Skip to main content




in mid-2024 there was a small flurry of articles about an upcoming 256-core 64-bit ARM processor from Ampere, but I don't see much of anything since then. anyone know what's up with these?
in reply to SnoopJ

but, I mean, they sell 128 and 192 core processors, so it's not like this is super science fictioney
in reply to John Regehr

in reply to David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

On top of this comes that you get confronted with Amdahl's Law en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%2… With 128 cores you get with just 5% synchronisation just a max speedup of 17.5X. Each access to main memory is a synchronisation point. Only if all cores just work on their 1st level cache which is not shared between its neighbour then you might get more performance. But if all cores run on full speed then you probably get throttled because of thermal issues.
in reply to David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

Except I think hardware failures are somewhat linearly correlated with the number of hardware components. So for a cloud provider, having more servers for the same tasks would result in a lot of failures: each failure would have a smaller scope, but would still need the same amount of work to go to the rack, extract the server and service it. For hyperscalers, hardware failure already happens all the time, they don't want to increase the cost of ...
in reply to Simon Thoby

... handling these incidents. From an electricity consumption (multiply the idle costs by the number of machines)/heat (closely related to electricity consumption)/physical space in the DC/stock management/maintenance POV, the less servers the better. Virtualization did happen for a reason after all :)
in reply to Simon Thoby

Azure has actual data on this, which is what I'm basing my post on. Your intuitions are based on oversimplifications.
in reply to David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

I don't object to the fact that most customers do not care about having the latest CPU generations, I don't doubt it, the vast majority of customers only need a CPU "fast enough" to run their application well, and most CPUs since the Skylake microarchitecture probably fit that description. I'm only saying that the push towards high core-counts makes a lot of sense for cloud companies. Obviously if a company has existing hardware that works, ...
in reply to David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

years ago I worked on an HPC project that did something like that: boot separate operating systems on the different cores with dedicate memory reservations, not for reliability, but to deal with Amdahl's law scaling limits. It partitioned the compute (using a lightweight kernel with 1GB page allocations for the sole user process), IO, viz, and stats (all running Linux). we had hacked the kernels to mostly work and could even reboot them independently.
in reply to David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

I only have the 128-core part, and my workloads (fuzzing + alive2) are trivially parallel and do not communicate meaningfully.

and btw this system is lovely for my kind of workload. each core is maybe 25% of an Apple p-core, but with 128 of them the aggregate throughput is very solid.

in reply to John Regehr

I understand all of the points that you are making, but it's funny because for my own purposes I almost always have the opposite preference. I really do want high core count because this reduces the sysadmin burden and also I prefer to be able to run fewer jobs, but with higher throughput.
in reply to John Regehr

It's a very different economic situation if you're buying one of them and using it yourself than if you're buying a million and renting out parts of them. Unfortunately, the economies of scale aren't there to cater to the people wanting one or two.
in reply to John Regehr

It took longer than I hoped (though I do like the Morello box by my feet), but it's understandable. The workstation market is pretty much the smallest market segment and is completely dwarfed by cloud servers and mobile. Even the consumer desktop market is much smaller than those. No one is really designing chips for workstations, they're either scaling up ones for high-end mobile devices or scaling down ones for servers.
in reply to David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

It's probably less marketable, but I know a few anti-virtualization weirdos who might maybe feel safer with hardware-based LPARs on commodity hardware. Maybe. I'm not really surprised you don't see that available, but I think it would be nice if it were...
in reply to David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

I don't really doubt anything you say, but it seems the CPU vendors are aggressively developing and marketing higher and higher core counts in their server parts. Why?
in reply to Andrew Barker

This entry was edited (1 week ago)




Soil is more important than oil’: inside the perennial grain revolution
Soil is more important than oil’: inside the perennial grain revolution
theguardian.com/environment/20…

Planting grains perennal like trees 😳




Microsoft Unveils Compact Surface Keyboard for Remote Workers dutchiee.tv/news/microsoft-unv…
Microsoft has unveiled a compact face keyboard designed for ultramodern remote workers worldwide. The device reflects how work habits continue changing across diligence moments. Remote work now requires flexible tools that support productivity anywhere.

#technews #technology #tech #technologynews #gadgets #techie...



Just learned about @robinince having to leave The Infinite Monkey Cage, and I’m so sad for him and for us all.

There are simply too many monsters with too much power in this country/world. Robin shouldn’t have had to stop what he was doing at the BBC at all, but I’m glad he chose to step away from that increasingly troubled platform rather than have his work diminished.

bsky.app/profile/robinince.bsk…

Long live the strawberry indeed.

🍓✊

reshared this



Mésopotamie : hydraulique, écriture et naissance de l’État

Mésopotamie : la maîtrise de l’eau et de l’écriture invente l’État. Roi-prêtre, scribes, contremaîtres des canaux organisent irrigation, recensements, greniers. De la souveraineté hydraulique naît une population gouvernable. 🌊📜 #Mésopotamie #ArchéologieDuPouvoir #SouverainetéHydraulique #ÉtatNaissant #Mégamachine En Mésopotamie (IVe-IIIe millénaire av. J.-C.), l’État naît d’un nœud technique et administratif :…

homohortus31.wordpress.com/202…



Close ties between Telekom Serbia and Federica Mogherini – Serbian MonitorSerbian Monitor byteseu.com/1623414/ #Serbia




Beth’s Sunflowers chosen as Kingswinford garden centre’s charity of the year allforgardening.com/1537307/be… #business #Dudley #garden #kingswinford #LocalHubs #news



#LightAdvent2025 day 13

…Which also doubles as a #Caturday post.

Milo, whom we lost earlier this year, used to shine so brilliantly on that windowsill. I miss him very, very much.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

reshared this



“‘#Destructive #Entitlement’: How the World Enables the #Cult of #Israel’s Perpetual #Victimhood

by Avigail Abarbanel in Avigail Abarbanel‘s Fully Human Essays on Substack

@palestine@fedibird.com
@Palestine@masto.ai
@palestine@lemmy.ml
@BBC5Live
@BBCRadio4
@BBCNews
@AlJazeera

“Destructive entitlement describes the phenomenon whereby people act as if their own suffering entitles them & offers them justification, to inflict suffering on others”

open.substack.com/pub/avigail/…

#Press #Zionism #Inhumanity #Barbarity #Brainwashing



The one thing that the 🥀 UK Labour Party has proven unequivocally is that -
Votes Are Worth Nothing if You Lose Your Values.

The only way we Greens can win (and keep) votes is by
➡️ consistently promoting and working within 🟢 Green Values:

🟢 Cooperation, not competition
🟢 Distribute/share power and resources
🟢 Compassion and Fairness
🟢 Respect for nature
🟢 Think globally, act locally
🟢 Use open source, distributed digital
🟢 Honesty and transparency

reshared this




Wegzehrung

(Mir wurde schon mitgeteilt, dass ich doof bin. Kein Grund für Wiederholungen.)

in reply to Thor Rapid

Eine Plastikflasche füllt das Bild. Die Flasche ist schlank und wird nach oben hin schmaler. Das Etikett ist ein blaues und rotes Band, das die Flasche teilweise bedeckt. Auf dem Etikett steht in großen roten Buchstaben „PUPSI“. Weiter unten auf dem Etikett steht in kleineren blauen Buchstaben „ZERO ZUCKER“.

Bereitgestellt von @altbot, privat und lokal generiert mit Gemma3:27b

🌱 Energieverbrauch: 0.075 Wh



Siamo in piena “eat-at-home economy”

L’inflazione, il bisogno di comodità e una nuova idea di valore stanno spostando i consumi dal ristorante al divano in una tendenza globale.

linkiesta.it/2025/11/siamo-in-…

@cultura

#Cultura



plushtodon, :kb_ec:, :kb_ec:

Sensitive content

in reply to Lena Sophie

re: plushtodon, :kb_ec:, :kb_ec:

Sensitive content



In the occupied West Bank, heavy rains are leaving displaced families struggling to stay dry inside overcrowded shelters.

Israel has forced more than 30 thousand Palestinians from Jenin’s refugee camps. Authorities warn that continued rainfall could worsen living conditions for thousands of people, particularly those living in temporary camps.

Al Jazeera’s Hamza Mohamed reports.

youtube.com/watch?v=nY7h4T5fJf…

🕎 🇵🇸 ☮️
#Gaza #Palestine
#Press #News