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Subject: Re: Sempron vs. Athlon 64: Proof that Crafty's working set is < 256k

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:51:50 08/20/04

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On August 20, 2004 at 04:33:07, Tom Kerrigan wrote:

>Now that AMD is selling two processors that are identical other than L2 cache
>size (Sempron has 256k, Athlon 64 has 512k) we have proof of Crafty's working
>set size:
>
>Sempron:    1,080,020 NPS
>Athlon 64:  1,080,230 NPS
>
>http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2170&p=3
>
>This should prove once and for all that Crafty's working set is < 256k and
>therefore that size of L2 cache has no effect on its performance (as long as
>it's >= 256k) and that main memory speed likely plays a trivial role
>performance-wise.
>
>I bring this up because of all of the long debates that have occurred in the
>past about the value of L2 cache, the speed of memory, and the working set size
>of chess programs.
>
>I have no doubt that Crafty uses a bunch of memory, but obviously not with
>enough temporal locality for it to matter one iota.
>
>-Tom


Your interpretation _could_ be seriously flawed.  IE suppose its working set is
2mb?  You can't conclude anything if that is true as both the 256K and 512K
would be thrashing equally.

Only _real_ way is to test with larger sizes as well.  I've done that up to 2mb
and saw improvement from 512 to 1024K and from 1024K to 2048K, on older xeons.




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