interesting Athlon/P4 discussion from FreeBSD-Q-l

[Mark Hahn]

> > the P4 is not exceptional
> > when running real code in-cache; this is why on most benchmarks
> > other than Stream, recent Athlons beat P4's quite handily.
> 
> Like SPEC2000fp, for example?

notice the "in-cache" there.  yes, there is such a thing as real code 
that is happy with 384 KB cache.

> > and that's why AMD is having such an awsome time in the market now,
> > and why Intel is cutting prices so dramatically on the P4.
> 
> That's true in the overall market. I thought this was the Beowulf
> mailing list? Do you think that a majority of beowulf users can
> re-compile their own codes, or do they use shrink-wrapped binaries
> from vendors who are unwilling to re-compile for the P4?

I find it terribly amusing that you're so offended by someone saying that
Athlon is a viable alternative to the P4.  it's obviously true.  being
interested in high-performance clustering of commodity hardware does not
somehow rule out decent cache hit rates.

besides, the real problem with the P4 is rdram's price.
	http://brain.mcmaster.ca/~hahn/ram.gif