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VIA K8T800 Chipset Preview - Dual Opteron in Action
Mr.Tweak writes "It has been a long time coming but we are finally reaching the beginning stages of 64-bit mainstream computing. AMD has been the first to bring a 64-bit processor to the market with any true support in the Opteron. VIA is one of the key chipset companies supporting AMD64 and today TweakTown takes a preview look at their new K8T800 chipset with AMD Opteron 242 and 244 processors. 64-bit computing is boarding - don't miss the train!"
Where have you been? I've had a 64-bit machine for almost 5 years now. ;) It's even been EOLed since July 2002.
My journal has hot
There is a nice review in the latest german C'T too (issue 18 - page 36) of the MSI K8T Master2FAR board with dual opteron support, Via K8T800/VT8237 chipset and a lot of nice features (AGP, SATA, GBit Ethernet). Size constaints meant only a single memory-bus is implemented, a 5-10% speed bump on memory access. Another downside is no PCI-X slots.
The nicest thing though is the price: 280 euros. Sounds like a good workstation board.
I know it's a pain... more advertising revenue for them though I guess.
:-)
I always hit the printable version and cancel the print dialog. Plus that means modem users have a chance to read the article in less than a week.
Meep meep
it's not the price that's holding me back (I'm considering a dual xeon for some serious SGML crunching) but rather the question of "what's the added value of 64bit for me here ?"
I'm doing fine with my 3GB Ram. 6 would be nice, but so far I can stay out of thrashland at safe distance. So the potential speed gain would be minimal. Since it's an 1.4GB ASCII sgml, I don't need 64 bit numbers either...
Honestly : there's no reason for me right now to go 64bit, and I consider myself a high-end desktop user. I can imagine the low to middle end having even fewer reasons, given the uncertainty of 64 future right now.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
For the relatively small number of programs (at least on Linux) that have trouble with 64-bit longs, just compile as i386 code. The Opteron is backwards compatible with 32-bit code and gets reasonable performance out of it.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
It has been a long time coming but we are finally reaching the beginning stages of 64-bit mainstream computing.
I guess you didn't hear about the Apple PowerMac G5 when it was announced months ago and began shipping last week, then....
The really useful thing about the Opteron isn't the 64-bit aspect, but the fact that in 64-bit mode you get a lot more registers, etc, to play with. This in turn means that code compiled for the 64-bit mode will run faster than the code compiled for the 32-bit mode. Also the on-die memory controller means that memory latency is much lower, which in turn means things run faster. I'd buy a dual Opteron machine over a dual Xeon machine anyday.
For those of you that wanted the grapics, I'll be taking an ASCII Art Course for the next one 8p
Introduction
We saw the release of the Opteron processor earlier this year which was powered by AMD's own 8131 Northbridge. With many months passed since and a lot of R&D invested, it was time to see what VIA were capable of when given the latest 64-bit processor to play with from AMD. The latest chipset to hit the market from the Taiwanese chipset manufacturer comes in the shape of the K8T800 and carries over everything you need when it comes to inserting those brand new processors into VIA-powered motherboards.
The K8T800 chipset carries over with it the latest Southbridge from VIA, the VT8237, which we were very impressed with when reviewing the PT800 only last month. It carries over the same features which we will look more into later on.
Due to the limitation in server hardware and server benchmarking software, we have chosen to write a preview on the chipset with a lot of benchmarks with different processor environments. We will help give people an understanding of the technology and the future it has.
Without dragging on anymore, let's see what VIA's K8T800 chipset is capable of when powered with some of the newest and most powerful processors to hit the market from Advanced Micro Devices.
The Opteron Processor
Before we get into talking about the chipset, we will take a moment to have a look at the processor which will be accompanying our test motherboard today.
The AMD Opteron is the latest processor to hit the market and carries the long awaited 64-bit architecture to the retail market. While we have seen Intel release a 64-bit processor to the market in the shape of the Itanium and Itanium 2 some time ago, it was one product that the end-user would not consider purchasing due to its high price tag and lack of chipset support.
The Opteron comes with a massive 940 pin count which is the largest of any processor implementing the PGA format. PGA or Pin Grid Array can be separated into two parts: the first being Pin, which in this case is the small metal pins we see coming from the bottom of the processor and the other is the Grid Array. The Grid Array is the formation the pins are in, which here is a 940 pin formation. Together we have the highest pin count currently on the market for this kind of technology. The Opteron processor also carries a huge 1MB of L2 cache to help when it comes to processor-hungry applications. The Opteron also has three Hyper Transport buses which we will look into more in just a moment.
What else AMD has in store for 64-bit
While we are on the subject of AMD processors, we may as well have a quick look at what else AMD have in store for the 64-bit market.
The cheapest of AMD's 64-bit line will be known as the Athlon 64 and will most likely be launched next month in Taiwan at Computex 2003. The Athlon 64 will be the entry level 64-bit processor and the mainstream product with a pin count of 754 replacing Athlon XP. Athlon 64 has the smallest amount cache out of the group with only 512k and will only support Single Channel DDR and one Hyper Transport Bridge meaning it is not SMP-capable.
The other processor which will be making an introduction, which seems to be confusing a lot of people, is Athlon FX or Athlon 64 FX. The Athlon FX will be the enthusiast processor, according to speculation currently floating around. Consisting of 1MB cache and three Hyper Transport buses, the only difference between it and the Opteron is support for SMP. The Athlon FX will consist of 939 pins; the pin that is missing is the one that gives it the ability to run Dual Processor mode.
Hyper Transport Buses
As we just mentioned, the Opteron and the Athlon FX will consist of multiple HT (Hyper Transport) buses, while the cheaper mainstream Athlon 64 will only have one.
One of the buses goes to your peripherals (your AGP slot, PCI slot, etc). This is the only one on the Athlon 64. The s
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Maybe they need to learn about caching so as to reduce the load on MySQL. The rest of the server is running fine, it is let down by a poor content presentation system. Why do all these sites have to generate every page from the database anyway?
Obviously you didn't do any research. Here is a board I've gotten to work with, complete with AMD chipset:h tml
t s.html
http://www.amdboard.com/msi_k8d_master.
And all currently announced chipsets:
http://www.amdboard.com/opteron_chipse
AMD themselves, nVidia, and VIA.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
it's not the price that's holding me back (I'm considering a dual xeon for some serious SGML crunching) but rather the question of "what's the added value of 64bit for me here ?"
I'm doing fine with my 3GB Ram...
On a 32 bit architecture, the kernel has to use nasty, expensive tricks to address memory over 3/4GB (for the default 1:3 userspace/kernel memory split). These tricks require lots of TLB invalidations, which are painfully slow, since the cache has to be reloaded from main memory. 64 bit architectures can just directly address that high memory, so you get a speed boost. How much, I don't know yet, since I don't have an Opteron at hand to benchmark. It will be quite measurable.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
one dual cpu test could be
make -j bzImage
on the linux kernel. -j spaws a new process when ever possible. It is possible to limit the number of processes, with a number right after the -j. This trick naturally works on other compilations than the kernel, so just find something big, and give it a test.
Actualy when i read Toms and others test of the Opteron back when it was released i kind of missed tests that used OS tools and programs to test the system, using real programs.
Source Compilation:
Maybe you dont recompile kernels all day, but if you are a developper you compile source code, so for you a compile test is worth while.
Gimp:
Apple usualy does alot of photoshop benchmarks, so why not use gimp, a known image, and a known script for gimp to benchmark the system with that? Some people use imagemanipulation for work, so lets test real work.
It might be an idea to test other programs, possibly some engineering tool, maybe blender, or some other tool that uses the floating point unit, rather than the integer part, and or possibly something that can use and test SMP, and/or tests that is cpu bound, memory bound, (or disk bound).
Putting the various other 64-bit processors aside (and remember, there have been > 32-bit processors since the 1970s), don't forget about the 64-bit MIPS processors. There's one in each and every PlayStation 2. Yes, there's only 32MB in a PS2, but the processor is still truly 64-bit. Integer registers are all 64-bits wide. Actually, they're 128-bits wide, but there's a limited number of operations that can be performed on 128-bit values
AMD beat Apple to market by about 3 months on this one, mate. 'sides, I know of a handful of them that have been ordered that -haven't- shown up (G5s). :)
I played with Opty's months ago.
Are we about to enter 18 months to 2 years of mostly running 32-bit apps on 64-bit hardware? (Or even longer than that, if we recall that "32-bit Win95" was really 16-bit in sheep's clothing.) And what's a "generation" for hardware? 2 years?
There will probably be some nice bargains on 32-bit boxen later this year & next, I'm sure. And they're gonna run those old 32-bit apps just fine. Then, when they wear out in 2-3 years, you can upgrade to 64-bit hardware to actually run 64-bit apps.
In other words, that first train trip is going to take you to an amusement park that's still under construction.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
You dont know? It wouldn't have been hard to find out
meh.
NUMA is n't about utilizing memory space, it's purpose is to reduce the amount of contention on a bus, a 64-bit address space actually helps you. Contention is the the reason adding >2 processors on a board only gets you marginal spreed improvements since there is n't enough bandwidth on the bus for all the processors.
With NUMA instead of sharing the memory and memory bus each processor has it's own local memory and a special bus for accessing other processors memory. Accessing local bus is always at 100% speed whilst the inter-processor communication bus is always slower. This setup means that you get much better performance when you have a large amount of CPU's.
The problem with this setup is that you need an OS that is aware of this. Also some applications would have to be rejigged to get maxiumum performance.
Also remember that the Opteron does n't have a traditional bus as such, it uses HyperTransport for communication between the CPU and external peripherals. From what I can gather on this dual chipset the second CPU has its memory controller turned off and that all memory requests are serviced by the 1st CPU over the HyperTransport bus via the chipset. How optimal this setup is I cant say.