| Author |
Message |
JJ
Guest
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 Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
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Nick Maclaren wrote:
| Quote: | In article <dh6mm7$s17$03$1@news.t-online.com>,
Klaus Fehrle <FirstnameLastname@t-online.de> wrote:
Nick Maclaren schrieb:
Frankly, I can't see ANY technology helping much while we insist
on designing hardware to cater to the ghastlier serial codes.
Which again raises the question to what extent serial codes are ghastly
and to what extent the underlying problems are ghastly serial. ;)
Very true. But those of us who have looked at the issue tend to
agree on the following:
Most codes are both ghastly and unnecessarily serial, and some
manage to combine both in a way that is so disgusting that the
English language includes no expressions foul enough to describe
them[*].
Very few of the problems are inherently serial, but there are
some where parallelisation may be infeasible, and enabling good
parallelisation often involves changing specifications.
[*] If anyone thinks that I am referring to GUIs, such as the X
Windowing System and Microsoft's related one, I am.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren.
|
The real issue is the various vendors only know how to push one button,
ie serialized bandwidth. We see that in the P4, Cell, Trimedia and so
on and on. EEs know all about bandwidth, thats easy and scaleable, but
don't seem to want to tackle lower latency and esp random issue rates.
How much would it be worth to have a no memory wall solution where
truly random issue rate was king, lower latency and bandwith 2nd & 3rd.
The price for such would include pervasive hardware threads, protected
objects, and lots of smaller relatively small cores, probably tied
together with CSP, shame the price is so high. Take any one of those
away and the model breaks. Ironically such a model would allow the
clock race to get back on track.
johnjakson at usa dot_com |
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Anton Ertl
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
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"Nathan Bates" <nathanbates99@yahoo.com> writes:
| Quote: | About the Mac, Jobs looked at the roadmaps of both Intel and AMD.
There were other factors, but Jobs was more intrigued by Intel's.
Why?
|
Intel have the Killing Roadmap (think Monty Python) that makes
executives immediately bet their company's future on the roadmap.
Worked for Compaq, SGI, HP, and now Apple.
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html |
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Del Cecchi
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
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"keith" <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.09.25.23.47.47.223276@att.bizzzz...
| Quote: | On Sun, 25 Sep 2005 19:45:12 +0000, Anton Ertl wrote:
"Nathan Bates" <nathanbates99@yahoo.com> writes:
About the Mac, Jobs looked at the roadmaps of both Intel and AMD.
There
were other factors, but Jobs was more intrigued by Intel's. Why?
Intel have the Killing Roadmap (think Monty Python) that makes
executives
immediately bet their company's future on the roadmap. Worked for
Compaq,
SGI, HP, and now Apple.
You got it! They'll simply bite the leggs off the competition. ;-)
--
Keith
leggs? The competition wears nylon stockings or pantyhose? kinky, dude.
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keith
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
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On Sun, 25 Sep 2005 19:05:26 -0400, Yousuf Khan wrote:
<tight snip>
| Quote: | Again, another reason why AMD is doing so well these days. They brought
64-bit x86 out first,
|
While Intel was dragging heels, thinking the world would adore Itanic
because it was 64bit, or sumpin'.
| Quote: | which was intriguing, but they really ignited the rockets once
dual-core was introduced.
|
I disagree, sorta. Intel cooled its jets with Itanic. They haven't
yet recovered from that disaster plan. OTOH, AMD has executed their
plan rather well.
--
Keith |
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keith
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
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On Sun, 25 Sep 2005 19:45:12 +0000, Anton Ertl wrote:
| Quote: | "Nathan Bates" <nathanbates99@yahoo.com> writes:
About the Mac, Jobs looked at the roadmaps of both Intel and AMD. There
were other factors, but Jobs was more intrigued by Intel's. Why?
Intel have the Killing Roadmap (think Monty Python) that makes executives
immediately bet their company's future on the roadmap. Worked for Compaq,
SGI, HP, and now Apple.
|
You got it! They'll simply bite the leggs off the competition. ;-)
--
Keith |
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Klaus Fehrle
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
|
|
Nick Maclaren schrieb:
| Quote: | In article <dh6mm7$s17$03$1@news.t-online.com>,
Klaus Fehrle <FirstnameLastname@t-online.de> wrote:
Nick Maclaren schrieb:
Frankly, I can't see ANY technology helping much while we insist
on designing hardware to cater to the ghastlier serial codes.
Which again raises the question to what extent serial codes are ghastly
and to what extent the underlying problems are ghastly serial. ;)
Very true. But those of us who have looked at the issue tend to
agree on the following:
Most codes are both ghastly and unnecessarily serial, and some
manage to combine both in a way that is so disgusting that the
English language includes no expressions foul enough to describe
them[*].
|
No objection.
| Quote: |
Very few of the problems are inherently serial,
|
This is the part I am insistingly challenging. Consider it as a devils
advocate's position presently, as I have no evidence that it is more
than just "very few" indeed. (How much ever "very few" might be ;))
I am following the "Not enough parallelism in programming" thread with
interest. However, admittedly tiring interest when it goes into all
sorts of lenghts and widths, but not into depth wrt the above. I'm still
curious how alpha is determined in Amdahl's law, heretically.:)
K. |
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Yousuf Khan
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 12:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
|
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Nathan Bates wrote:
| Quote: | I would hardly call the knowledge they gained in hyperthreading to be
knowledge that will come in handy later. Whatever they learned about HT
was only relevent to a Pentium 4, it can't apply to Pentium M.
That's like saying none of the knowledge gained from
the P6 design carried over to the Williamette design.
|
You might as well say that the knowledge they gained in Hyperthreading
will help them design an SMT Xscale. Sure, it might, but it's like
textbook knowledge -- they are still at square one the next time around.
| Quote: | About the Mac, Jobs looked at the roadmaps of both Intel and AMD.
There were other factors, but Jobs was more intrigued by Intel's.
Why?
|
That falls into the wishful thinking category. It's been stated that
Intel is going to have a new secret weapon that will just blow AMD right
out of the water next year; this has been stated in the same way for the
past three years now. So far everything Intel has turned out has been
laughably outclassed by the competition. Even the rumours so far have
Intel only developing processors next year that are still behind what
AMD already had in 2003.
Yes, I'm sure Jobs has looked at their roadmap. Perhaps the most
intriguing roadmap that he saw was Intel's MDF roadmap? That is, MDF =
market development funds.
| Quote: | Turning to the server-blade market, when you need more racks of blades,
the consideration is packing as much processing performance per watt
(and space).
|
That seems to be one of the biggest reasons why AMD is doing so well in
servers now. They have special ultra-low-power Opterons doing 30W for
this market.
| Quote: | There is only so much instruction parallelism in one thread of code.
Single-threaded superscalars core often stall because of
data dependencies, resource locks, cache misses,etc.
Multi-threaded (parallel) cores are the future.
|
Again, another reason why AMD is doing so well these days. They brought
64-bit x86 out first, which was intriguing, but they really ignited the
rockets once dual-core was introduced.
Yousuf Khan |
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keith
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 6:40 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
|
|
On Sun, 25 Sep 2005 19:10:44 -0500, Del Cecchi wrote:
| Quote: |
"keith" <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.09.25.23.47.47.223276@att.bizzzz...
On Sun, 25 Sep 2005 19:45:12 +0000, Anton Ertl wrote:
"Nathan Bates" <nathanbates99@yahoo.com> writes:
About the Mac, Jobs looked at the roadmaps of both Intel and AMD. There
were other factors, but Jobs was more intrigued by Intel's. Why?
Intel have the Killing Roadmap (think Monty Python) that makes
executives
immediately bet their company's future on the roadmap. Worked for
Compaq,
SGI, HP, and now Apple.
You got it! They'll simply bite the leggs off the competition. ;-)
--
Keith
leggs? The competition wears nylon stockings or pantyhose? kinky, dude.
|
I thought you knew me better. ;-)
--
Keith |
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Stephen Fuld
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 7:21 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
|
|
"Nick Maclaren" <nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:dh6oj1$qsv$1@gemini.csx.cam.ac.uk...
| Quote: | In article <dh6mm7$s17$03$1@news.t-online.com>,
Klaus Fehrle <FirstnameLastname@t-online.de> wrote:
Nick Maclaren schrieb:
Frankly, I can't see ANY technology helping much while we insist
on designing hardware to cater to the ghastlier serial codes.
Which again raises the question to what extent serial codes are ghastly
and to what extent the underlying problems are ghastly serial. ;)
Very true. But those of us who have looked at the issue tend to
agree on the following:
Most codes are both ghastly and unnecessarily serial, and some
manage to combine both in a way that is so disgusting that the
English language includes no expressions foul enough to describe
them[*].
Very few of the problems are inherently serial, but there are
some where parallelisation may be infeasible, and enabling good
parallelisation often involves changing specifications.
[*] If anyone thinks that I am referring to GUIs, such as the X
Windowing System and Microsoft's related one, I am.
|
While I would never assert the quality or parallelizability of GUI codes, I
question whether their lack of parallelizability matters. By definition,
they are dealing with a user, presumably a human one, which are quite slow,
at least compared to a single threaded CPU. I am not at all sure what
having the ability to parallelize the part of the GUI code that responds to
(for example) mouse clicks would buy you. Barring the bad scheduler, etc.,
it seems to me that this code is "fast enough" for my all too human reflexes
to handle.
What am I missing?
--
- Stephen Fuld
e-mail address disguised to prevent spam |
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Nick Maclaren
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 8:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
|
|
In article <dh7c5g$vev$01$1@news.t-online.com>,
Klaus Fehrle <FirstnameLastname@t-online.de> wrote:
| Quote: | Very few of the problems are inherently serial,
This is the part I am insistingly challenging. Consider it as a devils
advocate's position presently, as I have no evidence that it is more
than just "very few" indeed. (How much ever "very few" might be ;))
|
Please note that I said "problems" - a huge proportion of program
DESIGNS (or, at least, operation) are inherently serial. You will
know that I am a "back to basics and rethink" person :-)
| Quote: | I am following the "Not enough parallelism in programming" thread with
interest. However, admittedly tiring interest when it goes into all
sorts of lenghts and widths, but not into depth wrt the above. I'm still
curious how alpha is determined in Amdahl's law, heretically.:)
|
Empirically, usually.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren. |
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Nick Maclaren
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 8:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
|
|
In article <1127675777.266624.204970@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
JJ <johnjakson@gmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: |
The real issue is the various vendors only know how to push one button,
ie serialized bandwidth. We see that in the P4, Cell, Trimedia and so
on and on. EEs know all about bandwidth, thats easy and scaleable, but
don't seem to want to tackle lower latency and esp random issue rates.
|
Hmm. While that is an important issue, one could debate for megabytes
whether it is cause or effect.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren. |
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George Macdonald
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 8:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
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On 24 Sep 2005 17:52:11 -0700, "Nathan Bates" <nathanbates99@yahoo.com>
wrote:
| Quote: | Jim Brooks wrote:
Signs and portents as JMS would say.
Stevel Jobs does a 180' and enthusiastically becomes
Intel's bedfellow on the basis of a compelling roadmap.
That roadmap has to be pretty darned interesting.
Intel claims they aren't developing Hyperthreading anymore.
But Intel now knows all the issues involved in hw threading.
Why not exploit that know-how as an advantage over AMD?
AMD has only a fraction of the resources that Intel has,
so AMD will have a hard time catching up
I would hardly call the knowledge they gained in hyperthreading to be
knowledge that will come in handy later. Whatever they learned about HT
was only relevent to a Pentium 4, it can't apply to Pentium M.
That's like saying none of the knowledge gained from
the P6 design carried over to the Williamette design.
About the Mac, Jobs looked at the roadmaps of both Intel and AMD.
|
Hector was quoted as saying that Jobs/Apple never talked to AMD... and that
they were much too busy anyway.:-)
| Quote: | There were other factors, but Jobs was more intrigued by Intel's.
Why?
|
Hey maybe this is not a joke at all:
http://www.electric-chicken.co.uk/itoilet.html
--
Rgds, George Macdonald |
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Del Cecchi
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 8:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
|
|
"keith" <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.09.26.01.40.30.587467@att.bizzzz...
| Quote: | On Sun, 25 Sep 2005 19:10:44 -0500, Del Cecchi wrote:
"keith" <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.09.25.23.47.47.223276@att.bizzzz...
On Sun, 25 Sep 2005 19:45:12 +0000, Anton Ertl wrote:
"Nathan Bates" <nathanbates99@yahoo.com> writes:
About the Mac, Jobs looked at the roadmaps of both Intel and AMD.
There
were other factors, but Jobs was more intrigued by Intel's. Why?
Intel have the Killing Roadmap (think Monty Python) that makes
executives
immediately bet their company's future on the roadmap. Worked for
Compaq,
SGI, HP, and now Apple.
You got it! They'll simply bite the leggs off the competition. ;-)
--
Keith
leggs? The competition wears nylon stockings or pantyhose? kinky,
dude.
I thought you knew me better. ;-)
--
Keith
never saw you without long pants. Too cold for shorts up there in the |
green mts? Or you just can't spell?
> |
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YKhan
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 8:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
|
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EdG wrote:
| Quote: | That seems to be one of the biggest reasons why AMD is doing so well in
servers now. They have special ultra-low-power Opterons doing 30W for
this market.
you see the Sun/Opteron ads versus DELL... 50% faster, 66% more energy
efficient... http://www.sun.com/emrkt/rejected/index.html
|
And that's using overclocked CPUs too. It's still more power-efficient.
Yousuf Khan |
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YKhan
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Sep 26, 2005 8:15 am Post subject:
Re: Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design |
|
|
Nathan Bates wrote:
| Quote: | That's like saying none of the knowledge gained from
the P6 design carried over to the Williamette design.
About the Mac, Jobs looked at the roadmaps of both Intel and AMD.
There were other factors, but Jobs was more intrigued by Intel's.
Why?
|
Another thing to note. A familiar refrain is that Intel can outspend
AMD in R&D by several times. This is true. Then usually the next
refrain is that because of this Intel can catch up with AMD anytime it
wants. This has not been proven.
They may say that two heads are better than one. However, nobody has
ever proven that five hundred heads are better than one hundred heads.
Yousuf Khan |
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