News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by QuinnyPig on Saturday January 25, 2020 @02:52PM (#22148248)
To my uninformed understanding, power efficiency wasn’t really the design goal. If it’s AWS’s power bill, do we care as much (presuming sustainable energy)?
Re:AWS Graviton2 by marcinzm on Saturday January 25, 2020 @03:24PM (#22148429)
>If it’s AWS’s power bill, do we care as much (presuming sustainable energy)?

I care because it's an interesting question regarding future trends in technology. More broadly, people care about a lot more than just what has direct short term applications to their jobs.

Re:AWS Graviton2 by QuinnyPig on Saturday January 25, 2020 @04:23PM (#22148701)
Fair. Trouble is, we’re never going to get Graviton2 devices of our own outside of an AWS datacenter or device; the power profile is intellectually interesting, but not likely to ever enter the public sphere.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by nine_k on Saturday January 25, 2020 @04:45PM (#22148817)
I'm not sure why Amazon won't try to recoup some of the investment by designing and marketing other boards / devices with this chip, or by just selling it in quantities to some manufacturers (think telecom, home entertainment, industrial equipment, etc).
Re:AWS Graviton2 by QuinnyPig on Saturday January 25, 2020 @05:03PM (#22148908)
Based upon my experience, I’d say it’s going to be profitable in its own right just by powering EC2 instances. The same argument could be said to apply to Apple’s ARM chips.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by rumanator on Sunday January 26, 2020 @04:39AM (#22151275)
> the power profile is intellectually interesting, but not likely to ever enter the public sphere.

It does have an impact on operational cost, and cost is a very important factor.

Re:AWS Graviton2 by marcinzm on Saturday January 25, 2020 @04:56PM (#22148876)
If something is possible and economical then others will copy it in time.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by Scaevolus on Saturday January 25, 2020 @02:59PM (#22148305)
Power and heat dissipation are a huge part of TCO for datacenters. I'm sure Amazon picked an appropriate point on the performance per watt curve.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by qeternity on Saturday January 25, 2020 @03:00PM (#22148312)
Given that your cost is going to be correlated to AWS’s cost of goods sold, I’d argue of course we care.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by QuinnyPig on Saturday January 25, 2020 @03:13PM (#22148373)
I care what AWS charges me; I don’t have the energy to care what their underlying cost structure and its constituent parts looks like.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by qeternity on Saturday January 25, 2020 @06:53PM (#22149413)
As I said in my comment, their underlying cost structure has a direct relationship to the cost you incur (at least in the long run with semi efficient markets). There’s a reason why commodity markets tend to revert towards variable cost.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by ksec on Sunday January 26, 2020 @04:21AM (#22151225)
> There’s a reason why commodity markets tend to revert towards variable cost.

Is that some theory of economical model ?

Or is that a way of saying the final price of a product varies greatly because the commodity part with the product is only a small percentage of the TCO / BOM ?

Re:AWS Graviton2 by wmf on Saturday January 25, 2020 @05:52PM (#22149139)
Indeed; we shouldn't care about AWS power efficiency but we also shouldn't assume that it's bad just because we can't see it.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by cwyers on Saturday January 25, 2020 @09:46PM (#22150070)
I can think of exactly 0 circumstances where Amazon wouldn't pass on its power bill to its customers.
Re:AWS Graviton2 by adrianN on Sunday January 26, 2020 @12:29AM (#22150542)
> presuming sustainable energy

Pretty big presumption.