myocardia
Diamond Member
- Jun 21, 2003
- 9,291
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Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Not at all. I benchmarked the ACTUAL achievable performance benefit of cache L1 vs L2 vs RAM,
that does NOT depend on the application you run so it's not so much of a synthetic
benchmark as a fact of what your CPU and MEMORY CAN and CANNOT do.
It is like saying "I have an integer ALU so I can add numbers with this CPU", it's a functional
fact not a contrived synthetic theoretical benchmark of some arbitrary program.
And my point was therefore that it's a functional irrefutable FACT that
if you have the cache, your code and data memory accesses WILL
be 3X to 6X faster than POSSIBLE with RAM each time, every time,
all the time, no matter WHAT program you run.
If someone is saying that a 3X to 6X performance boosting factor
is irrelevant when it's obviously demonstrable that SOME applications
do use such capabilities heavily they're just wrong.
I never said that it'd be 3X faster for reading email, I said that
there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to get that 3X to 6X performance
benefit UNLESS you have enough cache for your program;
end of story, you have it or you don't.
If you don't have the cache you lose more ACTUAL performance than
clock rate can POSSIBLY make up for for a significant class of prorgams.
If those kinds of programs aren't what you care about then that's
fine, but I never said it'd make EVERY program 6X faster, just
SOME programs.
So, just name 3 or 4 apps that will be 3-6X faster, if the cpu has double the L2 cache, so he'll stop arguing with you. BTW, even if there happens to be one or two that would actually be 2 or more times as fast, (seemingly) not a soul that posts on these forums uses it, so it's kind of a moot point, don't you think?