[Info-vax] Sunway TaihuLight is the fastest supercomputer in the world

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com] On Behalf Of
> lawrencedo99--- via Info-vax
> Sent: 26-Jun-16 5:27 AM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: lawrencedo99 at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Sunway TaihuLight is the fastest supercomputer
> in the world
> 
> On Saturday, June 25, 2016 at 9:16:42 PM UTC+12,
> johnwa... at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> > This was at a time when some people in DEC HQ still thought
> > there was useful profit to be made from designing and building
> > robust well engineered x86 PCs for the business market.
> > Ignoring what would turn out to be a high volume low margin
> > barely profitable business was not thought to be an option. Oh
> > well.
> 
> It’s worth pointing out that x86 Windows-compatible PCs may be a low-
> margin business for the PC vendors, but it’s very much high-margin for
> Intel and Microsoft.
> 
> The real high-volume CPU business is dominated by ARM. And in the
> markets where that chip sells, both Intel and Microsoft have been taking
> a hammering.
>

Shareholders likely hard to be upset with the way MS's revenue and margins 
keeps going up:
https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar15/index.html

"Hammering" is a bit of a stretch for Intel .. at least in the datacenter. 

CPU Futures from Feb 2016:

Future Systems: What Will Tomorrow’s Server Look Like?
http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/02/04/future-systems-what-will-tomorrows-server-look-like/
"There are only a few other CPUs that matter in the datacenter. A handful 
of ARM chips from upstarts like AMD, Applied Micro, Broadcom, Cavium, 
and Qualcomm, some of which are starting to ramp now but none of 
which has scored a big win yet that can count as a tipping point in the 
server market. IBM’s Power8 chip is trying to follow ARM with a licensing 
and proliferation approach, and is counting on adoption in China to drive 
volumes much as the ARM collective is doing. The ARM collective is hoping 
to capture 25 percent share of server shipments by 2020, and IBM’s top 
brass similarly aspire for the OpenPower platform to attain 10 percent to 
20 percent market share."

"But for now, the motor of choice for compute is the Xeon E5 processor and 
it is the one to beat. This is Intel’s market to lose, and it will take something
truly radical to alter the market dynamics here. Intel is not exactly sitting still."

[see rest of article]

Btw - Interesting discussion on memory and storage as the area where lots 
of real interesting stuff happening. How to config server SW when 5TB-10TB 
memory servers become more commonplace (blades already support 1.5TB)

Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com