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from the watch-for-bugs-at-the-chip-buffet dept.
High Performance Computing (HPC) Chips – A Veritable Smorgasbord?
No this isn't about the song from Charlotte's Web or the Scandinavian predilection for open sandwiches; it's about the apparent newfound choice in the HPC CPU market.
For the first time since AMD's ill-fated launch of Bulldozer the answer to the question, 'Which CPU will be in my next HPC system?' doesn't have to be 'Whichever variety of Intel Xeon E5 they are selling when we procure'.
In fact, it's not just in the x86 market where there is now a genuine choice. Soon we will have at least two credible ARM v8 ISA CPUs (from Cavium and Qualcomm respectively) and IBM have gone all in on the Power architecture (having at one point in the last ten years had four competing HPC CPU lines – x86, Blue Gene, Power and Cell).
In fact, it may even be Intel that is left wondering which horse to back in the HPC CPU race with both Xeon lines looking insufficiently differentiated going forward. A symptom of this dilemma is the recent restructuring of the Xeon line along with associated pricing and feature segmentation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @08:36PM (1 child)
Nah, they'll send in the Nazgul making claims of patent infringement and other forms of Imaginary Property theft. ARM And intel will shake their hands and do some more cross-licensing with IBM having one less competitor and the little people lose.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 17 2017, @04:24PM
That's because most people are oblivious as they stare at Kim K's ass on their ARM or x86 machines.
Now, if you paid enough money for Kim K to release her latest nudies in a way that only decodes on a specific platform, you might see either an uptick of interest, or people starting ignoring her for free porn elsewhere.
Both are very positive outcomes, where's the GoFundMe page?