Author: Matthew Hull
Date: 05:16:40 04/21/05
Go up one level in this thread
On April 20, 2005 at 20:26:38, Keith Ian Price wrote: >On April 20, 2005 at 17:35:56, Frank E. Oldham wrote: > >>On April 20, 2005 at 14:41:49, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>On April 20, 2005 at 12:33:24, Keith Ian Price wrote: >>> >>>> >>>>IBM recently came out with their Power-5 module: >>>> >>>>http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/images/wallyswisdomwarehouseweblogscom/8XPower5MCM.jpg >>>> >>>>This module has 4 dual-core multi-theaded Power PCs similar to the ones used in >>>>the Mac G5. That makes for a total of 16 virtual cores, and IBM has a system >>>>that ties 8 of these modules together with a 4GB/s bus for a total of 128 >>>>virtual cores. The other four chips in the module are 4x36MB L3 cache. Since >>>>Crafty already gets about 1500 kns on a fast processor, and the mult-threading >>>>on a core offers about a 15-20% speedup, Crafty would likely exceed 100,000 kns >>>>on a full system, especially if the hash tables could be kept in the L3 cache. >>>>First, would it be possible to run a 128-thread version of Crafty? If so, do you >>>>suppose that IBM might be interested in affording you the use of one of these, >>>>as a Professor of Computer Science, to have a match against the self-proclaimed >>>>successor to Deep Blue? I imagine they would get some good publicity having an >>>>off-the-shelf IBM computer beat the specially designed chess computer in a >>>>match. What do you think? >>> >>>Hard to say. The "dual-core" part sounds good. The other part about what >>>appears to be a form of "hyper-threading" does not. HT for Crafty is actually a >>>losing proposition after the changes Eugene and I worked on (with AMD) for the >>>NUMA stuff last year. My dual xeon has HT disabled. >>> >>>But that aside, this could be a pretty powerful box. I've said all along that >>>the FPGA approach is not a particularly attractive approach considering what >>>could be done with an ASIC (ala' deep blue 2) vs a far slower FPGA solution. I >>>would not be surprised if later this year the dual-core boxes were able to >>>surpass the Hydra performance level, we will see... >> >>The SMT (hyperthreading) can be disabled -- they do this for some SPEC testing. >>On a single-core basis,, the POWER5 at 1.9GHz is about 10% slower than an >>Opteron at 2.5GHz on Spec Int type codes, >>but about 100% faster on Spec fp codes. And IBM will sell you 64 cores... Runs >>AIX or Linux 64-bit. >> >>My rough estimate is that crafty could enter the Deep Blue range of 100+ MNPS on >>a large config. >> >>Frank > > >That's what I thought. Now the only problem is to figure out how to get IBM to >donate a big system to UAB for "research". That's never going to happen. AMD is the cost-effective way through on this. Dual cores will be common soon, and relatively cheap compared to IBM. IMO, the only way you'll see a big crafty project on IBM is if somebody that's already got one (whose name is not IBM) donates the computer time. >It would take the "ft" right out of >Crafty, and get it back to its roots... > >;-)
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