Tabor Research Quick Question Results:

Users: What processor architecture will you select for your next HPC purchase?

The commodity revolution is a frequent topic in the HPC industry, and Tabor Research wanted to know to what extent it would continue for the next wave of HPC purchases. Not surprisingly, the majority of respondents indicated that they would select x86-64 processor architectures for their next HPC purchase. However, the revolution is not complete. RISC still showed up in second place with a considerable number of responses.

When multiple votes from single IP addresses were eliminated - a process that had little effect on the overall percentages - x86-64 was the dominant selection, with 71% of the votes. RISC was a distant second with 16%. EPIC (Itanium) was received only 3% of the vote, and x86-32 and vector architectures received single votes for 1% each. 6% of voters selected "Other."

In all, we received 97 votes from 68 unique IP address. The table below summarizes the responses.

Table: Processor Architecture Choice for Next HPC Purchase

Tabor Research Analysis: RISC Seekers?

Although x86-64 is certainly dominant in the survey results, the 16% of the vote garnered by RISC is considerable. Will 16% of HPC purchases go to RISC architectures over the next two years? Tabor Research advises caution in being too exuberant over the result.

We take note of the fact that the percentage of RISC respondents dropped - from 20% to 16% - when we controlled for duplicate IP addresses. The implication is that respondents selecting RISC were more likely to come from within a common organization than respondents in other categories.

With respect to the adoption of x86-64 in favor of x86-32, we believe that users have varying requirements for 64-bit capabilities and may be being pulled to the technology by market forces rather than pushed by applications requirements. First, both x86-32 and x86-64 processors provide 64-bit or double-precision floating-point computation at the same speeds as 32-bit computation. Double precision is a requirement across a broad range of applications with notable exceptions only in such areas as signal processing (e.g. satellite imagery, seismic analysis) and image rendering of films, and even in these areas the requirements for 64-bit data can be found or are expected.

The major advantage of 64-bit systems is the ability to configure nodes with greater than 4 GB of memory. Historically cluster system users have often been content with node memories under the 32-bit limit, given cost trade offs between the number of nodes and the amount of memory configured on each node. Up to a year or two ago we would have expected about half the cluster nodes to be configured with 4 GB of memory or less; however, we believe that the combination of lowered memory prices, and the introduction of multi-core nodes that will place greater stress on the entire cache-memory-disk hierarchy will require users to move to large-memory nodes under most circumstances.

We also find the lack of enthusiasm for Itanium to be noteworthy. Once heralded as the next big thing for HPC, the product never quite hit its market window, and demand for Itanium processors never took off. Only a small sector of users - likely a subset of those who adopted Itanium early and have not yet jumped off the bandwagon - will continue to purchase the processors for HPC.

Methodology

The Quick Question is a web poll available through the Tabor Research web site. Any visitor to the site is able to respond to the question, with respondents only identified by IP addresses. After receiving a new vote the system displays current total and percentages for the poll. Poling is generally left open for one to two weeks. The objective of this poll is to provide a mechanism for members of the HPC community to quickly weigh in on important current issues.

Quick Question votes are anonymous - identified only by IP address - and can come from any visitor to the Tabor Research website, including both users and vendors. Multiple responses from the same email address usually reflect multiple users voting from the same server, but in some cases, a single respondent could register multiple votes.

Future Quick Questions

A new Quick Question poll is currently active at www.taborresearch.com. Please register your vote today. We welcome your comments on this question and suggestions for future questions. Please contact either: Chris Willard (chris.willard@taborresearch.com) or Addison Snell (Addison@taborresearch.com).