65nm news from Intel

"keith" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 01:34:39 +0000, Robert Redelmeier wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips keith wrote:
I'm not against SMP at all, if it's free I'll take it (and
have predicted multiple core processors here for at leat five
years), but to say it's somehow "free" today, is *nutz*. Even
a short few years ago I stated that two complete systeems
were better than one dual. I think the line is crossing
soon to the dual-porcessor, but I'd rather have two systems.
...both duals soon. ;-)

I think you're a bit behind the times

Well, I was talking about single-chip SMP. Even at that it was
rather
obvious (I believe I argued with Fleger over this). What else to do
with
infinite transistor budgets after caches?

Uh, Fleger here. ;-)

We have long had desktop SMP available. Question: what legacy
software runs faster on two cores (whether on one or two chips) than
on one? Answer: none.

Desktop SMP has always been for the person who wants to check his
email while a compile is in progress. SMP == workstation. Useless
for the vast majority of PC users, although there is a heavy
sprinkling of workstation users in this NG. Keith, for instance.

One of the stories I got about dual-core (*initially* dual) cpus is
that they were to solve the heat problem. So we just had IDF where
200 watt heat-sinks were on display for dual-core CPUs. What??

I agree that almost every server will run faster with multicore CPUs.
I strongly disagree that multicores will benefit Joe MS Office or Joe
IE. As Keith points out, I had this opinion 5 years ago. I see no
reason to change.

Felger Carbon wrote:

We have long had desktop SMP available. Question: what legacy
software runs faster on two cores (whether on one or two chips) than
on one? Answer: none.

Photoshop, and probably most other professional audio/video/graphics
programs, especially for Apple.

Oh, and make. I bought a SMP Linux computer years ago for the specific
purpose of running my compiler testsuite in half the time.
Parallelization was done with make.

"Kees van Reeuwijk" wrote in message
...
Felger Carbon wrote:

We have long had desktop SMP available. Question: what legacy
software runs faster on two cores (whether on one or two chips)
than
on one? Answer: none.

Photoshop, and probably most other professional audio/video/graphics
programs, especially for Apple.

Bzzt! This is an IBM.PC NG.

Oh, and make. I bought a SMP Linux computer years ago for the
specific
purpose of running my compiler testsuite in half the time.
Parallelization was done with make.

"Make" is run on workstations. It is not a legacy application for
personal computers.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Felger Carbon wrote:
We have long had desktop SMP available. Question: what
legacy software runs faster on two cores (whether on one
or two chips) than on one? Answer: none.

`make -j2 bzlilo` to make a Linux kernel runs 1.9x

Desktop SMP has always been for the person who wants to
check his email while a compile is in progress.

Checking/writing email/news uses so few cycles that I don't
notice any change in compile speed.

I agree that almost every server will run faster with
multicore CPUs.

I doubt even this. It depends on the nature of workload.
If the thing is network or disk bound, multi won't help.

-- Robert

In article . net,
Felger Carbon wrote:

Bzzt! This is an IBM.PC NG.

You are cross-posting to comp.arch. Please pay attention. In addition,
you might want to spend less time explaining how the average PC user
running only Word or Internet Explorer won't benefit; I don't see
anyone arguing against that.

-- greg

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 13:25:51 +0000, Robert Redelmeier wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips keith wrote:
Well, I was talking about single-chip SMP.

Sorry, I missed that upthread.

What else to do with infinite transistor
budgets after caches?

A very good point. SMT is a fairly simple thing.
Orthogonal to other efforts to improve performance.

Actually *designing* a way of using
transistors is exponentially difficult.

True enough. You run out of orthogonalities

When I looked (a few months ago) a decent dual AthlonMP board
was around $400, with the processors at a rather premium too.

Decent? What do you classify as decent? I see'em around $200,
and surely you don't shy away from fixing painted jumpers?
I figure the dual premium is around $200 now.

Every board I looked at from Asus, Tyan, or any of the others on my short
list. ...and I don't over-clock either. ;-)

...particularly when Linux is on this one. ;-)

Oh, I see you're still running the K6-3. No reason to stop.

Yep, as the WinBlows system. My wife hasn't gotten used to Linux yet. I
have to beat on her to give up IE, in favor of FireFox. Actually there is
a Win boot partition on this system, but it's never been used for anything
other than bringup/test.

--
Keith

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 17:15:46 +0000, Stephen Fuld wrote:


"Robert Redelmeier" wrote in message
...
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Peter Boyle
wrote:
On Mon, 4 Oct 2004, Robert Redelmeier wrote:
Code type matters. SMT is best for continuing work during
the ~300 clock memory fetch latency.

What is the evidence to back up this claim?

Logic. When else can SMT really do net increased work?
If you want to test, run some pointer-chasers.

I would however claim that functional units are almost free,

This is getting more and more true as caches grow, but only
from an areal perspective. A multiplier still sucks back a
huge amount of power and tosses it as heat.

Which is an argument for SMT over CMP. With SMP, you can "share" one
multiplier between the two threads (assuming they are not both heavy users
of multiply - which is true for lots of server type workloads), wheras a CMP
would require two multipliers with all the power and heat issues that
implies.

It's not that much of a gain since you havent' doubled the decode/dispatch
width. Heat/power of unused execution units can be largly mittigated with
clock gating and other power-saving techniques. The pipeline is deep, use
that knowledge.

--
Keith

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 20:08:05 +0000, Felger Carbon wrote:

"keith" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 01:34:39 +0000, Robert Redelmeier wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips keith wrote:
I'm not against SMP at all, if it's free I'll take it (and
have predicted multiple core processors here for at leat five
years), but to say it's somehow "free" today, is *nutz*. Even
a short few years ago I stated that two complete systeems
were better than one dual. I think the line is crossing
soon to the dual-porcessor, but I'd rather have two systems.
...both duals soon. ;-)

I think you're a bit behind the times

Well, I was talking about single-chip SMP. Even at that it was
rather
obvious (I believe I argued with Fleger over this). What else to do
with
infinite transistor budgets after caches?

Uh, Fleger here. ;-)

We have long had desktop SMP available. Question: what legacy
software runs faster on two cores (whether on one or two chips) than
on one? Answer: none.

Available, but expen$ive. Legacy isn't everything. People will think of
new ways of using computers. Many things I do today will put a drag on a
computer and ruin the "Windows Experience". ;-) Bursty
interactive performance isn't good for productivity. I seem to keep my
laptop at work rather busy with multiple tasks. Hell, I can keep several
servers busy if I'm in the right mood and the coffee is hot enough. ;-)

Desktop SMP has always been for the person who wants to check his email
while a compile is in progress. SMP == workstation. Useless for the
vast majority of PC users, although there is a heavy sprinkling of
workstation users in this NG. Keith, for instance.

Ok, I'll let you define "workstation" such that it includes
a P3-850 running on a battery (not often). Is it my turn to define the
terms tomorrow? ;-)

One of the stories I got about dual-core (*initially* dual) cpus is that
they were to solve the heat problem. So we just had IDF where 200 watt
heat-sinks were on display for dual-core CPUs. What??

Umm, did you catch the link here earlier today, comparing the 90nm A64,
130nm A64, and 90nm P4? A P4 at 230W! Yeow! I passed that one around
the office. ;-)

I agree that almost every server will run faster with multicore CPUs. I
strongly disagree that multicores will benefit Joe MS Office or Joe IE.
As Keith points out, I had this opinion 5 years ago. I see no reason to
change.

It'll happen because there's nothing left to do with the other 500M
transistors. Build it and they will come. ;-)

--
Keith

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 23:40:15 +0000, Felger Carbon wrote:

"Kees van Reeuwijk" wrote in message
...
Felger Carbon wrote:

We have long had desktop SMP available. Question: what legacy
software runs faster on two cores (whether on one or two chips)
than
on one? Answer: none.

Photoshop, and probably most other professional audio/video/graphics
programs, especially for Apple.

Bzzt! This is an IBM.PC NG.

Ah, Uncle Felg! walks away shuffling feet and hanging his head

Oh, and make. I bought a SMP Linux computer years ago for the
specific
purpose of running my compiler testsuite in half the time.
Parallelization was done with make.

"Make" is run on workstations. It is not a legacy application for
personal computers.

Hell, my PS2/50Z was a workstation?! ...even when assembling 8051 code?
A new definition of workstation is born; runs MAKE.

How about surfing two (ten) web sites at once?

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 07:37:36 +0000, Nick Maclaren wrote:


In article ,
keith writes:
| On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 09:24:06 -0700, Eugene Miya wrote:
| Stefan Monnier wrote:
|
| Your second CPU will be mostly idle, of course, but so is the first CPU
| anyway ;-)
|
| Yeah, but that's not bad.
| 2nd CPUs are cheap these days.
|
| You may htinf the second is "cheap", but I don't. The second CPU and the
| board that dgoes with it are certainly *not* "cheap".

What board?

The cost difference is far more marketing than production. Dual
CPU boards are sold as 'servers' and as 'performance workstations',
both at a premium. They could equally well be sold with the same
margin as the 'economy' boards.

The development costs (board/chipset/BIOS) have to be recaptured across
fewer units sold, so will cost more. Look at the prices of boards with
on-board SCSI, for another example. OTOH, it doesn't cost all *that* much
more to throw another core on a chip.

--
Keith