AMD Introduces Industry’s Most Powerful Server Graphics Card

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
ShintaiDK

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
Most powerhungry?

The S10000 is 3.94Mflops per W.
Telsa K20X is 5.57Mflops per W.

Anyway, in the 225W segment thats its all about.
FirePro S9000, 900Mhz, 0.806 peak DP Tflops, 6GB@264GB/sec. (3.58Mflops/W.)
Xeon Phi 5110P, 1053Mhz, 1.01 peak DP Tflops, 8GB@320GB/sec. (4.49Mflops/W.)
Tesla K20, 706Mhz, 1.17 peak DP Tflops, 5GB@208GB/sec. (5.2Mflops/W.)
 
Last edited:
O

OCGuy

Lifer
Jul 12, 2000
27,227
36
91
I was looking for something that actually backed up the headline, all I got was a press release.
 
3

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
The S10000 is a graphics card, though. It's not meant as a single purpose compute monster. The S9000 (also a graphics card) and S10000 are a generation behind the GK110. We'll have to see what Sea Islands top single GPU can do and if it can match the K20 or not. "In theory" GCN can do twice the DP it does now (1/2 compared to 1/4).
 
Keysplayr

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,209
50
91
The S10000 is 3.94Mflops per W. 2xGPUs
Telsa K20X is 5.57Mflops per W. 1xGPU
 
B

boxleitnerb

Platinum Member
Nov 1, 2011
2,601
2
81
I know they are not really comparable spec wise, but where you can fit those 375W and where power consumption is of little consequence, the S10000 might be appealing. $3599 vs. likely $4000-5000 for K20X which has less of everything, especially bandwidth.

I can understand why AMD would release such a card given the fact it cannot compete with S9000 against K20. Brute force approach, but good perf/$. Where have we seen that before...Bulldozer anyone?
 
ShintaiDK

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
Not to mention x86 beating it in efficiency (and speed at 225W) ;)

The S10000 and S9000 are statements of why the HPC segment is beyond AMD.

Its nVidia vs Intel there. Both with their own benefits.

S9000, 2499$ 0.806Tflop DP. Thats 0.32Mflop per $.
K20, 3199$ 1.17Tflop DP. Thats 0.37Mflop per $
5110P, 2649$ 1.01Tflop DP. Thats 0.38Mflop per $.

Just looks worse and worse for AMD.
 
Last edited:
S

sontin

Diamond Member
Sep 12, 2011
3,273
149
106
Yeah, AMD is dead in the server market. No OEM is supporting their FirePro cards. There are no software tools, there is no infrastructure. The cards are much slower than the competition or need to much power.

Ironic: You can't beat nVidia with a Fermi copy.
 
FalseChristian

FalseChristian

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
3,322
0
71
ATI was so much better when they were a standalone Canadian GPU maker. I wish Intel would level the playing field buy buying nVidia.
 
RussianSensation

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Keysplayr said:
The S10000 is 3.94Mflops per W. 2xGPUs
Telsa K20X is 5.57Mflops per W. 1xGPU
Click to expand...

It's not Mflops/w, but Gflops/w.

For example, K20X => 732mhz x 2688 SP x 2 Ops/clock / 1000 = 3935 Gflops
Then to get DP divide by 3 => 1311 Gflops
Then to get per Watt divide by 235W => 5.58 Gflops / Watt

Anyway your and ShintaiDK's comparison mysteriously focuses ONLY on double precision performance. Not all apps use double precision - hence the reason for K10's existence.

SP
S10000 = 15.8 Gflops/w
K10 = 20.4 Gflops/w
K20 = 15.7 Gflops/w
K20X = 16.8 Gflops/w

Outside of superior Glops/watt, other reasons NV is dominating HPC are:

1) Software integration - CUDA
2) Customer relationships - NV created GPGPU industry
3) Technical expertise / support
4) AMD is only now entering this space - can't expect Cadillac ATS to overthrow a BMW 3 series that has established itself for a long time in a particular segment.

It is true that Kepler has superior performance/watt no doubt, but it took a 7B transistor chip to barely beat a 4.3B chip in compute (although NV gimps its consumer GPUs, which means GTX680 is hopelessly outclassed in Compute in the consumer space for games/distributed computing projects):

A 4.3B HD7970 Ghz @ 1050mhz on a 365mm^2 die, with 250W TDP:
SP = 4.3 Tflops
DP = 1.08 Tflops

Asus Matrix $499 @ 1300mhz:
SP = 5.3 Tflops
DP = 1.33 Tflops

K20X > $3,200 (seen estimates of $4-5K):
SP = 3.94 Tflops
DP = 1.31 Tflops

If you just compare it on paper, for us consumers, we need to spend $3000-5000 on an NV card that offers comparable compute performance to a $500 Asus Matrix (of course I realize professional compute differs from consumer compute but for us distributed computing guys, ECC is irrelevant). The hardware power is not that impressive given the size of the chip. What's impressive is that they built a 7B chip and their DP performance is 1/3 of SP, not 1/4th like it is for GCN.

What really happened is NV's engineers took a better approach and outsmarted AMD's by going with more shaders @ lower clocks vs. less shaders @ high clocks. That was a good engineering move by them after Fermi. Also, NV once again had the balls to build a large monolithic die - a 7B transistor chip, with a die size of 520+ I bet. Still, on a compute performance/mm^2, AMD's 10-months old chip offers a lot more compute performance. With HD8970 series, if it has 2560 SPs, it will easily overthrow K20X in both SP and possibly even DP.

Again to me, what's most impressive here is that NV actually built a 7B chip. That's :thumbsup::thumbsup: because it increases the possibility for GK110-based GTX780. As far as compute performance goes, given the size of the chip, it's not impressive per say unless we take power consumption into account. Even then at 235W, this chip has lower SP performance than a 250W TDP HD7970 Ghz. And we all know that HD7970 Ghz doesn't use 250W of power at load.

Comparing AMD / Intel and NV on theoretical FLOPS also misses the point since that doesn't tell us the real world throughput in any particular app. With features like Hyper-Q and Dynamic Parallelism, NV could be 3-5x faster if a particular app takes advantage of these features and runs way faster with CUDA support (we've seen this scenario play out with Quadro vs. anything AMD throws at them). Really, the more important aspects for professional compute are not just theoretical #s but software/application support, ability to meet specific client's needs, technical support/expertise, etc. That's where NV excels and they should since they have invested millions of dollars into HPC compute while AMD is only now taking this space seriously.

If NV can improve yields and 28nm node matures even more by next year, if they can launch an 850-875mhz GK110 2688 SP with a 250W TDP, it would be a monster for sure. Of course we know NV is going to cripple its DP performance for us consumers anyway just like it has done every single generation in its existence.

Seeing how NV met its target of 3x increase in DP Gflops / watt with Kepler over Fermi, things are looking exciting for Maxwell. In 2-2.5 years, K20X is going to look like a toy based on NV's roadmap. ;)

Nvidia-Kepler-Will-Arrive-in-2012-Maxwell-in-2014-Says-Company-Slide-3.png


It's definitely exciting to see GPUs become far more important in the world outside of games.
 
Last edited:
T

truckerCLOCK

Senior member
Dec 13, 2011
217
0
76
ShintaiDK said:
Most powerhungry?

The S10000 is 3.94Mflops per W.
Telsa K20X is 5.57Mflops per W.

Anyway, in the 225W segment thats its all about.
FirePro S9000, 900Mhz, 0.806 peak DP Tflops, 6GB@264GB/sec. (3.58Mflops/W.)
Xeon Phi 5110P, 1053Mhz, 1.01 peak DP Tflops, 8GB@320GB/sec. (4.49Mflops/W.)
Tesla K20, 706Mhz, 1.17 peak DP Tflops, 5GB@208GB/sec. (5.2Mflops/W.)
Click to expand...


If there is an AMD thread.......can count on you to bash them. LOL
 
Vesku

Vesku

Diamond Member
Aug 25, 2005
3,743
28
86
AMD now has impressive raw compute performance, but imo they'll need to implement shared memory space via their HSA initiative in order to have a compelling feature over Nvidia's offerings.

Side note:
RussianSensation said:
If you just compare it on paper, for us consumers, we need to spend $3000-5000 on an NV card that offers comparable compute performance to a $500 Asus Matrix (of course I realize professional compute differs from consumer compute but for us distributed computing guys, ECC is irrelevant).
Click to expand...
I thought the 7900 series had ECC?
 
D

Dribble

Platinum Member
Aug 9, 2005
2,076
611
136
It's the software support that's the real problem - you need to do a lot more then just produce a set of drivers with some basic opencl support in. Look at the amount of time, money and effort nvidia puts into the software side of it's HPC offering. AMD puts in hardly any effort and then expects all the software infrastructure to magically appear -it's just not going to happen. It's not like x86 - there is no Intel or MS putting all the effort in which AMD can piggyback on.
 
Last edited:
T

tviceman

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2008
6,734
514
126
www.facebook.com
RussianSensation said:
Seeing how NV met its target of 3x increase in DP Gflops / watt with Kepler over Fermi, things are looking exciting for Maxwell. In 2-2.5 years, K20X is going to look like a toy based on NV's roadmap. ;)

It's definitely exciting to see GPUs become far more important in the world outside of games.
Click to expand...

Everyone's favorite satire writer seems to think Maxwell will be dead in the water and Nvidia is doomed (again).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom