X86-64 exercise tester run on AVX-512?

Programming x86-64 Assembly
1

I picked up an x86-64 assembly mentoring case where the student is writing AVX-512 code. (Background: AVX-512 is one of a series of x86 CPU extensions, and is not all that common ‘in the wild’.)

So, my own computer does not support AVX-512. The student’s computer doesn’t support AVX-512. But he writes code and runs it from within the Exercism code-editor-running web pages, and it runs.

My question is basically about Exercism back-end infrastructure. Are the exercises run on hardware owned by Exercism? In a ‘cloud’ like AWS? In either case, are all runner hosts equipped with AVX-512? Are you specifically paying for AVX-512-capable cloud instances? Or is my student just getting lucky that when he tries to run his program, it randomly happens to hit an AVX-512 instance?

(Or – maybe – are x86-64 exercises actually run in an emulator which is transparently downloaded into the browser? Such things also exist – and might actually make more sense in this situation…)

2

The test runners all run in docker containers on AWS hardware.

This is the dockerfile for the x86-64 track.

I don’t know enough about x86-64 to know if AVX-512 is part of the setup, but it does appear (from some awkward googling) that nasm has support for AVX-512, and the dockerfile installs nasm.

3

Thanks. AVX-512 is an optional feature (well, a morass of tiny little optional subfeatures, available in different terrible mix-and-match combinations on different CPUs). It is not present on the vast majority of x86-64 capable CPUs.

The dockerfile doesn’t address this at all. It would be encoded in whatever mechanisms (whether it’s legal contracts, API calls, or what) select what sort of AWS instances the containers run on.

4

AFAIK AWS and Intel mentions that “most” of the intel infra has AVX-512 enabled hardware