Processor brands: just this intel and amd?

Intel and AMD are the best-known brands of computer processors, but many ask the same question: Will there be more?

In the home computer industry we always find Intel and AMD, but there are more specific processor brands. Although in the professional field it is also covered by these two brands, there are certain entities that need more demanding benefits. In this way, we can find IBM or Tesla.

Index of contents

Intel, the best known

As for the commercialization of computers, the average consumer recognizes Intel as the best processor company in the world. However, this does not mean that Intel is the best brand, but that it is the best known.

Intel is a manufacturer of processors that has a great alliance with Microsoft, the creator of Windows. On the other hand, they are the official chips of Apple computers. In short, it is a brand that practically takes over the personal computer sector.

It has ranges for all types, from m3 for ultrabooks, to the Intel Core X family for servers or very heavy tasks. It offers solutions for home and business, which means covering almost the entire computer market.

For years, its main rival was AMD, although it did not offer as many professional solutions, focusing on the personal computer.

AMD, the maximum rival

Outside of the professional sector, we find AMD as the only competitor to Intel, focusing on the price-performance ratio. As Intel processors have always been more expensive than AMDs, this company has focused on offering competitive prices without sacrificing performance. AMD's primary focus was offices and gamers .

In 2017, AMD launched its Ryzen range of processors, hitting the table and putting Intel in serious trouble because its processors were much more expensive and offered little more than the Ryzen range. The fight between the two companies benefits consumers, as it demands that the two give everything in their R&D.

Intel and AMD have struggled in innovation for many years, losing the second on many occasions. Now, it seems the balance has been balanced with AMD's AM4 architecture and Ryzen, prompting Intel to pull out an eighth generation of processors with more cores and threads.

However, in the field of notebooks, Intel continues to win, despite the fact that Ryzen for notebooks are attractive. It remains a sector dominated by the Mountain View company.

With the passage of time, AMD has moved tab in the professional sector with its Threadripper range, processors with 32 cores and 64 threads. They are processors that work very well for everything, but it is focused on the most demanding multitasking, such as rendering, editing, etc. They rival the Intel Core X family and stand up to it shamelessly.

Supercomputers: Intel and AMD are not alone

If we get into the small sector of supercomputers, we will realize that Intel and AMD are not alone. Here we run into IBM, so things get very serious.

As an added bonus, all the world's fastest supercomputers use Linux.

IBM and POWER9

Within the most cutting-edge institutions and technology companies in the world, we find supercomputers that cannot equip a "simple" Intel Xeon or a Threadripper, but need much more power.

Thus, IBM and its POWER9 processor appear on the scene as one of the best industrial solutions in the world. It evolves to its predecessor, the POWER8, increasing almost twice its performance. Powers the Summit, the world's most powerful supercomputer used by the OAK River National Laboratory in the United States.

This processor has 22 cores and we know what you are thinking. The AMD Threadripper has 32! Yes, but the POWER9 chip uses I / O technology, which means that it has a higher bandwidth and can carry very heavy work. This chip was created with the objective of interpreting, reasoning, analyzing and ingesting algorithms. In addition, it incorporates NVIDIA NV-link and OpenCAPI technology.

According to the LINPACK benchmark, the Summit has a speed of 148.6 TFlop / s, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world.

Sunway SW26010

The Chinese also have weapons with which to fight in the supercomputer war. An example of this is the Sunway SW26010, a processor for which we have little information, but which is part of the third fastest supercomputer in the world: the Sunway TaihuLight, the "God of the lake".

The TaihuLight contains 40, 960 processors, representing more than 10 million cores. In short, it is a processor that has contributed to registering 93 TFlop / s in the LINPACK benchmark. The SW26010 has 260 cores.

Like the POWER9, it is a processor dedicated to algorithm processing and far exceeds its predecessor, the Tianhe-2.

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Finally, TaihuLight is used by the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China.

Matrix-2000

The China National Defense Technological University (Guangzhou) created a processor called the Matrix-2000, which was released in 2017. The initial TianHe-2 equipped Intel Xeon, but Obama banned the sale of high-performance processors to China based on the nuclear bomb war that was brewing.

So the Matrix-2000 served to replace Intel processors. It is a 128-core 64-bit processor designed for the Tianhe-2A supercomputer. In addition, this chip contains 8 channels of DDR4 memory with a maximum frequency of 2400 MT / s and 16 PCIe lanes.

Each processor has 4 supernodes that contain 32 cores each and work at 1.2 GHz and the TianHe-2A. This reached 61, 444.5 TFlop / s in LINPACK.

Intel Xeon Platinum 8280

Intel is present in all wars and past, so it had to get into high-performance or large-scale processors. In his case, he has done it this year with his Xeon Platinum 8280, manufactured in 14 nm, with 28 cores and 56 threads.

Bring to life the 5th best supercomputer in the world: the Frontera, which is made by Dell. In addition, it supports DDR4-2933 MHz RAM, with a total of 6 channels. According to Intel on its website, it would have a retail price of $ 10, 009.

This Dell supercomputer marked a performance of 23, 516.4 TFlop / s in LINPACK, which hints at how powerful it can be. In its case, it incorporates 448, 448 total cores, which means 16, 016 Xeon Platinum 8280.

AMD Opteron 6274

AMD also offers its solution for supercomputers, such as the Opteron 6274. Power up the Titan, a supercomputer made by Cray. It ranks seventh among the world's most powerful supercomputers, a highly creditable place because the Opteron was launched in 2012.

This processor is manufactured at 32nm and contains 16 cores, each operating at 2.2GHz. As for the Titan, it achieves a performance of 17, 590 TFlop / s in LINPACK. This team incorporates 35, 040 Opteron 6274, which offers 560, 640 cores.

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This processor was an advanced for its launch, which means that today it continues to give spectacular performance. In fact, in 2012 it ranked first as the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Which processor has amazed you the most? Did you think that only Intel and AMD existed?