[Beowulf] More AMD rumors

[Vincent Diepeveen]

On Nov 19, 2012, at 3:43 PM, Robert G. Brown wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Douglas Eadline wrote:
>
>>
>> Though not formally announced, Semiaccurate seems to have learned
>> that AMD is leaving the X86 server business.
>>
>> http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/19/amd-kills-off-big-cores-kaveri- 
>> steamroller-and-excavator/
>
> Hi Doug,
>
> Sad, but not surprising at the moment.  I benchmarked a four core i7
> against an eight core AMD FX, and the former literally blew the pants
> off of the latter -- out to eight parallel tasks!  Faster AND better
> scaling.

If you measure memory latency at all 8 cores at the same time, it's  
even more horrible.

> I would have hoped that AMD would dig in an innovate and
> regain at least parity if not the lead, because it is good for the
> industry for Intel to have serious competition, but while Intel could
> make money and survive as second best to AMD, AMD can't make any money
> as second best to Intel...

We must split of course the 2 worlds of HPC performance.
In fact htere is 3 but let's do a rough 2 world division

a) floating point or vectorized performance (can be integers as well)

We skip A : the manycores have won there.

b) integer performance non-vectorized

For integers and branches if i take a huge program like Diep.

http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php? 
option=com_content&task=view&id=105&Itemid=42&limit=1&limitstart=13

More is better.

i7-3960X-EE : 2.0 Million chess positions a second   (12 logical cores)
i7-980x turbo: 1.85 Million chess positions a second (12 logical cores)
i7-3770k:         1.47 million chess positions a second (8 logical  
cores)
AMD Phenom X6 1100T : 1.34 million chess positions a second (6 cores)
AMD Phenom X6 1090T : 1.30 million chess positions a second (6 cores)
FX-8150 : 1.22 million chesspositions a second (8 mini cores)

The FX-8150 is AMD's latest 'bulldozer' CPU.

The problem is the new generation FX-8150 at a NEW process  
technology, with 2 billion transistors or so (caches counted
- the initial press release from AMD - not the later one where they  
creatively not counting things reached 1.2 billion)  is not beating
their own old design.

Furthermore another big problem is power usage.

http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php? 
option=com_content&task=view&id=105&Itemid=42&limit=1&limitstart=6

Under full load:

Phenom X6 1090T : 69.6 watt,
Phenom X6 1100T : 92 watt

We see how the 1100T already was clocked a tad too high by AMD, which  
explains the huge power increase.

Now the FX-8150 : 115.2 watt

As if Law of Moore garantueeing progress doesn't exist...

As for you, in many benchmarks you did do maybe multiplication was  
important. Each minicore has its own multiplication unit.
Sounds good huh?

So far the good news: the problem is: it's also over 2 times slower  
that unit...

Please note that bulldozer does have AVX. From benchmarks we know  
that both intel as well as AMD with this bulldozer,
had tried to optimize performance for game. Games using AVX especially.

It's not doing bad there in fact. Worse than the quadcore intels. I  
don't want a quadcore chip though.
I want a million cores.

>
>     rgb
>
>>
>> -- 
>> Doug
>>
>> -- 
>> Mailscanner: Clean
>>
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>
> Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
> Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
> Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
> Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu
>
>
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