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Subject: Re: Is AMD 2.2 Ghz. 64 bit, an upgrade to 3.2 Ghz. 32 bit, in all ways?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 21:18:31 12/14/03

Go up one level in this thread


On December 14, 2003 at 23:47:22, Ricardo Gibert wrote:

>On December 14, 2003 at 23:05:08, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On December 14, 2003 at 08:25:31, Ricardo Gibert wrote:
>>
>>>On December 14, 2003 at 07:15:08, stuart taylor wrote:
>>>
>>>>On December 14, 2003 at 03:50:21, Jeremiah Penery wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On December 14, 2003 at 03:31:47, stuart taylor wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On December 13, 2003 at 23:56:06, enrico carrisco wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On December 13, 2003 at 22:09:22, stuart taylor wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Including speed, for all applications? Or for all chess programs?
>>>>>>>>If not, why did they now make 2.2 (or 2.0?).
>>>>>>>>S.Taylor
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>What "3.2GHz" cpu do you speak of?  A P4?  If so, yes, you would see a nice
>>>>>>>speed up even on 32-bit apps, chess or non-chess.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I'm speaking of the same company, AMD.
>>>>>>If the difference varies from program to program, which Ghz. of 64 bit-AMD would
>>>>>>you say, is safely a speed-up (over amd/32/3.2Ghz) on ANY application (32 or
>>>>>>64)?
>>>>>>S.Taylor
>>>>>
>>>>>There is no 3.2GHz AMD processor.
>>>>
>>>>Oh!
>>>>
>>>>So whatever it was. 3 Ghz? 2.8 Ghz?
>>>>
>>>>Funny, I thought the 3.2 was Amd.
>>>>
>>>>S.Taylor
>>>
>>>You're thinking of the intel PIV.
>>>
>>>The fastest amd cpu is 2.2 Ghz. To "help" people make performance comparisons,
>>>amd has instituted "performamce ratings." For instance, the 2.2 Ghz athlon xp
>>>has a 3200+ PR.
>>
>>
>>One thing I can say beyond a doubt.  I have been running on this quad 2.0ghz
>>opteron, and I have now seen 10M NPS in several positions.  I have _never_
>>seen any single CPU machine that will produce 2.5M nps.  For example, my 2.8
>>will do about 1/2 of that using one cpu, while the opteron is producing 2.5M
>>on a single processor, and acutally a bit more as the NPS is not scaling
>>perfectly.
>>
>>It is an impressive procssor, at least for what I am doing.
>
>Before you disdained Amd in favor of Intel. Now you are sounding very much like
>a fan.

More or less correct.  I witnessed some K5 problems that caused a _lot_ of
debugging that was unnecessary.

however, I continue to look at everything and run on whatever I can, which is
really almost everything being made.

And the opteron has certainly impressed me, probably more than any single
64 bit chip I have tried.  The new Itaniums are not bad, but they don't seem
to have any significant advantage over the Opteron, and I happen to like the
assembly language the opteron uses.  :)


>
>Amd has consistently made greater strides with its series of processors than
>Intel. It started with the mediocre K5. It was only a little inferior with the
>K6-2. It more or less equalized with the Athlon. Now it has pulled solidly ahead
>with the Hammer. A remarkable story considering it was up against a giant with
>vastly greater resources.
>
>The Itanium is the worst processor ever produced when you consider how much
>money Intel threw at it and how much they got in return. Most companies would
>have been put out of business by the chip many times over. The Itanium 2
>improved, but compared to opteron, it is way too expensive. A dual opteron
>system is cheaper than a single Itanium 2 and performance-wise can run circles
>around it to boot.
>
>The Itanium 2 only gets interesting in an 8-way configuration, but the market is
>too tiny for it to recoup the incredible amount if money Intel has spent. Intel
>seems to be running a charity as far as I can see.
>
>When Intel announced it had no plans to follow suit with its own version of the
>hammer, I wondered how it could be that wasn't a major blunder. What did Intel
>have up its sleave? When the Hammer release slipped by about year, I started to
>think maybe Intel knew Amd was going to fall on its ass. Now that opteron is
>here, the only one who looks like they might fall on their ass is Intel.
>
>However, with Intel's resources, it can afford a lot of expensive misadventures
>and still remain the industry leader, but you have to wonder how long this can
>remain true. Amd continues to execute with amazing consistency. Very impressive
>for such a relatively tiny company.

I agree.  Intel isn't stupid.  But ignoring the IA-64 stuff AMD has done is
a significant error, IMHO.  Nothing like real X86 compatibility, with the
added boon of more registers and 64 bits when you want to use 'em.

There are a few compatibility issues, dealing with pointers.  But in general,
the thing _really_ looks good.  I had no idea that I might see 10M nps on a
quad-anything in 2003.  The last time I saw near 10M was on the Cray 32-cpu
T90, and there CB was bumping along at about 7M.  Crafty runs the benchmark
at 7M+ using gcc.  Eugene's compiler is significantly faster.

So consider me an AMD believer when it comes to Opteron.  The NUMA stuff is
problematic, but definitely solvable.  And for duals/quads, it really is not
that noticable if you are careful with shared stuff.



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