nobody in particular (nobody.delete@this.nowhe.re) on February 20, 2019 7:35 am wrote:
> Write-up at Anandtech
>
> The stated SPECint numbers are superb. I'm looking forward
> to spec2017, but this is a very, very promising start.

We'll see if it actually delivers, but ARM is certainly looking a whole lot better than it used to.

They've been nicely strengthening their memory model, to the point that these days it's actually one of the better ones. They even seem to have decided that I$ coherency matters. Good for them. Doing cache coherency in software is crazy, and people who think it's a good idea don't understand the complexities of reality. Maybe some day it will even become architectural.

And I have to say, I like the direction ARM is going with vector math a lot more than the AVX512 that Intel is pushing. I don't know how well it works in practice, but the whole "let's try to do something that works for different vector lengths" is laudable. I'm quite tired of the model where Intel introduces yet another incompatible model every few years.

I still will hold judgement until we actually see widely available hardware that people actually can use for development and deployment. I've just seen too many promises and "released" hardware that never went anywhere and nobody really had reasonably available.

In particular, I do wish they didn't push the "hyperscale" design so much. Maybe they got the scaling working, but honestly, I doubt it. It just takes time and effort and learning. Don't try to jump to 64-128 core targets until you've had a few years of just plain getting something like a "simple" 8-core one right. Which they haven't actually demonstrated, so far.

But hey, maybe they'll surprise me.

Linus