[Beowulf] More AMD rumors

Robert G. Brown rgb at phy.duke.edu
Mon Nov 19 11:37:25 PST 2012


On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Douglas Eadline wrote:

>
>> On Mon, 19 Nov 2012, Douglas Eadline wrote:
>>
>>> Intel has a single socket Xeon (E3-12XX series Sandy/Ivy-Bridge)
>>> and will work on single socket motherboards. Mostly designed for
>>> the small office/home server these have more "server" features,
>>> basically ECC, and cost slightly more than the i-5/7 series. They
>>> are lower power as well.
>>
>> But are they faster?
>
>
> That, I don't know. My guess is they are about the same as
> the i7, but provide ECC. You know the die is pretty much the
> same on all parts within a family. They blow a few fuses to turn
> off capabilities and "bin" the parts based on
> thermal performance/clock speed.

Yeah, I just wasn't sure how much they were "within a family".  You know
my motto -- a benchmark talks, bullshitting about possibilities walks;-)
Otherwise it is too easy to theorize your way into an expensive mess
with your budget blown and no way to fix it.

Anybody have an apples to apples comparison on some sort of real code or
benchmark code i7 to one of the Xeon family CPUs?

In the meantime, let me commend the i7-3770 with this:

processor       : 7
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 58
model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
stepping        : 9
cpu MHz         : 1600.000
cache size      : 8192 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 8
core id         : 3
cpu cores       : 4
apicid          : 7
initial apicid  : 7
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 13
wp              : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat
pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp
lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc
aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3
cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand
lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips        : 6784.31
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

on a pretty boring ASUS motherboard, not even a sabertooth.  I wouldn't
hesitate to put together an i7 system for floating point stuff, although
with really large memory I admit ecc is moderately appealing (a
perennial discussion:-).  I would avoid overclocking it -- the ASUS
boards all support aggressive overclocking -- to ensure that it runs in
a nice, stable mode.  I also have a small mountain of fans to keep the
chassis cool.  It's a 6 TB RAID as well as compute platform, and all of
the fans have nifty blue leds and the case itself is partly transparent.
It's gorgeous, in other words...

    rgb

>
> BTW, I have an unopened i5-3470S sitting here waiting
> for testing. I use the i5 S series (low power 65W) for my Limulus
> boxes. There is a 65W i7, but it is a little pricey. In my
> experience the Sandy Bridge and now Ivy Bridge provide
> incredible performance and would be a hard target for AMD
> in any case.
>
> --
> Doug
>>
>>     rgb
>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Doug
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Comments from anyone else?
>>>>
>>>>     rgb
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin
>>>>>> Computing
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>>>>>
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>>>>> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin
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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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Mailscanner: Clean
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Doug
>>>
>>> --
>>> Mailscanner: Clean
>>>
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Mailscanner: Clean
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Doug
>
> -- 
> Mailscanner: Clean
>

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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