RussianSensation
Elite Member
- Sep 5, 2003
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I like Anand's final words on BD. :'(The good news is AMD has a very aggressive roadmap ahead of itself; here's hoping it will be able to execute against it. We all need AMD to succeed. We've seen what happens without a strong AMD as a competitor. We get processors that are artificially limited and severe restrictions on overclocking, particularly at the value end of the segment. We're denied choice simply because there's no other alternative. I don't believe Bulldozer is a strong enough alternative to force Intel back into an ultra competitive mode, but we absolutely need it to be that. I have faith that AMD can pull it off, but there's still a lot of progress that needs to be made. AMD can't simply rely on its GPU architecture superiority to sell APUs; it needs to ramp on the x86 side as wellmore specifically, AMD needs better single threaded performance. Bulldozer didn't deliver that, and I'm worried that Piledriver alone won't be enough. But if AMD can stick to a yearly cadence and execute well with each iteration, there's hope. It's no longer a question of whether AMD will return to the days of the Athlon 64, it simply must. Otherwise you can kiss choice goodbye.
So why the f**k did AMD decide to go for low IPC and high GHz pushing the watts to insane levels just to get some decent performance out of the thing?
I am ashamed to display my sig on every one of my posts here at AnandTech. I'm going to take it down now and crawl into a hole. :'(
What I can't work out is WHY Windows 7 scheduler isn't working correctly for AMD's module design, thus wasting performance. For example, currently two threads share resources on one module, instead of using one module each.
The WHY comes from the fact that surely in 5 YEARS of design, AMD would have made sure a patch was ready for the current Windows version to communicate correctly with their new CPU on release. It appears AMD still haven't learnt that working with software developers is just as important as churning out new hardware.
Having said that, using two modules for two threads would probably use even more power under load! I would just be interested to see if it helped push it up 10% or so.
The biggest laugh however is Bulldozer was conceived at a time when P4/Pentium-D was made to look like a bad design - low IPC resulting in high GHz and high power usage to be competitive. Intel switched to high IPC and lower power usage, the same thing AMD targeted for years.
So why the f**k did AMD decide to go for low IPC and high GHz pushing the watts to insane levels just to get some decent performance out of the thing? Not only that, but it costs them more to produce as the die size is much bigger than the better performing Sandybridge, WHICH HAS INTEGRATED GRAPHICS! Honestly, it beggars belief. Don't forget these engineers are clever guys, but it seems they COULDN'T SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES.
I hope for AMD this architecture does indeed come into its own in the future as they tweak it, because I would love to eat my words and say they did indeed see the forest. For now though, it's Intel for desktop use.
Well, AMD is a $6 billion company and Intel is a $43 billion company. Larger companies can devote more resources to their products. Still, AMD made a processor with a new design that competes with a company eight times their size in heavily threaded tasks. Lightly threaded tasks aren't so hot on BD, but what did you all expect? Did anyone really think that little AMD could take on a giant just by getting lucky or something? Was a staggering difference in R&D budget not supposed to matter?
In the server room, AMD is squaring off against Intel's 8- and 10-core Xeons which are substantially faster in multi-threaded applications than Intel's quad-core desktop chips while still retaining a 130W TDP. AMD hasn't been competitive in the server space for a while, and I don't see that changing with Bulldozer.
with the 1100T trading blows with Intel's best as the thread count increases.
Umm, Its not like you are Repping a Pentium D 840 at 3.8 Ghz. Seriously. Bulldozer isn't a great processor but to compare it to the worst processors ever isn't really fair. It isn't like it is a K6, nor is it like a Cyrix 6x86 processor. This processor would have worked if one thing hadn't occurred, if the Thuban was never released.
Honestly, though I'm not sure why AMD didn't just add the SSSE3, SSE4, and AVX instructions to the Thuban microprocessor like Intel does with their microprocessors and do a dieshrink. Heck they could have added 2 extra cores to a Thuban processor and had a much more powerful design. AMD got the bulldozer just plain wrong. Most accurate release I could compare it to isn't in the CPU world but in the GPU world with the HD 2900XT. Its Hot and not as fast the competing product. Recommendation to AMD is just shink the Thuban core to .32nm and give it an extra two cores at least it would be able to trade blows on a threaded level. Bulldozer is one step forward and two steps back.
Well, AMD is a $6 billion company and Intel is a $43 billion company. Larger companies can devote more resources to their products. Still, AMD made a processor with a new design that competes with a company eight times their size in heavily threaded tasks. Lightly threaded tasks aren't so hot on BD, but what did you all expect? Did anyone really think that little AMD could take on a giant just by getting lucky or something? Was a staggering difference in R&D budget not supposed to matter?
I disagree 16-core Interlagos should be pretty competetive with 8-core Sandy Bridge-EP and 10-Core Westmere-EX at least until Ivy Bridge-EP and EX arrives in 2013
Well BD can actually win.
Really makes you wonder if it all comes down to process issues. As Anand mentioned they were shooting for 30% higher clock speeds with Bulldozer. 30% is pretty vague like he said, but if you use the fastest X6 with 3.3GHz base and 3.7GHz turbo as the baseline, that would put you at about 4.3GHz base and 4.8GHz turbo for the flagship Bulldozer. Would probably be quite competitive at those speeds, and considering those clocks are high (but attainable) for 32nm Sandy Bridge chips with a far shallower pipeline, you'd think a 32nm process from GloFo that was performing as intended could reach those clocks with BD and do so without sucking down hundreds of watts.
Would be really interesting to see how clocks scale with future steppings. For example the 8170 is supposed to be a new stepping, isn't it? Supposedly base clock will be 3.9 and turbo is 4.5. Still not 30%, but would be getting closer to that goal.
When it gets beaten by the previous generation processors, yeah I'm gonna say its up there with the worst.
Where's Fumbles the AMD engineer?
Bulldozer is already a very large die with very high power requirements. We'll see how AMD can balance power and performance with a 16-core chip. Unless there's something wrong with Bulldozer that they intend to correct with Interlagos, I have my doubts that they will produce a chip that server admins will find acceptable.
16-core Opteron 6282 SE 140 TDP 2.6 Ghz
16-core Opteron 6276 115 TDP 2.3 Ghz
8-core Xeon E2-2687W 150 TDP 3.1 Ghz (Sandy Bridge-EP)
8-core Xeon E2-2670 115 TDP 2.6 Ghz (Sandy Bridge-EP)
10-core Xeon E7-4870 130 TDP 2.4 Ghz (Westmere-EX)
10-core Xeon E7-4820 105 TDP 2 Ghz (Westmere-EX)
Looks pretty competitive to me.
Which is a good point, but they are selling this at a price point that is similar to Intel while costing them more to produce (larger die size). Also, they have been bigging up the FX line for a long time and should perhaps have let us know they are bowing out of the dying desktop market in terms of the performance crown. It's all about promises and expectations over the 5 years we've been waiting.
They would have been better sticking to budget CPU's and APU's for the desktop, shrinking a Phenom II to 32nm and improving IPC and performance per watt if they can't compete in most usage scenarios. That would have saved them a lot of money and since the desktop market is dying probably brought them a lot of sales for those wanting cheap upgrades.
If this makes them a nice profit in the sever and niche market then great, it's achieved its goals of caching the monster Intel by going for a different design philosophy; as you said they can never out perform a company with a 2 year lead on fab and a huge design budget so had to try and attack from a different angle.
We are however talking from the standpoint of desktop CPU use for most of us, and it just isn't a good CPU design for that currently and doesn't even have a Windows 7 patch ready to make better use of its design. So I do believe the flack is warranted regardless of budget as it was pushed as a top of the line desktop CPU also, so will be compared to Intel on price/perfromance and performance/watt for general use. In that area it fails.
Well... Remember BD was meant to compete with Nehalem. Design issues, delays, and setbacks plagued comparatively tiny AMD and therefore it gets compared to SB. AMD couldn't just abandon their investment when they saw this dynamic coming.
It sucks for them, but that's what happens when small companies have to compete against semi-monopolistic giants.