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Intel Yonah Performance Preview
illusoryphoenix writes "Anandtech has an interesting preview of the successor to Dothan (Pentium M's second generation), Yonah, with tests run on an engineering sample. It seems like latest Pentium M is still lagging in the floating point area, but has gained some ground overall. It's also interesting to note their comparisons to the Pentium D/Netburst based dual core."
The new Macs are going to kick ass. No more stone-age G4 PowerBooks.
I really have to wonder when Intel will start using this technology in desktops. It really does seem like a good idea. From TFA "At 2.0GHz, Yonah is basically equal to, if not slightly slower than an Athlon 64 X2 running at the same clock speed in virtually all of the tests we ran. " That right there should show that Intell is should switch its R&D and support the Pentium M as a desktop chip.
Yay, I have a sig.
And in other news Apple has announced it's next generation computers will run on the AMD platform
From TFA:
The problem is that Intel seems to have changed sockets once more, meaning that Yonah is not backwards compatible with the original Pentium M socket.
Cool... no.
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Synopsis: unreleased Intel CPU gets ass handed to it by competing CPU released 4 months ago. If that's all Yonah has going for it, I forsee bad sales in Intel's future. I guess Yonah has that nice low power consumption, but it must really pain Intel to be so far behind in performance.
The new apples are using Intel processors, definitally not worth a -1.
I want my SMP Pentium M's in my new Apple Mini or nanoBook!
FP, Baby!
I just bought a brand-new Pentium M (Dothan) laptop a few weeks ago, and then this new uber processor comes out. Well, that's the computer industry for you...
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
Wait. This thing consumes 92W at rest and 108W at ful usage and it's a laptop chip? Geez, what's the expected battery life for users of this chip?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Wow, a 65nm chip consumes slightly less power and performs slightly worse compared to AMD's bottom-of-the-line 90nm X2. Who's amazed? Aren't we just applauding because we see Intel as the big retarded kid who's just managed to tie his own shoes? What I'm trying to say is that this is no big accomplishment. If AMD's 65nm chips were turning out these sorts of performance numbers, we'd all scream about how this is a huge letdown, a step backwards, is this finally the end of AMD, etc.. So let's keep some perspective.
With a name like Yonah (aka Jonah), what are they saying about their motherboards?!
I met it in a lab at Intel
where it smelle like dry erase
Just like a cube farm
Yo-Yo Yo Yo-Yonah
I saw the little chip sitting on a bench
I asked him his name,
and with a digitial voice he said
Y O N A H Yonah
Yo YO YO YO Yohah
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is a _mobile_ chip being compared to _desktop_ chips. You _should_ be impressed. And when the next generation comes out in 2H2006, Merom, any remaining performance gap will probably be gone, plus it'll then be 64-bit, too, though of course, AMD will hopefully keep making strides in the meantime, with their upcoming socket M2-based offerings.
That this is likely the Intel chip to be used in upcoming Macs is a very good sign for future Mac owners like myself.
One thing that's always put me off of the Pentium M's has been the 533MHz Front Side Bus speed when the P4 FSB's are at 800MHz and some extreme editions at 1066MHz. Does anyone know what the FSB speed is off this chip? -- its not mentioned anywhere in TFA.
From the article:
While the Yonah and Athlon 64 X2 systems consumed relatively similar power at idle, Yonah hardly eats up any more power under full load. In fact, a 2.0GHz Yonah under 100% load consumes less power than an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at idle. Obviously Intel has the advantage of being on a much lower power 65nm process, but it won't be until the second half of next year before we see any Athlon 64 X2s at 65nm, so it is an advantage that Intel will have for quite some time.
Although we didn't consider it as such here today , Yonah will be quite impressive on notebooks. The thought of having such a cool running dual core processor in a notebook is honestly amazing, and the performance difference (especially for multitaskers) over what we have today will be significant. The other thing to keep in mind is that when you go from a single core to a dual core Pentium M notebook, you won't be giving up anything at all. On the desktop side, you normally give up clock speed for dual core support, but Yonah will be running at very similar frequencies to what Dothan is running at today. In other words, you won't be giving up single threaded performance in favor of multi-threaded performance - you'll get the whole package.
As a desktop contender, Yonah is a bit of a mixed bag. While its performance in content creation applications has definitely improved over the single core Dothan, it still falls behind the Athlon 64 X2 in a handful of areas. Intel still needs to improve their video encoding and gaming performance, but it looks like we may have to wait for Conroe and Merom for that.
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
Yonah sounds Jewish to me.
It works for AMD. Why didn't intel put one on? Granted its performance does come close to that of AMD's offering.
It consumes less than a 3800 X2? Isn't the fact that a laptop chip is even being *compared* to a dual core desktop chip in terms of power consumption quite worrying? And for that same "little big less power" they're getting a "little bit less speed"? I thought this was all about performance per Watt?
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Im going to cry
You wrote a poem
On slashdot no less
Yo Yo Yo Yo My Eyes
Stop the pain
It hurts inside
What are you doing
Oh oh oh oh noooooo!
There is no sig
I am eagerly waiting for a dual core laptop. I don't really care if it is intel or AMD, but I think the Yonah is the best bet. Does anyone know of any dual core laptops from Dell or IBM?
Anyone heard when we'll actually be able to BUY a brand-name dual core laptop?
it costs Intel just as much to make a dual core Yonah, as it did for them to make a single core Dothan.
Considering it is the same price for much improved technology, this proves Moore's law is correct?
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Yeah, it's lame when User Friendly does it, too.
Many Dothans died to bring us this information.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Just my 2 cents, but sooner or later the PC world needs to break away from this fixation on legacy desktop PCs with their Heath Robinson contraptions of wires, grouchy PSUs and naked circuit boards, not to mention size and noise. The line that caught my eye in this review: "A 2.0GHz Yonah under 100% load consumes less power than an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at idle."
Unless it is for gaming or for special and demanding applications, who needs all this muscle? A few more steps in the Yonah development line and we may be able to see PCs that are far smaller, quieter and more frugal with the juice while still packing a punch.
None of this means that the Ahtlon 64 isn't darn good, only that it is not appropriate for many computing situations. Right now, Yonah looks more like a stab at tomorrow whereas the Athlon 64 represents the apogee of yesterday.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Give me a break. AMD is using 17 more Watts at idle, 36 Watts at full bore. And that's after power supply efficiency losses.
But, how much power are these chips using? The Intel is rated at something like 25W? Less?
That means the Intel is using perhaps 15W at idle and the AMD is using 32W?, or double?
At full bore, perhaps the Intel is using 25 Watts, and the AMD 61 Watts. More than double.
And yet the Intel keeps up with and beats the AMD much of the time.
And you crow about these numbers?
Go ahead and rejigger the figures a bit. Maybe you can figure a way how AMD's chip is using "only" 50% more power.
Either way, AMD is getting skunked. For the moment at least. I'm sure they'll make 65nm soon.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Also all of Intel's mobile line is developed in Israel.
Again, maybe my memory is hazy, but I just wanted to bring up this point in light of the "Israeli technology is crap" posts raised in previous stories.
... The Yonah uses less power at full load than the Athlon64 X2 does at idle.
Let's put it in another way :
- A chip, which is only available for testing, lacking motherboard support, which will be sold as a laptop CPU, and which is considered to be an indicator of what Intel will be producing next year, is a little bit *slower* than a rival technology from AMD that has been already available for some time and can be found in machines running today.
In another way :
- Tomorrow's Intel hope are as good as today's reality from AMD.
So yes, it's good that Intel is realising that they must change something, and that they've starting to work into the right direction.
But no, in itself, it's not a promising technology : I mean we have already better on the market right now.
I think will still have to wait a couple of CPU generation before Intel is back in the place with something that's worth.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yonah was the one that didn't follow the programmed instructions and was eventually consumed by Wales.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The review fails to mention that, unlike AMD's current mobile Turion CPUs, the upcoming Yonahs will not run 64-bit code. What is Intel thinking? With 64-bit OS and software support increasingly available, who will want to invest a lot in such a laptop? Yet dual-core laptops are supposed to be high-end, and, being a more expensive investment, ought to last longer.
Which Anandtech correctly points out that the performance of the two is quite close (at the same clockspeed), they then say its impressive that Yonah can do this without an onboard memory controller...but don't mention that Yonah has a fair bit more cache than the X2. It'll be interesting to see what AMDs reaction is, because by the looks all they need to do is add cache (aka the next model up).
It'll also be interesting to see how well it scales- the A64/X2 scales way above 2Ghz already (on 90nm) but the P-M is stuck at 2.13...Yonah needs to have improved that or they'll be left behind.
[1]In those days Da-than begat Yo-nah, which was the fruit of his circuitboard, strong by nature and a good processor. [2]Now Da-than looked on Yo-nah and said, "Yea shall I call you the Slayer of the Amd-ites, for thou shalt go out into their pastures and you shall slay their benchmarks utterly; [3]for thou art pleasing and art born of good silicon." [4]But Yo-nah saw, when he went out into the land of Cun-sumer, how despised he was among the buyers of chips; and he did gnash his teeth and beat his transistors saying: [5]"Oh wherefore was I not left dead on the test-bench and why was my die not broken the day I was born? [6]for I am inferior to my brethren the Amd-ites who run much better than I and cost way the hell less." [7]And he went out into the dust and wandered for a year, until the new product cycle taketh him away.
Call me when they release the D version of this processor...
Yodah....
Let's get off the GHz band wagon for once! We've all been arguing for years that there's more to it than just the hertz but here you are saying that since the *older* 2.2GHz chip is 10% faster then it should have 10% better performance. You're obviously one of those people which has been feed on a steady diet of all that Intel bullshit for years and now can't seem to get yourself off it.
Many Dothans died to bring us this story.
Alas, for I have not the mod points of yore....but this made my evening ;-)
The power consumption in the article is "Total System Power Consumption," not the TDP of the chip itself. This is also a mobile chip installed in a _desktop motherboard_.
Okay, I'm not a Mac guy and haven't followed this closely, but isn't OS X a 64 bit OS? Yonah won't be 64 bits (unlike the A64)... So, what's the deal? Did Apple just "downgrade" OS X to 32 bits for the x86 architecture?
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
I am still waiting for Intel/AMD to announce a power saving feature of shutting down all but one of the multiple cores... if this is going to be a mobile chip, obviously you only want one core running while you are using battery power. It should be like that displacement-on-demand thing that newer cars and trucks have.
95% of my apps under Rosetta emulation? Let's see...
1) iPhoto - universal binary
2) Aperture - universal binary
3) iTunes - universal binary
4) Safari - universal binary
5) XCode - universal binary
6) Java - universal binary
7) Firefox - universal binary
8) Final Cut Pro - universal binary
9) Quicktime Pro - universal binary
10) Garage Band - universal binary
11) Photoshop - Rosetta until later in 2006
This is not looking much like 95% Rosetta to me. Besides, Rosetta handles all GUI elements natively, only having to emulate the core program logic of the application being run; therefore, going from any G4 Powerbook to a Yonah Powerbook is going to be a performance increase regardless - a slight improvement under Rosetta and a massive improvement running as a universal binary.
There are a lot of other factors to "system performance", like memory, video, and disk subsystem speed. How much of a gain will a dual core CPU buy if the system is waiting for a (relatively) slow disk? If you want to put in a 7200 rpm 2 1/2", or a pair of 'em (or here), well ok. But then power consumption and it's cousin heat go up. Bigger batteries, Ok. Now you've got weight. I guess it's all about trade-offs, and what do you really want.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
...kinda predicted the reaction the chip would get...Yawn-er...
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
The Opteron 270 HE dualcore CPU would be a better choice to compare against Yonah. Dual 2GHz cores, each with 1MB L2 cache, 55W TDP. Same speed but twice the cache of the Athlon 64 X2 3800+. Mind you that's a 90nm chip, not 65nm like Yonah. Consider that to be the baseline for what a dualcore Turion will do. I suspect they'll cut the clockspeed back a bit in order to bring the wattage down even further.
I'm looking forward to the dualcore Turions. Dualcore 32-bit CPUs seem... silly.
Definitely Michael Palin reading the holy handgrenade how-to from the Book of Armaments
wmv file
Mobile processor also outperforms desktop processor in most tests while using 2/3rds the power. Film at 11.
Also note that AMD doesn't have a separate laptop line (well, they do, but it's no different except in name) so this means Intel is also skunking AMDs mobile processors on performance/power ratio.
Again, this could change when AMD hits 65nm. And also as a mitigating factor, Intel hasn't released their own 65nm chip yet (this is a prerelease), so it's theoretically possible AMD could even beat Intel to the 65nm punch. I don't expect it though.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The Memory bus is a DDR bus, and the Athlon64/Opteron speaks to the rest of the computer via HyperTransport (I looked at AMD's website, and their information does not describe the memory subsytem as using hypertransport. Do your DIMMs speak HT?)
Considering the low power usage of the tested chip, Intel can probably afford to raise the clock speed for the desktop versions. They may also achieve some performance optimization between now and the release of the desktop version.
On the other hand, AMD will have the 65nm version of its Athlon X2 by that time. My guess is that AMD will stay ahead for now, but Intel is back on a reasonable course (no more Prescotts).
C - the footgun of programming languages
I'm experiencing a little cognitive dissonance here. I think I was thrashed recently in a BSD forum for making such assertions.
I've been running Java 5 on a Mac Mini at work and on a Sempron Pro 2600 FC3 box at home, and frankly I don't see the Mac Mini as that much slower, other than what I would expect for a desktop HD vs. a laptop HD.
I think I'm seeing a lot of rationalization from iNTEL fanboys in this thread.