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by lawrenceong 2953 days ago
newbie to Power 9 here. i'm just wondering what one can do with this type of machine better than an intel. i presently have the dell precision with up to 2 procs (currently have 1), am planning to gain more insight into machine learning.

TIA
2 comments
juliangoldsmith 2953 days ago
I think the biggest advantage of this particular system is openness. As the linked page says, you can modify any piece of code in the system, including CPU microcode. That means no secret operating system running somewhere you can't touch (i.e. Intel Management Engine), and no opaque blobs that could be doing anything.
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dragontamer 2953 days ago
> i'm just wondering what one can do with this type of machine better than an intel.

The BIG advantage to Power9 is the massive L3 cache. Utterly, utterly huge. The 18-core Power9 chip has 90MB of L3 for example. With 8x RAM channels at only $1300. With 4xSMT, that's 72-threads.

Compare to Intel's Xeon Gold 6150 $3000 chip, which only has 24.75 MB of RAM and only 6x RAM channels. Intel only supports 2xSMT for 36-threads.

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