3 ms·

Maybe in terms of time, but not in terms of actual performance. CPUs haven’t changed that much since 2011 (relatively speaking), but between Windows 3.1 and Vis

by elteto 2y ago

Maybe in terms of time, but not in terms of actual performance. CPUs haven’t changed that much since 2011 (relatively speaking), but between Windows 3.1 and Vista we got x64 and multicore CPUs everywhere became the norm.

nicoburns 2y ago
> CPUs haven’t changed that much since 2011 (relatively speaking) Perhaps not relatively speaking, but my 2021 CPU is 10x faster than my 2015 CPU on workload which parallelise (which compiling generally does).
- mort96 2y ago
  Good, let's look at hard numbers! Windows 3.1 came out in 1992. One of the highlights in the CPU world in 1992 was the launch of the Intel DX2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_DX2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_DX2). It used an 800nm process node, ran at up to 66MHz, had 8k of cache, and was usually coupled with either 4 or 8 MB of RAM. Windows Vista came out in 2007. That's the year Intel released their Core 2 Quad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2). It was a quad core, manufactured on a 45nm process node, running at up to 3.5GHz, with 256k of L1 cache and 8M of L2 cache. In this era, computers often had around 2 GB of RAM. So we're talking 4x the number of cores, 50x the clock speed, 256x the RAM, 1024x the cache. Benchmarks comparing the two are extremely difficult to find, because they're from completely different eras of computing; but I think it's pretty safe to say that your 10x is completely insignificant in comparison.
  - SSLy 2y ago
    Clock speed is irrelevant as a comparison point between highly out of order micro-architectures with execution ports approaching dozen by now.
    - mort96 2y ago
      Come on. We're not comparing 2.1GHz and 2.4GHz here. We're comparing 66MHz and 3500MHz. That difference is significant regardless of execution ports and other micro-architectural details. I'm not saying that the Core 2 Quad is 50x more powerful because it has 50x the Hz, or that the Core 2 Quad is 200x more powerful because it has 4x the cores @ 50x the Hz, or that it's 1024x more powerful because it has 1024x the cache, or anything like that. I'm trying to illustrate the extreme evolution of the microprocessor from the early 90s to the late '00s.
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      For the throughput of a computer the clock frequency is at least as important as the number of cores, the IPC (instructions per clock cycle) and the amount of work done by one instruction. Were it not for the fact that increasing the clock frequency increases the power consumption more than the throughput, clock frequency would have been the most important factor, because increasing any of the other factors increases the throughput by less than their increment, due to various inefficiencies or because not all applications can benefit from those improvements. For the computer user only the total throughput matters, not how it is achieved.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    While I agree that the increase in speed per socket was greater in the 15 years between 1992 and 2007 than in the following 15 years from 2007 to 2022, your comparison for the cache size is not correct. A motherboard with a 486 CPU of 1992 would have had an L2 cache memory with a size between 64 kB and 256 kB, made with discrete SRAM chips. During the year 2000, the second generations of Intel Pentium III and of AMD Athlon were the first to have an L2 cache memory integrated in the CPU. When first launched in 1999, both Pentium III and Athlon still had external L2 cache memories. External L2 cache memories had been the norm in all motherboards except in the cheapest models, starting already with 80386DX, before 1990. So the L2 cache memory of 2007 was only around 64 times the size of that of 1992. The increase in IPC (instructions per clock cycle) was huge between 1985 and 1995, i.e. 80386 => 80486 => Pentium => Pentium Pro. After that, the increase in IPC has been continuous until the AMD Zen 5 and Intel Lunar Lake of 2024, but at a much slower pace. From 1995 to 2003, there was a huge increase in clock frequency, from 0.2 GHz to 3.2 GHz, i.e. 16 times, while in the next 20 years the clock speed has increased less than 2 times. From 2005 (AMD dual core) until today the greatest speed increases have been provided by either increasing the number of cores per socket or the width of the SIMD execution units. For consumer CPUs (i.e. non-server) Intel has provided a sequence of throughput doublings in the sequence Core 2 (double SIMD throughput vs. previous Athlon X2) => Nehalem (4 cores/socket) => Sandy Bridge (double SIMD throughput) => Haswell (double SIMD throughput), but after that the following throughput doublings in consumer CPUs have all been provided by AMD, with the increase of the number of cores per socket to 8 then 16, and now with the double width of the SIMD units in the desktop variant of Zen 5, i.e. Granite Ridge. So the increase in throughput per socket (in personal computers) between 2004 and 2024 has been of 256 times, due to increases of core count or SIMD width. For comparison with this 20-year improvement, the increase in clock frequency from 1985 to 2003, during 18 years, had been from 16 MHz to 3.2 GHz, i.e. of 200 times. I do not know the exact increase in IPC between 1985 and 2003, as that would require the choice of a benchmark program, to be run both on an 80386 and on a Pentium 4 or on an Opteron, but it might have been around 20 times. The increase in IPC from 2003 to 2024 might be of at most 6 to 8 times, when accepting an increase of 10% to 20% every 2 to 3 years. So overall, with a doubling of the clock frequency from 2004 to 2024, there would be an increase in the throughput per socket for personal (non-server) computers of around 4000 times both during the 19 years from 1985 to 2004 and during the last 20 years. This corresponds on average to a little more than a doubling of the throughput per socket (in personal computers) every 2 years, during the last 40 years (i.e. from an Intel 80386 @ 16 MHz to an AMD 9950X).
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
    An intel chip from 2011: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/52210/intel-core-i5-2500k-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-70-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/52210/i... Equivalent chip today: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/236784/intel-core-i5-processor-14500-24m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/236784/... 4 cores/4 threads up to 14 cores/20 threads. Max memory supported 32GB up to 192GB. 3.7Ghz turbo up to 5Ghz. 6MB cache up to 24MB+11.5MB L2. Memory bandwidth 21GB/sec up to 76GB/sec. AVX2. Faster GPU. It’s not so dramatic but it’s not nothing; 5x the threads, nearly 4x memory bandwidth, 1/3rd higher clock speed, 4x the cache, much higher bus bandwidth I think ~5x?
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      Plus probably like 2x IPC
    - atiedebee 2y ago
      Using max memory supported in this case seems disingenuous, the truth is that the average computer in 2011 had 8GBs of ram, and the average computer in 2024 has 16GBs of ram, 32 if we're being generous. It doesn't refute your claim that modern CPUs are drastically faster than 12 years ago, but there has definitely been quite a regression in how much we've been gaining the past years
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by elteto 2y ago

nicoburns 2y ago

> CPUs haven’t changed that much since 2011 (relatively speaking) Perhaps not relatively speaking, but my 2021 CPU is 10x faster than my 2015 CPU on workload which parallelise (which compiling generally does).

mort96 2y ago
Good, let's look at hard numbers! Windows 3.1 came out in 1992. One of the highlights in the CPU world in 1992 was the launch of the Intel DX2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_DX2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_DX2). It used an 800nm process node, ran at up to 66MHz, had 8k of cache, and was usually coupled with either 4 or 8 MB of RAM. Windows Vista came out in 2007. That's the year Intel released their Core 2 Quad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2). It was a quad core, manufactured on a 45nm process node, running at up to 3.5GHz, with 256k of L1 cache and 8M of L2 cache. In this era, computers often had around 2 GB of RAM. So we're talking 4x the number of cores, 50x the clock speed, 256x the RAM, 1024x the cache. Benchmarks comparing the two are extremely difficult to find, because they're from completely different eras of computing; but I think it's pretty safe to say that your 10x is completely insignificant in comparison.
- SSLy 2y ago
  Clock speed is irrelevant as a comparison point between highly out of order micro-architectures with execution ports approaching dozen by now.
  - mort96 2y ago
    Come on. We're not comparing 2.1GHz and 2.4GHz here. We're comparing 66MHz and 3500MHz. That difference is significant regardless of execution ports and other micro-architectural details. I'm not saying that the Core 2 Quad is 50x more powerful because it has 50x the Hz, or that the Core 2 Quad is 200x more powerful because it has 4x the cores @ 50x the Hz, or that it's 1024x more powerful because it has 1024x the cache, or anything like that. I'm trying to illustrate the extreme evolution of the microprocessor from the early 90s to the late '00s.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    For the throughput of a computer the clock frequency is at least as important as the number of cores, the IPC (instructions per clock cycle) and the amount of work done by one instruction. Were it not for the fact that increasing the clock frequency increases the power consumption more than the throughput, clock frequency would have been the most important factor, because increasing any of the other factors increases the throughput by less than their increment, due to various inefficiencies or because not all applications can benefit from those improvements. For the computer user only the total throughput matters, not how it is achieved.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  While I agree that the increase in speed per socket was greater in the 15 years between 1992 and 2007 than in the following 15 years from 2007 to 2022, your comparison for the cache size is not correct. A motherboard with a 486 CPU of 1992 would have had an L2 cache memory with a size between 64 kB and 256 kB, made with discrete SRAM chips. During the year 2000, the second generations of Intel Pentium III and of AMD Athlon were the first to have an L2 cache memory integrated in the CPU. When first launched in 1999, both Pentium III and Athlon still had external L2 cache memories. External L2 cache memories had been the norm in all motherboards except in the cheapest models, starting already with 80386DX, before 1990. So the L2 cache memory of 2007 was only around 64 times the size of that of 1992. The increase in IPC (instructions per clock cycle) was huge between 1985 and 1995, i.e. 80386 => 80486 => Pentium => Pentium Pro. After that, the increase in IPC has been continuous until the AMD Zen 5 and Intel Lunar Lake of 2024, but at a much slower pace. From 1995 to 2003, there was a huge increase in clock frequency, from 0.2 GHz to 3.2 GHz, i.e. 16 times, while in the next 20 years the clock speed has increased less than 2 times. From 2005 (AMD dual core) until today the greatest speed increases have been provided by either increasing the number of cores per socket or the width of the SIMD execution units. For consumer CPUs (i.e. non-server) Intel has provided a sequence of throughput doublings in the sequence Core 2 (double SIMD throughput vs. previous Athlon X2) => Nehalem (4 cores/socket) => Sandy Bridge (double SIMD throughput) => Haswell (double SIMD throughput), but after that the following throughput doublings in consumer CPUs have all been provided by AMD, with the increase of the number of cores per socket to 8 then 16, and now with the double width of the SIMD units in the desktop variant of Zen 5, i.e. Granite Ridge. So the increase in throughput per socket (in personal computers) between 2004 and 2024 has been of 256 times, due to increases of core count or SIMD width. For comparison with this 20-year improvement, the increase in clock frequency from 1985 to 2003, during 18 years, had been from 16 MHz to 3.2 GHz, i.e. of 200 times. I do not know the exact increase in IPC between 1985 and 2003, as that would require the choice of a benchmark program, to be run both on an 80386 and on a Pentium 4 or on an Opteron, but it might have been around 20 times. The increase in IPC from 2003 to 2024 might be of at most 6 to 8 times, when accepting an increase of 10% to 20% every 2 to 3 years. So overall, with a doubling of the clock frequency from 2004 to 2024, there would be an increase in the throughput per socket for personal (non-server) computers of around 4000 times both during the 19 years from 1985 to 2004 and during the last 20 years. This corresponds on average to a little more than a doubling of the throughput per socket (in personal computers) every 2 years, during the last 40 years (i.e. from an Intel 80386 @ 16 MHz to an AMD 9950X).
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  An intel chip from 2011: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/52210/intel-core-i5-2500k-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-70-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/52210/i... Equivalent chip today: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/236784/intel-core-i5-processor-14500-24m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/236784/... 4 cores/4 threads up to 14 cores/20 threads. Max memory supported 32GB up to 192GB. 3.7Ghz turbo up to 5Ghz. 6MB cache up to 24MB+11.5MB L2. Memory bandwidth 21GB/sec up to 76GB/sec. AVX2. Faster GPU. It’s not so dramatic but it’s not nothing; 5x the threads, nearly 4x memory bandwidth, 1/3rd higher clock speed, 4x the cache, much higher bus bandwidth I think ~5x?
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Plus probably like 2x IPC
  - atiedebee 2y ago
    Using max memory supported in this case seems disingenuous, the truth is that the average computer in 2011 had 8GBs of ram, and the average computer in 2024 has 16GBs of ram, 32 if we're being generous. It doesn't refute your claim that modern CPUs are drastically faster than 12 years ago, but there has definitely been quite a regression in how much we've been gaining the past years

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]