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Nenik0
MikeSmith2011
Benchmarks will always be used as long as CPUs are sold. The type of benchmarks ...
Microprocessor server benchmarks seen as irrelevant
Brian Fuller
10/31/2012 5:58 PM EDT
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Server design--and by extension microprocessor and component considerations--are now driven by new-media companies such as Facebook and Google, whose system specifications render traditional benchmarks useless.
That was the word this week from panelists at ARM TechCon here exploring the future of big computing and its impact on semiconductor design.
"J.P. Morgan is one of the largest consumers of compute on earth," said Andrew Feldman, CEO of AMD acquisition Seamicro and now head of AMD's Data Center Server Solutions. "They're one of the top 10 buyers of CPUs. They're a 130 year-old company."
"In Facebook's fifth year they bought the same amount of compute--in their fifth year," he added. "It's at that type of company where the battle is going to rage. That's where price-per-unit-compute, compute-per-watt will move to the fore. Those are the dimensions the battle will take place on. And they'll take place...not over abstract benchmarks, but the exact work that these companies have and need."
The panel took place against the backdrop of AMD allying with ARM to drive into the server market in the coming years, where power consumption has become an enormous issues in massive server farms that drive digital commerce. There, the question arose as to what the role of traditional benchmarks is in a world where power consumption can make or break a deal.
"Traditional benchmarks are about defining headroom and performance per dollar," said Karl Freund, vice president of marketing with ARM-based server company Calxeda. "In the new world, it's not performance per dollar; it's supporting number of users at a given service level at the least capital and operationg expense. In that type of world, there's a smaller role for benchmarks."
Manufacturing profit
"Traditional enterprise guys are not going to look at ARM first," Feldman said. "The people who will use ARM first...almost every one of them uses computer to manufacture profit. If you use compute to manufacture profit, you are always and every day interested in how you can improve the efficiency of your ability to manufacture profit. That class of customers will move first. Customers who use compute to do IT will move last. If you look at those two markets, those who use compute to generate profit are growing many hundreds of times faster than the other segments of the market."
Related stories :
--AMD to ship ARM-based server SoCs in 2014
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MikeSmith2011
11/2/2012 2:35 AM EDT
Benchmarks will always be used as long as CPUs are sold. The type of benchmarks will change and the traditional compute oriented benchmarks will be replaced with more system and IO throughput ones.
There is a need for a suite of benchmarks that not only measure performance but also power. A spec-power for the new workloads - maybe a cloud-power benchmark suite that measures throughput in transactions/sec/watt.
And can all the self-respecting CPU vendors stop quoting DMIPS?
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Nenik0
11/12/2012 3:04 AM EST
Hmm, SPECpower is a benchmark,
and is 2008.
But perhaps it is no longer relevant what is the power usage of a synthetic benchmark when you know your exact workload upfront.
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