6 ms·

It will be interesting to see whether they can match Intel in single-threaded performance across the board, and not just some carefully-selected benchmarks. Th

by p1mrx 7y ago

It will be interesting to see whether they can match Intel in single-threaded performance across the board, and not just some carefully-selected benchmarks. This would be the first time since the Core2/Athlon64 days.

sadris 7y ago
I'm begging for a good single threaded CPU that isn't $600
- ianai 7y ago
  Read that often here tonight. Is there a killer app for single core performance other than UI/UX?
  - fooey 7y ago
    Games are still bottle necked by single thread performance
    - reiichiroh 7y ago
      Last two Assassin's Creed engine benefit from more than 4 threads
  - PureParadigm 7y ago
    In all seriousness, I've been wanting better single threaded performance for running a Minecraft server.
    - ehnto 7y ago
      What kind of player count are you getting? I have been running 4 players with one of the most taxing modpacks on a mid tier digital ocean VPS with no hitches. Not many players I guess but in case you were curious if you could use a VPS. Even when we had multiple excavators sending thousands of entities through sorting pipelines it was stil doing surprisingly well.
      - PureParadigm 7y ago
        Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into whether a VPS is viable, but we often have poor internet at our LAN parties and get the best experience when the server is local. It's a vanilla server and I also get around 4 players. The real problem occurs when people are generating new terrain while flying on an elytra, sometimes causing the server to crash altogether. When not exploring, it will frequently report "Can't keep up!" messages even when hanging around spawn, which I think might be due to the truly insane amount of hoppers we have (although haven't seen this as much in the recent update). If you're curious, the CPU is a i5-3570K @ 3.40GHz. The game is certainly playable, but it struggles under load like I described.
      - imtringued 7y ago
        A max size reactor in minecraft consists of 50000 Tileentities and it only produces a few million RF/t enough to power a handful of max tier void miners. Thousands isn't exactly impressive.
        ehnto 7y ago
        Well we had a max size reactor powering our excavators so I guess we had those entities too. I didn't realise it took so many entities to run. Not to mention the hundreds of other pieces in our worlds automation puzzle and it was all spread out quite far apart, with chunk loaders maintaining the networks presence. Things were routed, crushed, smelted, crafted and eventually stored or utilized, all automatically.
    - doublepg23 7y ago
      Intel just announced the i9-9900KS which has 8 cores all 5GHz. That should be top single core perf.
  - Baeocystin 7y ago
    Literally everything other than the rare, very specific workloads that are amenable to parallel processing! (This isn't hyperbole.)
    - 0815test 7y ago
      There's nothing "rare" and "very specific" about parallel processing, what's "rare, very specific" is the amount of software that's been rewritten/redesigned to take advantage of it so far. Sure, there are inherently-serial workloads, but most of what we use our machines for isn't like that. Parallel processing is not just about performance either but also general stability, a many-core processor can run a lot cooler and be a lot less fiddly than a high-end CPU core that packs the same amount of compute performance in a single CPU thread!
      - Baeocystin 7y ago
        >There's nothing "rare" and "very specific" about parallel processing, what's "rare, very specific" is the amount of software that's been rewritten/redesigned to take advantage of it so far. People have been banging their heads against the 'rewrite this software to take advantage of multiple cores' wall for decades. The lack of progress is telling. For a straightforward example, look at the second half of this Factorio update blog: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-215 https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-215 Factorio is a sim game that you would think on first consideration would hugely benefit from a multithreaded design. It turns out that doing so is actually slower(!). And although this example is pulled from a game, it is essentially the same story again and again, no matter what the subject. Now consider the second half of your statement- that the main benefit of multi-core processing is that it provides more CPUs, so that if any one gets choked, the general environment continues to operate. (Which is true, and a great advantage of having a multi-core CPU.) But consider a little deeper, too. If the first, best defense we have regarding multi-core designs is that they are simply more single-cores to have on hand, what does that say about the relative value of parallel processing vs. single-thread performance? Inherently serial workloads dominate across the board, in every field. The few parallel problems we have, we have because people have put a lot of brain sweat in to figuring out what, exactly, we can even do with all these cores lying around. Meanwhile, there are entire classes of problems that are simply waiting for better single-thread performance before we can move ahead. This is a very real problem, and it isn't going away.
  - ehnto 7y ago
    There aren't that many benefits for super high core counts in your average enthusiasts use cases. Even games don't benefit from higher core count as much as you would expect. The people who would benefit from more cores have the server specific lines of CPUs to choose from, so that makes consumer grade CPUs a compromise between core count and single core performance.
    - saltminer 7y ago
      > Even games don't benefit from higher core count as much as you would expect. And some games (like some Source-engine titles) crash if you have a high core count. I certainly benefit from the higher core count because I usually have a VM, 40 browser tabs, Slack, and a bunch of other stuff open at any given time, but my parents would see no benefit with their 5 tabs + iTunes + Word usage.
  - arianvanp 7y ago
    Most Flight simulators or any physics heavy game gains a lot from single-threaded performance
  - intricatedetail 7y ago
    Yes, music production. If you want to run plugins in realtime you need fast single core for long plugin chains.
- snvzz 7y ago
  AIUI the 3900x delivers at just $500. I am hopeful for the actual third party benchmarks.
- phonon 7y ago
  Try the i3-9350K or i5-9600 https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/186606/intel-core-i3-9350k-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-60-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/186606/... https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134900/intel-core-i5-9600-processor-9m-cache-up-to-4-60-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134900/...
hajile 7y ago
They already came close in a ton of benchmarks and were faster in others. The biggest issue was AVX. They could run AVX2, but at (effectively) 1/2 clockspeed due to their implementation being 128-bits wide instead of 256-bits like Intel's (which downclocked, but was still faster for non-mixed loads). AMD now has 256-bit AVX2 units, but unlike Intel, they don't need to downclock due to 7nm TSMC's lower power requirements compared to Intel's 14nm process. This should also affect 128-bit AVX instructions. It should be possible to reorder and push 2 through the pipeline at the same time in a lot of circumstances.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  > It should be possible to reorder and push 2 through the pipeline at the same time in a lot of circumstances. To be clear, the existing chips had two 128-bit vector units, and the new ones have two 256-bit vector units. So that would get you 4 total. Also each unit, at least on existing chips, is capable of either a single FMA or a completely independent multiply and add at the same time. I don't think Intel chips can do this?
mfatica 7y ago
Single threaded performance is irrelevant at this point
- jwr 7y ago
  On the contrary, it is absolutely crucial for some of us (yes, even for developers). I work with an interactively compiled language (Clojure and ClojureScript) and while I rarely do full "builds", I care a lot about recompiling single files and reloading them in the browser. That is not a multi-threaded job and requires single-threaded performance. This is why when looking at iMacs, I'd rather get the iMac than the iMac Pro. Multiple cores just aren't as important to me as is single-core performance.
  - pdimitar 7y ago
    The iMac Pro's Xeon CPUs have pretty good turbo boost frequencies. If your machine isn't pegged on all cores when you want to do the task specified in your post then you should have zero problems.

by p1mrx 7y ago

sadris 7y ago

I'm begging for a good single threaded CPU that isn't $600

ianai 7y ago
Read that often here tonight. Is there a killer app for single core performance other than UI/UX?
- fooey 7y ago
  Games are still bottle necked by single thread performance
  - reiichiroh 7y ago
    Last two Assassin's Creed engine benefit from more than 4 threads
- PureParadigm 7y ago
  In all seriousness, I've been wanting better single threaded performance for running a Minecraft server.
  - ehnto 7y ago
    What kind of player count are you getting? I have been running 4 players with one of the most taxing modpacks on a mid tier digital ocean VPS with no hitches. Not many players I guess but in case you were curious if you could use a VPS. Even when we had multiple excavators sending thousands of entities through sorting pipelines it was stil doing surprisingly well.
    - PureParadigm 7y ago
      Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into whether a VPS is viable, but we often have poor internet at our LAN parties and get the best experience when the server is local. It's a vanilla server and I also get around 4 players. The real problem occurs when people are generating new terrain while flying on an elytra, sometimes causing the server to crash altogether. When not exploring, it will frequently report "Can't keep up!" messages even when hanging around spawn, which I think might be due to the truly insane amount of hoppers we have (although haven't seen this as much in the recent update). If you're curious, the CPU is a i5-3570K @ 3.40GHz. The game is certainly playable, but it struggles under load like I described.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      A max size reactor in minecraft consists of 50000 Tileentities and it only produces a few million RF/t enough to power a handful of max tier void miners. Thousands isn't exactly impressive.
      - ehnto 7y ago
        Well we had a max size reactor powering our excavators so I guess we had those entities too. I didn't realise it took so many entities to run. Not to mention the hundreds of other pieces in our worlds automation puzzle and it was all spread out quite far apart, with chunk loaders maintaining the networks presence. Things were routed, crushed, smelted, crafted and eventually stored or utilized, all automatically.
  - doublepg23 7y ago
    Intel just announced the i9-9900KS which has 8 cores all 5GHz. That should be top single core perf.
- Baeocystin 7y ago
  Literally everything other than the rare, very specific workloads that are amenable to parallel processing! (This isn't hyperbole.)
  - 0815test 7y ago
    There's nothing "rare" and "very specific" about parallel processing, what's "rare, very specific" is the amount of software that's been rewritten/redesigned to take advantage of it so far. Sure, there are inherently-serial workloads, but most of what we use our machines for isn't like that. Parallel processing is not just about performance either but also general stability, a many-core processor can run a lot cooler and be a lot less fiddly than a high-end CPU core that packs the same amount of compute performance in a single CPU thread!
    - Baeocystin 7y ago
      >There's nothing "rare" and "very specific" about parallel processing, what's "rare, very specific" is the amount of software that's been rewritten/redesigned to take advantage of it so far. People have been banging their heads against the 'rewrite this software to take advantage of multiple cores' wall for decades. The lack of progress is telling. For a straightforward example, look at the second half of this Factorio update blog: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-215 https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-215 Factorio is a sim game that you would think on first consideration would hugely benefit from a multithreaded design. It turns out that doing so is actually slower(!). And although this example is pulled from a game, it is essentially the same story again and again, no matter what the subject. Now consider the second half of your statement- that the main benefit of multi-core processing is that it provides more CPUs, so that if any one gets choked, the general environment continues to operate. (Which is true, and a great advantage of having a multi-core CPU.) But consider a little deeper, too. If the first, best defense we have regarding multi-core designs is that they are simply more single-cores to have on hand, what does that say about the relative value of parallel processing vs. single-thread performance? Inherently serial workloads dominate across the board, in every field. The few parallel problems we have, we have because people have put a lot of brain sweat in to figuring out what, exactly, we can even do with all these cores lying around. Meanwhile, there are entire classes of problems that are simply waiting for better single-thread performance before we can move ahead. This is a very real problem, and it isn't going away.
- ehnto 7y ago
  There aren't that many benefits for super high core counts in your average enthusiasts use cases. Even games don't benefit from higher core count as much as you would expect. The people who would benefit from more cores have the server specific lines of CPUs to choose from, so that makes consumer grade CPUs a compromise between core count and single core performance.
  - saltminer 7y ago
    > Even games don't benefit from higher core count as much as you would expect. And some games (like some Source-engine titles) crash if you have a high core count. I certainly benefit from the higher core count because I usually have a VM, 40 browser tabs, Slack, and a bunch of other stuff open at any given time, but my parents would see no benefit with their 5 tabs + iTunes + Word usage.
- arianvanp 7y ago
  Most Flight simulators or any physics heavy game gains a lot from single-threaded performance
- intricatedetail 7y ago
  Yes, music production. If you want to run plugins in realtime you need fast single core for long plugin chains.
snvzz 7y ago
AIUI the 3900x delivers at just $500. I am hopeful for the actual third party benchmarks.
phonon 7y ago
Try the i3-9350K or i5-9600 https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/186606/intel-core-i3-9350k-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-60-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/186606/... https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134900/intel-core-i5-9600-processor-9m-cache-up-to-4-60-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134900/...

hajile 7y ago

They already came close in a ton of benchmarks and were faster in others. The biggest issue was AVX. They could run AVX2, but at (effectively) 1/2 clockspeed due to their implementation being 128-bits wide instead of 256-bits like Intel's (which downclocked, but was still faster for non-mixed loads). AMD now has 256-bit AVX2 units, but unlike Intel, they don't need to downclock due to 7nm TSMC's lower power requirements compared to Intel's 14nm process. This should also affect 128-bit AVX instructions. It should be possible to reorder and push 2 through the pipeline at the same time in a lot of circumstances.

Dylan16807 7y ago
> It should be possible to reorder and push 2 through the pipeline at the same time in a lot of circumstances. To be clear, the existing chips had two 128-bit vector units, and the new ones have two 256-bit vector units. So that would get you 4 total. Also each unit, at least on existing chips, is capable of either a single FMA or a completely independent multiply and add at the same time. I don't think Intel chips can do this?

mfatica 7y ago

Single threaded performance is irrelevant at this point

jwr 7y ago
On the contrary, it is absolutely crucial for some of us (yes, even for developers). I work with an interactively compiled language (Clojure and ClojureScript) and while I rarely do full "builds", I care a lot about recompiling single files and reloading them in the browser. That is not a multi-threaded job and requires single-threaded performance. This is why when looking at iMacs, I'd rather get the iMac than the iMac Pro. Multiple cores just aren't as important to me as is single-core performance.
- pdimitar 7y ago
  The iMac Pro's Xeon CPUs have pretty good turbo boost frequencies. If your machine isn't pegged on all cores when you want to do the task specified in your post then you should have zero problems.