Bulldozer Goes to 11 ?

[Elixer]

http://blogs.amd.com/work/2011/01/31/bulldozer-goes-to-11/

We are including a new feature in “Bulldozer” that will help you take your performance up to 11. This feature, which is new to our server processors, is called AMD Turbo CORE technology and it allows you to capture that extra power headroom between average and maximum power, turning it into more clock speed. So, how does it work? Perhaps a little background about how clock speed is derived will help first.

Hmmm...interesting read.

 

[Martimus]

I have yet to see "This is Spinal Tap", but I am sure that is what he is refering to.

 

[slag]

If you read the article, the very first section talks about the movie and how what he is saying relates to that.

 

[nyker96]

I don't care how he blows his own horn, when the actual product ships, it's performance or lack of will speak for itself.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Its a delayed dud.

 

[996GT2]

I doubt BD will be faster than Sandy Bridge clock for clock, but we'll see once the actual benchmarks are released.

 

[Soleron]

500MHz on all 16 cores is a great increase given that base speeds will be the same as they would have been without Turbo existing.

Intel's competitor to this is a 10-core Westmere @2.4GHz this year. Not even SB.

 

[Mopetar]

I doubt BD will be faster than Sandy Bridge clock for clock, but we'll see once the actual benchmarks are released.

Even if it's not, there are advantages to having more physical cores for many applications.

 

[996GT2]

Even if it's not, there are advantages to having more physical cores for many applications.

Only in highly multithreaded apps that can actually use more than 4 cores.

 

[Mopetar]

500MHz on all 16 cores is a great increase given that base speeds will be the same as they would have been without Turbo existing.

Intel's competitor to this is a 10-core Westmere @2.4GHz this year. Not even SB.

To be fair to Intel, AMD's product isn't shipping yet. Am really looking forward to this new architecture. It should be great for virtualization.

 

[Mopetar]

Only in highly multithreaded apps that can actually use more than 4 cores.

True. It probably won't be as good for gaming, where there are plenty of games that don't scale well beyond 2 cores, but a lot of professional applications can take advantage of multiple cores.

The other advantage is that even if one individual program can't use all 8 cores, you can actually get other work done while some job is rendering in the background without disrupting it too much.

 

[aigomorla]

Even if it's not, there are advantages to having more physical cores for many applications.

This can be very very argued.

Because sometimes lesser cores at higher clock speed is more preffered then massive cores at dismal clock speed.

 

[Martimus]

This can be very very argued.

Because sometimes lesser cores at higher clock speed is more preffered then massive cores at dismal clock speed.

I think you mentioned that you don't have access to AMD processors before they are released, but have you heard anything about this processors clockspeed by someone who does?

 

[JFAMD]

Only in highly multithreaded apps that can actually use more than 4 cores.

Somebody once also said "who would ever want more than 640K".

 

[996GT2]

Somebody once also said "who would ever want more than 640K".

It all depends on your intended use. If you use highly threaded apps all of the time, then an 8-core BD may be better than a chip that's faster core per core but has a lower # of cores.

The deciding factor is whether AMD can produce BD chips at a fast enough clock speed. We know that Phenom II is slower clock for clock than Intel's last generation of Core 2 processors, which first debuted in 2006-2007. For example, compare a Phenom II 940 @ 3.0 GHz and a Core 2 Quad Q9650 @ 3.0 GHz and the Core 2 Quad comes out ahead in every benchmark. The new Sandy Bridge chips are considerably faster than Core 2 clock for clock, so BD would have to be a huge leap over Phenom II in order to actually compete with Sandy Bridge on a clock for clock basis.

If AMD can produce BD chips at ~3.5-4 GHz, then it could be very competitive with SB. However, if these new BD chips are being released at the same dismal clock speeds that the original Phenom chips were clocked at, then Intel should have the performance advantage in most applications even with their 4-core chips.

 

[Mopetar]

This can be very very argued.

Because sometimes lesser cores at higher clock speed is more preffered then massive cores at dismal clock speed.

Obviously this is the case when the application is only singly threaded. Every other core is just going to sit their doing next to nothing. There's no way to fix that.

Software developers are still learning how to make their applications run using multiple threads, and in some cases this can prove challenging. Outside of super computers, multi-core environments are relatively new. Software support for multiple cores is getting a lot better.

Unless the application doesn't scale well across multiple cores or the clock speed disparity is huge, I'd prefer a system with more cores, even if they do have a lower clock speed.

 

[Accord99]

Obviously this is the case when the application is only singly threaded. Every other core is just going to sit their doing next to nothing. There's no way to fix that.

Or look at Magny Cours versus Gulftown, or Nehalem versus Thuban. Fewer cores can match up to more cores even in highly threaded applications when they are faster clocked and are more powerful.

Unless the application doesn't scale well across multiple cores or the clock speed disparity is huge, I'd prefer a system with more cores, even if they do have a lower clock speed.

If the multi-threaded throughput is roughly the same, then the system with fewer cores is going to be faster most of the time since there's a better chance it will reach maximum performance.

 

[Accord99]

Somebody once also said "who would ever want more than 640K".

Since then, the typical desktop has over 4000x more RAM but only 2-4 times more CPU cores.

 

[bryanW1995]

Its a delayed dud.

yeah, it would have been much better if they had released it in january but used faulty mobos, right?

 

[996GT2]

yeah, it would have been much better if they had released it in january but used faulty mobos, right?

Hey, AMD makes mistakes too. Don't forget about the Phenom TLB Bug. Who's to say something like that won't happen with Bulldozer? We won't know until it's been out for a few months.

 

[Texashiker]

Even if it's not, there are advantages to having more physical cores for many applications.

Maybe on:
Server level applications
database server
web server
heavy computer animated video encoding - lord of the rings types of movies
Encoding feature length movies

But even then, I dont know if the cache will be able to preform sever level operations like an Intel Xeon.


Not on:
Games like Black Ops, left 4 dead 2, metro2033,,,, will not benefit from having more then 4 or 6 cores. I play left 4 dad 2 on an old amd 620 quad core at 2.6 ghz - playing left 4 dead 2 only takes about 50% of all 4 cores.

Seems amd and intel are adding more cores for bragging rights more then anything else.

 

[bryanW1995]

It all depends on your intended use. If you use highly threaded apps all of the time, then an 8-core BD may be better than a chip that's faster core per core but has a lower # of cores.

The deciding factor is whether AMD can produce BD chips at a fast enough clock speed. We know that Phenom II is slower clock for clock than Intel's last generation of Core 2 processors, which first debuted in 2006-2007. For example, compare a Phenom II 940 @ 3.0 GHz and a Core 2 Quad Q9650 @ 3.0 GHz and the Core 2 Quad comes out ahead in every benchmark. The new Sandy Bridge chips are considerably faster than Core 2 clock for clock, so BD would have to be a huge leap over Phenom II in order to actually compete with Sandy Bridge on a clock for clock basis.

If AMD can produce BD chips at ~3.5-4 GHz, then it could be very competitive with SB. However, if these new BD chips are being released at the same dismal clock speeds that the original Phenom chips were clocked at, then Intel should have the performance advantage in most applications even with their 4-core chips.

considering that many parts o the new architecture are designed with high clockspeeds in mind it would be an epic failure to see the same clockspeeds on BD as the original phenoms. Even taking into account the completely new process I'd be disappointed if it isn't the same clockspeed or higher than 1100t unless they have a very large improvement in ipc.

 

[bryanW1995]

Hey, AMD makes mistakes too. Don't forget about the Phenom TLB Bug. Who's to say something like that won't happen with Bulldozer? We won't know until it's been out for a few months.

phenom's tlb bug was at least partially due to amd rushing the cpu out before it was ready b/c core was killing them. intel is under absolutely zero pressure from amd right now and could have easily spent a bit more time on QA.

 

[drizek]

Exactly. At CES they were already bragging about how well they were doing with 22nm and Ivy Bridge. Intel got cocky with SB.

 

[bryanW1995]

either that or they already knew about the issue and were hoping that it wouldn't show up in large enough volume to necessitate a recall.