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Subject: Re: Dual Opteron 248 - recommended or not?

Author: Eugene Nalimov

Date: 09:54:30 11/19/03

Go up one level in this thread


On November 19, 2003 at 12:15:23, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On November 18, 2003 at 16:06:43, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>
>>On November 18, 2003 at 15:58:39, Russell Reagan wrote:
>>
>>>On November 18, 2003 at 15:22:51, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>>
>>>>Don't forget the Opteron is WAY faster running old 32 bit code too. You don't
>>>>need 64 bit applications to take advantage of them.
>>>
>>>I don't know about that. I've seen a lot of benchmarks where the Opteron just
>>>edges out the P4 (faster, but not WAY faster). I've also seen some where the P4
>>>edges out the Opteron, but they are almost always in the same ballpark.
>>>
>>>The specint scores for a 2GHz Opteron and a 2GHz Athlon are not too far off
>>>either. The Opteron scores were about 18-20% faster than the equivalently
>>>clocked Athlon running Crafty, but the Opteron scores for 32-bit code were
>>>compiled with the latest Intel C++ compiler (7 something), while the only >Althon 2GHz scores they have were using Intel C++ 5 something. I suspect if
>>>both used the newer compiler, the difference would be less than 18%, which is
>>>not WAY faster.
>>
>>IIRC for Athlons the Intel compilers are equivalent (They're INTEL compilers
>>after all ;-)
>>
>>>How about Deep Sjeng? You posted your 64-bit numbers. Do you have any numbers
>>>that would compare an equivalently clocked Opteron and 32-bit Athlon both
>>>running 32-bit code? You still haven't told us if Deep Sjeng uses bitboards,
>>>which makes it difficult to extract meaning from your 64-bit numbers. A 70%
>>>speedup for a bitboard program is very nice, but a 70% speedup for a
>>>non-bitboard program would really say something, considering Crafty only gets
>>>about a 60% boost.
>>
>>Considering you know that Crafty is the archetypal bitboard program,
>>and that I haven't exactly kept my opinions about bitboards secret,
>>perhaps the answer to that question isn't _that_ hard to figure out.
>>
>>>That is something I've been very curious about lately, whether a chess program
>>>that doesn't use 64-bit values heavily (0x88, any array based program, etc.)
>>>will get much of a speed boost on the Opteron compared to the fastest 32-bit
>>>processors. Crafty is already faster than a lot of non-bitboard programs on
>>>32-bit hardware. If it gets a 60-70% boost, while others get a 10-20% boost,
>>>that's a significant blow to the non-bitboarders.
>>
>>I'll have more Opteron data 'soon'.
>>
>>But really, the chip is fast 32 bit and BLAZING 64 bit. I don't understand
>>why people still have questions. I don't. And I've noticed Bob and Eugene
>>don't have any more either these days ;)
>>
>>--
>>GCP
>
>
>I _still_ have questions.  The NUMA issues are non-trivial.  Memory hot-spots
>kill performance.  Etc.  But I agree that done right, a program can really zip
>right along.
>
>After studying it quite a bit, I would not yet suggest Linux as the platform
>for a NUMA box, yet.  I'm looking at it closely and may fool around with it
>some myself once we get an opteron in here, if the problems are not solved
>before then.  The issues are "interesting" to say the least.  The hash table
>is just _one_ example of what is "interesting".

Use Windows :-)

I believe we resolved majority of issues (though yes, Windows NUMA API is
minimalist and sometimes ugly). If you'll hit some non-driver-related problems
AMD or NT people will help you :-)

Thanks,
Eugene



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