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Subject: Re: Latency versus Information Bandwidth: Questions

Author: Jeremiah Penery

Date: 22:16:46 12/04/02

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On December 04, 2002 at 23:15:03, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On December 04, 2002 at 20:29:52, Bob Durrett wrote:
>
>>
>>The recent threads shed some light on the issue of when one is more important
>>than another, but the answer is sketchy and seems to be "depends."
>>
>>For current chess-playing programs, which is more important?  Latency or
>>bandwidth?  Why?
>>
>>Is the answer different if multiple processors are used?
>>
>>Bob D.
>
>First, chess engines have a bad habit of doing real random-access probes to
>memory for things like hashing.  That is latency-dependent rather than bandwidth
>because we are not reading large chunks, but small scattered 16-32 byte
>blocks...
>
>That said, programs do need some bandwidth as you have to keep the cpu fed with
>instructions and data and that stuff resides in memory unless the program is
>small enough to tuck away in L1/L2/L3 cache.
>
>multiple processors increases the bandwidth requirement.  Two cpus require
>twice the bandwidth as one, and generally, high-end server boards provide two-
>way memory interleaving to double the bandwidth.
>
>Given the choice of 2x the bandwidth or 1/2 the latency, I'd go for reducing
>the latency.  But that is basically impossible.  Latency as been stuck at
>100-120ns for 20+ years now...

I'm not sure why you persist in giving this 100-120ns number, when several
credible sources have said that the figure of today is no more than 75ns.



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