6 ms·

On Ethernet, Intel is known for their little frills, stable line of NICs. That said, they have not been a leader since the jump to 10Gbps. Their 10Gbps line eve

On Ethernet, Intel is known for their little frills, stable line of NICs. That said, they have not been a leader since the jump to 10Gbps. Their 10Gbps line eventually came along and is solid, but it was a few years behind everyone else. That same story seems to be repeating itself at every new ethernet standard over the past decade. Come to think of it, the last decade has been really bad for Intel. They no longer have a node advantage. They no longer have a performance advantage in any market space that I can think of outside of frequency hungry low-thread applications (games). Their WiFi chips are good, but second tier. Their Modem chips are third tier. Their node is mostly on par with the competition, for now. Their CPUs are trading blows with AMD. Their ethernet chips are a generation behind. Optane is is a bright spot, but we'll see how they squander that. The next big diversification play by Intel is GPUs, I have no idea how that will pan out.

metildaa 7y ago
Optane will be squandered by limited CPU support and slim software support :c Optane is a neat idea, but the severe change in software architecture combined with only select CPUs even supporting it will limit uptake outside FAANGs or organizations with really specialized needs.
- Tostino 7y ago
  Databases will love Optane. There have been companies showing how much they are willing to spend on database hardware and software for ages. I'm not sure that will change any time soon.
  - metildaa 7y ago
    Yep, exactly what I was getting at. If you have a giant database and a big budget, Optane is great. It could be really useful for smaller users too, but its unlikely to become widely popular as the average developer won't have it available in their laptop or desktop.
  - dman 7y ago
    Not so sure about this. World is increasingly moving to distributed scale out databases. Once you go that way consensus algorithms and rpc costs dwarf disk io speed.
    - magila 7y ago
      Not everyone is building apps which need to be "web scale". Optane has the potential to significantly raise the performance ceiling of a single-master database. I bet there are a lot of companies who will happily drop six figures on Optane systems if it saves them the complexity of managing a distributed database.
      - lmm 7y ago
        The niche where your present requirements are big enough to benefit from Optane and your future requirements are small enough to not need to go distributed is pretty narrow.
        dogma1138 7y ago
        Finance, healthcare, and enterprise systems. I'm not sure it's really a niche.
        lmm 7y ago
        I've worked for a company that was willing to spend that kind of money on monolithic database servers. They were a top-100 website though, and this was the best part of a decade ago (and thus e.g. in the pre-SSD era). They were also scrambling to move all their services away from use of that database in favour of a horizontally scaled system that could grow further. The query rate that can be handled by a single conventional server are pretty monstrous these days. You'd have to be simultaneously a) maybe top-50 website level load (I'm well aware that there's a lot more than websites out there, but at the same time there really aren't that many organizations working at that scale, much as there are many that think they are) and b) confident that you weren't going to grow much.
- sufiyan 7y ago
  Optane will be seen as a really big main memory by the OS and that's it. So, I don't get why there will be severe changes in software..
  - metildaa 7y ago
    Optane is not durable enough to survive as main memory, hence use cases using it as primarily read memory to avoid wearing out the cells with writes. Take a look at how cagey Intel is acting about Optane: https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/05/31/intel-dodges-every-question-at-apache-pass-xpoint-launch/ https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/05/31/intel-dodges-every-q... This is the same behaviour as with Intel's LTE chips, where promised features keep slipping (much to Apple's dismay).
    - wtallis 7y ago
      SemiAccurate's singing a different tune this year, now that Intel has stated that the Optane DC Persistent Memory modules are warrantied for 5 years regardless of workload. Intel's gotten write endurance up to sufficient levels for use as main memory, though if you use those DIMMs as memory rather than storage, then your DRAM will be used as a cache.
    - Symmetry 7y ago
      The new DIMMs Intel is putting out have a RAM cache in front of the optane memory that will absorb all the churn plus a wear leveling algorithm on the writeback side. It has big enough capacitors to put all its data away in the event of power loss. https://www.storagereview.com/intel_optane_dc_persistent_memory_module_pmm https://www.storagereview.com/intel_optane_dc_persistent_mem... All of which looks to solve the wear problem even if it means higher price and latency.
freedomben 7y ago
As long as Intel keeps fully supporting the open source Linux driver, I suspect there will always be demand for their GPUs (for people that don't need to game or do video production/etc). Also IIRC for low end devices and battery life, Intel GPUs are play the nicest
- eBombzor 7y ago
  xf86-video-intel?? Distros have been defaulting to the modesetting kernel driver for years due to the instability caused by Intel's linux drivers.
  - mikelpr 7y ago
    the intel drm kernel driver which the modesetting x11 ddx (not kernel driver) uses
eBombzor 7y ago
Could you fill out those tiers? Who has better wifi/ethernet chips than Intel atm?
- justinclift 7y ago
  Chelsio has 10GbE (and above) adapters with good reputation. Mellanox has 40GbE (and above) adapters with good reputation. Mellanox also have 10GbE stuff, but that's mostly older generation / legacy (low end). Not sure how the 10GbE ones are regarded.
  - voltagex_ 7y ago
    What about Aquantia? Although I'm sad the USB 3.1 5gbit NICs never appeared.
    - justinclift 7y ago
      Sorry, no idea as I've never heard of them. :)
    - chx 7y ago
      That's not 100% correct. You can get them if you buy 500 or more. Product page: http://www.speeddragon.com/index.php?controller=Default&action=ProductInfo&Id=797 http://www.speeddragon.com/index.php?controller=Default&acti... Available https://sybatech.en.alibaba.com/product/60793590161-804423206/USB_TypeC_5_Gigabit_Ethernet_Network_Adapter.html https://sybatech.en.alibaba.com/product/60793590161-80442320... I talked to Syba USA two months ago and they said end of Q1 so I didn't pursue the idea of bringing 500 into the US and sell them. I still might. Do you know any good platforms for this sort of thing? The other reason I didn't pursue this because the Realtek based 2.5gbps adapters are out https://www.centralpoint.nl/kabeladapters-verloopstukjes/club3d/usb-3-2-gen1-type-c-to-rj45-2-5gbps-art-cac-1520-num-11069657/ https://www.centralpoint.nl/kabeladapters-verloopstukjes/clu... (USB A version: https://www.centralpoint.nl/kabeladapters-verloopstukjes/club3d/usb-3-2-gen1-type-a-to-rj45-2-5gbps-art-cac-1420-num-11069655/ https://www.centralpoint.nl/kabeladapters-verloopstukjes/clu...) and I wasn't sure whether people would care enough to jump to 5gbps.
donavanm 7y ago
Re ethernet youre spot on with 82599 and ixgbe. Cheap, plentiful, and really reasonable platform support. Its like the 2.6.18 kernel in that I expect it to be relevant for decades. However my sidelines impression was intel got sidetracked with 40g while everyone else, especially dc network fabric land, went towards 25/100.
noinsight 7y ago
> On Ethernet, Intel is known for their little frills, stable line of NICs. That said, they have not been a leader since the jump to 10Gbps. Their 10Gbps line eventually came along and is solid ... I wouldn't call them solid - at least the X710. The net is full of bad experiences regarding them. They're VMware certified but are apparently really unstable on VMware; I have no personal experience with that platform. On Windows Hyper-V hosts I had the NICs repeatedly go into "disconnected" status and individual ports would straight up suddenly stop working. On Linux KVM hosts that didn't occur, at least for me. Supposedly upgrading the firmware to a recent-ish release fixes it - I haven't had it occur after. That's understandable. What's not understandable is that the NIC was released in 2014 and the issue was resolved only in like 2018 according to the net.

metildaa 7y ago

Optane will be squandered by limited CPU support and slim software support :c Optane is a neat idea, but the severe change in software architecture combined with only select CPUs even supporting it will limit uptake outside FAANGs or organizations with really specialized needs.

Tostino 7y ago
Databases will love Optane. There have been companies showing how much they are willing to spend on database hardware and software for ages. I'm not sure that will change any time soon.
- metildaa 7y ago
  Yep, exactly what I was getting at. If you have a giant database and a big budget, Optane is great. It could be really useful for smaller users too, but its unlikely to become widely popular as the average developer won't have it available in their laptop or desktop.
- dman 7y ago
  Not so sure about this. World is increasingly moving to distributed scale out databases. Once you go that way consensus algorithms and rpc costs dwarf disk io speed.
  - magila 7y ago
    Not everyone is building apps which need to be "web scale". Optane has the potential to significantly raise the performance ceiling of a single-master database. I bet there are a lot of companies who will happily drop six figures on Optane systems if it saves them the complexity of managing a distributed database.
    - lmm 7y ago
      The niche where your present requirements are big enough to benefit from Optane and your future requirements are small enough to not need to go distributed is pretty narrow.
      - dogma1138 7y ago
        Finance, healthcare, and enterprise systems. I'm not sure it's really a niche.
        lmm 7y ago
        I've worked for a company that was willing to spend that kind of money on monolithic database servers. They were a top-100 website though, and this was the best part of a decade ago (and thus e.g. in the pre-SSD era). They were also scrambling to move all their services away from use of that database in favour of a horizontally scaled system that could grow further. The query rate that can be handled by a single conventional server are pretty monstrous these days. You'd have to be simultaneously a) maybe top-50 website level load (I'm well aware that there's a lot more than websites out there, but at the same time there really aren't that many organizations working at that scale, much as there are many that think they are) and b) confident that you weren't going to grow much.
sufiyan 7y ago
Optane will be seen as a really big main memory by the OS and that's it. So, I don't get why there will be severe changes in software..
- metildaa 7y ago
  Optane is not durable enough to survive as main memory, hence use cases using it as primarily read memory to avoid wearing out the cells with writes. Take a look at how cagey Intel is acting about Optane: https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/05/31/intel-dodges-every-question-at-apache-pass-xpoint-launch/ https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/05/31/intel-dodges-every-q... This is the same behaviour as with Intel's LTE chips, where promised features keep slipping (much to Apple's dismay).
  - wtallis 7y ago
    SemiAccurate's singing a different tune this year, now that Intel has stated that the Optane DC Persistent Memory modules are warrantied for 5 years regardless of workload. Intel's gotten write endurance up to sufficient levels for use as main memory, though if you use those DIMMs as memory rather than storage, then your DRAM will be used as a cache.
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    The new DIMMs Intel is putting out have a RAM cache in front of the optane memory that will absorb all the churn plus a wear leveling algorithm on the writeback side. It has big enough capacitors to put all its data away in the event of power loss. https://www.storagereview.com/intel_optane_dc_persistent_memory_module_pmm https://www.storagereview.com/intel_optane_dc_persistent_mem... All of which looks to solve the wear problem even if it means higher price and latency.

freedomben 7y ago

As long as Intel keeps fully supporting the open source Linux driver, I suspect there will always be demand for their GPUs (for people that don't need to game or do video production/etc). Also IIRC for low end devices and battery life, Intel GPUs are play the nicest

eBombzor 7y ago
xf86-video-intel?? Distros have been defaulting to the modesetting kernel driver for years due to the instability caused by Intel's linux drivers.
- mikelpr 7y ago
  the intel drm kernel driver which the modesetting x11 ddx (not kernel driver) uses

eBombzor 7y ago

Could you fill out those tiers? Who has better wifi/ethernet chips than Intel atm?

justinclift 7y ago
Chelsio has 10GbE (and above) adapters with good reputation. Mellanox has 40GbE (and above) adapters with good reputation. Mellanox also have 10GbE stuff, but that's mostly older generation / legacy (low end). Not sure how the 10GbE ones are regarded.
- voltagex_ 7y ago
  What about Aquantia? Although I'm sad the USB 3.1 5gbit NICs never appeared.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    Sorry, no idea as I've never heard of them. :)
  - chx 7y ago
    That's not 100% correct. You can get them if you buy 500 or more. Product page: http://www.speeddragon.com/index.php?controller=Default&action=ProductInfo&Id=797 http://www.speeddragon.com/index.php?controller=Default&acti... Available https://sybatech.en.alibaba.com/product/60793590161-804423206/USB_TypeC_5_Gigabit_Ethernet_Network_Adapter.html https://sybatech.en.alibaba.com/product/60793590161-80442320... I talked to Syba USA two months ago and they said end of Q1 so I didn't pursue the idea of bringing 500 into the US and sell them. I still might. Do you know any good platforms for this sort of thing? The other reason I didn't pursue this because the Realtek based 2.5gbps adapters are out https://www.centralpoint.nl/kabeladapters-verloopstukjes/club3d/usb-3-2-gen1-type-c-to-rj45-2-5gbps-art-cac-1520-num-11069657/ https://www.centralpoint.nl/kabeladapters-verloopstukjes/clu... (USB A version: https://www.centralpoint.nl/kabeladapters-verloopstukjes/club3d/usb-3-2-gen1-type-a-to-rj45-2-5gbps-art-cac-1420-num-11069655/ https://www.centralpoint.nl/kabeladapters-verloopstukjes/clu...) and I wasn't sure whether people would care enough to jump to 5gbps.

donavanm 7y ago

Re ethernet youre spot on with 82599 and ixgbe. Cheap, plentiful, and really reasonable platform support. Its like the 2.6.18 kernel in that I expect it to be relevant for decades. However my sidelines impression was intel got sidetracked with 40g while everyone else, especially dc network fabric land, went towards 25/100.

noinsight 7y ago

> On Ethernet, Intel is known for their little frills, stable line of NICs. That said, they have not been a leader since the jump to 10Gbps. Their 10Gbps line eventually came along and is solid ... I wouldn't call them solid - at least the X710. The net is full of bad experiences regarding them. They're VMware certified but are apparently really unstable on VMware; I have no personal experience with that platform. On Windows Hyper-V hosts I had the NICs repeatedly go into "disconnected" status and individual ports would straight up suddenly stop working. On Linux KVM hosts that didn't occur, at least for me. Supposedly upgrading the firmware to a recent-ish release fixes it - I haven't had it occur after. That's understandable. What's not understandable is that the NIC was released in 2014 and the issue was resolved only in like 2018 according to the net.