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Subject: Re: SURPRISING RESULTS P4 Xeon dual 2.8Ghz

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 08:33:53 12/17/02

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On December 17, 2002 at 11:25:10, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On December 17, 2002 at 10:58:51, Bob Durrett wrote:
>
>
>Indeed you are correctly seeing that DIEP, which runs well on
>cc-NUMA machines as well, is a very good program from intels
>perspective, because even a 'second' processor on each physical
>processor which runs slower will still give it a speedboost,
>where others simply slow down a lot when you do such toying.
>
>So where many programs which will be way slower when running at
>4 processes/threads at a 2 processor Xeon, the software is the
>weak chain.

What program fits this description?  Not mine...


>
>In case of DIEP the bottleneck is the hardware clearly. Even
>something working great on cc-NUMA doesn't profit too much from
>the SMT/HT junk from intel.
>
>Though it is a great sales argument, the hard facts (11.4%
>speedboost) are not lying.
>
>So they need to press 2 cpu's which results in a cpu price
>2 times higher *at least* than an AMD cpu, the result
>is that you win 11.4% in speed.

What are you talking about?  SMT doesn't "press 2 cpus".


>
>Though i am not a hardware engineer, i can imagine the problems
>they had getting this to work.
>
>Instead of a P4-Xeon cpu clocked at 2.8Ghz which can split itself
>into 2 physical processors, i would have preferred a P3-Xeon cpu
>which splitted itself into 2 real processors (so each having its
>own L1 and L2 caches) clocked at 2.0Ghz.
>
>That would have kicked anything of course from speed viewpoint as
>it scales 1 : 1.2 to a K7 (k7 20% faster for each Ghz than the P3).
>
>Now we end up with a very expensive cpu which is 1 : 1.4 and a bad
>working form of HT/SMT.
>
>So it's not DIEP having a problem here. But the hardware very clearly.
>Intel optimistically claims 20% speed boost here and there. Others
>claim 11% for database applications.
>
>I see 11.4% for DIEP. So that's a market conform viewpoint.
>
>The not so amazing thing of this all is that a 2.8Ghz Xeon being not
>deliverable yet here is very expensive (even a 3.06Ghz P4 is already 885
>euro in the shops here also not yet deliverable) and the MP2200 which
>DOES get offered for sales here is 290 euro. the fastest Xeon i see
>getting offered socket 603 is a 2.0Ghz Xeon for 829 euro at alternate.nl
>
>a dual motherboard for the P4 i see here is several:
>  789 euro for a dual xeon motherboard called: 860d pro (msi)
>  549 euro for a tyan S2720GN is by far the cheapest i see
>
>then you gotta buy ecc registered DDR ram for it.
>
>a dual motherboard for K7 i see at the same alternate.nl is:
>  259 euro for A7M266-D/U
>  299 euro chaintech 7KDD (dual; U-DMA/133 RAID en sound)    AMD-762MPX
>  289 euro tiger MPX S2466N-4M
>
>The last mainboard (tiger) for sure needs registered DDR ram. but lucky
>not ECC ram.
>
>the P4 dual motherboards need for sure ecc registered stuff.
>
>The only good news is that ddr ram ecc registered is a lightyear cheaper
>than ecc registered RDRAM.
>
>RDRAM RIMM 256 MB (ValueRAM, ECC)    voor PC   PC1066   EUR 239,00
>now you can't need 256MB at all. You need more RAM than that. which is
>exponential more expensive i fear.
>
>You get better served with DDR ram though:
>  kingston 1GB DIMM 1 GB (Registered) for PC   PC266   EUR 599,00
>
>It is amazing how many professors and others still throw away money
>to get that dual 2.8Ghz P4 which is over 2 times more expensive than
>AMD dual at the moment is.
>
>
>
>
>>On December 17, 2002 at 10:10:46, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>Hello,
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>>
>>>Best regards,
>>>Vincent
>>
>>Vincent:
>>
>>Please help me to understand this.  I had the impression that a software
>>package's design makes a huge difference in how well that software will utilize
>>a given hardware package.  In the past, you talked about the advantage of
>>portability.  The "ideal" chess engine would run optimally on "anything."
>>
>>It seems to me that evaluation of the suitability, of a particular hardware
>>configuration, for chess purposes must be measured using several or many
>>different chess software packages.
>>
>>How do you know, for sure, that your program will run properly on the hardware
>>you're discussing?  How do you separate out the evaluation of the hardware from
>>the software?  Doesn't performance depend on both?  If you get poor performance,
>>how do you isolate the problem to the hardware?
>>
>>Bob D.



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