Ampere Altra Max 128-Core CPU Is Priced Lower Than Flagship Xeon, EPYC CPUs
phoronix.com
phoronix.com
The article implies that it performs similarly to the high-end Intel and AMD parts, but the linked benchmarks are mostly synthetic tests like Stress-NG. There are a few Blender benchmarks ( https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ampere-a... ) but the rest of the tests aren’t really relevant to real workloads.
I wouldn’t be surprised if offer funds for companies to buy into their ecosystem in the first place.
Individuals at this point probably buy them off eBay especially the “ghost” SKUs that are only available for exascale customers.
I just decommissioned a 2010 40 core Intel that ran around this clock under full load, because the power consumption was outlandish. Replaced with 5950x and it benches within ten seconds on "all core kernel compile" - time make -j16 on new and time make -j40 on old.
Realistically I'd be happier with more threads for what I do, 100% of the time. I have "high clock" CPUs for single threaded workloads specifically so I don't fall into this 'ghz matters' trap.
It would be really nice if there was a system that could be built for around $2000 that could compile chromium & other massive applications in ~30 minutes.
This feels like Intel marketing shenanigans from 2000's..
Having this insane number of different is a common marketing stuff, that nowdays I found hard to belive ads any value to a business. Moreover, given the current Fab issues, and supply constraints keeping a clean & simple fabrication process, distribution, and sales pipeline actually is an advantage.
Can't help remembering Steve Jobs famous quote when re-gained controll of Apple. 4 producs Matrix: Consumer, Pro vs Portable, Desktop.
Again kudos for Apple: That continues to design one or maybe two CPUs per year and heavily optimizes, efficiency, scale, logistics, etc.
Its not like Intel, in that Ampere does not seem to play games with memory channels/clock, PCIe lanes, different accelerator features, etc.
Yes. They are on the same die. ( Or may be two Die, Altra and Altra Max ) You can tell or guess by the same amount of Memory Chanel and PCI-E Lanes across the line up.
And also bin for yield as well. So you just fuse off the parts / core with defects.
That's probably not what's happening though -- more likely, this is 1-4 different chips with aggressive yield management and some cores being fused off for the most entry level SKUs.
The fewer SKUs therefore isn't a result of impressive engineering but rather impressive profit margins. They just don't care about salvaging mostly-working silicon as much as Intel, AMD, and now Ampere.
It also signals impressive yields to me. The M1 is very small, only around 120mm^2. I’m sure we’ll see more than two SKUs when the new MacBooks launch.
But regardless Ampere, AMD, and Apple are all fab'd by TSMC, so they'd all be seeing similar enough yields.
What a weird comment to make.
What is so complex about their pricing? This is completely normal stuff, and simpler than both AMD and Intel.