AMD's TPI nixed

AMD has quietly nixed its True Performance Index initiative:

http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/6155

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 20:48:47 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
wrote:

AMD has quietly nixed its True Performance Index initiative:

http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/6155

Hmm, a little unfortunate, though perhaps expected. It seemed like a
pretty big undertaking to change the whole way that people look at
computer performance. If Intel had signed on for the Pentium
M/Centrino, things might have been different.

On the other hand, the AMD PR-lackey isn't entirely off-base when he
said that the idea didn't exactly fail. The success of the Centrino
does seem to indicate that people no longer look just at clock speed.
I've also commented before that I like the way AMD classifies their
Opteron line of processors, much more so than using clock speed.

Also, I'm not sure that making a benchmark index was ever a really
achievable goal. Just look at the wealth of benchmarks out there and
how much the results vary. Even if you just focus on one particular
set of applications, eg. video encoding. While Intel's P4 is always
seen as the king of video encoding, recent testing has shown that
AMD's Athlon64 line, and even the older AthlonXP line, as quite a bit
faster when using the popular XVid codec.

Trying to sum up the performance of all applications in a single
number is pretty much a lost cause.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca