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Subject: Re: 8 way processor

Author: Yen Art Tham

Date: 09:33:43 08/23/02

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On August 22, 2002 at 17:13:47, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On August 22, 2002 at 16:25:10, Yen Art Tham wrote:
>
>>On August 22, 2002 at 13:43:06, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On August 22, 2002 at 13:38:17, Rajen Gupta wrote:
>>>
>>>>in practical terms how much faster would an 8 way processor be for the most
>>>>scaleable commercial chess programme which i believe is shredder?
>>>>
>>>>rajen
>>>
>>>
>>>If it turned out to be 1.5X faster than a 4-way that would probably be
>>>a huge plus...  memory is a problem on 2-way and 8 way boxes...
>>
>>
>>In what way is memory a "problem" on a dual?
>>Please elaborate.
>>
>>yat
>
>
>Memory bandwidth is severely limited on a normal PC.  On a dual, you
>simply add a second processor, which then competes for memory bandwidth
>with the first processor.  As a result, a dual machine is generally not
>2x faster than a single.
>
>For the quad (4 cpu machines) the manufacturers use a more sophisticated
>chipset that provides 4x the memory bandwidth by doing 4-way memory
>interleaving.  As a result, on a quad, each CPU sees about the same
>bandwidth potential as a single-cpu machine sees.
>
>On an 8-way box, the chipset still relies on 4-way interleaving, but you
>have 8 processors.  IE it will perform about like 4 dual-cpu machines,
>which is not quite as good as you would expect from 8 cpus...


Would the problem be solved with the Opteron which has integrated
memory controller? 2 cpu, 2 memory controller.



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