Intel Unleashes Its First 8-Core Desktop Processor(newsroom.intel.com) |
Intel Unleashes Its First 8-Core Desktop Processor(newsroom.intel.com) |
That's disappointing, because while the CPU will likely remain close to state of the art for quite some time to come, you'll most likely max out the memory on day one and be stung by an inability to upgrade.
Of course, this was probably by design, so that they can sell you another, virtually identical 8 core processor in two more years for another $999.
http://ark.intel.com/products/75269/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-...
And it supports ECC.
If you read my post again, I'm not saying that 64gb is too little right now. It's probably the right match for the processor for most workloads, today. 32gb would seem weak with 8c/16t (I have that much in my 4770 system), and 128gb could be excessive.
But in two years, swapping in 128gb would be the no-brainer upgrade to this thing. That this is being ruled out ahead of time is not a good thing.
(Barring an Intel microcode revision, as is being speculated by the sibling commenters. But I'm not holding my breath, as Intel Ark is pretty definitive.)
http://techreport.com/news/26985/samsung-ddr4-modules-for-se...
I'm not sure why you wouldn't get a Xeon version if you wanted to work with so much RAM?
http://www.kitguru.net/components/memory/anton-shilov/sk-hyn...
The clock speeds are similar, but there are lots of differences under the hood. Whether these matter depends on your use case, but in many situations with integer compression algorithms, I'm finding that I can get 50%-150% better performance per core with Haswell. Partially this is due to the AVX2 instruction set (which adds integer operations for 32B vectors), but more than I'd expected this is due to the BMI/BMI2 instructions and improved memory throughput.
I haven't owned a desktop PC in a decade but I seem to recall by brother still got by with 8 GB.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8376/intel-disables-tsx-instru...
At Penny Arcade Expo.
Times really have changed.
Perhaps a note for those who don't know, penny arcade here stands for the web comic penny arcade. In the comic the main characters play and criticise video games as they come out, as well as going through general life stuff. For the past decade its extreme popularity has made it one of the industries biggest media.
Seriously though, what are you talking about?
http://www.parallax.com/microcontrollers/propeller-1-open-so...
8-core microcontroller in 2006, not bad. They're releasing a better one later this year, so they've opened the verilog design for the current one.
I don't mean to bash Parallax but to make a point that making an N-core processor is itself not impressive. Making an N-core architecture that performs like this is.
I do molecular dynamics simulations with LAMMPS, and I've noticed performance on my laptop is best with 4 cores. Using all 8 "virtual cores" is actually quite a bit slower.
Cost per operation? Can get an AMD 8 core processor, 125 Watts, 4.0 GHz clock, for about $180. So, $1000 for an Intel processor with 8 cores with hyper threading stands to be cost effective? In what sense?
They probably do this because it's probably to easier to manage the larger die size and greater complexity as the process has matured and yields have improved.
Not necessarily -- as AMD fans (I'm one) have seen, the entire "more cores is better" is not always true -- it heavily depends on the workload, and frankly, most games and programs are not utilizing these cpu's fully (yet). Now, put something like a 2 x 16 core Opterons in a server and you have yourself quite a powerful virtualization platform.
With that said - I'm interested in seeing it's price point and performance compared to AMD's offerings.
We sure are living in a sci-fi millennia
Edit: "very highest-end processor" should read "very highest-end PC processor". I'm excluding the workstation-class Xeon.
The dual-core CPU you are looking for is called the "Pentium Anniversary Edition: Intel Pentium G3258" and was released in July.
AMD already has an Operton 16-core processor. I'm not saying that AMD is any better, but I thought Intel would have started selling these from long ago, judging based on the pace of the computer industry.
http://ark.intel.com/#@ServerProducts
But your original point is a valid one: AMD introduced desktop 8 core processors a couple of years ago, while this is intels first 8 core desktop processor.
In hyperthreaded processors, each core can be further split into two "threads". These threads share most of their hardware resources; you can think of them as a thin veneer over a single core. These threads execute simultaneously, making use of whatever resources their partner isn't using at the moment.
Some examples (assume a single core processor with 2 hardware threads for each): Imagine you're running a thread, and it needs to access main memory before it can continue. Depending on the chip, this will take hundreds or even thousands of cycles before the thread can continue. Hyperthreading is one way to make use of this time; the other thread can run at full steam while the first is waiting to get its results back from memory.
Another positive example: you're running some floating point DSP code (perhaps your music player's equalizer) at the same time that you are compiling a new build of a program. The DSP code will make use of a mix of integer and floating point resources, while the compiler will probably not need to use the floating point units at all. Hyper threading allows the music player to use those resources that would otherwise be idle while the compiler is running. The DSP code will slow down the compiler because it is competing for things like integer resources (which are needed for pointer arithmetic, for instance), however there will still likely be an improvement over normal multitasking on a single hardware thread.
Now, for a negative example: you are running two very demanding threads. These threads are painstakingly programmed to use almost every resource they possibly can at any moment, they very rarely need to stall to access memory, etc. In this case, the two threads will only waste time fighting over the same resources, kicking each other out of cache, etc, and it would ultimately be more efficient to disregard hyper threading and run each thread sequentially.
Another negative example: you are running two instances of the same thread. This will result in good utilization of some resources (such as code cache, because each thread is executing the same program) but practically guarantees contention over the execution units, even if the program isn't that demanding.
To sum it up, hyperthreading is usually a net positive for desktops where you have a very heterogenous (and often not anywhere close to optimally programmed) mix of programs that need to run at once, and usually a net negative for high performance computing programs like your molecular dynamics simulation where every thread is executing the same extremely demanding program at once.
EDIT: And to go a bit further and explain what makes GPUs special, they're basically the inverse of a hyper-threaded CPU, great at running a lot of homogenous threads. Instead of having independent threads sharing the same resources, they have the same logical thread (many designs sharing the instruction pointer amongst many hardware threads, thus causing each to execute the same instruction at any given moment with different inputs) shared across cores that have their own indepedent execution units.
The simple explanation is that you have a core with its set of execution resources. Instead of using those resources to satisfy just a single execution context the processor has two execution contexts, which run independently of each other sharing the resources. This can potentially result in large gains when you have a workload which often leaves a execution stalled waiting on ram, though less than you might guess because there are overheads and because modern processors are already able to extract a fair amount of parallelism out of a single thread.
It works out less well for software that sees non-trivial overhead when running more threads, or when more threads increase cache pressure too much.
The problem of molecular simulation is that it's almost entirely composed of floating point instructions. Thus, hyperthreading can't run them in parallel at all.
The more CPU-bound and similar (between them) the tasks are, the less HT is going to make a difference
It made sense for single-core P4 and Atoms, but for an 8-core processor, the efficacy of HT is debatable.
OTOH, AMD will let you use ECC, which would be nice; the Intel processor includes a video card on board, if that's of interest.
One Haswell core is equivalent to two AMD cores. But yeah, AMD is dramatically cheaper than Intel for equivalent performance.
Last night I went shopping and for a mobo looked at the Asus M5A97 as at
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A97/specifications/
and that Web page says that the mobo will use ECC (error correcting coding, as I recall, use 72 bits for each 64 bits the programmer sees).
Thanks for confirming that the AMD processor also supports ECC.
Next I'll wonder what Windows Server does in case of ECC detected errors, correctable or not! Is the OS willing to disable blocks of memory that are giving ECC errors and report the situation?
Intel has had better performance per watt for years, and an "8 core" AMD processor and "8 core" Intel processor are not equivalent.
Meanwhile, PAX had 9000 attendees in 2005, and 58,500 by 2008 [2]. The most recent attendance figures I can find are 2011, with 70,000 attendees reported.
E3 later changed back to being open to the public; in 2014, their attendance was 48,900. So far from completely dead as a show.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_E3&old... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penny_Arcade_Expo...
For a given CPU that comes off the production line, the max frequency it can run at will vary from chip to chip. As well, if there are dead cores on that chip they can just disable them and sell the chip at a lower price (though, intel may not do this; nvidia has in the past with graphics chips).
Intel is a larger wealthier company and they assumedly pour a lot more money into R&D than AMD. If you go purely by market capitalization, Intel is about 50-60 times larger and AMD. That's not necessarily a fair measure and ignores a lot of variables but it does help shed a little light on the situation. In addition, AMD's business model has them focusing a lot of their attention on niches that intel doesn't seem as interested in. For instance AMD continues to develop new ARM technologies that could provide a very important market edge for them in the future as small "internet of thing" like devices start to emerge and become a part of people's daily life.
Here's a decent article on the subject: http://analysisreport.morningstar.com/stock/research?nav=no&...
But IMO, just go with Intel.
[1] http://www.chiploco.com/intel-haswell-ep-e5-1600-v3-35072/ [2] http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2014/2014080502_Xeon_E5-2600_v...
It's a monthly fee for the pro version but it's about a 2 yr bnreak even with just buying it at $199
If you're unfamiliar with the history, Prepar3d is an evolution (by Lockheed Martin) of the old FSX codebase - but they've updated it with multi-core support, DX11, etc. Most (but not all) FSX addons are compatible, and it gives better frames at MUCH better visual quality than FSX.
Actually, I'd expect most new 3D engines to be prepared for heavy multithreading by now, but many new games at the moment are still based on older engines. 2015 and on, maybe not so much, when people start releasing things backed by UE4, CryENGINE (4), Source 2, FOX Engine, etc in earnest. I think the majority would target a quad-core, and might be surprised to find themselves running on a 6 or 8 core.
“[…] You’ll notice that it is no longer the Penny Arcade Expo. It’s outgrown us and it belongs to the gaming community at large now not just PA fans. Someday I expect to attend a PAX and not even be recognized. […]”¹
Therefore, I believe it is incorrect to say that Intel revealed this product at “Penny Arcade Expo”.
1) http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/01/01/resolutions
That is, I doubt many of us make a huge distinction between PAX pre and post the direct affiliation with PA.
Edit: Also, thanks for that link. Really nice essay by Gabe that I'm glad to have read now.
And my point was to simply correct the name used; PAX used to stand for Penny Arcade Expo; now it doesn’t, so we shouldn’t call it that. I’m still not sure what all the downvoters think I meant.
If you think 64gb will be an easy limit for an average user to hit in the near future I would love to hear your envisioned use case.
There's lots of really good reasons to do this (sandboxing, ease of installation, compatibility, snapshots/state saving, etc.) and VM tech at the consumer level is good enough for most applications. Doing so also enables you to distribute the same application for different host architectures relatively easily (swap out the virtualization core with an emulation core).
VM technology basically will allow consumer software vendors to start treating your computer like a set-spec videogame console instead of worrying about millions or billions of possible complications from how your computer is set up. Once VMs in the consumer space get good enough to really run high-end games, imagine everybody just writes to some Valve defined Linux spec that just happens to match some Steam Box, but you can install the VM for that game on your Mac or Windows or whatever and get to gaming.
If this happens, VMs will chew through RAM faster than just about anything out there.
So instead of installing and running Adobe Suite, you start up the Adobe Suite VM and boom, 8GB of your RAM vaporizes. Fire up your web browser VM and boom, there goes another 4GB. Your e-mail client annihilates 4GB more and now we've eaten up 16GB of RAM to run a handful of applications. Open up an MS-Office component and there goes another 8-16GB. Run a non-virtualized legacy app? Why those all just get sandboxed into an automatic "old shit" VM so the virii keep out.
This isn't inconceivable and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this wasn't already on the drawing boards somewhere.
Using VMs for apps does make sense for some pro apps, especially those with idiotic system requirements and/or copy protection. And obviously for testing.
Full VMs for regular desktop apps? I don't think so. We already have sandboxes.
And in any case, this wont happen in the life span of this professor being relevant (say, 5 years), so, it can't be an issue that necessitates 64 bit.
Put it this way: a $120, dual core Core i3-2100 released in 2011 has support for 32gb of ram. But a $1000 eight core processor, released more than three years later, for nearly ten times the price, supports just twice as much memory.
I believe this is imbalanced. And expecting to be able to upgrade a workstation tomorrow, when purchased today for likely well over $2000, is not unreasonable.
I'm still happily running a Mac Pro I maxxed out in 2008 and expect a couple more years out of it at the least.
It would be nice if this kind of machine could last a similar 6-8 years instead of entering (and I think that was the OPs point) 'engineered' obsolescence in 4/5 years?
No, he's reffering to what will happen in "2 years". I quote: "But in two years, swapping in 128gb would be the no-brainer upgrade to this thing. That this is being ruled out ahead of time is not a good thing".
And there's just no way that normal users will run their desktop apps in VMs in two years -- which is what was said a as a justification for needing > 64gb.
Even the puny Raspberry Pi (ARM v6 at 700Mhz!) is able to stream video in FullHD thanks to its dedicated GPU.
A slow CPU can still be a bottleneck if paired with an high-end GPU, but in general a cheap CPU with an expensive GPU is a much better set-up for gaming than the other way around.
(Of course there are exceptions, but this is generally true for your average AAA title).
The video encoder/decoder has a little fixed-function logic, but the VC4 is rather good at vector operations itself, particularly 2D 16x16 and 32x32 ones, and probably has at least as much general compute muscle as the ARM, I'd say? It is not easy to program efficiently, however, and its pipeline doesn't seem to like branches very much. And trying to do ChaCha20 on it is tricky because I can't seem to find a way to address the diagonals...
Edit: first Google hit to satisfy parent, since replying is disabled. Valve goes multicore [2006] http://techreport.com/review/11237/valve-source-engine-goes-...
Nobody (consumers) really care that it makes it easier for app developers or most of the other benefits, but consumers can be scared into all kinds of weirdness.
Bonus for PC makers, it would give a huge boost to kick off the upgrade cycle again for home PCs. More cores, more RAM, more disk space needed for all these dozens of VMs (each with their own multi-GB OS and software install).
Heck, I know of at least half a dozen people who do a variant of this right now in order to run a single Windows only application on their Macs.