AMD Demos x86 APU Server Running Fedora Linux

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NTMBK

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
10,461
5,847
136
Semiaccurate very briefly had a story about AMD demoing Fedora running on ARM servers, but it was quickly taken down. I think they may have accidentally broken an embargo...
 
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mrmt

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2012
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piesquared said:
Looks like there is a broad based ecosystem in place, nice. Hmm and Red Hat is a member of the HSA foundation I believe, interesting. Well it looks like AMD won't be 'going it alone' after all, nice! :) HSA is almost certainly going to have a big impact. :)
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Don't you find a little strange that software companies, not OEMs are testing this type of servers? doesn't Calxeda ring a bell?
 
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mrmt

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2012
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Ajay said:
Wow, NV pushing OpenCL - now that's a shocker! The specifically didn't implement OpenCL 1.2 on Kepler (which was annoying). I wonder what they'll do with Maxwell? Would love to see them implement v2.0. Off topic I know...
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Nvidia is less vocal about its support for OpenCL, but it supports OpenCL quite good. Better drivers, better support, better everything. Their consumer cards also support OpenCL since long time ago.

I don't think they will miss OpenCL 2.0 in future hardware.
 
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Nothingness

Diamond Member
Jul 3, 2013
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mrmt said:
Nvidia is less vocal about its support for OpenCL, but it supports OpenCL quite good. Better drivers, better support, better everything. Their consumer cards also support OpenCL since long time ago.

I don't think they will miss OpenCL 2.0 in future hardware.
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Are you sure about that? Do you have some reference about that? Because random Google search brings threads like this where a developer explicitly say that OpenCL support in NVIDIA drivers is poor as far as optimization goes. The lack of OpenCL sub-forum on devtalk is to be noted too.

I'm not trying to say you're wrong, but all evidence I found point to poor OpenCL performance on NVIDIA due to poor OpenCL optimization in their drivers (and that won't change my point of view: I'll keep on buying NVIDIA due to their better Linux support).
 
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mrmt

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2012
3,974
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Nothingness said:
Are you sure about that? Do you have some reference about that? Because random Google search brings threads like this where a developer explicitly say that OpenCL support in NVIDIA drivers is poor as far as optimization goes. The lack of OpenCL sub-forum on devtalk is to be noted too.
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Optimization =! Developer support. I wasn't addressing performance here, as it's clear that whatever optimization support Nvidia will give will be directed to CUDA, not OpenCL.


What I was talking is about this:

http://streamcomputing.eu/blog/2013-08-01/amd-fix-bugs-in-opencl-compilerdrivers/

or this:

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/crash-at-opencl-detection.179608/
 
A

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
16,094
8,114
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Redacted

Let's please save the NV OpenCL discussion for another thread.
-ViRGE
 
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piesquared

piesquared

Golden Member
Oct 16, 2006
1,651
473
136
Here's the official press release. :)

AMD Showcases Server Innovation and Industry First with a Demo of its Next-Gen x86 APU Running Fedora Linux

And here's AMD's OpenCL leadership.

0208_Image_Surface_Smoothing.png
 
A

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
16,094
8,114
136
Well, I was I little hopeful about this, till I found AMD's spec page on Berlin and it TDP is listed as 11-22 watts!!! I'm sorry, I just don't get it. What is the size of the market for ~15W SoCs with this level of performance? On the plus side, it won't be bandwidth limited anymore :|
 
coercitiv

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
7,409
17,590
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Ajay said:
Well, I was I little hopeful about this, till I found AMD's spec page on Berlin and it TDP is listed as 11-22 watts!!! I'm sorry, I just don't get it. What is the size of the market for ~15W SoCs with this level of performance? On the plus side, it won't be bandwidth limited anymore :|
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Care to share the link? I think you stumbled on the X2100 series, based on Jaguar cores.

AFAIK Berlin will use 4 Steamroller cores.
 
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ph2000

Member
May 23, 2012
77
0
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mrmt said:
Don't you find a little strange that software companies, not OEMs are testing this type of servers? doesn't Calxeda ring a bell?
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that like chicken and egg problem
but then amd already had hardware platfom from seamicro
what missing is the software to showcase it
 
M

mrmt

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2012
3,974
0
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Ajay said:
Well, I was I little hopeful about this, till I found AMD's spec page on Berlin and it TDP is listed as 11-22 watts!!! I'm sorry, I just don't get it. What is the size of the market for ~15W SoCs with this level of performance? On the plus side, it won't be bandwidth limited anymore :|
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It's worse than you think. Berlin is 65W, is the excavator APU. It's not low power enough to put a bunch in micro servers, it's doesn't have enough performance to use in a conventional servers. Meet the poor man web hosting server, or the poor student CAD "workstation".
 
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mrmt

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2012
3,974
0
76
ph2000 said:
that like chicken and egg problem
but then amd already had hardware platfom from seamicro
what missing is the software to showcase it
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That business model would kill them, because that would mean AMD would fight directly with OEMs for a pie of their revenues. Plus building a server is one thing, designing and support an environment is a huge step ahead. Nobody would want to sell AMD after that.

AMD needs OEMs to partner with them. The fact that Fedora, and not one of the big names of the industry are showcasing the thing is a big red light.
 
Cerb

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
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sefsefsefsef said:
A few months ago I attended a keynote by the guy behind HSA who's now at nVidia (Norm Rubin), and while he couldn't talk specifically about how great HSA is because of his current affiliation, he did an excellent job of selling the notion that the future lies in ISA-independent languages, like Java and OpenCL. I'm personally aboard this particular hype train because of my own research, and how universal languages fit into it.
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That has been the future since the 60s. Whether it has become the past, or will do so soon, depends on what kind of use cases you're looking at.

As to the "meh"-ness of the announcement in general: no CPU running Fedora Core should be any particular surprise. That just means some minimal amount of driver support has been implemented. Red Hat (for those who aren't aware, Fedora is Red Hat's experimental playground) or Ubuntu LTS support, either right out of the door or very near it, will also be a requirement, practically, for any server CPU to be able to gain traction, these days, including CPUs as lowly as in the Raspberry Pi.
 
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Headfoot

Diamond Member
Feb 28, 2008
4,444
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sefsefsefsef said:
A few months ago I attended a keynote by the guy behind HSA who's now at nVidia (Norm Rubin), and while he couldn't talk specifically about how great HSA is because of his current affiliation, he did an excellent job of selling the notion that the future lies in ISA-independent languages, like Java and OpenCL. I'm personally aboard this particular hype train because of my own research, and how universal languages fit into it.

If you hate AMD, that's fine. I personally think it's silly to hate a company, but I won't stop you. AMD might even totally fail in this particular implementation and attempt at HSA, but I think the history books will show that something like HSA + high level languages are the way to go. The cool thing isn't how you can run code on a CPU or GPU (IMO GPUs are almost as lame as CPUs), but how this will maybe make it easy and practical to run our general purpose code on something way more powerful and efficient than either.

Sorry if there are mistakes, I wrote this out on my phone in a busy airport.
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Java hasn't been the future since 1990. High-level languages have advanced immensely past Java. Hell, I could start listing off a bunch of really good languages/frameworks built directly on top of the Java VM that are superior to Java in programmer friendliness in any way you can think of. Clojure, Groovy/Grails, Scala... And that's just languages built on the JVM, much less newer languages like Python. As far as I'm concerned if they want speed they can improve the C (or port to C++) API. If they want programmer friendliness, use a popular and nice language like Python. Java is like x86 in that its primary value is the massive library of things built upon it
 
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A

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
16,094
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136
Headfoot said:
Java hasn't been the future since 1990. High-level languages have advanced immensely past Java. Hell, I could start listing off a bunch of really good languages/frameworks built directly on top of the Java VM that are superior to Java in programmer friendliness in any way you can think of. Clojure, Groovy/Grails, Scala... And that's just languages built on the JVM, much less newer languages like Python. As far as I'm concerned if they want speed they can improve the C (or port to C++) API. If they want programmer friendliness, use a popular and nice language like Python. Java is like x86 in that its primary value is the massive library of things built upon it
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And yet..Java usage dwarfs the languages you just mentioned. I thought Ada 95 was the best thing since sliced bread for embedded/high reliability systems...and I was so wrong as far as marketplace acceptance went. Heck, I remember when I though Smalltalk and Modula were so cool, way, way better than BASIC :(
 
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