Spec VPR Results for various processors...

K

Kenneth Land

Guest
On Paul Leventis' info that the VPR Benchmark (Part of SPEC) is an FPGA
Place and Route program I went and looked at a few results at www.spec.org.

The interface is hideous, but I managed to ferret out a few results:

2.0 GHz Opteron time 115, score 1215
2.0 GHz Athlon 64 time 127, score 1102
2.2 GHz Athon XP (32bit) time 182, score 768
3.2 GHz Xeon (1MB cache) time 129, score 1085


I started out looking for a 32bit Athlon vs. 64bit, but couldn't find any
exact matches on a GHz vs. GHz, but the slower 64bit cpu's trounced the 32
bit XP's even given its faster clock.

Interesting also that the super Xeon couldn't best the Opteron even with
over a GHz clock advantage.
So if VPR is any indication then a 64 bit AMD system looks very promising.

Ken
 
Kenneth Land wrote:
On Paul Leventis' info that the VPR Benchmark (Part of SPEC) is an FPGA
Place and Route program I went and looked at a few results at www.spec.org.

The interface is hideous, but I managed to ferret out a few results:

2.0 GHz Opteron time 115, score 1215
2.0 GHz Athlon 64 time 127, score 1102
2.2 GHz Athon XP (32bit) time 182, score 768
3.2 GHz Xeon (1MB cache) time 129, score 1085

I started out looking for a 32bit Athlon vs. 64bit, but couldn't find any
exact matches on a GHz vs. GHz, but the slower 64bit cpu's trounced the 32
bit XP's even given its faster clock.

Interesting also that the super Xeon couldn't best the Opteron even with
over a GHz clock advantage.
So if VPR is any indication then a 64 bit AMD system looks very promising.
Click to expand...
Ok, so the AMD 64 bit machines seem to outrun their 32 bit machines and
even outrun the fastest Intel 32 bit machines, but this is while running
32 bit programs. The same AMD 64 bit machines run slower when running
the same program in 64 bit mode.

Hmmm... I'm not sure what this means in terms of the future of AMD 64
bit processing. I guess place and route is not the only engineering
application, so the level of adoption of the AMD 64 bit architecture
depends on a lot of other apps as well.

What I do know is that the Itanium has been a big flop. It will be
interesting to see what Intel's new 64 bit (32 bit compatible) machine
will be like. But I'm not sure I want a CPU that clocks at frequencies
higher than my cordless phone uses ;)

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX
 
In article <4047A189.496AF35B@yahoo.com>,
rickman <spamgoeshere4@yahoo.com> wrote:
The interface is hideous, but I managed to ferret out a few results:

2.0 GHz Opteron time 115, score 1215
2.0 GHz Athlon 64 time 127, score 1102
2.2 GHz Athon XP (32bit) time 182, score 768
3.2 GHz Xeon (1MB cache) time 129, score 1085

I started out looking for a 32bit Athlon vs. 64bit, but couldn't find any
exact matches on a GHz vs. GHz, but the slower 64bit cpu's trounced the 32
bit XP's even given its faster clock.

Interesting also that the super Xeon couldn't best the Opteron even with
over a GHz clock advantage.
So if VPR is any indication then a 64 bit AMD system looks very promising.

Ok, so the AMD 64 bit machines seem to outrun their 32 bit machines and
even outrun the fastest Intel 32 bit machines, but this is while running
32 bit programs. The same AMD 64 bit machines run slower when running
the same program in 64 bit mode.

Hmmm... I'm not sure what this means in terms of the future of AMD 64
bit processing. I guess place and route is not the only engineering
application, so the level of adoption of the AMD 64 bit architecture
depends on a lot of other apps as well.
Click to expand...
WILD A** guess says this probably comes down to the faster memory
heirarchy in the AMD 64 bit processors. Since the Athlon 64 has the
memory controller on the CPU, directly connecting to the DIMMs, memory
latency is something like 15 processor cycles + DRAM access, which is
amazingly low, saving 2 chip crossings and a boatload of chipset
overhead.
--
Nicholas C. Weaver nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu
 
Hi Kenneth,

I started out looking for a 32bit Athlon vs. 64bit, but couldn't find any
exact matches on a GHz vs. GHz, but the slower 64bit cpu's trounced the 32
bit XP's even given its faster clock.
Click to expand...
Looking through the SPEC results again, I think I may have misread them the
first time I tried to mine through for this data. It's possible I compared
32-bit and 64-bit results on two machines that had different speed
processors, which would have been pretty silly. Here's what I found this
time:

Under Spec CINT2000 results, you'll find 8 results listed as AMD "A4800".
The third entry in the list appears to be a 1.8 Ghz Opteron 144 w/ 2GB RAM
running SuSE 8 and is compiled using gcc targeting 64-bit instruction set (I
believe that's what SPEC_CPU2000_LP64 means but am not positive). The
fourth entry appears to be the same machine and OS except with code
targeting 32-bit instructions. This is the only example of 32-bit vs.
64-bit I could find in this listing.

Overall SPEC Results (higher better)
32-bit 1045
64-bit 980 (-6%)

175.VPR results (higher better)
32-bit 865
64-bit 957 (+10%)

300.Twolf results (another p&r tool):
32-bit 1133
64-bit 997 (-12%)

So what do I think now? I think results on one computer on a couple tools
can't tell us the whole story and that we need more data for a meaningful
conclusion. But I'll stick to my original conclusion that 64-bit won't be a
silver bullet for speed -- it may give a small boost or may not.

Regards,

Paul
 
Kenneth Land <kland1@neuralog1.com1> wrote:
On Paul Leventis' info that the VPR Benchmark (Part of SPEC) is an FPGA
Place and Route program I went and looked at a few results at www.spec.org.

The interface is hideous, but I managed to ferret out a few results:

2.0 GHz Opteron time 115, score 1215
2.0 GHz Athlon 64 time 127, score 1102
Click to expand...
The difference here would be one of cache and memory system.

2.2 GHz Athon XP (32bit) time 182, score 768
3.2 GHz Xeon (1MB cache) time 129, score 1085


I started out looking for a 32bit Athlon vs. 64bit, but couldn't find any
exact matches on a GHz vs. GHz, but the slower 64bit cpu's trounced the 32
bit XP's even given its faster clock.

Interesting also that the super Xeon couldn't best the Opteron even with
over a GHz clock advantage.
Click to expand...
Forget clock rating - unless its the same processor, it doesn't really mean
anything.

So if VPR is any indication then a 64 bit AMD system looks very promising.

Ken
Click to expand...
--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++
 
Nicholas C. Weaver <nweaver@ribbit.cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
WILD A** guess says this probably comes down to the faster memory
heirarchy in the AMD 64 bit processors. Since the Athlon 64 has the
memory controller on the CPU, directly connecting to the DIMMs, memory
latency is something like 15 processor cycles + DRAM access, which is
amazingly low, saving 2 chip crossings and a boatload of chipset
overhead.
Click to expand...
It is not just that. The new AMD K8 core (used in AThlon 64 and Opterons)
has a number of advantages over the old K7 core (used in Athlon XP, etc).
you can read more on this on say www.chip-architect.com.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++
 
On Paul Leventis' additional info that the TWOLF Benchmark was also a P&R
app I went back and nabbed those results as well for just the 64bit vs.
32bit AMD cases:

2.0 GHz Opeteron time 186, score 1611
2.2 GHz Athlon XP (32bit) time 304, score 929
2.0 GHz Athlon 64 time 204, score 1468

Same story as VPR. New 64 bit processors trounce 32 bit processor even with
higher clock.

Ken


"Kenneth Land" <kland1@neuralog1.com1> wrote in message
news:104f0nlms2b281e@news.supernews.com...
On Paul Leventis' info that the VPR Benchmark (Part of SPEC) is an FPGA
Place and Route program I went and looked at a few results at
www.spec.org.

The interface is hideous, but I managed to ferret out a few results:

2.0 GHz Opteron time 115, score 1215
2.0 GHz Athlon 64 time 127, score 1102
2.2 GHz Athon XP (32bit) time 182, score 768
3.2 GHz Xeon (1MB cache) time 129, score 1085


I started out looking for a 32bit Athlon vs. 64bit, but couldn't find any
exact matches on a GHz vs. GHz, but the slower 64bit cpu's trounced the 32
bit XP's even given its faster clock.

Interesting also that the super Xeon couldn't best the Opteron even with
over a GHz clock advantage.
So if VPR is any indication then a 64 bit AMD system looks very promising.

Ken
Click to expand...
 
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