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Comment by mrb | Hacker News Reader

The Zen core had a pretty good (but no that amazing) success in the consumer market, because although people admired its multi-threaded performance, they were merely lukewarm about its single-threaded perf which "just" almost matches Intel. But oh boy, the Zen core in the server market is going to make a killing. Servers are all about multi-threaded performance (hence why 80% of the server market is dual socket). And it looks like a single socket EPYC is beating a dual socket Xeon... ouch. Finally a good kick in Intel's resting bottom.

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> The Zen core had a pretty good (but no that amazing) success in the consumer market, because although people admired its multi-threaded performance, they were merely lukewarm about its single-threaded perf which "just" almost matches Intel.

That's highly variable, I was actually pretty astounded by it's single core performance and completely blown away by its multicore performance.

I built a 1700 (not even a +) for work a few weeks ago and I keep running into things where I pause and think something crashed because it can't have finished that fast...

Yesterdays was 5Gb of mixed data in 18s (turns out the SSD is the bottleneck), if I wasn't busy with a new job I'd be trying that 5Gb of data out of a RAM disk just to see how fast pigz (love pigz by the way, multithreaded gzip) can go with 8 cores/16 threads.

Pigz do fly.

> The Zen core had a pretty good (but no that amazing) success in the consumer market

In the communities I look at, the only Intel processors still getting regularly recommended are the Pentium G4560 and the Intel i7-7700K. And that's from consumers to consumers.

Also, when I look at my meta-benchmark for games, I see Ryzen with really good results by now. That changed a bit, it improved now that games are getting optimized and ram support is getting better. Before the i5 was still more viable.

I don't have insight into the whole market, but from my small observer position Ryzen does look like a pretty huge success.

While the raw compute performance numbers of Zen may be better than Intel, don't underestimate other economic and business factors. AMD has always played 2nd fiddle to Intel and it is hard to shake that perception. I'd love to see a major cloud provider (AWS, Google, Azure) actively buying AMD chips and making them available for compute. However, I am still a bit skeptical this is ever going to happen. There is just too much risk for a cloud provider. Intel holds market and nearly all mindshare in mainstream cloud computing.

Disclosure: $AMD shareholder

I wouldn't be so sure. As Intel's customers, the cloud providers are very interested in not seeing Intel maintain the near-monopoly they have inched toward over the last 5 years. They don't want to pay $7K each for the highest performance Xeon if it could be $6K in a slightly more competitive market. So much so that Google and others joined the OpenPOWER Foundation. Whether that was just for signaling alone, or if they legitimately thought a POWER8 chip would come available that met their needs, I of course do not know.

I agree, but there is inherent risk to switching for a cloud provider, even though AMD might offer a cheaper and faster CPU.

Certainly a risk, but this is Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook we are talking about here. The largest public companies in the world. Some of the most technologically advanced as well. If they cannot bring pressure to Intel, no one can.

Cloud providers aren't going to switch fully to AMD, but I wouldn't be surprised if they buy a mix like 70% Intel / 30% AMD.

There may be a situation, however, where the servers that are rented to customers are 100% Intel which would perpetuate the appearance of a monopoly even if it no longer exists.

I disagree. It is _vital_ for cloud providers to keep Intel's feet to the fire. Things got so bad a few years back, Google started porting its entire software stack to ppc64le, which is far less convenient as a platform than amd64. I think we will totally see EPYC deployment in data centers if AMDs benchmarks hold up. You may not even know they're there, but I can guarantee they'll see a significant traction.

> AMD has always played 2nd fiddle to Intel and it is hard to shake that perception.

I don't know where you got that perception. Perhaps you're a kid fresh out of highschool and are oblivious to AMD's history, but AMD's Athlon line outperformed Intel's offering of the time by a wide margin, namely their Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV and Pentium D lines.

IIRC, Intel only started to become competitive with AMD with the introduction of their Core 2 line.

In fact I am not an oblivious "kid fresh out of highschool"... Also, I think you are confusing performance with business success and sales. AMD may have had better performing CPUs in the past, but that has not mattered thus far. $INTC market cap 165 billion. $AMD market cap 10 billion.

Then you are probably aware that it has not mattered because of Intels shady tactics. [0][1][2][3] etc.

[0] https://www.wired.com/2009/12/ftc-sues-intel-for-anti-compet...

[1] http://www.silicon.co.uk/workspace/dell-pays-65million-to-se...

[2] http://techreport.com/news/8547/does-intel-compiler-cripple-...

[3] http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49#49

> Also, I think you are confusing performance with business success and sales.

I see your point. I've misinterpreted your comment assuming it was focused on performance instead of market share.

While that's true, Intel had better sales even in those times due to their aggressive marketing and business practices. IIRC AMD peaked back then at shipping 40 % of all units.

> I'd love to see a major cloud provider (AWS, Google, Azure) actively buying AMD chips and making them available for compute.

AWS used to use AMD chips in some instance types; I believe the whole m1 line used to be dual-sourced. If you got an Opteron when you launched it, you killed it and tried again, as the Xeon type was a little faster :)

Certainly for server software that is licensed per CPU and not per core, this is a major plus point for AMD.

I've used a dual cpu AMD Bulldozer for years (and still do), it's been rock solid and the 32 threads really helped with certain workloads. At the time the equivalent from Intel would have been far more expensive.

What board supports had dual socket FX? Those chips have come down in price to a point where it's now cheap to buy second hand systems for the price of the chip when it was released.

It would make a nice home VM server.

It's an HP server, I don't know if they make those any more. I can look up the model number if you want, I'm sure I have the invoice somewhere.

If you wouldn't mind grabbing a model number that would be great.

Ok, give me a moment.

edit: this is the one:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/archives_Divis...

It's a DL 385 G7.

Cpuinfo: (there's two of these but they're obviously the same)

processor : 31 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 21 model : 1 model name : AMD Opteron(TM) Processor 6274

Looks like they are going for around $190 used on eBay with the CPUs and RAM included (some with HDDs and some without, but personally I'd buy without and use my own SSDs). Not a bad deal for the horsepower!

Bare in mind that nowadays there are used Opteron processors being given away practically for free. In fact, right now I have 6 Opteron 6172 sitting on my desk which I've bought off ebay for around 40€.

No, definitely not a bad deal. It will also take a ton of RAM.

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