back to article All aboard the PCIe bus for Nvidia's Tesla P100 supercomputer grunt

Nvidia has popped its Tesla P100 accelerator chip onto PCIe cards for bog-standard server nodes tasked with artificial intelligence and supercomputer-grade workloads. The P100 was unveiled in April at Nvidia's GPU Tech Conference in California: it's a 16nm FinFET graphics processor with 15 billion transistors on a 600mm2 die. …

  1. Mad Mike

    Really?

    "The rest of us, in the real world, are using x86 processors for backend workloads."

    "Nearly 100 per cent of compute processors in data centers today are built by Intel"

    Really? I guess all those other servers like Sparc, Power, mainframe etc.etc. don't exist. Last time I looked, the majority of importan business workload (especially in places like banks etc.) still run on non-X86 hardware. Granted, the numbers are dropping, but there's still a lot out there. Percentage wise, it might not be a lot, but that's because efficiency wise, they tend to do more, with higher utilisation rates etc. than Intel.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Really?

      It all depends on the semantics of what "nearly" 100% means. I have struggled to find recent market share figures from a reliable source but it looks like the sales figures are currently 95% Intel. The installed share will be a few percentage points less than 95% as much of the installed kit dates back to when non Intel compute processors were more fashionable.

      1. Mad Mike

        Re: Really?

        I wasn't really worrying about the exact semantics, but the clear implication of what he was saying. He said, for instance:-

        "Those Big Blue chips are destined for American government-owned supercomputers and other heavy-duty machines. The rest of us, in the real world, are using x86 processors for backend workloads."

        This is complete rubbish. There are plenty of companies out there currently running Power servers and there will still plenty when Power 8+ and Power 9 are out there. We seem to be dealing with someone who doesn't have any idea of what major organisations are running their critical systems on these days. Most banks still have the majority of their critical systems on mainframe, whether he likes it or not.

        Also, he seems to have missed that x86 does not equal Intel. Yes, Intel are the biggest players in that area, but not the only ones.

        1. Mad Mike

          Re: Really?

          Don't you just love the people who downvote, but don't leave any information on why............. What's wrong with the post? What part do they disagree with?

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Really?

          It's fine saying Banks and other companies are using other architecture, but it wouldn't surprise me if Google alone have more Intel servers than all the banks combined using non-Intel. Throw in Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple and very quickly all the other makers start to look insignificant.

          (I didn't DV you BTW)

          1. Mad Mike

            Re: Really?

            Hello Lost all faith.

            Thanks for your reply. You raise an interesting point. However, it might be worth contacting your IBM representative and asking how many Power processors Goodle are purchasing now. You might be surprised. Google are going through a process of rewriting much of their software to make it hardware agnostic, are a member of OpenPower (Platinum) and are buying Power processors!! Indeed, there are quite a few manufacturers beginning to take a big interest in Power now, especially the Chinese!!

            OpenPower is actually getting an awful lot of interest at the moment as their membership list shows:-

            http://openpowerfoundation.org/membership/current-members/

            The following article is also interesting about Google, Rackspace and Power chips.

            http://www.pcworld.com/article/3053092/ibms-power-chips-hit-the-big-time-at-google.html

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Really?

              Interesting read.

              Oh as for the down votes...someone spends their entire day doing it. See how many posts get just one down vote.

              1. Mad Mike

                Re: Really?

                Hello again,

                It would seem like someone just does it randomly. Certainly don't ever seem to have a reason.

                It is interesting what's happening. Obviously, Intel are still way, way out in front, but the resergence of Power and the opening of the architecture and patents etc. is a brave move for IBM. At the moment at least, it appears to be paying off. The involvement of Google is very interesting as well. They must be pumping a lot of money into the initiative, which presumably means they see a lot of money coming out the other side.

                We'll have to wait and see :-)

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Really?

          These figures about Intel doesn't surprise me as the bank that I work at uses purely Intel based

          servers for their credit risk HPC clusters and have invested heavily in HP SL270's (Nvidia K40 gpu based HPC servers ) for that purpose with great success. AMD doesn't even feature in HP's current portfolio as there are no GEN 8 or GEN 9 AMD server chip sets..

  2. earplugs

    10billion interferences per second

    A truly remarkable adversarial chip

    1. quxinot

      Re: 10billion interferences per second

      I had an ex like that once.

      Made me tired, and then I found out I was being outsourced for much of it as well.

  3. Spender

    wow

    Amazing that effectively, this computer from 2000 now fits on a single card!

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