AMD Ryzen, for production CMM's

[[Ro...]]

I have a bunch of old i9 9900 / i7 10700 machines, with P2200 graphics cards that are about to be replaced, mostly due to GPU driver support ending, other than security fixes. To avoid being in such a situation again, for quite some time, I intend to go with systems that have RTX 2000 Pro Blackwell GPU's. Our IT department demands it must be Lenovo, and come from CDW.

The problem that I am running into is availabilty of Intel systems, that meet my requirements. (Thanks AI) My workstation, for simulation, is a Threadripper Pro 7945WX, for the same reason. There weren't any viable Intel options at the time of purchase, and my previous machine had died. I was told that using AMD for the production machines would be a bad idea, due to some differences on how Intel and AMD do math. As Calypso it now 64bit, and Intel actually pays AMD to be able to use their 64 bit instruction set, it didn't make sense to me. 

 

Is there anyone here that is using AMD for their production machines? 

Spec of one of my available options: Ryzen 7 Pro 9745 3.8 GHz, 64gb DDR5, 1tb NVME SSD, and RTX 2000 Pro Blackwell.

 

[[Ka...]]

Moin Robert,

The question here is which compiler and which options Zeiss used to create the 64-bit binary.
Another question is whether the actually minor floating-point differences between AMD and Intel have any noticeable effect on CALYPSO at all.
It would be great if the system could determine at runtime whether the hardware platform is Intel or AMD and then switch accordingly.
 

I'm pessimistic about this:
Just because a 64-bit executable is now being produced doesn’t necessarily mean that the internal libraries have also been optimized (i.e., for AMD/Intel opcodes). Zeiss is likely aware of the problem, and if it really has a noticeable impact on calculation results, they’ll take the usual approach: the lowest common denominator. In other words, they’ll use the simple x86-compatible math library that produces identical results on both platforms.

To be sure, you'll have to ask Zeiss, and I'd almost bet a case of beer that you won't get any definitive information from a developer. At any rate, here's something from support to put your mind at ease: “Everything will work” ... or something along those lines.

 

[[Jo...]]

Zeiss publishes a "PTB Report" where they have an external company validate the math for every calypso release. Doc is published along with release notes. 

[[Lu...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

where is it

[[na...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

At the bottom on the portal, Additional Files -> https://portal.zeiss.com/download-center/softwares/imt/software/9533

[[Wo...]]

Huh, interesting, I've always assumed that CPU's brand doesn't matter as long as they support the same instruction set. I knew GPUs are different because of CUDA cores etc. 

[[Ch...]]

This might not be relevant, but Zeiss Inspect can use AMD Ryzen just fine.  My Zeiss supplied computer for Inspect has an AMD Threadripper.

 

[[Ch...]]

I use CALYPSO on a Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5955WX with 128 GB RAM and an RTX A4000. The hardware is expensive enough to make you regret bad decisions, yet speed is not something CALYPSO regularly impresses me with.

My advice: focus on strong single-core performance. More CPU cores don't help much when the software still behaves as if parallel processing were some kind of futuristic technology.

And yes, I still remember ZEISS recommending a Xeon processor. To this day, I'm not entirely sure why. My best guess is that if CALYPSO isn't going to run any faster, at least the invoice should look impressive.

[[No...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

Well, yes, technically. But that certificate only confirms that the results calculated by Zeiss (based on a point set generated and provided by the PTB) are the same as the ones the PTB has calculated themselves. It does not contain any information about the hardware architecture on which those tests were performed. 

[[Jo...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

I believe all of the math determinations would be made by the compiler at compile time.  The compiled code would return the same results on any system that would run it, so this sort of verification is appropriate  (Correct me if wrong?)

[[Ro...]]

Please sign in to view this quote.

 

I would be looking at Ryzen 7 Pro 9745's, with 64gb ddr5 and an RTX 2000 Pro Blackwell, if buying AMD for the production CMM's. Ryzen 9000's have pretty good single threaded performance.