News Microsoft to offer Ampere instances

[DrMrLordX]

Well what do you know! Ampere is coming to Azure:

Microsoft offers Azure VMs with Ampere Altra Arm processors

'Up to 50%' better price-performance than x86 equivalents claimed

www.theregister.com

I don't know if MS will feature Altra or Altra MAX, but, hey, there you have it. A competitor to Graviton 2. That's interesting. Especially considering that MS and Google were allegedly looking at developing their own ARM CPUs in-house ala Amazon. Anyone think that MS may have thrown in the towel on that effort?

Also, by choosing Ampere's products, it should be rather obvious that Qualcomm will not be entering the ARM server market anytime soon, Nuvia or no Nuvia.

 

[NTMBK]

Also, by choosing Ampere's products, it should be rather obvious that Qualcomm will not be entering the ARM server market anytime soon, Nuvia or no Nuvia.

What difference does that make? They run the same instruction set, instances running on today's Ampere chips should be able to migrate to tomorrow's Qualcomm chips (or in-house Microsoft chips).

Could be the first step towards a Microsoft acquisition of Ampere- though I still think it's more likely that they get bought up by NVidia.

 

[ultimatebob]

Wasn't NVidia going to start offering their own ARM CPU's? Where are they?

 

[jpiniero]

Wasn't NVidia going to start offering their own ARM CPU's? Where are they?

1H 2023.

 

[DrMrLordX]

What difference does that make? They run the same instruction set, instances running on today's Ampere chips should be able to migrate to tomorrow's Qualcomm chips (or in-house Microsoft chips).

Could be the first step towards a Microsoft acquisition of Ampere- though I still think it's more likely that they get bought up by NVidia.

I mean, I guess, but MS has had exclusivity agreements with Qualcomm before. If Qualcomm had intended to ever re-enter the server market by 2023 using Nuvia products, MS wouldn't be playing footsie with Ampere today. Because, you know, exclusivity.

 

[moinmoin]

I mean, I guess, but MS has had exclusivity agreements with Qualcomm before. If Qualcomm had intended to ever re-enter the server market by 2023 using Nuvia products, MS wouldn't be playing footsie with Ampere today. Because, you know, exclusivity.

Microsoft essentially has 3 different business areas touching CPUs: consoles with Xbox, servers with Azure, and consumer computers with Surface. So far I honestly didn't think there was much of a crossover (if any) between these areas regarding with what companies they partner.

 

[Thala]

Finally we can use Azure now to test ARM apps, which was a bit problematic with Gravitron, because you had to run Windows in a VM. From what i understand, with Azure i can get a native ARM11 (Pro or Enterprise) instance.

 

[jpiniero]

Finally we can use Azure now to test ARM apps, which was a bit problematic with Gravitron, because you had to run Windows in a VM. From what i understand, with Azure i can get a native ARM11 (Pro or Enterprise) instance.

Amazon does offer a bare metal option for Gravitron. I don't know why you would bother with Windows if you were going to do ARM, but hey, you can?

 

[Thala]

Amazon does offer a bare metal option for Gravitron. I don't know why you would bother with Windows if you were going to do ARM, but hey, you can?

Not sure what bare metal means - but i assume it means booting into some bare-metal Linux environment, right?
Regarding your second question, when targeting Windows - i need some test machines for both x64 and arm64 - the later were somewhat problematic in the past with the best option running Windows in a KVM on Gravitron instances (or locally on an ARM64 device). So it is not a question of "can" but of "must".

Also your phrasing is somewhat misleading. I am not going "to do ARM" but I do support ARM64 independent of OS. And why not - sources are architecture independent within the same OS environment.

 

[jpiniero]

Not sure what bare metal means - but i assume it means booting into some bare-metal Linux environment, right?

It's physical hardware.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Microsoft essentially has 3 different business areas touching CPUs: consoles with Xbox, servers with Azure, and consumer computers with Surface. So far I honestly didn't think there was much of a crossover (if any) between these areas regarding with what companies they partner.

1). I am absolutely confident that Qualcomm would attempt to leverage current agreements to force MS to use their server chips IF Qualcomm had any (they don't, and I fully expect that to continue)
2). I am also absolutely confident that MS wouldn't touch Ampere except as a last resort, e.g. MS isn't producing their own Graviton competitor in-house (or can't bring it to market in a timely/cost-effective fashion)

If I'm wrong I'm wrong, but the skeptic in me says otherwise.

 

[moinmoin]

1). I am absolutely confident that Qualcomm would attempt to leverage current agreements to force MS to use their server chips IF Qualcomm had any (they don't, and I fully expect that to continue)
2). I am also absolutely confident that MS wouldn't touch Ampere except as a last resort, e.g. MS isn't producing their own Graviton competitor in-house (or can't bring it to market in a timely/cost-effective fashion)

If I'm wrong I'm wrong, but the skeptic in me says otherwise.

To me Azure seems to be run in a very pragmatic way. It's what made Azure Microsoft's main business. With both your points you suggest the complete opposite.

 

[DrMrLordX]

To me Azure seems to be run in a very pragmatic way. It's what made Azure Microsoft's main business. With both your points you suggest the complete opposite.

Then your and my definitions of what is pragmatic do not align. At least not in this case.