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Subject: Re: Hammer info. And som SMP musings.

Author: Sune Fischer

Date: 21:55:31 03/25/02

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On March 25, 2002 at 18:15:54, Jeremiah Penery wrote:

>On March 25, 2002 at 08:48:54, Sune Fischer wrote:
>
>>On March 25, 2002 at 08:00:18, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On March 25, 2002 at 07:52:12, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>>
>>>>On March 25, 2002 at 07:05:26, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>The only INTERESTING thing is how fast a processor + compiler performs
>>>>>for a program. If you build a 1Ghz processor, then it gotta beat
>>>>>a 2Ghz K7 simply. If it doesn't, THEN YOU ARE SLOWER.
>>>>
>>>>Actually, it might beat it:
>>>
>>>>"In SPEC CFP2000 the Alpha 21264A running at 667MHz can outperform our beloved
>>>>AMD Athlon at over 2x the clock speed, not to mention that Intel's own Itanium
>>>>only runs at 800MHz while providing even higher scores."
>>>
>>>that's the floating point unit Sune. not a single chessprogram is
>>>using much floating point. also floating point isn't faster than
>>>integers (otherwise we could rewrite stuff to floating point).
>>>
>>>Just look how fast the best prepared alpha machine at specINT is
>>>completely outgunned by XP2000 (=mp2000).
>>
>>That is true when talking about the Alpha, it was probably not designed to be
>>very integer fast, I've even heard it couldn't do integers, that it would just
>
>The Alpha is just as much faster than other processors in Integer operations as
>it is in FP ones.

Well lets not split hairs on this, I think the alpha was designed primarily to
do floating point ops. It is still pretty fast on the integers though:
http://www.redhill.net.au/hw-cpu-test-nonx86.html


>>cast from floats. Don't know if that is true or not, but why would the Hammer
>>have the same weakness?
>>Look at the specs for the Hammer, it looks as though it will be 2x faster at
>>64-bit int-operations.
>
>2x faster than what?  Everything I've read indicates the Hammer will be about
>25% faster than the AthlonXP clock for clock in 32-bit mode, and going to 64-bit
>mode will give another 15-20% speed boost, mostly due to the extra GP registers.
> Maybe for a bitboard-based program like Crafty, it would get even more of a
>speed boost.

The second part of thet doesn't really make any sense to me, "15-20% speed
boost" on 64 bit-operations????
First of all, why would Crafty then "get even more of a speed boost" and second
why not a clear factor 2 in speed (assuming everything runs in cache so not to
waste bandwith)?
The registers are 64-bit, so that is twice the operational bit capacity clock
for clock over a 32 bit chip.

-S.



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