Prescott impact to prime95.

nucleon · 2003-07-02, 16:05

Guys,

Thought I start a thread on the new intel processor core coming up. (My apologies if this has been brought up earlier)

Anyone have any tech details on the new processor? I've heard that there are new instructions codenamed "PNI", and they represent marketting speak such as "to accelerate video encoding and improve thread synchronization" (taken from tom's hardware guide).

Also heard the L2 cache, and L1 data caches are getting doubled, and core frequency is going to be 3.4-5GHz.

Anyone have any decent web pages on the prescott core?

-- Craig

TauCeti · 2003-07-02, 16:35

I think:

http://www.chip-architect.com/
http://www.hwextreme.com/articles/prescott/
http://cedar.intel.com/media/pdf/pniwithopcodes.pdf

have some good information.

E_tron · 2003-07-02, 19:05

I read about Prescott Core about a few months ago and apparently this PNI code was formally called SSE3 in many of the articles I looked at :? . I think we will start to see it as the Pentium V in Octoberish? Lets not forget the Athlon64. It could pack a wallop as well 8) .

Maybe we should all e-mail Intel and get George one of these Prescott CPU’s ASAP (as to not waist the new optimizations :D ).

Prime95 · 2003-07-02, 20:02

I looked at the PNI instructions several months ago and did not see anything prime95 could use :(

QuintLeo · 2003-07-03, 13:26

"SSE3" is mostly marketing hype on the part of Intel - it does NOT add much over SSE2, and seems to mostly be a responce to the addition of SSE2 support to the Opteron and Athlon64 AMD cpu lines.

I'm going to be REAL curious to see if Athlon64 CPU clock speeds ramp up quickly - for Prime work, they'll need to get a LOT closer to P-IV clock speed for the SSE2 support to help much. For everything else, though, looks like Opteron is ALREADY pretty competative - and when the 64-bit native code applications start rolling in, Itanic is gonna be pretty much a dead issue (it's ALREADY hurting badly)....

ColdFury · 2003-07-03, 19:22

Quote:

looks like Opteron is ALREADY pretty competative - and when the 64-bit native code applications start rolling in, Itanic is gonna be pretty much a dead issue (it's ALREADY hurting badly)....

Itanium isn't meant to compete with Opteron, more with IBM's Power series. Besides, the newest Itanium just announced has the highest SPEC score in FP.

QuintLeo · 2003-07-05, 02:51

Itanium is older than Opteron - but they've been failing as it is to compete against Power and Sun.

Opteron is just most likely to be the CPU series that finally sinks the Itanic.

And yes, the higher-end Opterons ARE in fact targeted at the Itanium - and already beat it on a lot of things, even though the Itanic is in it's 3'd family revision already....

ebx · 2003-07-05, 08:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuintLeo

Itanium is older than Opteron - but they've been failing as it is to compete against Power and Sun.

Opteron is just most likely to be the CPU series that finally sinks the Itanic.

Are you sure? Itanium is argueably behind Power4 and way ahead of Sun and other 64 bit cpu.

If Opteron is ever going to sink i64, it is becasue of its backward compatibility and maybe prices. Never performance. AMD does not even put Opteron up to I64. All their comparisions are against Xeon.

QuintLeo · 2003-07-06, 06:11

Other folks have compared Opteron to Itanium - IIRC Opteron wins on integer, Itanium wins on floting point - might be other way around - when clocked the same.

As it looks like Opteron is going to be able to ramp up speeds a LOT faster than Itanium has managed, well, I leave the math to you.

And Sun has sold more 64-bit machines IN ANY YEAR (other than the first year they sold them, PERHAPS) than Intel has managed TOTAL for ALL GENERATIONS of the Itanic combined.

Itanium is NOT succeeding against Sun by any measure - and Power4 (much less Power5) has been stomping it as well in sales.

ebx · 2003-07-06, 18:47

Market success and techinique success are seperate things. There are examples that advanced tech didnt translated into market sucess, like the alpha chips. Opteron may sell well but that doesnt change the fact that Itanium is FAR suporior. Carrying 32 bit luggage isnt all that great when the focus shifts to archetecture from marketing.

Itanium doesnt come out at higher clocks is largely due to the market condition. I bet if Opteron runs with Itanium head on head and the market is there, we will see faster Itanium sooner than later, just like what we have observed on p4/althron.

TauCeti · 2003-07-06, 20:37

The Itanium-2 is a brute with his L3-cronies. Besides the largely anticipated slow transformation of software to the itanic EPIC architecture, the Itanium-systems have imho one disadvantage worth mentioning: it's the low memory bandwith in multi-processor systems. All Itaniums in a multi-CPU block up to 4/8-way nowadays share one system-bus to access the main-memory.

This disadvantage is alleviated by the usage of Itaniums _large_ L3-caches and also can be improved with new external chipsets.

With Opterons capability to scale to glueless 8-way systems (err - AMD _did_ mention that once, even if they now only talk about 4-ways) with every CPU having a dedicated memory and with the low latency Hypertransport connections between the CPUs, i _can_ imagine workloads with huge datasets where the Itanium architecture is _not_ competitive with the Opterons in cluster environements.

So i really hope that AMD succeeds (that means: survives at all) with the Opteron and Athlon64 and stays competitive.

2003-07-02, 16:05	#1
nucleon Mar 2003 Melbourne 515₁₀ Posts	Prescott impact to prime95. Guys, Thought I start a thread on the new intel processor core coming up. (My apologies if this has been brought up earlier) Anyone have any tech details on the new processor? I've heard that there are new instructions codenamed "PNI", and they represent marketting speak such as "to accelerate video encoding and improve thread synchronization" (taken from tom's hardware guide). Also heard the L2 cache, and L1 data caches are getting doubled, and core frequency is going to be 3.4-5GHz. Anyone have any decent web pages on the prescott core? -- Craig

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2003-07-02, 16:35	#2
TauCeti Mar 2003 Braunschweig, Germany 2·113 Posts	I think: http://www.chip-architect.com/ http://www.hwextreme.com/articles/prescott/ http://cedar.intel.com/media/pdf/pniwithopcodes.pdf have some good information.

2003-07-02, 19:05	#3
E_tron Sep 2002 Austin, TX 3·11·17 Posts	I read about Prescott Core about a few months ago and apparently this PNI code was formally called SSE3 in many of the articles I looked at :? . I think we will start to see it as the Pentium V in Octoberish? Lets not forget the Athlon64. It could pack a wallop as well 8) . Maybe we should all e-mail Intel and get George one of these Prescott CPU’s ASAP (as to not waist the new optimizations :D ).

2003-07-02, 20:02	#4
Prime95 P90 years forever! Aug 2002 Yeehaw, FL 8164₁₀ Posts	I looked at the PNI instructions several months ago and did not see anything prime95 could use :(

2003-07-03, 13:26	#5
QuintLeo Oct 2002 Lost in the hills of Iowa 2⁶×7 Posts	"SSE3" is mostly marketing hype on the part of Intel - it does NOT add much over SSE2, and seems to mostly be a responce to the addition of SSE2 support to the Opteron and Athlon64 AMD cpu lines. I'm going to be REAL curious to see if Athlon64 CPU clock speeds ramp up quickly - for Prime work, they'll need to get a LOT closer to P-IV clock speed for the SSE2 support to help much. For everything else, though, looks like Opteron is ALREADY pretty competative - and when the 64-bit native code applications start rolling in, Itanic is gonna be pretty much a dead issue (it's ALREADY hurting badly)....

2003-07-05, 02:51	#7
QuintLeo Oct 2002 Lost in the hills of Iowa 2⁶·7 Posts	Itanium is older than Opteron - but they've been failing as it is to compete against Power and Sun. Opteron is just most likely to be the CPU series that finally sinks the Itanic. And yes, the higher-end Opterons ARE in fact targeted at the Itanium - and already beat it on a lot of things, even though the Itanic is in it's 3'd family revision already....

2003-07-06, 06:11	#9
QuintLeo Oct 2002 Lost in the hills of Iowa 2⁶·7 Posts	Other folks have compared Opteron to Itanium - IIRC Opteron wins on integer, Itanium wins on floting point - might be other way around - when clocked the same. As it looks like Opteron is going to be able to ramp up speeds a LOT faster than Itanium has managed, well, I leave the math to you. And Sun has sold more 64-bit machines IN ANY YEAR (other than the first year they sold them, PERHAPS) than Intel has managed TOTAL for ALL GENERATIONS of the Itanic combined. Itanium is NOT succeeding against Sun by any measure - and Power4 (much less Power5) has been stomping it as well in sales.

2003-07-06, 18:47	#10
ebx Aug 2002 145₈ Posts	Market success and techinique success are seperate things. There are examples that advanced tech didnt translated into market sucess, like the alpha chips. Opteron may sell well but that doesnt change the fact that Itanium is FAR suporior. Carrying 32 bit luggage isnt all that great when the focus shifts to archetecture from marketing. Itanium doesnt come out at higher clocks is largely due to the market condition. I bet if Opteron runs with Itanium head on head and the market is there, we will see faster Itanium sooner than later, just like what we have observed on p4/althron.

2003-07-06, 20:37	#11
TauCeti Mar 2003 Braunschweig, Germany 2×113 Posts	The Itanium-2 is a brute with his L3-cronies. Besides the largely anticipated slow transformation of software to the itanic EPIC architecture, the Itanium-systems have imho one disadvantage worth mentioning: it's the low memory bandwith in multi-processor systems. All Itaniums in a multi-CPU block up to 4/8-way nowadays share one system-bus to access the main-memory. This disadvantage is alleviated by the usage of Itaniums _large_ L3-caches and also can be improved with new external chipsets. With Opterons capability to scale to glueless 8-way systems (err - AMD _did_ mention that once, even if they now only talk about 4-ways) with every CPU having a dedicated memory and with the low latency Hypertransport connections between the CPUs, i _can_ imagine workloads with huge datasets where the Itanium architecture is _not_ competitive with the Opterons in cluster environements. So i really hope that AMD succeeds (that means: survives at all) with the Opteron and Athlon64 and stays competitive.