Johan, an honest question seeking an honest answer. I know you've said in the past that virualization articles are complicated and time consuming. It's been almost a month now. As you know, virtualization is THE feature the industry is begging for going forward, and is one of, if not the strongest feature of Shanghai. I'm just wondering why you didn't make this a top priority in your testing, and if we shouldn't expect to see any articles or reviews in this regard, until Intel has something that competes. It is really starting to look that way, but I hope i'm wrong as i've had alot of respect for you in the past. I doubt Core i7 will be all that competitive for VM, but even so, i'll be extremely dissapointed if it miraculously makes an appearance. Especially given the time to market between the two server parts.
Anyway, i'll continue to wait.................................
Johan,
Long time since we talked. I spoke with Joshua in TX and he informed me that he sent you some data on how to run and a binary with the latest ACML. You used that in your update, right? ACML 4.2 is quite a bit faster than 4.1 and uses a new algorithm which will be pushed out to all of ACML in the next year.
Another question I had, did you run HPL? There's a hpl.dat file there which needs to be tuned. Like you said in the review.. the chip's important, but so is the software (aka library but also that hpl.dat file). In the hpl.dat file there's an NB parameter. For ACML 4.2 that parameter is best set to 168. For MKL, ATLAS and GOTO they have their favorites so fyi if you switch libraries you also need to tune that parameter. Don't know if you knew about this but .. there it is.
Stay in touch.. I'm sure you have the email address.. and best regards Johan.
The raw performance of a processor does not just rely on Architecture. The manufacturing process technology play an important part. Intel win in this area. AMD as well as readers here knew that too. In my view, in order for AMD to survive, he has to beat Intel in a more creative way, which is manifested in their CPU design. Look, Nahelem takes a lot of similar concepts as AMD Agena. I think Intel is copying the ideas from AMD K9 processor in term of bus technology, the importance of embedding mem. controller into the processor etc.
I never think that AMD loss, both in design & sometimes performance. Pls note that, software has also making the equation more complex. Some benchmark only calc raw speeds which doesn't really implement in real life, AND the API used for benchmark software also depends on OS. Is OS not biased? If I'm Microsoft, how could I create a kernel that take the best from both world with a fixed resources, AT the time my R&D team is working on the Kernel? I'd tune my compiler base for the most popular CPU with their latest optimised insttruction set AT that time. All in all, it'd be base your benachmark on intended application rather than raw performance or architecture. You'll never find a fair answer.
So, there's really no point to argue on the results. But argument on the details will benefit all of us.
By the way, how much you used to pay AMD CPU for similar/equivalent preformance compare to Intel. And how would Intel CPU cost us without AMD pressure. I think cost should be also factored in the benchmark for general highlevel comparison. Intel selling Penryn in affordable manner is b'cse they have achieve economic of scale in manufacturing and also competition from AMD. All the bucks you pay are mostly for manufacturing technology, the silicon doesn't cost much.
That's just my 2 cents. Hope you guys don dispute each other anymore.
I agree AMD still have not lost the processor game. Gamers think AMD did lose because benchmarks shows Phenom and Athlon64 does not equal or over come the performance of Core 2 Duo. Gamers do not understand is that AMD is very strong in the server market. From what I have seen with benchmarks in the past comparing Core 2 Duo and AMD processors, they have not done a a very heavy load test. I am seeing a little glimpse with heavy loads that AMD Shanghai has a higher performance per watt ratio compared to Intel Harpertown processors.
I disagree that a smaller fabrication process improves performance. Sure it can provide higher clocks and more area to include more transistors. There are other ways to make a processor efficient. Turning a RISC processor to act like a VLIW processor which Intel have done with their Core 2 Duo processor. A silicon disk does cost a lot of money. Making pure silicon is not easy and the manufacturing process is very expensive.
From the results that I am seeing with LINPACK for both AMD Shanghai processor and Intel Nehalem processor, they are both equal in performance. I can not tell if the Intel processor is using non-ECC memory and if the AMD processor is using ECC memory. If one is using non-ECC and the other is using ECC memory, no wonder there is a 5 percent performance boost. Also both setups should hold about 6 GiB (6 of 1 GiB memory modules) of RAM to do a good comparison. Intel fans celebrating over a 5 percent of performance gain should look at it closer.
AMD has a better cost advantage. Their on-board motherboard chipsets are better and are cheaper compared to Intel motherboard chipsets. Also AMD systems have some flexibility to use 3rd-party motherboard chipsets with out having any problems. Using 3rd-party motherboard chipsets for Intel systems does have problems and history have stated this.
I call myself an AMD fan, but again this LINPACK review just shows that AMD Shanghai has equal performance to Intel Nehalem because the controls are vague and there are too many variables.
Just to shut up the AMD people. I havent bought an AMD since the k6III series and dont plan to go back now. But still Id like to see more benchmarks with games and such in them so that we can see if/how much the intel beats the amd (again).
We 'll do everything in the coming months to make sure that the it.anandtech.com community gets high quality debates with a good signal/noise ratio. In a few months the comment box and board should integrate for example. It is still the goal to bring deeply technical benchmarking to the IT world, where good reviews are still scarce IMHO. It will take time, but it.anandtech will get there. :-)
Again, I welcome all constructive and even sharp comments. But preferably well founded with some good reasoning.
Your bias is pathetic. Look at the front page where Intel has been hosting the Intel Resource Center link for over a year. Intel is one of Anand's biggest advertizers and Steve Ballmer enjoys the rim jobs Anand and his douchbag bloogers provide him.
Thanks again for confirming my beleifs that AMD (and ATi) will never get a fair shake on this sorry site.
As most of our regular readers know, let our trackrecord speak for itself:
http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=443">http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=443 Comment:
"This is really interesting. It looks like AMD is very competitive in the HPC / Server market. I am glad to hear it. I am currently using a Core 2 Duo system for my desktop machine, and it is very fast. But, I certainly don't want the competition between AMD and Intel to come to an end anytime soon. Any good news for AMD at this point is good news for consumers."
"The very first independent Nested Paging Virtualization tests"
"AMD's K10: a "dead" product or not?"
"AMD back in the quad socket race"
"The revenge of AMD Barcelona's TLB?"
Take the time to research, and judge for yourself.
Thank you, Johan. The last article is a reminder why so many Opteron machines are in the Top 10 of the Top 500 list of supercomputers. And this, folks, you should always remember when arguing Pro or Con AMD.
Barcelona is and was first and foremost a server ship (and performing exceptionally well in that role), with Deneb hopefully changing that bias toward gaming. At least I hope so, because I'd love to change my Athlon X2 6400+ to a faster CPU with less power hunger.
Besides, I can imagine why Anand is slightly biased toward Intel (and yes, it really is). After all, it was AMD who wanted to have positive reviews on the first Phenoms by inviting the testers to exotic locations (see Anand's review of Phenom 1). If someone tries to cheat you, you are less inclined to believe every bit of hype he tells you.
Wow your a moron! Steve Ballmer works for Microsoft not Intel. Microsoft != Intel
And as for your AMD fanboyness take a hike. You blame the hard working folks at anandtech for AMD's failures.
Linpack is great and all, but I was wondering if you had any benchmarks for sparse operations that you could run as part of the review, for instance running Pardiso on a 250k equation system (if RAM permits - 3GB will probably limit you to about ~100k-ish depending on matrix sparsity). I may be wrong here, but I think I've heard somewhere that memory is a significant bottleneck for sparse matrix computation, and so it would be interesting to see what sorts of gains Intel has made here with the new memory controller.
If you pretend being neutral, AnandTech should publish info about its financial interest and its connection with all brands mentioned in the review: Intel, Amd, etc., otherwise you very look like Intel promotion site.
Understand that Liz and myself are working here in Belgium, Jason and Ross are in Canada. We have no clue whatsoever happens in the financial part of Anandtech, and rightfully so. I have no interest whatsoever to get involved in that.
Read the past articles at it.anandtech.com and judge on that whether or work is "neutral" or not.
If you are really not biased, and if you are really interested to compare two hardware (CPU,chipset,mem) systems, WHY you didn't use neutral software as someone pointed out. Of cause, we would not reach top speed but it was not our goal.
Remember that AMD always takes in account that a lot of code out there is optimized for Intel architectures. If Intel's engineers go all the way to produce a carefully optimized SSSE-3 binary, it is very possible that it performs very well on the K10. And the evidence shows that the one I have been using is very good, as Shanghai at 2.7 GHz outperforms the Xeon 5472 at 3 GHz.
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piesquared - Saturday, December 13, 2008 - link
Johan, an honest question seeking an honest answer. I know you've said in the past that virualization articles are complicated and time consuming. It's been almost a month now. As you know, virtualization is THE feature the industry is begging for going forward, and is one of, if not the strongest feature of Shanghai. I'm just wondering why you didn't make this a top priority in your testing, and if we shouldn't expect to see any articles or reviews in this regard, until Intel has something that competes. It is really starting to look that way, but I hope i'm wrong as i've had alot of respect for you in the past. I doubt Core i7 will be all that competitive for VM, but even so, i'll be extremely dissapointed if it miraculously makes an appearance. Especially given the time to market between the two server parts.Anyway, i'll continue to wait.................................
twilkens - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
Johan,Long time since we talked. I spoke with Joshua in TX and he informed me that he sent you some data on how to run and a binary with the latest ACML. You used that in your update, right? ACML 4.2 is quite a bit faster than 4.1 and uses a new algorithm which will be pushed out to all of ACML in the next year.
Another question I had, did you run HPL? There's a hpl.dat file there which needs to be tuned. Like you said in the review.. the chip's important, but so is the software (aka library but also that hpl.dat file). In the hpl.dat file there's an NB parameter. For ACML 4.2 that parameter is best set to 168. For MKL, ATLAS and GOTO they have their favorites so fyi if you switch libraries you also need to tune that parameter. Don't know if you knew about this but .. there it is.
Stay in touch.. I'm sure you have the email address.. and best regards Johan.
Tim Wilkens
IdaGno - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
sheeshe! picky, picky, picky!bottom line: OPTIMIZED CODE IS CRITICAL
this should surprize no one
lighten up, people
befair - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
And I doubt Johan can even do a decent run of HPL without saying "Intel wins" before he even starts the runoctop - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
The raw performance of a processor does not just rely on Architecture. The manufacturing process technology play an important part. Intel win in this area. AMD as well as readers here knew that too. In my view, in order for AMD to survive, he has to beat Intel in a more creative way, which is manifested in their CPU design. Look, Nahelem takes a lot of similar concepts as AMD Agena. I think Intel is copying the ideas from AMD K9 processor in term of bus technology, the importance of embedding mem. controller into the processor etc.I never think that AMD loss, both in design & sometimes performance. Pls note that, software has also making the equation more complex. Some benchmark only calc raw speeds which doesn't really implement in real life, AND the API used for benchmark software also depends on OS. Is OS not biased? If I'm Microsoft, how could I create a kernel that take the best from both world with a fixed resources, AT the time my R&D team is working on the Kernel? I'd tune my compiler base for the most popular CPU with their latest optimised insttruction set AT that time. All in all, it'd be base your benachmark on intended application rather than raw performance or architecture. You'll never find a fair answer.
So, there's really no point to argue on the results. But argument on the details will benefit all of us.
By the way, how much you used to pay AMD CPU for similar/equivalent preformance compare to Intel. And how would Intel CPU cost us without AMD pressure. I think cost should be also factored in the benchmark for general highlevel comparison. Intel selling Penryn in affordable manner is b'cse they have achieve economic of scale in manufacturing and also competition from AMD. All the bucks you pay are mostly for manufacturing technology, the silicon doesn't cost much.
That's just my 2 cents. Hope you guys don dispute each other anymore.
jmurbank - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
I agree AMD still have not lost the processor game. Gamers think AMD did lose because benchmarks shows Phenom and Athlon64 does not equal or over come the performance of Core 2 Duo. Gamers do not understand is that AMD is very strong in the server market. From what I have seen with benchmarks in the past comparing Core 2 Duo and AMD processors, they have not done a a very heavy load test. I am seeing a little glimpse with heavy loads that AMD Shanghai has a higher performance per watt ratio compared to Intel Harpertown processors.I disagree that a smaller fabrication process improves performance. Sure it can provide higher clocks and more area to include more transistors. There are other ways to make a processor efficient. Turning a RISC processor to act like a VLIW processor which Intel have done with their Core 2 Duo processor. A silicon disk does cost a lot of money. Making pure silicon is not easy and the manufacturing process is very expensive.
From the results that I am seeing with LINPACK for both AMD Shanghai processor and Intel Nehalem processor, they are both equal in performance. I can not tell if the Intel processor is using non-ECC memory and if the AMD processor is using ECC memory. If one is using non-ECC and the other is using ECC memory, no wonder there is a 5 percent performance boost. Also both setups should hold about 6 GiB (6 of 1 GiB memory modules) of RAM to do a good comparison. Intel fans celebrating over a 5 percent of performance gain should look at it closer.
AMD has a better cost advantage. Their on-board motherboard chipsets are better and are cheaper compared to Intel motherboard chipsets. Also AMD systems have some flexibility to use 3rd-party motherboard chipsets with out having any problems. Using 3rd-party motherboard chipsets for Intel systems does have problems and history have stated this.
I call myself an AMD fan, but again this LINPACK review just shows that AMD Shanghai has equal performance to Intel Nehalem because the controls are vague and there are too many variables.
bonesdmz - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Does Nehalem still performs worse with SMT enabled when using newer Linpack binaries?Shmak - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Those looking for a real review of the Shanghai can find it tucked away in the IT section here: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3456&p...">http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3456&p...shin0bi272 - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
Just to shut up the AMD people. I havent bought an AMD since the k6III series and dont plan to go back now. But still Id like to see more benchmarks with games and such in them so that we can see if/how much the intel beats the amd (again).Spoelie - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
reading through those responses, don't you miss the level of conversation held at aceshardware articles?ah well different readership ;)
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Yes, of course :-).We 'll do everything in the coming months to make sure that the it.anandtech.com community gets high quality debates with a good signal/noise ratio. In a few months the comment box and board should integrate for example. It is still the goal to bring deeply technical benchmarking to the IT world, where good reviews are still scarce IMHO. It will take time, but it.anandtech will get there. :-)
Again, I welcome all constructive and even sharp comments. But preferably well founded with some good reasoning.
superflex - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
Your bias is pathetic. Look at the front page where Intel has been hosting the Intel Resource Center link for over a year. Intel is one of Anand's biggest advertizers and Steve Ballmer enjoys the rim jobs Anand and his douchbag bloogers provide him.Thanks again for confirming my beleifs that AMD (and ATi) will never get a fair shake on this sorry site.
JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
As most of our regular readers know, let our trackrecord speak for itself:http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=443">http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=443
Comment:
"This is really interesting. It looks like AMD is very competitive in the HPC / Server market. I am glad to hear it. I am currently using a Core 2 Duo system for my desktop machine, and it is very fast. But, I certainly don't want the competition between AMD and Intel to come to an end anytime soon. Any good news for AMD at this point is good news for consumers."
Still, not convinced?
http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/default.aspx">http://it.anandtech.com/weblog/default.aspx
"The very first independent Nested Paging Virtualization tests"
"AMD's K10: a "dead" product or not?"
"AMD back in the quad socket race"
"The revenge of AMD Barcelona's TLB?"
Take the time to research, and judge for yourself.
7upMan - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
Thank you, Johan. The last article is a reminder why so many Opteron machines are in the Top 10 of the Top 500 list of supercomputers. And this, folks, you should always remember when arguing Pro or Con AMD.Barcelona is and was first and foremost a server ship (and performing exceptionally well in that role), with Deneb hopefully changing that bias toward gaming. At least I hope so, because I'd love to change my Athlon X2 6400+ to a faster CPU with less power hunger.
Besides, I can imagine why Anand is slightly biased toward Intel (and yes, it really is). After all, it was AMD who wanted to have positive reviews on the first Phenoms by inviting the testers to exotic locations (see Anand's review of Phenom 1). If someone tries to cheat you, you are less inclined to believe every bit of hype he tells you.
Zorblack1 - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
Wow your a moron! Steve Ballmer works for Microsoft not Intel. Microsoft != IntelAnd as for your AMD fanboyness take a hike. You blame the hard working folks at anandtech for AMD's failures.
Mclendo06 - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
Linpack is great and all, but I was wondering if you had any benchmarks for sparse operations that you could run as part of the review, for instance running Pardiso on a 250k equation system (if RAM permits - 3GB will probably limit you to about ~100k-ish depending on matrix sparsity). I may be wrong here, but I think I've heard somewhere that memory is a significant bottleneck for sparse matrix computation, and so it would be interesting to see what sorts of gains Intel has made here with the new memory controller.uf - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
If you pretend being neutral, AnandTech should publish info about its financial interest and its connection with all brands mentioned in the review: Intel, Amd, etc., otherwise you very look like Intel promotion site.JohanAnandtech - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
Understand that Liz and myself are working here in Belgium, Jason and Ross are in Canada. We have no clue whatsoever happens in the financial part of Anandtech, and rightfully so. I have no interest whatsoever to get involved in that.Read the past articles at it.anandtech.com and judge on that whether or work is "neutral" or not.
uf - Wednesday, December 3, 2008 - link
If you are really not biased, and if you are really interested to compare two hardware (CPU,chipset,mem) systems, WHY you didn't use neutral software as someone pointed out. Of cause, we would not reach top speed but it was not our goal.ZootyGray - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
Nobody believes you anymore.Imagine a site that goes to great lengths to present unbiased testing. without the cheap trix you present.
2nd the call for apology - then again, it goes deeper than that - and you know it. Never mind - I am done with you.
kmmatney - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
Bye - Don't let the door hit your ass.strikeback03 - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
good, the more fanbois that disappear the betterMamiyaOtaru - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
yayerikejw - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
If you really wanted to compare architectures you would not use the Intel binary even if it faster for AMD than other binaries.You would choose a binary that was not heavily optimized at all and would not benefit any architecture.
The scores would be lower but you would compare ARCHITECTURES.
Then it is up to software developers to create the most efficient binary for the platform of choice. That is a completely different matter.
Do you really beleive that the Intel binary would not be better suited for Intel processors?
If they were not better the Intel developers would be worthless and incompetent, I think they are not.
JohanAnandtech - Sunday, December 7, 2008 - link
Remember that AMD always takes in account that a lot of code out there is optimized for Intel architectures. If Intel's engineers go all the way to produce a carefully optimized SSSE-3 binary, it is very possible that it performs very well on the K10. And the evidence shows that the one I have been using is very good, as Shanghai at 2.7 GHz outperforms the Xeon 5472 at 3 GHz.Zorblack1 - Monday, December 1, 2008 - link
Look at all these hateful peeps...Zorblack1 - Monday, December 1, 2008 - link
grrrhttp://anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=528">http://anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=528
Toadster - Monday, December 1, 2008 - link
very interesting... when can we buy some? :)ZootyGray - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
AT THE i7 TLB error DISCOUNT STOREthat'll rock your house.
BlueBlazer - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
Go back to your UAEZone.So called bug FUD was debunked.
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/15979">http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/15979
Zorblack1 - Monday, December 1, 2008 - link
Where are all the hateful people from the last blog entry. Crow tastes good huh? You should at least be man enough to apologize.