Posted by
Hemos
on from the conjecture-or-convinced dept.
vmircea writes "If you think clock speed is the most important measure of a processor, IBM's Bernie Meyerson wants you to reconsider. Meyerson, who heads research and development efforts for Big Blue's semiconductor group, says processor chip speed is old news. Go to ZDNet for the interview."
I dabble in image manipulation, but mainly i do music production on my computer. Mine's about 2 years old, too...Most of the time, it does great. However, once i get about 7-8 tracks in, depending on the kind of output, plus effects like reverb and compression, my CPU says, "Aw, HELL no!" and freezes my machine. Happened just yesterday..makes me wonder sometimes if 2 proc's might help.
*Everyone* knows?
by
funkdid
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I think to the/. crowd this is certainly old news. Ever try to explain this to grandma? Or your girlfriend's little brother? *Most* people after my speach of how processors work say "Yeah but arent AMD chips slow? Like a Pentium is 3Ghz, AMDs are cheap (meaning cheaply made) right?"
So I "dumb" my speach down a bit and give it again. The masses don't want to know how processors work, they don't want to know about architecture, they want an even base line to measure performance. Most people think the Comp Usa rep is ripping them off and they are trying to feel good about their purchase, being an un-educated consumer.
By buying the high clock speed they can compare it to their neighboors and in their heads they have a Super-Fast PC.
I'd like to note that most people I talk to look at AMD like most people look at a Yugo. (remember those cars?) In spite of my advice that an AMD is like a new Honda for $2,000.
FLOPS won't work; it ignores workloads that use integer math. It also ignores workloads that specialize in vector math. And workloads that depend a great deal on automated decision-making. And random-number generation.
The problem is that no matter what metric you use, it won't fit all cases. Different workloads have different requirements. Personally, I'd like to see programmable hardware...Essentially an FPGA section on CPUs. Programs would provide the OS's scheduler with a circuit layout, and the scheduler would have the layout programmed in when needed.
Each program doesn't necessarily have to have access to the whole grid array, either. The scheduler could divide the array into sections. One section would be for speeding up scheduler operations. The rest would be available to have programs loaded in. You wouldn't even need to erase one program's hardware when another program had something it wanted to implement. With the hardware divided, you could load the new program's code into an empty slot, and leave the old code available for the old program's next timeslice. (To prevent having to reprogram the FPGA section every time the program's turn came about.)
Re:Seems IBM is embracing open standards
by
SoopahMan
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I disagree - you're forgetting AMD. Intel has been pushing clock speed for a long time, and many consumers are still fooled by this engineered-for-marketing strategy.
But AMD very-much uses the x86 architecture, and has long emphasized things other than clock speed. They've already put into action several of the things IBM's Bernie Meyerson seems to think he brilliantly came up with:
Efficiency: Athlons just plain get more performance per clock than an Intel. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this including the length of the pipeline, but the design just gets more done with each tick. That's less complexity and less...
Power usage: Athlons have 10-12 pipeline stages compared to the Pentium 4's 30. Between that increased efficiency, and less need for a large cache (big pipeline means frequent cache hits), it can use far less power than a P4 for the same performance - and consequently generate much less heat.
Interacting with software: Also not new - more recent desktop AMD chips internally clock themselves up and down depending on whether you're idling or running an app. Laptop chips have done this for years. That means the invalid assumption PC novices make that leaving a PC on while they eat lunch will not use much power becomes valid. For the power user, the PC churns out less heat overall since it only pumps heat under peak usage.
There are things the guy lists that are just freakin' out there:
We are even building in the capability for the chip to physically morph, if required. For instance, you spot an excessive number of fails occurring in the memory--we have techniques in software that recognize those errors. But if it turns out that for whatever reason, one segment of the chip drives an extreme amount of correction, one can easily envision the system autonomically issuing a command to remove that segment.
Uh, dude, this isn't an episode of Transformers, it's a CPU. AMD and Intel already resolved this issue by building very strong chips that don't fail. Even if physically modifying the chip to lop off the bad parts is possible, I can only see it leading to a reduction in quality of chips produced, with manufacturers knowing that worst case, if it fails, it'll just lop itself to pieces.
Slashdot Mirror
I dabble in image manipulation, but mainly i do music production on my computer. Mine's about 2 years old, too...Most of the time, it does great. However, once i get about 7-8 tracks in, depending on the kind of output, plus effects like reverb and compression, my CPU says, "Aw, HELL no!" and freezes my machine. Happened just yesterday..makes me wonder sometimes if 2 proc's might help.
So I "dumb" my speach down a bit and give it again. The masses don't want to know how processors work, they don't want to know about architecture, they want an even base line to measure performance. Most people think the Comp Usa rep is ripping them off and they are trying to feel good about their purchase, being an un-educated consumer.
By buying the high clock speed they can compare it to their neighboors and in their heads they have a Super-Fast PC.
I'd like to note that most people I talk to look at AMD like most people look at a Yugo. (remember those cars?) In spite of my advice that an AMD is like a new Honda for $2,000.
That's my 2 cents
I boycott signatures
Clock speed has never been the definitive CPU performance measurement. As everyone knows it is the Bogo MIP.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
FLOPS won't work; it ignores workloads that use integer math. It also ignores workloads that specialize in vector math. And workloads that depend a great deal on automated decision-making. And random-number generation.
The problem is that no matter what metric you use, it won't fit all cases. Different workloads have different requirements. Personally, I'd like to see programmable hardware...Essentially an FPGA section on CPUs. Programs would provide the OS's scheduler with a circuit layout, and the scheduler would have the layout programmed in when needed.
Each program doesn't necessarily have to have access to the whole grid array, either. The scheduler could divide the array into sections. One section would be for speeding up scheduler operations. The rest would be available to have programs loaded in. You wouldn't even need to erase one program's hardware when another program had something it wanted to implement. With the hardware divided, you could load the new program's code into an empty slot, and leave the old code available for the old program's next timeslice. (To prevent having to reprogram the FPGA section every time the program's turn came about.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
But AMD very-much uses the x86 architecture, and has long emphasized things other than clock speed. They've already put into action several of the things IBM's Bernie Meyerson seems to think he brilliantly came up with:
- Efficiency: Athlons just plain get more performance per clock than an Intel. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this including the length of the pipeline, but the design just gets more done with each tick. That's less complexity and less...
- Power usage: Athlons have 10-12 pipeline stages compared to the Pentium 4's 30. Between that increased efficiency, and less need for a large cache (big pipeline means frequent cache hits), it can use far less power than a P4 for the same performance - and consequently generate much less heat.
- Interacting with software: Also not new - more recent desktop AMD chips internally clock themselves up and down depending on whether you're idling or running an app. Laptop chips have done this for years. That means the invalid assumption PC novices make that leaving a PC on while they eat lunch will not use much power becomes valid. For the power user, the PC churns out less heat overall since it only pumps heat under peak usage.
There are things the guy lists that are just freakin' out there:Uh, dude, this isn't an episode of Transformers, it's a CPU. AMD and Intel already resolved this issue by building very strong chips that don't fail. Even if physically modifying the chip to lop off the bad parts is possible, I can only see it leading to a reduction in quality of chips produced, with manufacturers knowing that worst case, if it fails, it'll just lop itself to pieces.