[HN Gopher] 2022 Cloud Report
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       2022 Cloud Report
        
       Author : estambar
       Score  : 241 points
       Date   : 2022-06-16 13:25 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cockroachlabs.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cockroachlabs.com)
        
       | vlovich123 wrote:
       | Am I misreading the report or is GCP faster for network/disk,
       | have more consistent performance (at least for network), & offer
       | cheaper pricing? Aside from vendor lock-in (or potentially
       | negotiated rates for large ENT accounts altering the economics),
       | is there any reason to choose AWS/Azure instead of GCP?
        
         | sharms wrote:
         | Each cloud comes with unique service / API complexity and
         | despite being managed services that experience does not
         | translate 1:1 across clouds. For example AWS IAM policies
         | cannot be reused, and there may be differences in availability,
         | durability, feature set et al. A good reason to choose AWS may
         | be to minimize deltas between stacks, and often it is a fair
         | assumption that their service offerings have been used by a
         | significant amount of enterprises.
        
       | bjornsing wrote:
       | How about ARM? Included in the report?
        
         | asdajksah2123 wrote:
        
         | guepe wrote:
         | There is very little offering and honestly afaik they are not
         | competing on performance except niche applications.
         | 
         | It's not that easy to displace x86...
        
           | StillBored wrote:
           | I'm not sure that is accurate for Gravaton3, which appears to
           | be besting intel/amd in a number of cases. So, it doesn't
           | appear there is a clear leader between the amd, intel and
           | gravaton instances. Meaning everyone should be benchmarking
           | their application and picking one.
           | 
           | https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=graviton.
           | ..
           | 
           | Amazon here seems to be leading the Arm technology pack, as
           | they are using a newer generation of CPU, while arm instances
           | on other providers tend to be providing gravaton2
           | (Neoverse-N1) based instances. I would imagine that gradually
           | changing in the near future as those vendors also upgrade.
        
           | canucklady wrote:
           | Graviton3 on AWS is better for most applications on a
           | cost/performance basis, and in some cases also on straight
           | latency.
           | 
           | Honeycomb has some great blogs about it:
           | https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/present-future-arm-aws-
           | gravito...
        
             | guepe wrote:
             | I stand corrected ! Note that is on cost/performance, not
             | raw performance yet. Impressive.
        
               | coder543 wrote:
               | And on raw performance: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php
               | ?page=article&item=graviton... (direct link to the
               | geometric mean performance of the whole test suite)
               | 
               | ARM isn't the optimal solution for every application at
               | this time, but anyone who isn't seriously considering it
               | probably needs to update their information.
        
           | colinmhayes wrote:
           | As far as I know most AWS services can be run on graviton
           | instances.
        
           | lallysingh wrote:
           | The big savings on graviton come from no hyperthreading. A
           | VCPU on x86 is a hypercore, but a VCPU on graviton is a full
           | core. So you get a full core and its L1 and L2 all to
           | yourself. Usually for cheaper than an x86 VCPU.
        
         | matdehaast wrote:
         | Last I checked cockroach don't support ARM binaries. Probably
         | means they thought not worth the effort to do the analysis on
         | those instances as it doesn't help for their offering
        
           | Thaxll wrote:
           | It does supports ARM. It's a Go project so it should except
           | if they do exotic things.
        
             | colinmhayes wrote:
             | I work on a similar product to cockroach. We inject
             | assembly into our code, wouldn't be surprised if they do
             | too.
        
             | _joel wrote:
             | Explained why they don't produce official, supported
             | builds.
             | 
             | https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues/62903#issue
             | c...
        
               | estambar wrote:
               | We're planning on having official ARM binaries in the
               | fall, so I expect ARM benchmarks will return in next
               | year's report
        
         | lbhdc wrote:
         | From the pdf of the report
         | 
         | >We chose not to test ARM instance types this year as
         | CockroachDB still does not provide official binaries for that
         | processor platform. Official support for ARM binaries is slated
         | for our Fall release (22.2), so we expect to return to testing
         | this processor platform next year.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | yekurtal wrote:
       | Direct download link:
       | https://www.cockroachlabs.com/pdf/2022-cloud-report-cockroac...
        
         | ghishadow wrote:
         | thanks
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | hesdeadjim wrote:
       | As a AMD fanboy who loves seeing them back on top, I'm just happy
       | we have a competitive CPU market now. I'll include the M-series
       | from Apple as well, despite being platform locked, because it
       | also forces the other players to up their game.
       | 
       | I would love to see an AMD chip as fully integrated as an M1,
       | moving the RAM fully on die and part of the Infinity fabric
       | directly. The insane memory bandwidth of the M1 is what keeps it
       | competitive.
        
         | WithinReason wrote:
         | > I would love to see an AMD chip as fully integrated as an M1,
         | moving the RAM fully on die and part of the Infinity fabric
         | directly.
         | 
         | Current rumours suggest that's where AMD is heading, Zen 5
         | having multiple accelerators integrated and Zen 6 having HBM
         | part of the package (on the datacenter variants):
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/6yFn85I5PbY?t=1222
        
           | bee_rider wrote:
           | All this makes me wonder where the Crystalwell concept could
           | have gone if Intel had really stuck it out.
        
           | jeffbee wrote:
           | The memory in an M1 is not "on die" it is plain old DRAM that
           | they buy from the Koreans and solder to the board just like
           | Intel and AMD and everyone else. DRAM is made on a
           | fundamentally different semiconductor process and there will
           | never, ever be a CPU with on-die DRAM. DRAM that can be made
           | on a CPU logic process is called eDRAM. A huge eDRAM is a few
           | tens of megabytes, while a huge DRAM is gigabytes. The bit
           | cell density of eDRAM is slightly better than SRAM and 1000x
           | lower than DRAM.
        
             | WithinReason wrote:
             | I should have said "on package", not "on chip".
        
             | babypuncher wrote:
             | I think the person you are responding too used the wrong
             | vocabulary. Apple mounts the SoC and DRAM together in a
             | system-in-a-package design, which is pretty different from
             | how thin & light x86 manufacturers solder DRAM chips to the
             | mainboard. The proximity between the SoC and DRAM is part
             | of what makes the M1s bandwidth possible.
        
               | jeffbee wrote:
               | The DRAMs in an M1 system are not really any closer to
               | the CPU than they are in competing ARM and x86 systems.
               | 
               | https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
               | content/uploads/2020/09/tiger...
        
               | erik wrote:
               | The M1's bandwidth is possible because Apple uses high
               | end LPDDR ram and a memory controller with a lot of
               | channels. They aren't doing anything exotic.
               | 
               | Consumer PCs don't match this bandwidth because DDR DIMMs
               | generally aren't as fast as LPDDR. Plus AMD & Intel limit
               | their mainstream consumer CPUs to two memory channels,
               | both for cost savings and to segment the market.
        
               | vitus wrote:
               | > Consumer PCs don't match this bandwidth because DDR
               | DIMMs generally aren't as fast as LPDDR.
               | 
               | What about LPDDR (low-power DDR) allows it to be faster?
               | And, by faster, do you mean lower latency? higher clock
               | rates -> higher throughput? This is unintuitive to me.
               | 
               | My impression is that lower power means that you can't
               | sustain higher clocks as readily (in fact, when
               | overclocking RAM, it's common to increase voltage in the
               | interest of stability).
               | 
               | I can't find anything about CAS latencies for LPDDR
               | DIMMs.
               | 
               | edit: to clarify: when overclocking RAM, your two options
               | are either increase voltage or increase timings, as if
               | you want to sustain higher speeds, you need to either
               | charge your capacitors faster, or wait more cycles for
               | them to be charged.
        
               | erik wrote:
               | > What about LPDDR (low-power DDR) allows it to be
               | faster? And, by faster, do you mean lower latency? higher
               | clock rates -> higher throughput? This is unintuitive to
               | me.
               | 
               | By faster I mean higher throughput at similar latency,
               | achieved by higher clock rates. And it is indeed
               | unintuitive as to how this can be done while using less
               | power than standard DDR.
               | 
               | My understanding is that it's down to two major factors:
               | 
               | 1. JEDEC has iterated on the LPDDR standards much more
               | rapidly. DDR4 and LPDDR3 both hit the market in 2012. But
               | then LPDDR3e, LPDDR4, LPDDR4x, and LPDDR5 were all
               | introduced before DDR5 was.
               | 
               | 2. LPDDR isn't available on DIMMs, it's soldered only.
               | 
               | So given that most laptops sold by companies like Dell
               | and Lenovo use soldered ram anyway, and that Intel and
               | AMD both support LPDDR, then why are PC laptops with
               | faster RAM so rare? I have no idea, maybe it costs a bit
               | more and the manufacturers don't think they can market it
               | as a benefit?
        
         | DeathArrow wrote:
         | >As a AMD fanboy who loves seeing them back on top
         | 
         | I am not a fanboy, but a realistic dude.
         | 
         | AMD ruled the last years but Alder Lake overtook Vermeer on
         | both performance and price/performance.
         | 
         | And that is with a process node difference, Intel using 10nm vs
         | AMD using 7nm.
         | 
         | And the future looks like Intel will enhance the distance
         | between its performance and AMD's.
        
           | colinmhayes wrote:
           | Alder Lake and zen 3 are on comparable processes. Intel 10nm,
           | now renamed Intel 7, has pretty much the same density as tsmc
           | 7nm.
        
             | FairlyInvolved wrote:
             | And N7 is almost certainly cheaper (holistically) than
             | Intel 7, from an economic perspective AMD have done more
             | with less.
        
           | viktorcode wrote:
           | Take a note, that node sizes of different factories aren't
           | comparable, because they are measured quite differently. You
           | can only compare TSMC v TSMC, Intel v Intel etc.
        
             | DeathArrow wrote:
             | True, but Intel is still lagging at least one node behind
             | TSMC, by whatever way you can measure.
        
               | colinmhayes wrote:
               | Against apple and I believe amd's new offering this fall.
               | Not amds last offering.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | bloodyplonker22 wrote:
           | if by "enhance the distance" you mean Intel will fall farther
           | in terms of price and performance to AMD, you're probably
           | right.
        
           | coder543 wrote:
           | I think Intel stands to regain some lost ground over the next
           | year or two, but Alder Lake isn't a compelling argument in a
           | datacenter-focused discussion.
           | 
           | Alder Lake relies on brute force, inefficient power
           | consumption to regain the performance crown. AMD's chips are
           | much more efficient, and efficiency matters in datacenters.
           | There is only so much power and cooling available to each
           | rack unit.
           | 
           | I think Sapphire Rapids holds a lot of promise, but it
           | remains to be seen.
        
             | DeathArrow wrote:
             | You are right. But parent comment was about desktops, not
             | data centers.
             | 
             | And in desktops performance is what matters. And
             | price/performance ratio, and both are in Intel's favor.
        
               | coder543 wrote:
               | This HN topic is about cloud, and I don't see anything in
               | the comment you replied to that's talking about desktop
               | computers specifically.
               | 
               | Both Intel and AMD have plans to integrate memory more
               | tightly onto the package of their datacenter processors
               | in the next couple of years, IIRC, and that seems to be
               | what the OP of this comment thread was hoping they would
               | learn from M1.
               | 
               | But, whatever.
        
         | how2cflags wrote:
         | As someone who has recently bought into AMD from a long hiatus,
         | I have to say they've come a long way since and I've been
         | personally impressed with what I've experienced so far on the
         | hardware side. That said, the reverse can be equally said on
         | other matters pertaining to their business as well; more
         | specifically their customer support pertaining to RMA's as of
         | late. Mind you, this is all a personal anecdote so take with a
         | grain of sand.
        
           | hanble wrote:
           | Agreed, in it's heyday (before Intel dominated in PC era),
           | AMD was my go-to for performance processors.
        
         | matthewmacleod wrote:
         | _I would love to see an AMD chip as fully integrated as an M1,
         | moving the RAM fully on die and part of the Infinity fabric
         | directly. The insane memory bandwidth of the M1 is what keeps
         | it competitive._
         | 
         | I know this has been said a million times, but it's worth
         | repeating because somehow the idea is still floating around -
         | the M series very much does _not_ have the RAM on-die. It 's
         | not even in the same package - it's standard LPDDR4/5 sitting
         | off to the side with a lot of channels.
        
         | ericmay wrote:
         | Yes! How awesome is it that we've got companies like AMD,
         | Intel, Nvidia, ARM, Apple + TSMC for M series, and others who
         | are cranking out _awesome_ products?
         | 
         | Sometimes we get lost in the criticism of every little thing
         | that these companies do and forget that honestly, they're all
         | cranking out great products.
        
           | leoc wrote:
           | Hopefully some serious competition and general normality will
           | return to consumer discrete GPUs sometime soon, too.
        
             | babypuncher wrote:
             | GPU prices are already coming back to earth, thanks to both
             | improved availability and the collapse of crypto mining.
        
             | Geonode wrote:
             | I don't know about competition, but I think we'll see
             | prices bottom out below MSRP before the 4000 level cards
             | come out in the next few months.
        
               | danuker wrote:
               | Do you think so, because the crypto craze is back in the
               | crypt?
        
               | vitus wrote:
               | We're already close to that point. Low to mid-end AMD
               | cards are already available at / below MSRP (e.g.
               | 6600XT), and nVidia cards no longer command a > 2x
               | premium across the board.
               | 
               | At the height of the craze, I saw a five-year-old card,
               | the GTX 1050 (not even Ti!), going for over 200.
               | 
               | https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/video-card/
               | 
               | From February: https://www.techradar.com/deals/looking-
               | for-a-gpu-dont-buy-y...
        
               | Geonode wrote:
               | Yep, the secondhand market is getting flooded.
        
           | MangoCoffee wrote:
           | we need a fab competition as well. too many fabless like AMD,
           | Apple...etc. deepened on TSMC
        
             | babypuncher wrote:
             | Intel is working on expanding their fab capacity and
             | contracting it out like TSMC and Samsung.
        
           | fauigerzigerk wrote:
           | ASML deserves mentioning as well.
        
             | BLanen wrote:
             | No.
             | 
             | Monopolies don't deserve credit.
        
               | FairlyInvolved wrote:
               | They hold a monopoly of merit, many tried EUV and they
               | succeeded in doing something that others were calling
               | impossible even 5 years before they shipped it, not by
               | shutting down competition but simply because no one else
               | could.
               | 
               | The idea that ASML would somehow be more worthy of merit
               | if Nikon/Canon also succeeded is weird.
               | 
               | Would the moon landing me more impressive if Russia and
               | Japan also managed it?
        
               | jaywalk wrote:
               | Exactly correct. They're literally _more_ deserving of
               | credit because they 've done something that to this day
               | nobody else has been able to do.
        
             | thg wrote:
             | Don't forget ZEISS
        
       | jeffbee wrote:
       | I wonder why they did not test the Amazon 6a class. The report
       | gives the impression that Amazon lacks an implementation of the
       | 3rd-gen EPYC.
        
         | shaicoleman wrote:
         | "Note: Because of our machine selection and testing cutoff
         | times, we were unable to test AWS's m6a instances, which also
         | run AMD's Milan processors. Based on the rest of our testing,
         | we expect that the m6a instances could have outperformed m6i."
        
       | lbhdc wrote:
       | https://www.cockroachlabs.com/guides/thank-you/?pdf=/pdf/202...
       | 
       | Here is the direct link to the report
        
         | fckgw wrote:
         | Even more direct :)
         | 
         | https://www.cockroachlabs.com/pdf/2022-cloud-report-cockroac...
        
       | smarx007 wrote:
       | From p. 74:
       | 
       | > Overall, the gap for most AMD-based processors closed almost
       | immediately when we controlled for NUMA nodes - in other words,
       | when we only considered runs where each instance showed all vCPUs
       | running across a single NUMA node. When we did this, the
       | performance gap dropped from 22% to 1%, which is smaller than our
       | margin of error.
       | 
       | How does one avoid machines with vCPUs across multiple NUMA
       | nodes? Do you just spin the machine up, run `lscpu | grep 'NUMA
       | node(s)'` and kill the machine if the value reported is anything
       | but 1 and try to spin a VM again?
        
         | estambar wrote:
         | That's what we did, yes
        
           | digb wrote:
           | "we" meaning you are an author on the report, or just at your
           | job?
        
             | fizwhiz wrote:
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31743182#31743198 :)
        
             | estambar wrote:
             | yes I was one of the authors of the report :)
        
       | mekster wrote:
       | Can we just go back to good old days and stop with animations to
       | bring the content from all directions which is even slow enough I
       | get blank screen for a few seconds as I scroll down which really
       | reduces the readability.
        
         | Thev00d00 wrote:
         | It also ignores the "prefers-reduced-motion" CSS Media feature
         | flag :(
        
           | cronix wrote:
           | Shouldn't the web browser be the one implementing css rules?
        
             | jaywalk wrote:
             | No. How is the web browser supposed to know how an
             | "unanimated" animation is supposed to appear? Animations
             | can be very complex, and there's simply no way that a
             | browser could do this without breaking a lot of stuff.
        
       | candiddevmike wrote:
       | Wonder how cockroach is doing these days with all the competition
       | in the space.
        
         | digb wrote:
         | was discussing this the other day with colleagues. you google
         | CockroachDB and are immediately served Yugabyte and
         | PlanetScale, which are imo much "hotter" right now
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | I don't follow their product closely. Who are their
         | competitors?
         | 
         | (If I were in the market for their database and the
         | alternatives were close in parity and price, I'd be likely to
         | choose a competitor for the name not being "cockroach" alone.)
        
           | sa46 wrote:
           | Other globally consistent NewSQL DBs: Spanner, TiDB,
           | Yugabyte, SingleStore
           | 
           | Partitioning for existing DBs: Citus for Postgres and Vitess
           | for MySQL.
           | 
           | Snowflake apparently just started to target transactional
           | workloads with UniStore.
        
           | thisiswrongggg wrote:
        
           | michaelmior wrote:
           | I'm curious what it is about the name Cockroach that turns
           | you off. I assume the name is intended to give the impression
           | that the DB is hard to kill.
        
             | estambar wrote:
             | ^^THIS
        
       | EugeneOZ wrote:
       | Dear webmasters, for "simple" cookies settings windows like this,
       | you should be tortured equally. https://ibb.co/dp89vYQ
       | 
       | You are trying to "make" the users click "Allow all" just to hide
       | this trash as quickly as possible. It is low.
        
         | Narishma wrote:
         | The whole website seems ill-conceived, with popups appearing
         | above the graphs they're supposed to explain and obscuring
         | them.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | Linkd wrote:
           | I read this as a strategic move. As their main goal is to get
           | your name, company, title and email to download the report.
           | So they were showing you snippets of interesting charts and
           | then quickly covering it up.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | aaa_aaa wrote:
           | I guess they make the information on the site unusable to
           | obtain your work e-mail for downloading the pdf.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | nix23 wrote:
         | cockroachlabs..... ;)
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | It's not even low, but straight up breaking the regulations
         | which made them put up that banner in the first place. But
         | seems companies haven't yet understood that, nor have
         | governments actually enforced anything so, here we are.
        
           | orangepurple wrote:
           | We need a browser extension to delete these stupid cookie
           | consent popups
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | nazgul17 wrote:
             | There is one: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
        
               | krageon wrote:
               | This gives consent automatically (in an unspecified
               | amount of cases). The correct action is to respond with a
               | "no consent" answer every time, because withdrawing your
               | consent for every single optional cookie category
               | _should_ be the default. People bother you with popups
               | because they hate you, not because they are mandatory.
        
               | RealStickman_ wrote:
               | While it's true that this extension sometimes accepts all
               | cookies, that isn't the case most of the time. From the
               | extension's website:
               | 
               | > In most cases, it just blocks or hides cookie related
               | pop-ups. When it's needed for the website to work
               | properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy
               | for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only
               | necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier
               | to do). It doesn't delete cookies.
               | 
               | It would be helpful to have a "what did you choose on
               | this site" view though if that doesn't exist yet.
        
               | krageon wrote:
               | It would be better if the default was to reject always,
               | everywhere. And the "please pander to corporate evil"
               | flag was something to turn on explicitly.
        
               | [deleted]
        
       | estambar wrote:
       | We are addressing some of the page rendering issues discussed in
       | the comments below and hope to have them resolved soon. Sorry
       | about that!
        
       | tofuahdude wrote:
       | These animations are painful!
        
       | Queue29 wrote:
       | This blog post is literally unreadable with animations flying
       | around covering up content, is that by design?
        
         | alex3305 wrote:
         | I have Windows zoomed in at 125% and at my 1080p height screen
         | some content boxes don't even fit my full view height.
         | Thankfully the full report is direct linked here.
        
         | nemothekid wrote:
         | These blog posts used to be really good in comparing different
         | clouds; I'm not sure why they decided that this was the optimal
         | way to display this information.
        
         | soco wrote:
         | This feels like back in the 90s with those GIF-laden scrolling
         | text webpages. I can't fathom what goes into the mind of a
         | designer creating all this nonsense for what basically is a
         | table report. Does anyone in their right mind expect people
         | would be more attracted by banners frolicking around?
        
           | madeofpalk wrote:
           | > I can't fathom what goes into the mind of a designer
           | 
           | Don't underestimate the damage an overly eager and naive
           | developer can do.
           | 
           | Or, (maybe more likely in this case?) a CMS author who's been
           | given a little bit too much power?
        
         | Thev00d00 wrote:
         | It also ignores the "prefers-reduced-motion" CSS Media feature
         | flag :(
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | so? this isnt about accessibility its about preference. i
           | prefer white backgrounds but im not sad when a site author
           | chooses pink.
        
             | cpmsmith wrote:
             | How should you know whether it's about accessibility? The
             | `prefers-reduced-motion` feature is explicitly[0] intended
             | to accommodate people with vestibular motion disorders,
             | which are common above age 40.[1]
             | 
             | [0]: https://drafts.csswg.org/mediaqueries-5/#prefers-
             | reduced-mot...
             | 
             | [1]: https://vestibular.org/article/what-is-
             | vestibular/about-vest...
        
               | bowmessage wrote:
               | If it's really bad, couldn't they apply userstyles that
               | disable all animation with `!important`? `prefers-*`
               | settings seem somewhat optional, best-effort, based on
               | their name.
        
               | vorpalhex wrote:
               | Sure, please write it, ship it, and then support my 8+
               | aging family members who need to use it.
               | 
               | Or just follow the spec.
        
           | J1859 wrote:
           | Dang! I didn't know this was a thing! Thanks!!
        
         | colinmhayes wrote:
         | Probably, they want you to download their report which requires
         | a work email nad personal details.
        
         | dsiegel2275 wrote:
         | The JavaScript console is your friend:
         | 
         | document.querySelectorAll('.aos-init').forEach(e => e.remove())
         | 
         | The above will remove all of those popups.
        
         | namibj wrote:
         | I had confirmed that the overlay is intended teasing to get you
         | to download the PDF.
        
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       (page generated 2022-06-16 23:01 UTC)