Author: Eelco de Groot
Date: 23:12:35 09/23/99
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On September 23, 1999 at 04:01:38, David Blackman wrote: >On September 23, 1999 at 00:42:28, Eelco de Groot wrote: > > >>For years second level cache runs at 66 Mhz and recently this was >>increased to 100 Mhz. >> >>The AMD-K6-III is a breakthrough because the second level cache runs >>at full processor speed. If you have (say) a 450 Mhz K6-III the >>second level cache will run at 450 Mhz too instead of the old 100 Mhz. >> >>Ed Schroder > >This second level cache at full processor speed is made up by the marketing >departments. The L2 on AMD K6-III and Intel Celeron are actually a bit quicker >than most of the off-chip caches, but nowhere near true CPU clock speed. Celeron >is usually about 11 clock cycles to L2 cache. K6-III is unpredictable. About 11 >clock cycles is the fastest i saw in testing, but sometimes it was much slower >for no obvious reason. > >The 100MHz or 66MHz off chip caches are also a bit misleading. You might think >this means an access time of 10ns or 15ns, but most chip sets will actually be >50ns to 100ns. David, isn't it strange that there is such variability in results for the K6-III? I mean if the benchmark would be a simple assembly language program, what could then cause the differences that you mention? Thanks for your comments! I found one article in Dutch, by the way, coming back to my original question, that said that Coppermine will have L2 cache "at full speed". So I think that for chessprograms with large evaluation functions we can expect an increase in speed compared with the Celeron. Rebel's Kryotech benchmark for the K6-III 600MHz will be hard to beat though I think, because of its extra fast memory, L3 cache I suppose, at 400 MHz. Eelco.
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