Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 18:36:17 03/24/02
Go up one level in this thread
On March 24, 2002 at 17:00:04, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >On March 24, 2002 at 00:00:30, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On March 23, 2002 at 17:21:10, Slater Wold wrote: >> >>>On March 23, 2002 at 17:07:53, Sune Fischer wrote: >>> >>>>On March 23, 2002 at 15:58:19, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >>>> >>>>>On March 23, 2002 at 09:53:13, Dan Andersson wrote: >>>>> >>>>>>As seen in: >>>>>>http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=45000312 >>>>>>A chess program using traditional work scheduling algorithms will not be using >>>>>>the Hammer architecture at its most effective. But it won't be all that bad due >>>>>>to the HyperTransport tunnels. And high bandwidth memory. A funny consequence of >>>>>>the architecture is that SMP multiprocessing is achieved by having software >>>>>>drivers. >>>>> >>>>>I don't know what you mean by "traditional work scheduling algorithms" but the >>>>>Hammer will be great for running chess programs out of the box. The only way to >>>>>make it faster would be to recompile the programs for x86-64, which reportedly >>>>>yields a 10-15% performance gain. >>>> >>>>The Hammer is a 64-bit chip, I expect it to bring a lot more than just 10-15% in >>>>chess, more like 100-150% for those progs with bitboards. >>>> >>>>-S. >>> >>>You're dreaming. Alpha's don't get *anywhere* near that kind of gain. More >>>like the 10-15% that Tom said. >>> >> >> >>Depends. Tim Mann produced > 1M nodes per second on a 600mhz alpha. NO >>600 mhz Intel will come within 1/2 that total... > >We were talking about gain, not absolute performance. You've just muddied the >waters here. > >-Tom It seems to me that "absolute performance" is the key to look at. The percent gain crap can be manipulated to no end. Compare _any_ processor available to that 800K node per second value for the 600mhz alpha to see which processor comes _close_. Not a one can do so... The fastest single-cpu Intel box I have tried is a 750mhz PIII. It hits about 320K nodes per second using the same version Tim used. that is 800K/320K = 2.5X faster, yet the alpha was clocked at 600mhz or 80% of the speed of the PIII. Normalizing for that extra 150mhz makes the alpha 21264 3.1 times _faster_. That is significant. And the alpha didn't have any assembler "boosts" which when removed, slow Crafty a significant amount, 15% in fact. Adding this in brings this to 3.65 times faster than an equally-clocked Pentium... That is both significant, not not very "muddy".
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