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Intel Releases Xeon, Look At Those Kernels Compile
Nelly Furtado writes "AnandTech has the scoop on Intel's new Xeon processor that was just released today in dual processor form. The review includes Linux kernel compilation tests as well as database server performance measurements. The article also hints at Jackson Technology (SMT) and AMD's 760MP chipset."
Quoting Linus: "A single "-j3" won't do much. It will only build three directories at a time, and you'll never see much load. But doing it recursively means that you'll build three at a time all the way out to the leaf directories."
The testers used make -j2 bzImage, which didn't make full use of the machine's capabilities.
Am I the only one who thought those particular benchmarks extremely worthless? Where's the "10,000 client mail-server" benchmarks, or some other thing people would actually use a dual pentium 4 Xeon system for?
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Apache benchmarks don't really make much sense - a fairly low end processor can easily saturate a high bandwidth pipe. The Microsoft vs Linux web server benchmark wars are just a marketeering pissing context - they have essentially zero real-world relevance.
> You upgrade when you cant stand your old machine anymore and the new one you buy will be at least 4 times faster.
:)
:)
:)
:)
:) *
Four times? I tend to get a cpu twice as fast as my old one (on Mhz and Benchmarks.)
> Seems to be around a 3 year cycle.
Yeah, that's about right.
My upgrade schedule was:
Apple, 1 Mhz
XT, 4 Mhz
286, 12 Mhz
386sx, 16 Mhz
Pentium, 100 Mhz
Pentium Pro, (180 o/c to 200
Dual Cel 550s (366 o/c to 550
Athlon 1.2 Ghz (not o/c as I prefer 100% stable)
My upgrade schedule has been around every 2 to 3 years as well.
Currently, I'm not upgrading for another 2 years when 2+ Ghz machines are out (Just upgraded back in Feb. Probably will upgrade the GeForce 2 first though next year.)
> and Im not very easily impressed by gee-whiz-gotta-have-that hardware anymore.
I hear ya. As you get older, computers just don't have the same "magic" or "pizzaz". (I grew up with an 8-bit 1 Mhz Apple ][ w/ 64k. Now we have video cards with 64 Megs of ram. Times sure change
i.e. P4 1.5 Ghz. Yeah, so. It's not THAT MUCH faster then an Athlon 1.2.
Don't get me wrong, I still want faster hardware, but it just doesn't phase me the same way when I got my 386sx-16.
e.g.
Cant' wait for 3D graphics to look just as good as 2D. I want a real 3D MMPRG to make Quake 3 look like Donkey Kong.
* Can't waiting for the GeForce 3 to become "bottom end" / ubiqiutous
Cheers
I remember working at a place where this guy was complaining that some timing tests he ran on these E250's running 350Mhz Sparc II's vs. 450Mhz PIIIs clearly favored the PIII. I told him that his test was meaningless because he was not running the systems under full load. When I demonstrated by essentially DOSing the two systems with SSL requests, he saw how the throughput tends to smoke clockspeed in the end. High end chips come down to saturation performance. Of course compare a Xeon to pure RISC chip like the Sparc under these high load conditions and you'll see similar results. Clock speed loses to throughput under load.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Can you do real-time editing of the digital video clips you downloaded from your digital video camera? Do you even have enough storage for that kind of content? Didn't think so.
The need for speed does not ramp up continuously. I'll agree with that. But certain classes of applications require quantum leaps of processing power. We've gone from blinking LED's to text to still images (with hints of motion thrown in for effect). But today's computers cannot reasonably be expected to handle high-bandwidth streaming multimedia except in fits and starts. They will though, and this will require more horsepower. Much more than even this processor improvement provides.
So don't say "No one with a modern computer will ever need to upgrade". Amend that to "You might consider waiting until you'll really be able to notice the difference." Because depending on what you're doing, you really may notice the difference.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
In case you don't know what Jackson Technology is, here's an article over at Tech-report. However, is appears that Intel has sold their soul to Lucifer. Ah well, let 'em join the ranks of other companies to have done the same. :-)
http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/1947
Flashback: 1989 - Intel releases the i860 64-bit microprocessor, dubbed a "Cray on a chip" (okay, so it was only a Cray 1, and I think it was only a third as quick as that, but hey - it's a "Cray"!) I even remember some of the RMIT ubergeeks designing a kick-ass computer based upon the i860... Unfortunately, I don't think it was ever built.
2001 - Intel releases the "i860" chipset to support the latest of its flagging 32-bit microprocessor range. Intel's 64-bit microprocessor, the "Itanium", is due for release real soon now...
</irony>
June 15
Enigma
Enigma
It is of course impressive that Intel made it run at 1.7GHz, but given this, the benchmarks are quite what could be expected. The Xeon is intended for High-End workstations and servers. I dont think many people will actually choose a system, just becaues it is Xeon-based (the OEM has made the choice).
When buying servers the CPUs are not really the most important thing (at least now where I work - we focus on disk/RAID/memory and takes whatever CPU comes with it, and maybe double it). If CPU is really important (massive database, scientific applications etc) 64-bit CPUs or vector machines might be more adequate even though the operate at lower clock freq.
Most Xeons will be in Windows (and of course, Linux/BSD) servers. On these servers PIII/Thunderbird is not really an option anyway.
So, what I have wanted to say all the time is that I'd rather see a benchmark/comparision between UltraSparcs, Alphas and Xeons.
For those of you who can't be bothered to read the entire article, the most interesting part by far is the real-world database benchmark towards the end. The 1.2GHz Athlon places right smack in the middle between the single Xeon and the dual Xeon (both 1.7GHz).
That makes it highly likely that a dual Athlon will significantly outperform the dual Xeon, does it not?
Even though dual Athlon systems aren't available yet, I'm willing to bet that when they are, the price tag of one such system will quickly drop far below the price tag of one of those dual Xeon beasties.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Sure you don't need more speed now, but remember someone-or-other's law: Software will expand to consume all available resources.
My Apple ][+ had 48k of RAM, and somehow still managed to do all sorts of cool stuff. And although it was probably about four orders of magnitude slower than my current machine, it didn't feel that much slower. Somehow, modern software manages to use resources at rates that we would hardly have dreamed of in 1980.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's easy to blame programmers for being lazy, but they're actually making intelligent decisions that lead to ever-increasing resource use. Every new increase in speed or memory opens up options that just hadn't been there before -- scripting languages, multitasking, multiple users, OOP, application frameworks, garbage collection...all made possible because there was a little power to spare. OS X uses gobs and gobs of memory double-buffering everything on the screen, which is just fine with me -- memory is so cheap they gave me 256 megs free when I got my machine, and the UI looks really cool for all the extra RAM it uses.
So hang in there. I'm sure somebody will find a way to burn up all the power your hardware can muster. And oddly, it will probably be worth it.