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Subject: Re: AMD Opteron 2 x 248

Author: Tom Likens

Date: 16:10:30 05/16/04

Go up one level in this thread


On May 16, 2004 at 16:54:10, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On May 16, 2004 at 15:39:18, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>
>>On May 16, 2004 at 13:56:23, Tom Likens wrote:
>>
>>>On May 16, 2004 at 13:17:17, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 16, 2004 at 11:10:01, Omid David Tabibi wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On May 16, 2004 at 11:05:36, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On May 16, 2004 at 10:14:07, K. Burcham wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Has anyone here posted using dual 248s?
>>>>>>>wonder how 2 x 248 AMD compares to dual Xeon 3.2 with 1 meg cache running a 32
>>>>>>>bit commercial chess program?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-433&depa=0
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=120140
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>kburcham
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Like Mike, I have dual 246s.  Opteron is a great CPU, but the 64-bit software
>>>>>>isn't *quite* ready, at least on linux (imo).
>>>>>
>>>>>Running 32 bit chess engines on that system, how much speedup do you see in
>>>>>comparison to the fastest 32 bit dual system?
>>>>
>>>>I wouldn't know.  I only run 64 bit linux :)  It works pretty well, but there
>>>>are definitely a few bugs left.  I'd say in another 3 months my system will be
>>>>good enough for me (new nvidia drivers, a few more kernel versions).
>>>>
>>>>anthony
>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>anthony
>>>
>>>Anthony,
>>>
>>>Are you running 64-bit SUSE or one of the Red Hat flavors?  I've got an FX-51
>>>that I initially loaded 32-bit SUSE on (this was before SUSE supported SATA
>>>drives right out of the box) and was pleasantly surprised at how fast the
>>>32-bit programs ran (chess engines included).  When I finally installed the
>>>64-bit version, I was unpleasantly surprised at how *slow* the 32-bit software
>>>ran (including and especially the various Linux engines I test against).
>>>
>>>I got the requiste 64-bit boost when I converted Djinn over to a true 64-bit
>>>program but was somewhat dismayed with the 32-bit slowdown of its sparring
>>>partners.  I *could* dual-boot into a 32-bit version of Linux for testing but
>>>frankly that offends my sensibilities and seems like a bit of a waste.
>>>
>>>regards,
>>>--tom
>>
>>Hmm, I haven't tried.  I usually test against crafty, and I compiled a version
>>in 64-bit mode.  I would have thought that 32 bit apps would run quickly because
>>this is essentially _hardware_ emulation, but maybe not . . . .
>>
>>anthony
>
>
>I don't see his problem.  32 bit code runs the same on a 32 bit or 64 bit
>operating system.  The opteron just doesn't get to use all its "stuff" in 32 bit
>mode.  I (and others) have done this several times and didn't see a 32 bit
>program run slower on a 64 bit O/S...
>
>Not sure what is going on there...

Hey Bob,

Unfortunately, I can't recreate the numbers now since I got rid of the
32-bit version of SUSE on the FX.  From memory what I saw was that if I
compiled my program under 32-bit SUSE, using the Intel 7.1 compiler and
profile-guided optimizations, I got about 1.1M nps.  So far, so good, but
when I switched over to the 64-bit version and compiled the exact same
program (in the same manner) I could only get a top speed of about 450k nps.

I didn't really worry about it too much since I was converting the program
over to 64-bits (which gave me all the speed back and a bit more).  My
assumption was that it was a problem with the 32-bit version of the
libraries, but now I'm not so sure (especially, if I'm the only one seeing
the problem).  I may try a couple of experiments tonight to either verify or
invalidate the old results.

regards,
--tom



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