Author: Matt Taylor
Date: 08:50:20 12/17/02
Go up one level in this thread
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. > >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. Clearly? It seems to me that memory is your bottleneck, and logical CPUs obviously don't help you there. >Though it is a great sales argument, the hard facts (11.4% >speedboost) are not lying. 11.4% doesn't lie for chess, or at least for Diep. Intel didn't advertise, "Wow! HT will make your chess programs run faster!" Intel said HT will get an average of 30-40% speed gain across applications on -average-. >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. Intel has always charged astronomical prices for their latest CPUs. HT isn't driving the price up. Intel doesn't like losing profits. In 6 months, the Pentium 4 3.06 GHz will be in the $200-$300 range just like the Pentium 4 2.53 GHz is now. A year from now, it will cost $100-$200. Five years from now, it will be on keychains. >Though i am not a hardware engineer, i can imagine the problems >they had getting this to work. Yes, they had to build a mux and duplicate some components. The infrastructure has been there for the past 5 years. >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. They had trouble clocking the Pentium 3 above 1 GHz. It's been run at frequencies from 150 MHz (the slowest Pentium Pro that I recall ever seeing, but perhaps not the slowest) all the way up to 1.4 GHz. A design only scales so far. Wouldn't it be nice if you could buy 3 GHz Athlons? Athlon just won't run at 3 GHz. Pentium 4 does because it's designed to. Pentium 3 wasn't even designed to hit 1.4 GHz; it wouldn't go much further anyway. >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. AMD is always cheaper than Intel for the same level of performance. Also, I own a TigerMPX S2466N-2M (only difference being that they don't mind telling me to eat a PCI slot for USB). At one point I only had 1 256 MB unregistered/non-ECC DIMM because my other 512 MB unregistered/non-ECC DIMM had failed. I finally replaced both with a single 1 GB Registered/ECC DIMM. If anyone wants to send me a digital camera, I'll take pretty pictures of the BIOS screens, my unregistered DIMM, and a working TigerMPX system on unregistered ram. If I'm feeling generous, I'll also take pictures of my dual-AthlonMP 2000 system at work. >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. Money grows on trees for some people. It is amazing how my coworkers convinced management to purchase machines with Radeon 9700 Pro graphics cards for "work." These cards were 20% of the cost of the whole machine at around $350 USD per card. Still, it is against social ettiquite to tell people how to spend their money. If someone wants to throw away money, they're fully entitled to do so. -Matt
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