> Xeon Platinum supports 8-socket machines. 6x memory channels x 8-sockets == 48x DIMMs for your massive 6TB RAM servers.
Both AMD Epyc Rome and Ampere Altra can support 8TB of RAM in dual socket machines, so that spec isn't particularly impressive anymore.
> Platinum is crazy priced for a crazy reason: its a building block to truly massive computers that only IBM matches.
Meh. A dual-socket Rome system with 128 cores (256 threads), 8TB of RAM, and 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes is an enormous machine. A full 8 socket Platinum system is going to cost an order of magnitude (or two) more, and the performance improvement is going to be less than 2x.
An 8-socket system is going to consume an enormous amount of power, cost an unbelievable amount of money, and the complex NUMA domain combined with Intel's interconnect isn't going to "just work" for almost any software, so you're likely going to put a lot of effort into making that system barely work.
Intel Platinum is priced crazy because Intel is building monolithic processors (which means low yields) and Intel likes to have a substantial profit margin. Together, those mean high prices.
At a certain point, you're better off investing in making your application work on an accelerator of some kind, in the form of a GPU or an FPGA or task-specific ASIC, rather than giving Intel all your money in the hopes of eeking out a marginal performance improvement. Alternatively, finding software that can scale to more than one machine.
Maybe IBM has truly large systems that are worth considering. Intel doesn't right now, unless you're using some software that demands Intel for contractual reasons no one can argue with.
Both AMD Epyc Rome and Ampere Altra can support 8TB of RAM in dual socket machines, so that spec isn't particularly impressive anymore.
> Platinum is crazy priced for a crazy reason: its a building block to truly massive computers that only IBM matches.
Meh. A dual-socket Rome system with 128 cores (256 threads), 8TB of RAM, and 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes is an enormous machine. A full 8 socket Platinum system is going to cost an order of magnitude (or two) more, and the performance improvement is going to be less than 2x.
An 8-socket system is going to consume an enormous amount of power, cost an unbelievable amount of money, and the complex NUMA domain combined with Intel's interconnect isn't going to "just work" for almost any software, so you're likely going to put a lot of effort into making that system barely work.
Intel Platinum is priced crazy because Intel is building monolithic processors (which means low yields) and Intel likes to have a substantial profit margin. Together, those mean high prices.
At a certain point, you're better off investing in making your application work on an accelerator of some kind, in the form of a GPU or an FPGA or task-specific ASIC, rather than giving Intel all your money in the hopes of eeking out a marginal performance improvement. Alternatively, finding software that can scale to more than one machine.
Maybe IBM has truly large systems that are worth considering. Intel doesn't right now, unless you're using some software that demands Intel for contractual reasons no one can argue with.