AMD Bulldozer Finally!

sunama · 11 Nov 2011 at 19:11

eddiew said:
... if you thread limit your program to, say, 2,

No way! I've busted a gut trying to get everything working with many many threads. Reducing down to 2 threads would be nigh on impossible now.

eddiew said:
You could also consider an i7, which I think would be unarguably faster

To go the 2600k route, you are effectively paying extra, just for the HT facility and I'm not 100% sold on HT.

I have a laptop (core i3) which has HT and it performs slower than my Core2Duo machine (when running my program). This makes me think that perhaps HT will not be of much benefit to me. I would rather spend the extra money saved on more RAM.

I think it really would be between the 1100T and i2500k...both over-clocked.

Tuvoc · 11 Nov 2011 at 19:19

I have a laptop with an Intel i5-2520M - dual core with hyperthreading. I timed a benchmark using 1,2,3 and 4 threads, and the time to complete for each thread

One instance - 27 secs
Two instances - 30 secs each
Three instances -43 secs each
Four instances - 55 secs each

So much for hyperthreading - the speed of each instance drops almost in half going from 1 thread to 4. Of course with 1 thread it turbos at 3.2Ghz, 2 threads at 3.0Ghz and with 4 threads it is 2.5GHz, so you need to take that into account. But essentially hyperthreading is useless for me

eddiew · 11 Nov 2011 at 19:21

sunama said:
No way! I've busted a gut trying to get everything working with many many threads. Reducing down to 2 threads would be nigh on impossible now.

I only meant for benchmarking purposes ^^; Admittedly if your threads do different things, rather than taking 1/4 of a general calculation, then it's a bugger

sunama · 11 Nov 2011 at 19:47

Unfortunately, my program uses separate threads for all sorts of things.
About 20 threads are running throughout the life of the program, using very little computer processor power...but occasionally, some of the threads will come to life (all independent of one another) and take CPU usage to above 80%.

I then have multiple threads used in a single method, which is another way that threads have been used.

To recode the program (which now consists of over 45k lines of code), into a single threaded program would be a nightmare...and besides it would be a downgrade. In general, multi-threaded program is damn difficult to code, but has major speed benefits...going backwards would be a little perverse.

I have created a benchmarking program which creates X clients, all connected to 1 server; those clients then bombard the server with Y messages/queries. The time taken to respond to all those queries, is the final benchmark result. The shorter the time is, the faster the program is running.

I guess the only way to run this program in a single thread would be to use the task manager...however, that would defeat the whole purpose of seeing which CPU can run the program faster.

eddiew · 11 Nov 2011 at 20:32

Under the circumstances it does sound like you've rather gone beyond the complexity where a single thread benchmark is actually informative xD

Wasted my mathcraft

sunama · 30 Nov 2011 at 20:13

There is an interesting discussion going on, at the HardForum:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1655225

Basically, they managed to get an exclusive interview with some AMD reps and the reps, gave marketing answers and tried to BS their way out the uncomfortable questions.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 30 Nov 2011 at 20:21

sunama said:
There is an interesting discussion going on, at the HardForum:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1655225

Basically, they managed to get an exclusive interview with some AMD reps and the reps, gave marketing answers and tried to BS their way out the uncomfortable questions.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=20680729&postcount=154

Phatzy · 1 Dec 2011 at 00:59

Tuvoc said:
I have a laptop with an Intel i5-2520M - dual core with hyperthreading. I timed a benchmark using 1,2,3 and 4 threads, and the time to complete for each thread

One instance - 27 secs
Two instances - 30 secs each
Three instances -43 secs each
Four instances - 55 secs each

So much for hyperthreading - the speed of each instance drops almost in half going from 1 thread to 4. Of course with 1 thread it turbos at 3.2Ghz, 2 threads at 3.0Ghz and with 4 threads it is 2.5GHz, so you need to take that into account. But essentially hyperthreading is useless for me

I think core parking is to blame, some programs see benefits, while others see little to no improvement.

Try this it may work for you link

layte · 2 Dec 2011 at 08:20

I'm sure somebody here was crowing about how such an amazing amount of transistors had been packaged into such a small area. Well... http://www.anandtech.com/show/5176/amd-revises-bulldozer-transistor-count-12b-not-2b
So, much, much larger than Intel 32nm parts of almost equal transistor count. AMD need to get the BD replacement out of the door as soon as they can IMO.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 2 Dec 2011 at 10:01

layte said:
I'm sure somebody here was crowing about how such an amazing amount of transistors had been packaged into such a small area. Well... http://www.anandtech.com/show/5176/amd-revises-bulldozer-transistor-count-12b-not-2b
So, much, much larger than Intel 32nm parts of almost equal transistor count. AMD need to get the BD replacement out of the door as soon as they can IMO.

Why are you so concerned with transistor densities??

There are two transistor counts for CPUs. One is the actual number of active transistors and the other the full number of transistors. Some transistors are not active and in other cases groups of transistors are counted as a single active one. The partticulat type of CPU design also affects density too. Sandy Bridge has a nominal count of 995 billion transistors;it actually had 1.16 billion transistors in total. Likewise,Llano is still the densest of all designs ATM.

layte · 2 Dec 2011 at 10:45

CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Why are you so concerned with transistor densities??

I am? I'm just pointing out that some were making a big fuss about AMD putting out a 2bn transistor part that was only 315mm². When it turns out to be anything but and makes the (in some cases quite scary) heat and power draw issues all that much worse now we know the chip has almost half the number of transistors than what we originally thought.

As for Llano (which IMO is a good bit of kit), that is a completely different design, is not in competition with the majority of BD or Core chips, and this thread is about BD.

Martini1991 · 2 Dec 2011 at 11:18

Layte has a point.
But now we can no longer say " 2BILLION TRANSISTORS AND THIS IS THE PERFORMANCE WE GET!? "

Mr Paul · 2 Dec 2011 at 21:20

To be fair to the BD if it was priced at around £100 I'd snap one up in a heart beat, however it's not so

Zaim · 2 Dec 2011 at 21:23

Mr Paul said:
To be fair to the BD if it was priced at around £100 I'd snap one up in a heart beat, however it's not so

Tbh even at that price I wouldn't touch it, high power consumption etc, performance is just poor, Intel is the way forward now.

Mr Paul · 2 Dec 2011 at 23:19

Zaim said:
Tbh even at that price I wouldn't touch it, high power consumption etc, performance is just poor, Intel is the way forward now.

I don't know, worth a punt at a ton IMHO.

opethdisciple · 3 Dec 2011 at 14:27

Supposedly Bulldozer selling well.

mmj_uk · 3 Dec 2011 at 16:01

opethdisciple said:
Supposedly Bulldozer selling well.

Just a positive marketing spin, of course it's selling out stock has been poor to the point where only pre-orders have been fulfilled.

Of course, getting sold out could be indicative that the inventories of such CPUs aren't all that big

sunama · 3 Dec 2011 at 16:20

AMD need to ramp up production. There is clearly a demand, but AMD can't seem to get their CPUs out to retail in decent quantities.

Martini1991 · 3 Dec 2011 at 16:25

sunama said:
AMD need to ramp up production. There is clearly a demand, but AMD can't seem to get their CPUs out to retail in decent quantities.

Yeah, all those people who bought AM3+ boards with interim CPU's, or the people who will buy them regardless of their performance.

sunama · 3 Dec 2011 at 16:33

Believe me, there are lot of people who are not the nerdy types (which we are) and they will buy them regardless, if the price/core makes sense.

AMD can definitely sell more of these, but only if they can make them faster. At present supply is barely satiating demand.