2 ms·

Skymont: Intel’s E-Cores reach for the Sky

48 points by zdw 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
e3a8 2y ago
Comparison against Ryzen AI 300: https://www.phoronix.com/review/core-ultra-7-lunar-lake-linux https://www.phoronix.com/review/core-ultra-7-lunar-lake-linu...
xaellison 2y ago
there's never a time I've been glad an article used Excel's 3D surface plot lol
jeffbee 2y ago
So it's a huge step over Crestmont, but in practice you can't tell?
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Article suggests that it's due to the relatively large difference in cache architecture. I suspect Skymont would indeed provide double digit percentage gains given identical cache setups. However, giving Crestmont a 24 MB L3 and a 100 MHz clock speed advantage seems to be enough to cancel out Skymont’s improved architecture. Performance-wise, Skymont seems to be at its best in high IPC workloads with a small cache footprint. For example Skymont beats Crestmont by 20.8% in 548.exchange2, a workload that fits in Zen 4’s 32 KB L1D cache. However if a workload is really cache unfriendly, Skymont’s ability to pull more memory bandwidth can show through. I suspect that’s what happens in Y-Cruncher and 549.fotonik3d, as both are very memory bandwidth bound on other architectures. There, Skymont posts huge gains.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    A long time ago, I was planning (and got some initial setup going) to use nodes in a distributed application running on a cluster of diverse architectures to benchmark performance of different types of machine to automatically look for better performance per dollar.
    - magicalhippo 2y ago
      Ah, sounds fun and sounds like something BOINC[1] might be good for. Perhaps one could even analyze data submitted to existing projects to analyze performance on various platforms. [1]: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
- wmf 2y ago
  If Arrow Lake has Skymont attached to the ring we'll see its full performance.
userbinator 2y ago
The elephant in the room is how long the errata list is going to be. Especially after the recent debacle with overvolting its CPUs to self-destruction, I wish they'd focus on stability and correctness a bit more.

48 points by zdw 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

e3a8 2y ago

Comparison against Ryzen AI 300: https://www.phoronix.com/review/core-ultra-7-lunar-lake-linux https://www.phoronix.com/review/core-ultra-7-lunar-lake-linu...

xaellison 2y ago

there's never a time I've been glad an article used Excel's 3D surface plot lol

jeffbee 2y ago

So it's a huge step over Crestmont, but in practice you can't tell?

magicalhippo 2y ago
Article suggests that it's due to the relatively large difference in cache architecture. I suspect Skymont would indeed provide double digit percentage gains given identical cache setups. However, giving Crestmont a 24 MB L3 and a 100 MHz clock speed advantage seems to be enough to cancel out Skymont’s improved architecture. Performance-wise, Skymont seems to be at its best in high IPC workloads with a small cache footprint. For example Skymont beats Crestmont by 20.8% in 548.exchange2, a workload that fits in Zen 4’s 32 KB L1D cache. However if a workload is really cache unfriendly, Skymont’s ability to pull more memory bandwidth can show through. I suspect that’s what happens in Y-Cruncher and 549.fotonik3d, as both are very memory bandwidth bound on other architectures. There, Skymont posts huge gains.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  A long time ago, I was planning (and got some initial setup going) to use nodes in a distributed application running on a cluster of diverse architectures to benchmark performance of different types of machine to automatically look for better performance per dollar.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    Ah, sounds fun and sounds like something BOINC[1] might be good for. Perhaps one could even analyze data submitted to existing projects to analyze performance on various platforms. [1]: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
wmf 2y ago
If Arrow Lake has Skymont attached to the ring we'll see its full performance.

userbinator 2y ago

The elephant in the room is how long the errata list is going to be. Especially after the recent debacle with overvolting its CPUs to self-destruction, I wish they'd focus on stability and correctness a bit more.