaining processor made by or available for IBM customers. IBM sold everything that used Intel or AMD to Lenovo so that they could focus 100% on their Power products. Power is what powers mainfraimes, the majority of mini-computers, anything AIX, and many others.
Power also does other things and is very common in RAID controllers and other small items. But not made by IBM in those cases.
Off-topic, but I remember reading an article a few years back that IBM switched all their employees over to Apple machines. Lol...random.
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller OH DUH....IBM right???
Yup. IBM makes the majority of Power processors and all of the high performance ones. Power is open source, so others can make it. Motorola made a low end Power proc family called PowerPC that Apple used to buy. Lots of chip makes use Power designs to make small 64bit chips these days. You find them in all kinds of appliances. But they are not nearly as popular as ARM for that.
Would Snapdragon count as ARM?
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The main processor families for general computing around still today include: Power, Sparc, MIPS, AMD64, ARM, RISC-V.
Recently killed off families included Alpha, PA-RISC, Itanium, IA32.
AMD and Intel both primarily make AMD64 chips. Intel has no chip design of its own today.
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Hmmm, never heard of Power.
Power is the only remaining processor made by or available for IBM customers. IBM sold everything that used Intel or AMD to Lenovo so that they could focus 100% on their Power products. Power is what powers mainfraimes, the majority of mini-computers, anything AIX, and many others.
Power also does other things and is very common in RAID controllers and other small items. But not made by IBM in those cases.
Off-topic, but I remember reading an article a few years back that IBM switched all their employees over to Apple machines. Lol...random.
Because they don't want to use Windows. IBM and Microsoft do not like each other.
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller OH DUH....IBM right???
Yup. IBM makes the majority of Power processors and all of the high performance ones. Power is open source, so others can make it. Motorola made a low end Power proc family called PowerPC that Apple used to buy. Lots of chip makes use Power designs to make small 64bit chips these days. You find them in all kinds of appliances. But they are not nearly as popular as ARM for that.
Would Snapdragon count as ARM?
Snapdragon is the highest performance ARM for end user devices made currently, yes.
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There are way faster ARM procs made, but they aren't designed for end user devices. They are made for servers.
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
The main processor families for general computing around still today include: Power, Sparc, MIPS, AMD64, ARM, RISC-V.
Recently killed off families included Alpha, PA-RISC, Itanium, IA32.
AMD and Intel both primarily make AMD64 chips. Intel has no chip design of its own today.
What about Xeon? And speaking of which, fuck those damn things are expensive.
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
What about Xeon? And speaking of which, fuck those damn things are expensive.
Xeon is one specific model of Intel's AMD64 lineup. It's not actually a model on its own. It's a "server" designation of other lines. You could by a Pentium III Xeon, then a Pentium IV Xeon, a Core Xeon, etc.
Just like how i3 means low end processor, and i5 means middle of the road, Xeon means "server".
Xeon as a designation going back to the Pentium II era and was the direct successor to the Pentium Pro, which most people know as the Pentium III architecture. So the original Xeons were 32bit, so IA32 architecture.
All modern Xeons since around 2006 are 64bit, so AMD64.
Intel has only ever made two 64bit families. IA64 (aka Itanium) and AMD64 (i3, i5, Xeon, etc.) Everything that isn't Itanium is AMD64 from them.
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@Dashrender said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
but it was just over 5 years old and died last year.
That's pretty young for a laptop. My $1100 HP Folio 13 is still going strong from 2012.
I have a Tecra Z50-A series that's still going strong. A high performance Intel SSD and the maximum amount of RAM gives it a good go along with an Asus HD USB3 monitor makes it a solid work kit.
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@PhlipElder said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@Dashrender said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
but it was just over 5 years old and died last year.
That's pretty young for a laptop. My $1100 HP Folio 13 is still going strong from 2012.
I have a Tecra Z50-A series that's still going strong. A high performance Intel SSD and the maximum amount of RAM gives it a good go along with an Asus HD USB3 monitor makes it a solid work kit.
We've hit that era where as long as you have enough RAM and an SSD, the CPU is often not a factor
