Prescott impact to prime95.

[ColdFury]

This disadvantage is alleviated by the usage of Itaniums _large_ L3-caches

How is this different than Power4's 128 MB L3?

[TauCeti]

Originally Posted by ColdFury

How is this different than Power4's 128 MB L3?

Each power4 processor has 2 cores sharing the L2 cache. 4 processors (8 cores) form a module. The 128MB L3 is used equally by all of the CPUs on that module.

power4 L3 bandwitdh is 'only' about 10GB/s (off-chip) compared to the 32GB/s of the itanium-2 (on chip L3)

Looking at SPECfp2000 and SPECint2000 the 6 MB L3 Itanium-2 performs actually better compared to a power4 in 'fp' and only slightly worse in 'int'.

Example:

SGI Altix 3000 Itanium-2 1.5GHz 6MB L3 Specfp2000:2055 SPECint2000:1077

IBM eServer pSeries 690 Turbo power4 1.7GHz SPECfp2000:1699, SPECint2000:1113

[nomadicus]

Originally Posted by TauCeti

Looking at SPECfp2000 and SPECint2000 the 6 MB L3 Itanium-2 performs actually better compared to a power4 in 'fp' and only slightly worse in 'int'.

Example:

SGI Altix 3000 Itanium-2 1.5GHz 6MB L3 Specfp2000:2055 SPECint2000:1077

Intel says that they will achieve parity speeds with the Alpha chip in 2006 (give or take a year), but the latest ev7 1.1GHz Alpha chip (www.specbench.org) is rated
Specfp2000:1482
Specint2000:877

What's the deal? I take it that the SGI numbers correct? So I am wondering if I got bad info. or am I misinterpreting these numbers ?
john

[ColdFury]

Actually, I've seen the SPECint of the new itanium reported as high as 1300. Are those base or optimized scores?

Intel says that they will achieve parity speeds with the Alpha chip in 2006

I don't recall any type of statement like that. Many chips were already competitive with Alpha when Intel bought the IP and such.

[QuintLeo]

OVer 2 years to achieve parity with a chip that has already had announced that it's development is pretty much dead?

Real impressive..... *NOT*



I do sometimes regret the death of DEC....

[ColdFury]

OVer 2 years to achieve parity with a chip that has already had announced that it's development is pretty much dead?

I'm confused, which chip do you mean? All the front line chips have surpassed the last Alpha chip by now.

[TauCeti]

Originally Posted by ColdFury

Actually, I've seen the SPECint of the new itanium reported as high as 1300. Are those base or optimized scores?

For the SGI system the base and peak values for SPECint are identical. Hmmm. Strange. For the power4 i posted the peak values. So the Itanium lead is even stronger. The lead also grows for tests with 8,16 or 64 CPU-Systems. LoL - i did not know the new Itanium-2 is _that_ fast.

I got the data here:

http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2003q3/cpu2000-20030616-02232.html
http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2003q3/cpu2000-20030616-02227.html
http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2003/june/altix_benchmarks.pdf

[nomadicus]

Originally Posted by ColdFury

I'm confused, which chip do you mean?

the 21364

Originally Posted by QuintLeo

OVer 2 years to achieve parity with a chip that has already had announced that it's development is pretty much dead?

Real impressive..... *NOT*

Yep. I knew I shouldn't have listened to the sales types.

Originally Posted by QuintLeo

I do sometimes regret the death of DEC....

Me too . . .

[ebx]

Freshly out: CPU with 64bit Architecture: Evolution or Revolution?
Goes back to intel 4004 days.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/64bit.html

...

The major question, however, is not about the technical characteristics of the processors, but about the power behind them: are they ready to ensure strong support? From this point of view and also due to their technical potential, Itanium and Power4+ will definitely be among the leaders one day. The future of Athlon 64 and Opteron is not quite clear. Everything depends on their ability to use the 64bit potential to the full extent, which means that they will need 64bit operation systems and mass applications. And the situation here is far from good today. However, this is not at all surprising: it took Microsoft about 10 years to shift from 16bit to 32bit.

[nomadicus]

Originally Posted by ebx

Freshly out: CPU with 64bit Architecture: Evolution or Revolution?
Goes back to intel 4004 days.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/64bit.html

I find it quite interesting that he notes the difference between servers/high-end workstations and the desktop. Servers needs to efficiently address beyond 32 bits. Does the desktop need that? Probably, a ways into the future. With Intel abandoning the x86 architecture (well, not really, they will probably make P4's for a long time) and AMD extending it, seems like to me, AMD could could survive at the mass market desktop level.
Intel needs to compete at the 32bit level with AMD (couldn't AMD put SSE2 into the Athlon XP? No. I see AMD as a 64bit addressing processor running mainly 32bit apps and including SSE2, etc.). Intel has to compete with Power4+ at the 64bit level (both a completely different architectures from each other and x86). Depends on what Microshaft does though. 64bit support from that company will tip the scales

[nucleon]

Isn't there a 64bit WinXP floating around?

But I think the AMD64 platform, is more like a 48bit addressing processor. :) But I liked the way you phrased the expression :)

I think in the near future, consumer based processors will need to be able to access >4GB memory in around 2 year time frame. (yes pulling those stats from where the sun isn't shining)

Again it's games pushing the envelope more than anything. Planetside a MMOFPS, was running on my machine using 700+ MB. There was a big difference for me going from 512MB to 1024MB physical memory in the machine. I can very well imagine games 2+ years from now needing more than double that memory.

I think currently ram prices are stalling the push to be able to access a larger ram space. I think 1GB DIMMS are too expensive for consumer grade PCs at the momment.