It's a bit odd that this would happen so soon after Cloudflare started testing & praising ARM-based server (and specifically Qualcomm's Centriq). For reference:
https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/ where they find Centriq is mostly performance-competitive with Skylake at a significantly lower TDP/power point modulo platform support/optimisation e.g. Go's ARMv8 backend being immature and lacking optimised assembly routines
https://blog.cloudflare.com/neon-is-the-new-black/ where they demonstrate the latter by simd-optimizing jpegtrans for ARMv8[0] leading the Centriq 2452 to reach (and even overtake) Xeon 4116's performance-per-worker and blowing its throughput-per-watt out the water (25 image/second/watt on Centriq 2452 versus under 10 on the 4116)
[0] as they'd previously done for AMD64, though starting with equivalent optimisations using SIMD intrinsics then adding ARM-specific assembly for further gains as "the compiler in that case produces somewhat suboptimal code" using intrinsics[1]
[1] because according to a commenter and SO[2] GCC inserts unnecessary register copies when involving NEON yielding to very poor machine code, Microsoft's ARM compiler is apparently stellar and Clang used to be meh but greatly caught up between 2012 and now
Looks like Qualcomm is a platinum level founding member of the risc-v foundation. Maybe they've decided to quit moving in this direction with ARM ISA and will revisit in a couple years with something they have more control over. Just me speculating or hoping.
The ARM-based servers have never been viable yet, because you can't buy affordable/standard sized motherboards from any of the top ten Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers yet. It's a chicken or egg problem for whitebox server platform adoption. It's all custom order stuff. Nothing like where you can buy a $400 Supermicro, Tyan or MSI dual socket server motherboard, put two $350 Xeons in it, add RAM, etc.
>It's a bit odd that this would happen so soon after Cloudflare started testing & praising ARM-based server
Qualcomm is a "Big American Co." They play big business. If they do invest a gigaton of money into something, they expect returns fast. In other words, those types tend to give up quickly.
Yeah, who would want to use ARM server, especially these days?
Performance and power efficiency is not the only story nowadays. Most modern cloud servers rely on virtualization technologies. AFAIK ARM is very weak in running VMs. AMD's AMD-V struggles with that too. Even Docker EE does not support ARM (CE does but it's not been a long time yet).
Yeah, who would want to use an Intel server, especially these days? Cost and vendor-lock-in is not the only story nowadays. Most modern data center servers rely on high-availability technologies. AFAIK Intel is very weak in running HA. AMD struggles with that too. Even Linux/FreeBSD does not support HA.
IMHO ARM64 server chips are suited for the cloud and cloud native applications. Containers and microservices can make better use of the high number of cores and greater mem bandwidth than old monolithic apps. Openstack, Kubernetes and Docker all work and are available with support. Virtualization with KVM also works fine.
My guess would be Samsung, I don't see anyone else being a good fit. Centriq is already being Fabbed by Samsung, it also has a in development Next Generation CPU that has improved ISA and uses Samsung 7nm. They also own Joyent, although I am not sure if it is relevant anymore.
I could see Fujitsu. They already have considerable investment in datacenter ARM. The government’s post-K-computer is supposed to be the first big rollout of what they’re doing with ARM.
I doubt it would happen for a number of reasons, but who is a) known for making amazingly powerful and power-sipping ARM chips, and b) rumored to be working on more powerful server/desktop class ARM chips for new products? Apple!
OTOH, Apple's chip design team probably doesn't have much (if anything) to gain from buying out qualcomm's team.
who else left for ARM-Server-Chips? so far many if not all ARM-server efforts fell apart.
it took a long while for xeon to get where it is today in the data center, maybe it is as hard as making Xeon run on cellphones comparing to getting ARM into Servers.
Not much seems to be happening on the performance front, but Intel can't charge quasi-monopoly prices anymore. They started to sell 6-core desktop CPUs at the same price that they were selling 4-cores for... dunno, 10 years? In servers, Epyc is applying the price pressure, and it actually has some performance advantages over Intel's offerings (more cores, more PCIe lanes).
[+] [-] masklinn|7 years ago|reply
https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/ where they find Centriq is mostly performance-competitive with Skylake at a significantly lower TDP/power point modulo platform support/optimisation e.g. Go's ARMv8 backend being immature and lacking optimised assembly routines
https://blog.cloudflare.com/neon-is-the-new-black/ where they demonstrate the latter by simd-optimizing jpegtrans for ARMv8[0] leading the Centriq 2452 to reach (and even overtake) Xeon 4116's performance-per-worker and blowing its throughput-per-watt out the water (25 image/second/watt on Centriq 2452 versus under 10 on the 4116)
[0] as they'd previously done for AMD64, though starting with equivalent optimisations using SIMD intrinsics then adding ARM-specific assembly for further gains as "the compiler in that case produces somewhat suboptimal code" using intrinsics[1]
[1] because according to a commenter and SO[2] GCC inserts unnecessary register copies when involving NEON yielding to very poor machine code, Microsoft's ARM compiler is apparently stellar and Clang used to be meh but greatly caught up between 2012 and now
[2] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9828567/arm-neon-intrins...
[+] [-] jsheard|7 years ago|reply
https://www.qualcommventures.com/companies/data-center-enter...
[+] [-] phkahler|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baybal2|7 years ago|reply
Qualcomm is a "Big American Co." They play big business. If they do invest a gigaton of money into something, they expect returns fast. In other words, those types tend to give up quickly.
[+] [-] davidgrenier|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbumsik|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cat199|7 years ago|reply
Yeah, who would want to use an Intel server, especially these days? Cost and vendor-lock-in is not the only story nowadays. Most modern data center servers rely on high-availability technologies. AFAIK Intel is very weak in running HA. AMD struggles with that too. Even Linux/FreeBSD does not support HA.
[+] [-] pureagave|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gruez|7 years ago|reply
are there any benchmarks to support this? a quick search on google yields nothing.
[+] [-] osivertsson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m_mueller|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djrogers|7 years ago|reply
OTOH, Apple's chip design team probably doesn't have much (if anything) to gain from buying out qualcomm's team.
[+] [-] TorKlingberg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyldfire|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmitrygr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mino|7 years ago|reply
What does this mean in practice?
[+] [-] ausjke|7 years ago|reply
it took a long while for xeon to get where it is today in the data center, maybe it is as hard as making Xeon run on cellphones comparing to getting ARM into Servers.
[+] [-] nappy-doo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhouston|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahartmetz|7 years ago|reply