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What is the current status, outlook, and pros/cons of ARM processors for high performance computing and general desktop use?

I hear a lot about ARM (and other non-x86 architectures) being the next big thing for high performance computing. Unfortunately, all the easy google searches return with what seems to be pure marketing hype devoid of details, and I've never seen such a machine in use.

My background is in high performance computing, both with GPUs and large traditional linux clusters.

Are there any functioning ARM servers/desktops a consumer can currently buy or build, install linux (or other OS) on, compile C/C++ code on, and execute on? (I see some chromebooks use some kind of ARM CPU, is that the extent of it?)

Are there currently any advantages of ARM by some metric, e.g. flops per dollar or flops per watt?

  • The Apple M1 computers have been attracting a lot of attention, comparing well against x86 equivalents in benchmarks, and so on.

    Those are ARMs, though pretty thoroughly customized beyond the standard-ish off-the-shelf ARM cores.

  • Dear neager543,

    Amazon AWS Graviton2 is based on Arm Neoverse N1.
    Also, as of November 2021, the "Fugaku remains the No. 1 system. It has 7,630,848 cores which allowed it to achieve an HPL benchmark score of 442 Pflop/s. This puts it 3x ahead of the No. 2 system in the list." This machine uses Fujitsu A64FX CPU, which is based on Armv8.2A.

    Best Regards,
    Willy Wolff

  • I hear a lot about ARM (and other non-x86 architectures) being the next big thing for high performance computing. Unfortunately, all the easy google searches return with what seems to be pure marketing hype devoid of details, and I've never seen such a machine in use.

    My background is in high https://tweakbox.mobi/ performance computing, both with GPUs and large traditional linux clusters.

    Are there any functioning ARM servers/desktops a consumer can currently buy or build, install linux (or other OS) on, compile C/C++ code on, and execute on? (I see some chromebooks use some kind of ARM CPU, is that the extent of it?)

    Are there currently any advantages of ARM by some metric, e.g. flops per dollar or flops per watt?

    I got this,...