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AMD Talks About Internal Benchmarks for Opterons

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the where's-the-beef dept.

ggruschow writes "AMD's CTO says their 2.0-Ghz Opteron (aka Hammer) beat a 2.8-Ghz Xeon (P4) on both SPECint2000 and SPECfp2000 tests, but was mixed against an Intel 1-Ghz Itanium 2 (details at ExtremeTech). IBM predicted "conservative" 1.8-Ghz PowerPC 970 scores, which fall in the middle of the pack (sweet for OS X). It's probably not a coincidence that AMD's news comes so soon after Gartner said x86-64 would fail. Even if Intel loses the performance crown again, their upcoming mobile processor is looking pretty spiff with its recently announced 1MB of cache. Sounds like next year might finally bring a worthy upgrade for my 486dx4-160."

4 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. How much is adequate? by Deton8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Oviously there is a market for super-fast processors to those of us on /., but aren't we at a point where currently available processors are fast enough for more and more user segments? What I mean is, people who do Word and Excel were happy along about 800 MHz and ordinary CAD people like me don't need more than about 2 gig. There are only two guys in my organization (running VHDL simulations day in and day out) who have any need for faster processors. Will we soon get to a point where the total market size of gamers and /. people will not pay for another processor spin?

  2. Benchmarks... by e8johan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Benchmarks are as bad as statistics. They measure nothing but how much you can tweak your CPU and compiler to fit that specific benchmark.


    I would say that AMD may have an advantage for being more backwards compatible than Itanium, but I also feel that it is time for a change!


    All major CPU manufacturers make proper RISC CPU already so why don't we find them in our ordinary computers? It is because the Windows codebase cannot simply be recompiled for a new target but has to be ported function by function (painful assignment, to say the least). Perhaps they can reuse 3/4 of the code, but still, there is a whole lot or rewriting and verification to do.

    I have worked in a Tru64 environment (running Alpha CPUs) and I was surprised of how easy it was to get 95% of the Linux apps to properly compile and run. I didn't try to get Linux it self running but I had gcc running and that was enough.

    What I'm trying to say is that the open source movement has proven that one can write portable code successfully and that it is time to make a hardware change. The serial ATA and AGP solutions from the PC are good enough, so is the PCI bus (lots of peripihals available) so I wouldn't change that, but simply make the standard computer run multiple RISC CPUs and a proper multi-threaded OS that can take advantage of that and then you'll have a performance boost that would make P4 look like a bicycle compared to a F1 car (ok, perhaps a Porche, but still, an F1 does 0-200kph in
    While I'm at the subject. As we have bochs, it would still be possible to run Windows in a VM, no matter what platform we use, so all M$ users could be happy, or do as ACorn did (does), have a PC as a extension card, i.e. run a PC natively in a window, just used the *fast* RISC CPU for any real work.

  3. And another ten, and another ten... by Kjella · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't pretend to feel the difference between 2.0GHz and 2.1GHz. I don't "feel the difference" when going from a HD with 3x20gb platters to 2x30gb platters. I don't feel the difference between PC3200 and PC2700.

    But I do feel it when I upgrade from an outdated system to a new one. And to know what kind of performance I could get for a reasonable* (*as defined by me ;) ) price, I do need to know what the state of the art is.

    Maybe that isn't relevant to you, maybe your 486 / Pentium / Duron / Space heater does what you want it to when you check your email and type up your word document, but not for all of us. I know a few tasks where I'd like 4gb+ of memory, solid-state SATA drive and a multi-GHz proc+, or a dual, for that matter.

    Large strides are best made one small step at a time. This is just another one of them.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  4. Everyone, look AWAY from the clock speed. by Neil+Watson · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I think the industry has to stop being blinded by clock speed. Before you can improve the speed of the chip there are still bottle necks on the motherboards (e.g. PCI bus, Disk controllers). Also, there is the problem of power consumption and heat.

    I think a better approach for the future are smaller less power hungry modular CPUs. We've all seen the evidence of the clusters that makeup super computers. What if all standard computers came with 4 CPUs that used the same power as the P4 today? What if, instead of buying a newer faster computer, you could add CPUs like expansion cards but, at a reasonable price?

    --
    UNIX/Linux Consulting