Enough of talking, and lets see some proofs with industry-standard SPECint_rate and SPECfp_rate benchmarks. We will only look at the base scores from the new SPEC 2006 benchmark suite.
First we look at how well Core 2 Quad scales from Core 2 Duo:
- [SPECint_rate_base2006]
- Intel Xeon 3060 2.4GHz, 2 cores/1 chip, 1066MHz FSB - 26.0
- Intel Xeon X3220 2.4GHz, 4 cores/1 chip, 1066MHz FSB - 43.4 (1.67x)
- [SPECfp_rate_base2006]
- Intel Xeon 3060 2.4GHz, 2 cores/1 chip, 1066MHz FSB - 22.4
- Intel Xeon X3220 2.4GHz, 4 cores/1 chip, 1066MHz FSB - 33.5 (1.50x)
In contrast, lets look at how AMD's Opteron (K8) scales to multi-core:
- [SPECint_rate_base2006]
- AMD Opteron 854 2.8GHz, 2 cores/2 chips - 22.3
- AMD Opteron 854 2.8GHz, 4 cores/4 chips - 41.4 (1.86x)
- AMD Opteron 2210 1.8GHz, 2 cores/1 chip - 17.3
- AMD Opteron 2210 1.8GHz, 4 cores/2 chips - 34.3 (1.98x)
- [SPECfp_rate_base2006]
- AMD Opteron 854 2.8GHz, 2 cores/2 chips - 24.1
- AMD Opteron 854 2.8GHz, 4 cores/4 chips - 45.6 (1.89x)
- AMD Opteron 2210 1.8GHz, 2 cores/1 chip - 17.6
- AMD Opteron 2210 1.8GHz, 4 cores/2 chips - 34.8 (1.98x)
Now lets look at how well does Core 2 Duo scale to multi-core, multi-processor setup:
- [SPECint_rate_base2006]
- Intel Xeon X5355 2.67GHz, 4 cores/1 chip, 1333MHz FSB - 45.9
- Intel Xeon X5355 2.67GHz, 8 cores/2 chips, 1333MHz FSB - 78.0 (1.70x)
- [SPECfp_rate_base2006]
- Intel Xeon X5355 2.67GHz, 4 cores/1 chip, 1333MHz FSB - 33.9
- Intel Xeon X5355 2.67GHz, 8 cores/2 chips, 1333MHz FSB - 56.3 (1.66x)
In contrast, lets look at how does Opteron scale from 4 cores to 8. This time we use only the dual-core Opteron processors for comparison:
- [SPECint_rate_base2006]
- AMD Opteron 2222SE 3.0GHz, 4 cores/2 chips - 44.6
- AMD Opteron 2222SE 3.0GHz, 8 cores/4 chips - 84.4 (1.89x)
- [SPECfp_rate_base2006]
- AMD Opteron 2222SE 3.0GHz, 4 cores/2 chips - 47.3
- AMD Opteron 2222SE 3.0GHz, 8 cores/4 chips - 89.8 (1.90x)
What is interesting above is that, for Core 2 Duo, the 4-to-8-cores scaling is actually better than the 2-to-4-cores one. This is probably due to the fact that the 8-core system has 33% faster FSB, plus a chipset intelligent enough to separate traffic to/from the two quad-core processors (rather than a dumb MCM connection as the Core 2 Quad has internally). This also shows that (1) Intel's FSB design is the bottleneck of multi-core scaling even at quad-core, and (2) The MCM quad-core is a even worse approach for scaling performance to multi-core.
In Conclusion - Intel's Core 2 Duo could well be the fastest processor for home computers (or dual-core, single-processor servers) which cost a bit more money for faster video encoding and AI-intensive gaming. On the other hand, with hard proofs we show that for servers that scale to 4 cores or higher, today's dual-core Opteron is a far better choice. This is probably due both to Opteron's Direct-Connect architecture and integrated memory controller, both of which were implemented by AMD in 2003, and will be followed suit by Intel in its next major processor release (Nehalem) in late 2008.
4 comments:
Is it just a coincidence that for Intel you chose mostly Windows and for AMD mostly Linux platforms? Also, are those results highest in their category or simply some chosen randomly?
Why no comparison of Intel 2core, 1P to 4 core, 2P to look at scaling? That would seem to be best apples to apples when looking at AMD 2core,1P to 4 core,2P.
"or servers that scale to 4 cores or higher, today's dual-core Opteron is a far better choice."
Is this also true from a cost perspective. SW licensing starts getting pretty pricey and you are comparing a current AMD solution which has twice as many sockets (and therefore licenses)
There is no data in 4 socket in above AMD is the best choice, but to look at spec_rate_base benchmarks ONLY and conclude AMD is a "far better choice" would seem to be a bit narrow minded.
8 Intel cores is cheaper than 8 AMD cores.
Ho Ho -
"Is it just a coincidence that for Intel you chose mostly Windows and for AMD mostly Linux platforms?"
Good question. No, I didn't make any effort to choose different operating systems for different processors, but I did try to find comparisons where identical settings are used for each respective processor except the number of cores.
This could be an effect if Windows and Linux schedulers have very different ability to scale to 4 or 8 cores. Though I believe it's not very likely.
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