[Beowulf] More AMD rumors

[Vincent Diepeveen]

On Nov 19, 2012, at 8:37 PM, Robert G. Brown wrote:

> 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?

If you're interested i have some results of diep at i7 Xeons and  
latency numbers.
2 socket Xeons that is.

Not 1 socket.

>
> 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 -

You did disable turboboost?

Which *is* a form of overclocking.

> - 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
>