[Beowulf] Clusters just got more important - AMD's roadmap

[Vincent Diepeveen]

On Feb 8, 2012, at 2:13 PM, Peter Kjellström wrote:

>>> GPU line will continue
>>> also inside cpu's integrated. Total monopoly for intel for
>>> applications needing CPU's as it seems.
>>
>> you seem to have missed AMD's main point, which HSA: the concept of
>> pushing x86 and GPU together to enable something higher-performing.
>> it's not a crazy idea, though pretty ambitious.
>
> The APU concept has a few interesting points but certainly also a  
> few major
> problems (when comparing it to a cpu + stand alone gpu setup):
>
>  * Memory bandwidth to all those FPUs
>  * Power (CPUs in servers today max out around 120W with GPUs at  
> >250W)

And the gpu's in those cpu's probably won't be doing double precision  
at all.
Maybe they work at 16% the speed of a similar highend GPU. AMD  
announced exactly
that for their cheap line gpu's which are already a lot better than  
waht's gonna be put
in the cpu's as it seems.

Add to that that the gpu will have probably very limited amount of  
cores.

So it'll be possibly a factor 200 slower than a 7990 gpu in double  
precision,
which should be a teraflop or 2 nearly in double precision and  
probably will eat around a 450
watt when crunching double precision code at all Processing Elements,  
as the streamcores are
called in OpenCL.

I'm not sure why people at this mailing list are excited about  
including gpu's in cpu's.
It's great for mobile phones and netbooks and cheapskate laptops and so.

 From performance viewpoint ignore it.

>
> Either way we're in for an interesting future (as usual) :-)
>
> /Peter
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