By: Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar), October 10, 2018 12:10 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
nobody in particular (nobody.delete@this.nowhe.re) on October 10, 2018 8:55 am wrote:
> More info here
>
> "In essence, requests per second (RPS) per Watt is a critical metric that Qualcomm’s
> ARM64 46 core Falkor chip had a big advantage over Intel’s Skylake 4116. Embracing
> the value of optionality and market competition, we made some noise.
>
> Intel proposed to co-innovate with us an off-roadmap 24-core Xeon Gold CPU specifically made for our workload
> offering considerable value in Performance per Watt. For this generation, we continue using Intel as system
> solutions are widely available while we’re working on realizing ARM64’s benefits to production."
>
> Looks like Centriq was far less of a done deal for Cloudflare than many assumed.
Intel can't afford to have a major business go ARM, that will legitimize it as an option and others will begin looking. So makes sense for them to do a customer SKU (which is probably a normal core that's had settings tweaked) which also offers a backdoor method of offering better pricing without making it a discount on a SKU on the official price list (which would piss off other customers)
On the other hand, Cloudflare might never have been that serious about ARM, and was using this was a way to get what they wanted out of Intel...
> More info here
>
> "In essence, requests per second (RPS) per Watt is a critical metric that Qualcomm’s
> ARM64 46 core Falkor chip had a big advantage over Intel’s Skylake 4116. Embracing
> the value of optionality and market competition, we made some noise.
>
> Intel proposed to co-innovate with us an off-roadmap 24-core Xeon Gold CPU specifically made for our workload
> offering considerable value in Performance per Watt. For this generation, we continue using Intel as system
> solutions are widely available while we’re working on realizing ARM64’s benefits to production."
>
> Looks like Centriq was far less of a done deal for Cloudflare than many assumed.
Intel can't afford to have a major business go ARM, that will legitimize it as an option and others will begin looking. So makes sense for them to do a customer SKU (which is probably a normal core that's had settings tweaked) which also offers a backdoor method of offering better pricing without making it a discount on a SKU on the official price list (which would piss off other customers)
On the other hand, Cloudflare might never have been that serious about ARM, and was using this was a way to get what they wanted out of Intel...