AMD clubs Intel like a baby seal.

On Sat, 9 Sep 2017 16:47:29 -0700 (PDT), RichA
wrote:

For those who despise Intel (me) this is good news, like when they released the Athlon which destroyed the "It's gets hot enough to fry an egg on top" 1st gen Pentiums.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3197...-and-more.html

A CPU needs support chips. Are properly matching chips available for
the new Threadrippers?

What software and operating system supports 24 threads?

--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

What software and operating system supports 24 threads?

macos certainly does, as does ios (internally the same).

"Eric Stevens" wrote

| A CPU needs support chips. Are properly matching chips available for
| the new Threadrippers?
|

Support chips?

| What software and operating system supports 24 threads?
|

I'm using an 8-core/8-thread with XP. It uses them
all. Probably Win7 would do it better, but XP handles
them. Though the question of what software can benefit
is a good one. Many programs are single-threaded.

I'm not sure about the efficiency of 2 threads
per core. Maybe it helps, but I don't see how. With
mutliple threads in a core, Windows does timeslicing.
As with the original single core CPUs. Each process
gets a turn, at a speed so fast that they all seem to
be running at once. With 8 cores/16 threads there
will be 2-thread timeslicing. Imagining something like
3-4 GHz per core, it's not likely that's going to make
much difference. (With the 8 cores I have now, PSP
16 is still a pig that takes several seconds to load.
It may be only one thread at startup.)

What is certain: AMD will continue to be a much better
deal for the money. Intel will continue to act like
they have a monolopy and you're lucky to get their
CPU at any price. And all of these things will be a much
better buy in 6 months. The time when it was a good idea
to buy the latest went out when CPUs got past about
700 MHz.

On 10/09/2017 02:37, Mayayana wrote:
snip

What is certain: AMD will continue to be a much better
deal for the money.

Increasingly, energy efficiency is becoming a factor determining how
good a deal is. And Intel usually betters AMD on that front.

--
Cheers, Rob

On 2017-09-10 06:40, Paul Carmichael wrote:

Erm, I don't think Windows timeslices any more.

Of course it does. And any thread that doesn't complete is pre-empted
at the end of the slice period and waits its turn to get cpu time again.

On 2017-09-09 20:18, Eric Stevens wrote:

What software and operating system supports 24 threads?

There are 600 or so threads running on my machine as I write this.

Except for heavy data crunching it's not so important that an
application be multithreaded. There's a programming and test cost to
that that is not justified in a lot of cases. Photoshop used to be
criticized for its poor core utilization. Not sure if that's the case
anymore (I don't care enough to look).

OTOH, a program like Handbrake uses cores efficiently. Per the program
notes on the Handbrake site the program will be less and less core
efficient as the core count rises. (It will still do more overall work,
but not to the full potential of all the available cores - possibly
because of the way video is encoded limits how many parallel threads can
work on the output of the file; or possibly because Handbrake is also
heavily I/O dependent).

So, I assume you mean "cores" running a thread at a given instant. I
seem to recall reading OS X (MacOS) can scale up to either 128 or 256
cores. iOS the same by extension.

Probably the same for Linux and Windows. Linux may go far beyond that
as it's used in many massive core count super computers (10's of
thousands of cores). But reservations there - I don't know how it's
actually implemented (could be thousands of OS instances on separate
machines all cooperating along the lines of a Beowulf array).

There may be Windows super computing OS releases that do the same
(though Windows is all but gone in super computing).

The OS determines what core is idle and throws a thread at it when one
is waiting. The CPU actually doesn't run the thread on the assigned
physical core, but chooses physical cores for thermal balancing. So
thread A may be assigned to virtual core 0 by the OS, but is actually
running on physical core 3. When the thread is pre-empted (or
completes) then that core is available for more work. When thread A
resumes it may be assigned to any available core.

Once an OS breaks into supporting 4 or more cores with true core
concurrency, then scaling up is relatively easy. On my Mac even using
primitive methods I can write simple programs in Pascal or C that nearly
saturate 8 cores (as long as there is no device I/O in the mix, of course).

"RJH" wrote

| What is certain: AMD will continue to be a much better
| deal for the money.
|
| Increasingly, energy efficiency is becoming a factor determining how
| good a deal is. And Intel usually betters AMD on that front.
|

That sounds like a statement from an Intel shill.

First, unless you're talking about a notebook that
you can't typically plug in, energy is not relevant.
So you'd need to qualify it:
"It's worth it to me to pay through the nose if I
can get an extra 20 minutes in the park on my
laptop."
In that case you'd probably also want to be looking
hard at laptop models and OSs.

Second, where are your back-up statistics? You're
making a claim with no links or evidence.

The AMD FX-8300 8-core I'm writing this with cost me
about $65 in 2015. It's 95 watts. I'm not an expert
on CPU power consumption, but a brief look at
this page seems to indicate that Intel and AMD
are similar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...er_dissipation

Even if my AMD CPU were using, say, 30 watts
more, I'm sitting in a room with a 75-watt lightbulb
and the box itself has a 650w power supply. I'm
guessing it's using maybe 25w+ per disk, plus the
graphics card and RAM, then fans, the monitor....
So I should pay through the nose for an Intel
CPU because I might save $3/year on my electric
bill?

And what about the CPU power? I have 8
cores at 3.3 GHz. The new CPUs are probably
much faster, some with 16 cores. But you have
to look at it in context. A car that can do 180
mph is faster than a car with top speed of 100
mph. But if you never top 70 then you're just
wasting gas.

As far as I'm concerned, what you're saying
is irrelevant even if it's true, which it doesn't appear
to be. On the other hand, if you want to say Intel
packaging is prettier then, well, at least that
would be a rational claim that can be backed up.
I'd obviously pay an extra $500 for a box with a lot
of decorative foil.

"Paul Carmichael" wrote

| I'm not sure about the efficiency of 2 threads
| per core. Maybe it helps, but I don't see how. With
| mutliple threads in a core, Windows does timeslicing.
|
| Erm, I don't think Windows timeslices any more.
|
Who's Erm?
Do you know what timeslicing is? The CPU gives
a turn to each process so that it can be a multi-
process OS. So program X gets a slice to work and
either uses it or passes if the time is not needed.
Then program Y gets a turn. Then program Z, and
so on.

If you have a 4-core CPU you can run
4 cores at once, but that's only 4 processes max
without timeslicing. Take a look at what's running on
your system right now, in terms of software programs
and services. On a typical machine it might be several
dozen. Without timeslicing how would they all run?

On 2017-09-10 10:47, Paul Carmichael wrote:
El 10/09/17 a las 15:10, Alan Browne escribió:
On 2017-09-10 06:40, Paul Carmichael wrote:

Erm, I don't think Windows timeslices any more.

Of course it does.Â* And any thread that doesn't complete is pre-empted
at the end of the slice period and waits its turn to get cpu time again.

Dunno. But I remember that 16 bit windows apps used to have to
relinquish the processor now and again. I thought all that stuff was
done by the processor itself these days.

Party like it's 1995.

Windows has used two or three variants of time-sliced, pre-emptive
multitasking since Windows 2000 or WinXP. I still run WinXP on my Mac
in a virtual machine. Last "solid" OS MS ever made though I'm also
happy with Win7 at work (again in a VM).

There were various amounts of pre-emption beginning as far back as
Windows 2 when operating on the right hardware.

On 10/09/2017 15:56, Mayayana wrote:
"RJH" wrote

| What is certain: AMD will continue to be a much better
| deal for the money.
|
| Increasingly, energy efficiency is becoming a factor determining how
| good a deal is. And Intel usually betters AMD on that front.
|

That sounds like a statement from an Intel shill.

First, unless you're talking about a notebook that
you can't typically plug in, energy is not relevant.
So you'd need to qualify it:
"It's worth it to me to pay through the nose if I
can get an extra 20 minutes in the park on my
laptop."

Well, what you interpret as paying through the nose others might
consider money well spent ;-)

Certainly, battery life can benefit. But in the main a more efficient
chip will save money in running costs, enable more versatility in
design, and probably lead to a quieter machine. I am saying that, in
most circumstances an Intel chip will be more energy efficient than an
AMD processor.

In that case you'd probably also want to be looking
hard at laptop models and OSs.

Second, where are your back-up statistics? You're
making a claim with no links or evidence.

The AMD FX-8300 8-core I'm writing this with cost me
about $65 in 2015. It's 95 watts. I'm not an expert
on CPU power consumption, but a brief look at
this page seems to indicate that Intel and AMD
are similar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...er_dissipation


I'm not sure which 2 processors you're looking at there. But I'd lay a
(small) wager that the Intel processor is doing more per watt than the AMD.

Even if my AMD CPU were using, say, 30 watts
more, I'm sitting in a room with a 75-watt lightbulb
and the box itself has a 650w power supply. I'm
guessing it's using maybe 25w+ per disk, plus the
graphics card and RAM, then fans, the monitor....
So I should pay through the nose for an Intel
CPU because I might save $3/year on my electric
bill?


That side of things matters more to me than you, I think.

I only run (relatively) energy efficient machines - with the exception
of a gaming PC, which is not used often. As it happens, it has an i3
processor, but that is more a coincidence - I'd have been (almost) as
happy with an AMD processor of similar performance


And what about the CPU power? I have 8
cores at 3.3 GHz. The new CPUs are probably
much faster, some with 16 cores. But you have
to look at it in context. A car that can do 180
mph is faster than a car with top speed of 100
mph. But if you never top 70 then you're just
wasting gas.

As far as I'm concerned, what you're saying
is irrelevant even if it's true, which it doesn't appear
to be. On the other hand, if you want to say Intel
packaging is prettier then, well, at least that
would be a rational claim that can be backed up.
I'd obviously pay an extra $500 for a box with a lot
of decorative foil.


My data is based on my own research, as a Mac and Windows user -

https://www.cpubenchmark.net

for example. Compare any two broadly similarly marketed AMD and Intel
processor, and the Intel will likely be the most energy efficient.

On value, AMD tends to do better. But TCO is not factored in in any
comparison sites I've seen. A 10W saving in energy would yield money
savings of about $10 p/a at UK electricity prices (computer used 10
hours/day)

I'm far from an expert too - just an interested user. Happy to defer on
this point in the face of evidence.


--
Cheers, Rob