Comments on: Video: Why ARM Does Compute for Future HPC http://insidehpc.com/2011/12/07/video-why-arm-does-compute-for-future-hpc/ HPC News Without the Noise for Supercomputing Professionals | insideHPC Sun, 09 Jun 2013 01:54:13 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: Woilfgang http://insidehpc.com/2011/12/07/video-why-arm-does-compute-for-future-hpc/#comment-375978 Woilfgang Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:11:22 +0000 http://insidehpc.com/?p=25735#comment-375978 What a commercial... Sumit doesn't seem to having heard about iPSC, Paragon, ASCI, etc. Fair to say that it's the wide spectrum of capabilities and standards of x86 which made HPC mainstream. What a commercial… Sumit doesn’t seem to having heard about iPSC, Paragon, ASCI, etc. Fair to say that it’s the wide spectrum of capabilities and standards of x86 which made HPC mainstream.

]]> By: Bernd Lauert http://insidehpc.com/2011/12/07/video-why-arm-does-compute-for-future-hpc/#comment-375238 Bernd Lauert Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:50:14 +0000 http://insidehpc.com/?p=25735#comment-375238 This is just stupid. x86 processors have been optimized for a wide range of workloads over the years, from windows desktops to computationally intensive applications. The typical x86 CPU just has one "coprocessor": The GPU. ARM on the other hand is a platform optimized for smartphones and embedded systems with lots of coprocessors, offloading as most as possible. The standard ARM CPU does not even come with a full integer ALU and has to emulate simple divisions. Apart from all the other problems, like no 64 bit support and an MMU which cannot handle more than 4 GB of RAM for a single operating system instance. We have yet to see an ARM compute node which actually performs. Up to that point, this seems more like a desperate stunt from NVIDIA. And the combination ARM/CUDA is certainly not making software development easier for anybody. This is just stupid. x86 processors have been optimized for a wide range of workloads over the years, from windows desktops to computationally intensive applications. The typical x86 CPU just has one “coprocessor”: The GPU. ARM on the other hand is a platform optimized for smartphones and embedded systems with lots of coprocessors, offloading as most as possible. The standard ARM CPU does not even come with a full integer ALU and has to emulate simple divisions. Apart from all the other problems, like no 64 bit support and an MMU which cannot handle more than 4 GB of RAM for a single operating system instance.

We have yet to see an ARM compute node which actually performs. Up to that point, this seems more like a desperate stunt from NVIDIA. And the combination ARM/CUDA is certainly not making software development easier for anybody.

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