Benchmarks of Google's Axion Arm-Based CPU

(phoronix.com)

34 points | by mfiguiere 3 hours ago ago

7 comments

  • CBLT 2 hours ago

    Hey can someone else double-check that the formula being used on Page 2 for Perf/Dollar is actually making sense?

    They had three measures: A) Flops. Operations per second. B) Cost. Dollars per hour. C) Runtime. Seconds per task.

    I expected the formula to be Flops/Cost, resulting in units of operations per dollar.

    Instead it was computed as Flops / (Cost * Runtime), to get some units that don't make sense to me — operations * tasks per dollar seconds?

    • sliken an hour ago

      The cost is a rate, like $2 per hour, not a purchase price.

      So faster CPUs get work done more quickly and may justify a higher cost per hour.

      Ah, the graph is wacky, but the text makes sense, looks like a disconnect:

         1. C4A Axion: $2.16 reported cost per hour, test took average of 9 seconds per run: cost approximately 0.005 dollars.
      
         2. T2A Ampere Altra: $1.85 reported cost per hour, test took average of 17 seconds per run: cost approximately 0.009 dollars.
      
         3. C4 Xeon Platinum EMR: $2.37 reported cost per hour, test took average of 17 seconds per run: cost approximately 0.011 dollars.
      
      So the C4A costs a bit more ($2.16 vs $1.85) but gets approximately perf/$ is around 2x in favor of the C4A.
    • svantana an hour ago

      Yup you're right, surprising for a site so dedicated to benchmarks.

    • jsnell an hour ago

      I agree, all of the perf/cost graphs are nonsensical.

  • xnx 2 hours ago

    > Not only was the Google Axion processors delivering great performance in Google Cloud but doing so with the best performance-per-dollar too.

    Nice upgrade for Google's customers. I'm guessing it does it at much lower wattage as well.

  • TwentyPosts 2 hours ago

    > These new C4A instances are advertised as offering up to 50% better performance and up to 60% better energy efficiency than their current generation x86 instance types.

    Hardware (see also, Google's TPUs and their performance vs. energy cost) is one reason why I'm fairly bullish on Google.

    • throwaway48476 an hour ago

      Hardware companies have yearly releases and work closely with their customers. None of this describes google and it's the reason why nvidia is a trillion dollar company despite Google TPUs existing prior. Basically no one outside of Google uses Google hardware. If it's a generic arm target someone might use it because it's low effort, but it's not exactly a value add.