3 ms·

BOOM is close to Ivy Bridge IPC in one benchmark. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~celio/ https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~celio/

atdrummond 7y ago
Using MHz as a divisor really benefits BOOM and extrapolating from IPC makes some assumptions regarding the future ability of the chip to scale to similar frequencies as Intel's product line. Assuming the best performing BOOM chip refers to the 2018 HotChips tapeout, that chip operated at 1.0 GHz. The lowest speed Ivy Bridge Core/Pentium (a design getting close to a decade old, FWIW) was 2.5 GHz. This means on a core-to-core basis Ivy Bridge is 2.7x more performant. This ignores the benefit of the additional core count of the Core series of Ivy Bridge procs. Today's 9900K is also around 40% more performant than the comparable Ivy Bridge (4960X). That would suggest the performance gains modern Intel design holds over BOOM is closer to 3.8x on a core-to-core basis. Being within an order of magnitude performance-wise is impressive given that BOOM is mainly a one-man show. That said, having about a quarter of Intel's present chips' performance doesn't strike me as particularly "close".
- kinghajj 7y ago
  IPC means "instructions per cycle," so it's correct to divide the scores by frequency. Totally agree that in total performance, no realized BOOM chip comes close to mainstream Intel chips. I think Chris is working at Esperanto Technologies (https://www.esperanto.ai/technology/); https://www.esperanto.ai/technology/); hopefully, they upstream performance improvements to the BOOM open-source repo.
  - atdrummond 7y ago
    I understand and I appreciate the test from an intellectual standpoint. But the IPC definition is orthogonal to meaningful performance benchmarking when I can't get real world equivalent clock frequencies of each processor type.
    - Taniwha 7y ago
      IPC "Instructions per cycle" is also "instructions per clock" - it's right there in the name "per clock" - it's a measure of architectural efficiency independent of clock speed. I agree that being able to build something that runs at speed is equally important but IPC does have an exact meaning
    - atdrummond 7y ago
      @Taniwha - I can't reply to you directly because we're so deep, thread-wise. I appreciate and understand the discussion around IPC and how BOOM is a significant improvement on the state of the craft. I cut my early programming teeth by developing PPC and SPARC versions of my business' embedded software products. I'm a longtime fan of alternative architectures and keep up with the industry through attendance at events such as Hot Chips. I am familiar with the terminology here and am not disputing it or the findings of the benchmark. My point was that using IPC in this way obfuscates how far these architectures have yet to go to be competitive in certain markets. Said market competitiveness was the original discussion topic up-thread.
      - detaro 7y ago
        You can always click on the timestamp of a comment to got the comment permalink and reply from there.
        atdrummond 7y ago
        That didn't seem to work at the time but both options are now available. Too late to delete and re-post, regardless.
  - glangdale 7y ago
    It's a bit more nuanced than that. It's a lot easier design-wise to hit a given IPC at 1.0GHz than it is to hit the same IPC at 4.0GHz.
- superkuh 7y ago
  >Today's 9900K is also around 40% more performant than the comparable Ivy Bridge (4960X). Most of that relative performance gain is not from increased speed but from decreased speed of older processors due to meltdown (and spectre) mitigations. In the past the 4960X and it's contemporaries were much faster.

atdrummond 7y ago

Using MHz as a divisor really benefits BOOM and extrapolating from IPC makes some assumptions regarding the future ability of the chip to scale to similar frequencies as Intel's product line. Assuming the best performing BOOM chip refers to the 2018 HotChips tapeout, that chip operated at 1.0 GHz. The lowest speed Ivy Bridge Core/Pentium (a design getting close to a decade old, FWIW) was 2.5 GHz. This means on a core-to-core basis Ivy Bridge is 2.7x more performant. This ignores the benefit of the additional core count of the Core series of Ivy Bridge procs. Today's 9900K is also around 40% more performant than the comparable Ivy Bridge (4960X). That would suggest the performance gains modern Intel design holds over BOOM is closer to 3.8x on a core-to-core basis. Being within an order of magnitude performance-wise is impressive given that BOOM is mainly a one-man show. That said, having about a quarter of Intel's present chips' performance doesn't strike me as particularly "close".

kinghajj 7y ago
IPC means "instructions per cycle," so it's correct to divide the scores by frequency. Totally agree that in total performance, no realized BOOM chip comes close to mainstream Intel chips. I think Chris is working at Esperanto Technologies (https://www.esperanto.ai/technology/); https://www.esperanto.ai/technology/); hopefully, they upstream performance improvements to the BOOM open-source repo.
- atdrummond 7y ago
  I understand and I appreciate the test from an intellectual standpoint. But the IPC definition is orthogonal to meaningful performance benchmarking when I can't get real world equivalent clock frequencies of each processor type.
  - Taniwha 7y ago
    IPC "Instructions per cycle" is also "instructions per clock" - it's right there in the name "per clock" - it's a measure of architectural efficiency independent of clock speed. I agree that being able to build something that runs at speed is equally important but IPC does have an exact meaning
  - atdrummond 7y ago
    @Taniwha - I can't reply to you directly because we're so deep, thread-wise. I appreciate and understand the discussion around IPC and how BOOM is a significant improvement on the state of the craft. I cut my early programming teeth by developing PPC and SPARC versions of my business' embedded software products. I'm a longtime fan of alternative architectures and keep up with the industry through attendance at events such as Hot Chips. I am familiar with the terminology here and am not disputing it or the findings of the benchmark. My point was that using IPC in this way obfuscates how far these architectures have yet to go to be competitive in certain markets. Said market competitiveness was the original discussion topic up-thread.
    - detaro 7y ago
      You can always click on the timestamp of a comment to got the comment permalink and reply from there.
      - atdrummond 7y ago
        That didn't seem to work at the time but both options are now available. Too late to delete and re-post, regardless.
- glangdale 7y ago
  It's a bit more nuanced than that. It's a lot easier design-wise to hit a given IPC at 1.0GHz than it is to hit the same IPC at 4.0GHz.
superkuh 7y ago
>Today's 9900K is also around 40% more performant than the comparable Ivy Bridge (4960X). Most of that relative performance gain is not from increased speed but from decreased speed of older processors due to meltdown (and spectre) mitigations. In the past the 4960X and it's contemporaries were much faster.