Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: When will 64-bit computers be the norm?

Author: Eugene Nalimov

Date: 12:57:55 02/28/02

Go up one level in this thread


On February 28, 2002 at 14:38:01, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On February 28, 2002 at 14:22:18, Eugene Nalimov wrote:
>
>>Sorry, I don't understand. We are not talking about "performance per MHz". We
>>are talking about *absolute* performance. And here Alpha is 3% better athan
>>contemporary P4 Xeon.
>
>True enough.  Certainly Intel does have better fabs and better technology than
>those who manufacture Alpha chips.  Now that they have the Alpha technology,
>they could build one at .1 micron if they so desired.

Once again: we we not talking about "what if", we were talking about *shipping
products*. Do not forget that Intel can make PIII/P4 *significally* faster, too,
if CPU price is not a concern -- e.g. it can add more cache on die, more
pipelines, etc.

I agree with you that "ultimate Alpha" should be faster than "ultimate x86"
built using the same process, but I do not believe it'll be 2x faster. More like
1.2x-1.3x on integer code.

>>Or probably we should talk about price/performance? :-)
>
>A 2 GHz Xeon system will also be "too expensive."

Just go to http://www.dell.com/us/en/bsd/products/minicat_precn_530.htm and
price one yourself. I'd say that $2.7k is reasonable price for cutting edge
technology (CPU is faster than one we were talking about, it has 512K L2 cache).
You can save ~$500 by installing simpler graphics card, declining 3 years
4-hours on-site support, etc. If that's still too much you can buy ~10-15%
slower system for ~$1.1-1.3k.

Eugene

>It's amazing what they can charge you for a teaspoon of sand.
>
>>Eugene
>>
>>On February 28, 2002 at 13:42:34, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>
>>>On February 27, 2002 at 21:55:19, Eugene Nalimov wrote:
>>>
>>>>Alpha is not "2X as fast as anything around".
>>>>
>>>>Fastest submitted SpecInt2k result for Alpha is 621(base)/679(peak). AlphaServer
>>>>ES45 Model 68/1000, hardware available October 2001.
>>>>
>>>>Dell Precision WorkStation 530 (2.0GHz P4 Xeon) has SpecInt2k
>>>>642(base)/663(peak), hardware available September 2001.
>>>>
>>>>679 is greater than 663, but not 2x. Not even 1.1x.
>>>
>>>Interesting.  At twice the clock speed, the Xeon was almost as fast!
>>>
>>>Thanks for proving my point.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.