Hey Ryan, normally I wouldn't do this but I have a burning curiosity and I can see how you missed my comment where I was asking for this in the original article: http://www.anandtech.com/comments/11482/amd-cpu-up...
And on topic, I wonder if the "enhance national security" goal will turn out to be something a little less that worthy of praise. We'll probably find out in 5-10 years.
With regards to your original comment, the only news that day was about ThreadRipper having 64 lanes of PCIe and quad channel memory. The rest of it had been previously announced.
Thanks for the reply Ryan. Though I wasn't actually referring to Computex, rather to AMD's Financial Analyst Day (2 weeks earlier, 16th of May) in which they provided a few very interesting details about Threadripper and Epyc. This deserved at least a pipeline story on time, but as far as I can tell the first mention of Threadripper on AT came 2 weeks later. This is what other news outlets managed to report on that occasion: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/amd-ryzen-...
Guess I'll have to find another source for such "small stories" :). I didn't expect AT writers to have such a high threshold for how big an announcement must be in order to deserve a 200 word pipeline story on time.
Strange though that a laptop being launched in a new color, a graphics card now being bundled with some game, the launch of yet another run of the mill SATA SSD, a headset, an SD card that will arrive in 6 months, or even a new minor version of a graphics driver must be considered major news here at Anandtech, and worthy of timely reporting...
You're looking at this site at the stage where the writers are unable to test specific processors with specific graphics cards because the two reviewers/writers are separated by a large ocean.
May 30, 2017: 16 Core ThreadRipper article is front and center, top, #1 main article with largest picture/link, right when the article was first posted to the site.
Minutes later, at least, before the end of the day, "Intel Announces Skylake-X: Bringing 18-Core HCC Silicon to Consumers for $1999" takes AMD ThreadRipper's place as the highlighted, main article on the home page. ThreadRipper article is knocked down into the pipeline articles below or elsewhere.
Sometime later, closer to June 15, 2017, the 16 core ThreadRipper article lost its place down below on the main page, next to the "Computex 2017: AMD Press Event Live Blog" right by the Intel 18 core article. The ThreadRipper article can still be found via the search feature on Anandtech, but it seems to have vanished otherwise, and from the Anandtech home page, looking through all the article titles scrolling down it appears there is no mention of 16 core AMD, as any news related to that can only be found, from the main page, by reading through the "Computex 2017: AMD Press Event Live Blog" article - therefore it would appear by quick glance on the main page at Anandtech that there is only Intel with high core count CPUs, at 18.
Yeah, there's a very tight relationship between AT and Intel these days. I noticed this when AT was the only high end tech outlet selling Kaby Lake as Jesus' second coming, "sits at the top of the stack, and performs like it", "mops the floor" with a 4790K (a 4 year old Haswell with some OC), etc. This while every other tech outlet was underscoring the fact that it brings performance to a standstill by being basically a slightly OCed Skylake. That's when I really started feeling that for one reason or another too many times there seems to be just a little too much positive bias towards Intel here at AT.
And the problem with bias towards any brand is that it starts making me question the validity of some conclusions even when they are perfectly accurate. I have to seriously question the motto "The Most Trusted in Tech Since 1997" under the new editorial leadership. Judging by the dropping page stats I'm not the only one...
In this particular case choosing to ignore for 2 weeks a relatively important announcement made by AMD and letting it be instantly bumped down the page by several Intel articles as soon as you decided to report on it is either gross journalistic oversight or worse. I'm glad the editor in chief decided to address this topic with a link to a comment that didn't even touch the correct issue and was also buried deep in an old article.
So I guess... good luck. Hope you take the more or less constructive criticism to heart.
"So I guess... good luck. Hope you take the more or less constructive criticism to heart."
Is it really constructive though? At one point you're insinuating that the writers are dishonest. Then you accuse them of being incompetent. Not that I disagree that more Threadripper articles would be nice, but I don't think accusing someone of being intentionally deceptive is constructive...
'I noticed this when AT was the only high end tech outlet selling Kaby Lake as Jesus' second coming, "sits at the top of the stack, and performs like it", "mops the floor" with a 4790K (a 4 year old Haswell with some OC), etc. This while every other tech outlet was underscoring the fact that it brings performance to a standstill by being basically a slightly OCed Skylake.'
Go re-read that article again. There's more to a CPU than just raw performance. Intel made good power numbers, so much better than anyone was expecting. If all you are doing is picking and choosing the bits of the review you want to read (e.g. performance) and missing out the rest, you really can't see the wood for the trees in my conclusion.
And referring to AMD's FAD announcements - I was half-way around the world, asleep, at a different show, while also dealing with some major testing items. I literally bounced from the UK to Taiwan to Germany to Romania and back to Taiwan again in three weeks, all the while trying to retest 30+ CPUs preparing for an upcoming review (which I'm currently 36 hours with no sleep writing), and while filling out both Anton's and my Computex timetable, and trying to get as many ducks in a row. Then for the AMD event at computex itself, I landed that morning of the trade show. Live Blogs have very limited shelf-life, hence it was bumped down for the main news of the week. I went straight from that AMD press event into a 12 hour day of meetings without a single break, with a combination of jet lag and 35C+ heat wearing a suit all day. Jeez, if I ever took weekends off, I'm sure that 'gross journalistic oversight' might just cause your head to spin, exorcist style.
I drop the ball on one announcement every now and again and somehow I'm the equivalent of an Intel patsy. For AMD's Ryzen launch, we had an exclusive interview with Lisa Su with some really probing questions - one of my best ever experiences in this job. That review went so deep I had CPU architects coming out of the aether adding discussion points in my inbox. That review signalled worthy praise on a product that deserved it and I'm making sure I'm as high up on the sampling list as I can be for all future products from both sides of the fence. I go super deep with as many engineers as I can on both sides to try and get the story, and get the info. If anything, AMD are more open to speak to me about the hardware than most other journalists and analysts. If I were seriously harboring an Intel bias that it stuck out of my rear end, I doubt AMD would be going near me.
<rant>I swear, I've been called an Intel shill and AMD shill in the same month, perhaps even the same week. If I do a deep dive into a platform that requires a vendors assistance for obtaining hardware, I'm called both a shill for that company who helped with the kit. If it's a negative review, I'm a shill for the other side.</rant>
The only reason either company works with me is because I am honest with both of them. I don't try to undermine any of them, either privately or publicly, by writing too much/failing to write about one side or the other. We're always in contant email contact up and down the chain, for both companies. I want to make sure the big articles we do are the biggest and the best, and we hit every CPU launch embargo with the ultimate review. If that, plus travelling to cover events, takes my time such that I end up missing a few news posts, so be it. Again, perhaps one day I'll get weekends off.
@Ian Cutress: "For AMD's Ryzen launch, we had an exclusive interview with Lisa Su with some really probing questions - one of my best ever experiences in this job. That review went so deep I had CPU architects coming out of the aether adding discussion points in my inbox."
I liked that article. It certainly wasn't the first time you deep dived either. Architecture deep dives are probably my favorite part of this site.
Would I like all news posts of interest (to me) covered at least a day before the news is publicly available? Sure, who wouldn't.
Would I sacrifice the depth or quality of in-depth articles to get them? #%$* NO!!! I'd rather lose all of the little news flash articles than lose a single full review. Though, I do appreciate being kept up to date on the direction of the tech industry as well.
@Ian Cutress: "... perhaps one day I'll get weekends off." It doesn't seem likely, given your apparent schedule overload. Perhaps if you cut out the time spent defending yourself to people trying to backseat drive your schedule and armchair quarterback your reviews.
Last I heard, Summit is supposed to be assembled this year and be available for general access next year. I guess it might get benchmarked in time for the November 2017 Top500 list. Sierra is a National Nuclear Security Administration system and so there's less impetus for giving a public timeline.
Incidentally, Aurora, which was supposed to come online in 2019 and sit between Sierra and Summit in performance, is now being reviewed for changes, and seems like it will probably be delayed. It was to be built using Intel's Knights Hill Xeon Phi processors (the successor to the current generation Knights Landing Xeon Phi).
Knight's Hill is tied to Intel's 10 nm production. First commercial 10 nm parts are expected late this year but it takes times to ramp up to a level where Intel can produce a 600 mm^2 or greater die on a new node. With Intel's 10 nm node being delayed from original road maps, it would make sense that Aurora would also see similar delays. The idea of a review is telling though.
Yeah, Paul Messina, senior strategic advisor at the Argonne LCF said, "The Aurora system contract is being reviewed for potential changes that would result in a subsequent system in a different time frame from the original Aurora system, but since that's just early negotiations I don't think we can be any more specific than that."
It could be interesting if, for example, AMD were chosen to contribute its CPU technology, but NVIDIA were chosen to contribute its GPU technology, and Intel its interconnection technology.
These awards are technology research awards. Later, contractors will make proposals for systems that the national labs are looking to purchase. Companies, some or all of these as well as others not included in these research awards, will form various strategic partnerships to create system proposals. For instance, in the previous round of bidding, Intel and Cray worked together and IBM, NVIDIA, and Mellanox worked together. The labs will choose from the systems offered to them by the contractors.
For a system where Intel are the primary contractor they would use all their own stuff, of course. IBM would use their own processors and almost certainly NVIDIA GPUs and Mellanox interconnect. HPE are developing their own silicon photonics interconnect that they would probably want to use if they turn out to be successful with it. I am guessing that if Cray were to be the primary contractor and use Intel's OPA, they would probably use Intel's CPUs as well. Neither AMD nor NVIDIA will be primary contractors.
I guess your scenario is possible but I think it's extremely unlikely.
HPE is likely using the interconnect expertise acquired via SGI which they purchased recently. SGI had the UV line which was fully coherent up to 256 sockets. Scaling to such levels with full coherency can provide a performance boost without the need for network overhead like a cluster. The real question is if Intel increased the limit to the number of sockets and cores x86 designs support. SGI was able to hit those limits previously. (The 64 TB physical memory limitation has at least been removed in SkyLake-EP.)
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19 Comments
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close - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
Hey Ryan, normally I wouldn't do this but I have a burning curiosity and I can see how you missed my comment where I was asking for this in the original article: http://www.anandtech.com/comments/11482/amd-cpu-up...And on topic, I wonder if the "enhance national security" goal will turn out to be something a little less that worthy of praise. We'll probably find out in 5-10 years.
Hurr Durr - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
It will be enchanced in exactly the same fashion as NSA does right now.Ryan Smith - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
With regards to your original comment, the only news that day was about ThreadRipper having 64 lanes of PCIe and quad channel memory. The rest of it had been previously announced.http://www.anandtech.com/comments/11482/amd-cpu-up...
close - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Thanks for the reply Ryan. Though I wasn't actually referring to Computex, rather to AMD's Financial Analyst Day (2 weeks earlier, 16th of May) in which they provided a few very interesting details about Threadripper and Epyc. This deserved at least a pipeline story on time, but as far as I can tell the first mention of Threadripper on AT came 2 weeks later. This is what other news outlets managed to report on that occasion: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/amd-ryzen-...Guess I'll have to find another source for such "small stories" :). I didn't expect AT writers to have such a high threshold for how big an announcement must be in order to deserve a 200 word pipeline story on time.
Strange though that a laptop being launched in a new color, a graphics card now being bundled with some game, the launch of yet another run of the mill SATA SSD, a headset, an SD card that will arrive in 6 months, or even a new minor version of a graphics driver must be considered major news here at Anandtech, and worthy of timely reporting...
HomeworldFound - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
You're looking at this site at the stage where the writers are unable to test specific processors with specific graphics cards because the two reviewers/writers are separated by a large ocean.Critical EMF - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
May 30, 2017: 16 Core ThreadRipper article is front and center, top, #1 main article with largest picture/link, right when the article was first posted to the site.Minutes later, at least, before the end of the day, "Intel Announces Skylake-X: Bringing 18-Core HCC Silicon to Consumers for $1999" takes AMD ThreadRipper's place as the highlighted, main article on the home page. ThreadRipper article is knocked down into the pipeline articles below or elsewhere.
Sometime later, closer to June 15, 2017, the 16 core ThreadRipper article lost its place down below on the main page, next to the "Computex 2017: AMD Press Event Live Blog" right by the Intel 18 core article. The ThreadRipper article can still be found via the search feature on Anandtech, but it seems to have vanished otherwise, and from the Anandtech home page, looking through all the article titles scrolling down it appears there is no mention of 16 core AMD, as any news related to that can only be found, from the main page, by reading through the "Computex 2017: AMD Press Event Live Blog" article - therefore it would appear by quick glance on the main page at Anandtech that there is only Intel with high core count CPUs, at 18.
close - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
Yeah, there's a very tight relationship between AT and Intel these days. I noticed this when AT was the only high end tech outlet selling Kaby Lake as Jesus' second coming, "sits at the top of the stack, and performs like it", "mops the floor" with a 4790K (a 4 year old Haswell with some OC), etc. This while every other tech outlet was underscoring the fact that it brings performance to a standstill by being basically a slightly OCed Skylake.That's when I really started feeling that for one reason or another too many times there seems to be just a little too much positive bias towards Intel here at AT.
And the problem with bias towards any brand is that it starts making me question the validity of some conclusions even when they are perfectly accurate. I have to seriously question the motto "The Most Trusted in Tech Since 1997" under the new editorial leadership. Judging by the dropping page stats I'm not the only one...
In this particular case choosing to ignore for 2 weeks a relatively important announcement made by AMD and letting it be instantly bumped down the page by several Intel articles as soon as you decided to report on it is either gross journalistic oversight or worse.
I'm glad the editor in chief decided to address this topic with a link to a comment that didn't even touch the correct issue and was also buried deep in an old article.
So I guess... good luck. Hope you take the more or less constructive criticism to heart.
ViRGE - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
"So I guess... good luck. Hope you take the more or less constructive criticism to heart."Is it really constructive though? At one point you're insinuating that the writers are dishonest. Then you accuse them of being incompetent. Not that I disagree that more Threadripper articles would be nice, but I don't think accusing someone of being intentionally deceptive is constructive...
Ian Cutress - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
'I noticed this when AT was the only high end tech outlet selling Kaby Lake as Jesus' second coming, "sits at the top of the stack, and performs like it", "mops the floor" with a 4790K (a 4 year old Haswell with some OC), etc. This while every other tech outlet was underscoring the fact that it brings performance to a standstill by being basically a slightly OCed Skylake.'Go re-read that article again. There's more to a CPU than just raw performance. Intel made good power numbers, so much better than anyone was expecting. If all you are doing is picking and choosing the bits of the review you want to read (e.g. performance) and missing out the rest, you really can't see the wood for the trees in my conclusion.
And referring to AMD's FAD announcements - I was half-way around the world, asleep, at a different show, while also dealing with some major testing items. I literally bounced from the UK to Taiwan to Germany to Romania and back to Taiwan again in three weeks, all the while trying to retest 30+ CPUs preparing for an upcoming review (which I'm currently 36 hours with no sleep writing), and while filling out both Anton's and my Computex timetable, and trying to get as many ducks in a row. Then for the AMD event at computex itself, I landed that morning of the trade show. Live Blogs have very limited shelf-life, hence it was bumped down for the main news of the week. I went straight from that AMD press event into a 12 hour day of meetings without a single break, with a combination of jet lag and 35C+ heat wearing a suit all day. Jeez, if I ever took weekends off, I'm sure that 'gross journalistic oversight' might just cause your head to spin, exorcist style.
I drop the ball on one announcement every now and again and somehow I'm the equivalent of an Intel patsy. For AMD's Ryzen launch, we had an exclusive interview with Lisa Su with some really probing questions - one of my best ever experiences in this job. That review went so deep I had CPU architects coming out of the aether adding discussion points in my inbox. That review signalled worthy praise on a product that deserved it and I'm making sure I'm as high up on the sampling list as I can be for all future products from both sides of the fence. I go super deep with as many engineers as I can on both sides to try and get the story, and get the info. If anything, AMD are more open to speak to me about the hardware than most other journalists and analysts. If I were seriously harboring an Intel bias that it stuck out of my rear end, I doubt AMD would be going near me.
<rant>I swear, I've been called an Intel shill and AMD shill in the same month, perhaps even the same week. If I do a deep dive into a platform that requires a vendors assistance for obtaining hardware, I'm called both a shill for that company who helped with the kit. If it's a negative review, I'm a shill for the other side.</rant>
The only reason either company works with me is because I am honest with both of them. I don't try to undermine any of them, either privately or publicly, by writing too much/failing to write about one side or the other. We're always in contant email contact up and down the chain, for both companies. I want to make sure the big articles we do are the biggest and the best, and we hit every CPU launch embargo with the ultimate review. If that, plus travelling to cover events, takes my time such that I end up missing a few news posts, so be it. Again, perhaps one day I'll get weekends off.
BurntMyBacon - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
@Ian Cutress: "For AMD's Ryzen launch, we had an exclusive interview with Lisa Su with some really probing questions - one of my best ever experiences in this job. That review went so deep I had CPU architects coming out of the aether adding discussion points in my inbox."I liked that article. It certainly wasn't the first time you deep dived either. Architecture deep dives are probably my favorite part of this site.
Would I like all news posts of interest (to me) covered at least a day before the news is publicly available? Sure, who wouldn't.
Would I sacrifice the depth or quality of in-depth articles to get them?
#%$* NO!!! I'd rather lose all of the little news flash articles than lose a single full review. Though, I do appreciate being kept up to date on the direction of the tech industry as well.
@Ian Cutress: "... perhaps one day I'll get weekends off."
It doesn't seem likely, given your apparent schedule overload. Perhaps if you cut out the time spent defending yourself to people trying to backseat drive your schedule and armchair quarterback your reviews.
DanNeely - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
Do we have a timeline for when Summit and Sierra are supposed to go online, and potentially reclaim the top two spots on the Top500 list?Yojimbo - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
Last I heard, Summit is supposed to be assembled this year and be available for general access next year. I guess it might get benchmarked in time for the November 2017 Top500 list. Sierra is a National Nuclear Security Administration system and so there's less impetus for giving a public timeline.Incidentally, Aurora, which was supposed to come online in 2019 and sit between Sierra and Summit in performance, is now being reviewed for changes, and seems like it will probably be delayed. It was to be built using Intel's Knights Hill Xeon Phi processors (the successor to the current generation Knights Landing Xeon Phi).
Kevin G - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
Knight's Hill is tied to Intel's 10 nm production. First commercial 10 nm parts are expected late this year but it takes times to ramp up to a level where Intel can produce a 600 mm^2 or greater die on a new node. With Intel's 10 nm node being delayed from original road maps, it would make sense that Aurora would also see similar delays. The idea of a review is telling though.Yojimbo - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
Yeah, Paul Messina, senior strategic advisor at the Argonne LCF said, "The Aurora system contract is being reviewed for potential changes that would result in a subsequent system in a different time frame from the original Aurora system, but since that's just early negotiations I don't think we can be any more specific than that."Rocket321 - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
I'm glad AMD still gets a seat at the table.Ktracho - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
It could be interesting if, for example, AMD were chosen to contribute its CPU technology, but NVIDIA were chosen to contribute its GPU technology, and Intel its interconnection technology.Yojimbo - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
These awards are technology research awards. Later, contractors will make proposals for systems that the national labs are looking to purchase. Companies, some or all of these as well as others not included in these research awards, will form various strategic partnerships to create system proposals. For instance, in the previous round of bidding, Intel and Cray worked together and IBM, NVIDIA, and Mellanox worked together. The labs will choose from the systems offered to them by the contractors.For a system where Intel are the primary contractor they would use all their own stuff, of course. IBM would use their own processors and almost certainly NVIDIA GPUs and Mellanox interconnect. HPE are developing their own silicon photonics interconnect that they would probably want to use if they turn out to be successful with it. I am guessing that if Cray were to be the primary contractor and use Intel's OPA, they would probably use Intel's CPUs as well. Neither AMD nor NVIDIA will be primary contractors.
I guess your scenario is possible but I think it's extremely unlikely.
Kevin G - Saturday, June 17, 2017 - link
HPE is likely using the interconnect expertise acquired via SGI which they purchased recently. SGI had the UV line which was fully coherent up to 256 sockets. Scaling to such levels with full coherency can provide a performance boost without the need for network overhead like a cluster. The real question is if Intel increased the limit to the number of sockets and cores x86 designs support. SGI was able to hit those limits previously. (The 64 TB physical memory limitation has at least been removed in SkyLake-EP.)Integr8d - Friday, June 23, 2017 - link
"...in a meaningful manner?""The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light."
I wonder if...