US DOE supercomputers wins for AMD, Intel, nothing new for nvidia.

[cj09beira]

3 hours ago, YaBoiWill said:

What are they even using it for? 

Dept of energy needing to calculate how much time they have left on coal power.

Peasantry in the UK we achieved 100 hours coal-less power production. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-coal-renewables-record-climate-change-fossil-fuels-a8901436.html

 

The US kind of needs to get going on renewables as well. 

things like researching molten salt reactors, which is pretty awesome.

 

 

 

on topic, it seems to me like mark just confirmed that vega 20 does have the ability to connect directly to the cpu via IF, which was only confirmed for gpu-gpu connections 

[LambdaSystems]

Interesting news, I wonder if this means that DOE think the upcoming amd GPUs are going be better than nvidia? For datacenters power consumption is usually an important part and historically that has been a weak point for amd so I'm curious to see if they managed to catch up to nvidia there.

[WhiteRabbite079]

4 hours ago, GabeThePCHelper said:

But can it run minesweeper? Or Minecraft?

...Or both...at the SAME TIME!?!?!?!?!?!0.0

[Neftex]

5 hours ago, YaBoiWill said:

What are they even using it for?

probably encryption cracking and AI for all kinds of intelligence agencies

[porina]

43 minutes ago, Jack_of_all_Trades said:

Does AMD have a new architecture or are they building the supercomputer on gcn ? Sounds more like a supernova than a supercomputer if thats the case. 

If you mean the GPU part, presumably it'll be Navi on 7nm in some form. They have a couple of years to get it into production.

[Trixanity]

17 minutes ago, porina said:

If you mean the GPU part, presumably it'll be Navi on 7nm in some form. They have a couple of years to get it into production.

Anandtech speculate that it's their next gen on 7+ nm which makes sense given that it's also on a future Zen uarch.

[cj09beira]

1 hour ago, Jack_of_all_Trades said:

Does AMD have a new architecture or are they building the supercomputer on gcn ? Sounds more like a supernova than a supercomputer if thats the case. 

those guys usually get much better bins than we do, so they should be performing much better, either way it will be interesting to see what they will be using, they were talking about hbm and IF in the video so that for now leaves only vega 20, not sure if navi 20 will also be a mostly enterprise gpu, specially as they have rarely made fp64 gpus, the last one was the 290x

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, MeatFeastMan said:

Intel. Here's a bit of advice. Plan for the future. AMD's roadmap is smashing it out of the park while Intel is caught with their pants down. But most of all Intel, don't take advantage of the people you are selling products to. Treat them as friends not stupid animals.

 

I'm going to say you have fallen for AMD's marketing.  Both companies are always planning for the future.  Every company does.   Having some success is not because of the name they gave their planning strategies. 

[Derkoli]

6 hours ago, porina said:

CPUs Via are currently doing have connections with China, so that'll go down well with the US gov. Gonna be too much pain to make that workable worldwide, both technically and politically.

 

It might be more interesting for them to look at non-x86 offerings if they wanted to go that route, although it would be a gamble for a niche market if there isn't already an order in place.

I swear whenever a company goes anywhere near china america is like ?? ???????? ??? ??? ???

[Fasauceome]

I think this is emblematic of more than one change, not only that AMD offers compelling hardware but also that Nvidia likely dropped the ball to cause buyers to look elsewhere. Similar story with apple and their GPU related work, Nvidia screws their partners sometimes because they think they can get away with it.

[S w a t s o n]

3 hours ago, porina said:

If you mean the GPU part, presumably it'll be Navi on 7nm in some form. They have a couple of years to get it into production.

 

3 hours ago, Jack_of_all_Trades said:

Does AMD have a new architecture or are they building the supercomputer on gcn ? Sounds more like a supernova than a supercomputer if thats the case. 

It could be using post navi as well, it's using Milan (Zen 3) or better almost certainly for instance

 

 

Aside about the perf: BTW if it's not clear, we're going to see like 4 years of very, very high yoy CPU gains due to sheer core counts. Zen 3 could be 96 cores, Zen 4 128 cores.

[mr moose]

15 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

I think this is emblematic of more than one change, not only that AMD offers compelling hardware but also that Nvidia likely dropped the ball to cause buyers to look elsewhere. Similar story with apple and their GPU related work, Nvidia screws their partners sometimes because they think they can get away with it.

 

I think AMD just offered more compelling hardware, by that I mean performance wise.    I have personally seen a company put in 2 quotes for the same job under different names.  Regardless which quote got accepted the company was going to make money and do the job the same way anyway.  The accepted quote was 5 times higher than the lower quote simply because the directors didn't believe the job could be properly done at the lower rate.  

 

Nvidia doesn't have to prove themselves in the field, So AMD must have spec'd a decent system.

 

[rockking1379]

11 hours ago, YaBoiWill said:

The US kind of needs to get going on renewables as well. 

this is probably more of a personal opinion than anything but i really dont want renewables. and its not because i dont love the earth. i just dont want to look out over the horizon and all i see are wind mills and solar panels everywhere.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

dont think its transferrable. i also have doubts of Nvidia managing to play it off in the CPU market. they make great GPUs, but both AMD and Intel are very competetive in the CPU market. 

Realistically the only viable company to buy out Via and compete in x86 is IBM.

[thorhammerz]

13 hours ago, YaBoiWill said:

The US kind of needs to get going on renewables as well. 

Not quite as (economically) feasible as some of the "green" parties tend to market it, especially for a large countries or regions with its population centres clustered in only several places. 

 

On the production side of things, for solar, generation must be geographically located in an area with sufficient sunlight year round (haze, clouds, weather, night, tend to reduce solar potential by... a lot). For wind, generation must be geographically located in an area with lots of surface wind; high altitudes = less air pressure = less force turning turbines; steep slopes = you get broken turbines. Then you also need them to be geographically co-located near population centres - load loss via transmission adds up quickly after a couple hundred miles; that's really no bueno. For hydro, you either have good rivers or you don't - dams are fabulously expensive to build and maintain, and tend to mess up the regional water distribution/drainage dynamics like no other.

 

After you've magically convinced politicians and Not-In-My-Backyarders the wonderful benefits of erecting wind farms all around them (good luck with that) where the wind blows, you still need to deal with the primary issue of storage (or the lack thereof), where people only tend to turn on all their electric appliances for a few hours every day ("peak demand") - the wind is not guaranteed to blow (reliability issues), and the sun is usually not shining during the evenings. Battery tech still has a decade or two of development and scaling to become truly commercially viable on the scale of power grids.

 

The countries that force themselves to "go green" (this vague terminology typically includes nuclear generation) have done so out of necessity - coal supplies aren't going to last forever, and neither is your supply of oil / natural gas due to geopolitical issues (Russia says hi to "give us our Empire back or we'll turn off the oil taps", the Americans "why are we policing the world when the Soviets are gone?" saying goodbye).

 

The Americans in the middle of the current shale revolution have access to a ridiculously abundant, accessible, and cheap source of natural gas - until "renewables" can compete with that in terms of end-to-end costs, "green" energy is going to remain comfortable in the single digit percentage of power generation market share.

 

[Jito463]

13 hours ago, YaBoiWill said:

Peasantry in the UK we achieved 100 hours coal-less power production. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-coal-renewables-record-climate-change-fossil-fuels-a8901436.html

 

The US kind of needs to get going on renewables as well. 

11 hours ago, MeatFeastMan said:

This here, absolutely. I don't want to desperately bang the renewable energy drum but it's become serious now. They should be creating renewable energy jobs, looking into the future. Not creating coal and fossil fuel industry jobs and looking into the past. It is CRUCIAL for Trump to be out of power into 2020 to stop this from damaging the planet. And I like Trump, he's not been the 'catastrophe who would blow the world up' as some were saying beforehand and he's proved them wrong. But on climate he needs to get real.

*sigh*

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#75f8ad093535

http://garydhalbert.com/2018/09/06/us-reduces-carbon-emissions-gets-no-credit/

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2018/11/24/fact-check-did-the-us-reduce-carbon-emissions-more-than-any-other-country-last-year-696200

 

That said, the whole "carbon emissions" gig is nothing more than a major scam to tax the rest of us more.  So called 'renewable' energy is not reliable enough to depend on, and won't be for any time in the foreseeable future.  The best choice would be nuclear, as that's the cleanest, safest and most reliable form of energy we can currently produce.

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, Jito463 said:

*sigh*

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#75f8ad093535

http://garydhalbert.com/2018/09/06/us-reduces-carbon-emissions-gets-no-credit/

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2018/11/24/fact-check-did-the-us-reduce-carbon-emissions-more-than-any-other-country-last-year-696200

 

That said, the whole "carbon emissions" gig is nothing more than a major scam to tax the rest of us more.  So called 'renewable' energy is not reliable enough to depend on, and won't be for any time in the foreseeable future.  The best choice would be nuclear, as that's the cleanest, safest and most reliable form of energy we can currently produce.

Too bad you got all those dumb ass greenies going out of their way to ensure nuclear is not fashionable.    Talk about uneducated moronic self defeating simpletons.

[leadeater]

21 hours ago, porina said:

Aurora is rated at 1.0 exaflops, running off Xeon and Xe. Both systems will be built by Cray for delivery in 2021.

I find it rather interesting there has been a contract commitment for a GPU we know so little about. That's some rather strong confidence in a product that as far as I know is at early generation engineering samples at best, though I admit I know next to nothing about Xe other than it's going to be a thing.

 

I shouldn't get my hopes up, I know better, but like.... that's real interesting.

 

It also puzzles me that they can make that 1 exaflop performance target without knowing the performance of Xe, the actual performance.

[porina]

19 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I find it rather interesting there has been a contract commitment for a GPU we know so little about. That's some rather strong confidence in a product that as far as I know is at early generation engineering samples at best, though I admit I know next to nothing about Xe other than it's going to be a thing.

Delivery is a couple years off, so its possible what goes into it wont even be 1st gen product. Intel has certainly been pushing the Xe brand on social media already. Makes you wonder when we'll actually see any product.

 

19 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It also puzzles me that they can make that 1 exaflop performance target without knowing the performance of Xe, the actual performance.

Supercomputers are rated in peak flops, so it probably isn't that difficult to predict. They know what configurations they can go for, and from there it is a matter of clock.

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, porina said:

Supercomputers are rated in peak flops, so it probably isn't that difficult to predict. They know what configurations they can go for, and from there it is a matter of clock.

Most of these large, peta/exa, super computers all come from the GPU so that's why I find it odd. At least with AMD and Nvidia you have better prediction capability of future products to do that math but for Xe? Feels a bit pulling numbers out of arse.

 

Though obviously you can just set a target then buy as much hardware as required to meet it, performance per device be damned.

[Jito463]

58 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It also puzzles me that they can make that 1 exaflop performance target without knowing the performance of Xe, the actual performance.

24 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Though obviously you can just set a target then buy as much hardware as required to meet it

I'm curious how they came to decision of building the higher end (1.5 ExF) system with AMD instead of Intel.  I'm glad to see AMD getting back into the high end game, just wondering how it came about.  That said, we'll likely never know since those type of contract decisions are rarely discussed publicly.

[porina]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Most of these large, peta/exa, super computers all come from the GPU so that's why I find it odd. At least with AMD and Nvidia you have better prediction capability of future products to do that math but for Xe? Feels a bit pulling numbers out of arse.

 

Though obviously you can just set a target then buy as much hardware as required to meet it, performance per device be damned.

Assuming things haven't changed, they're rated on FP64 FLOPS. I think this applies both to existing AMD and nvidia GPUs, as well as CPUs. Essentially assume you do one instruction per clock, and multiply that by the number of execution units (related to but not number of cores). If the instruction is FMA, then it counts as 2 per clock. Intel must have an idea of how wide they can make the GPU based on their planned manufacturing process, with a possible wild card of tuning clock and power efficiency afterwards.

 

And because the above is peak, it doesn't necessarily bare any resemblance to attainable throughput which will be lower. It then becomes a programmer's problem to extract performance from it.

[mr moose]

20 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I'm curious how they came to decision of building the higher end (1.5 ExF) system with AMD instead of Intel.  I'm glad to see AMD getting back into the high end game, just wondering how it came about.  That said, we'll likely never know since those type of contract decisions are rarely discussed publicly.

Lisa Su is a formidable player in the whole selling game,  she worked very hard to secure both Xbox and PS hardware contracts, I have no doubt she offered very compelling hardware specs and probably the ability to customize the hardware during the design process.  It also would surprise me if the icing on the cake was a few dollars saved too.

[leadeater]

30 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I'm curious how they came to decision of building the higher end (1.5 ExF) system with AMD instead of Intel.  I'm glad to see AMD getting back into the high end game, just wondering how it came about.  That said, we'll likely never know since those type of contract decisions are rarely discussed publicly.

Because DoE is making a big push in to Open Source systems and software and AMD is more conducive to that.

 

On the technology front AMD has the lead there too, higher CPU rack density and PCIe lanes per CPU. Then also AMD is a major player in the up coming accelerator card interconnect standards like CCIX where Intel has basically no part in those (Nvidia too), pursuing their own.

 

Cray is the perfect partner because they are very experienced in interconnect technologies so you have pretty much the all star team to pull of something good using all new technology with high chance of success. Without someone like Cray AMD would not be in the preferred candidate position, even with the better technology.

[cj09beira]

27 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I'm curious how they came to decision of building the higher end (1.5 ExF) system with AMD instead of Intel.  I'm glad to see AMD getting back into the high end game, just wondering how it came about.  That said, we'll likely never know since those type of contract decisions are rarely discussed publicly.

i would guess its all thanks to the good bandwidth between cpus and gpus and also the large amounts of available pcie for good rack to rack bandwidth, if they plan on doing lots of gpgpu then that is going to be very important, rocm being open also allows them to tailor it to their needs, something large projects like this probably like to do