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Date:      Fri, 12 Mar 2004 15:33:20 -0500
From:      Jem Matzan <valour@thejemreport.com>
To:        freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Peer review of AMD64/FreeBSD article
Message-ID:  <40521E90.8090102@thejemreport.com>
In-Reply-To: <20040312195958.GA32345@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu>
References:  <200403121301.i2CD1oQC076505@lurza.secnetix.de> <4051B7D3.8020404@thejemreport.com> <20040312174736.GD7661@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> <4052130E.9060601@thejemreport.com> <20040312195958.GA32345@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu>

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Brooks Davis wrote:

>On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 02:44:14PM -0500, Jem Matzan wrote:
>  
>
>>Brooks Davis wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 08:14:59AM -0500, Jem Matzan wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Hyper-Threading seemed to help with processes that didn't require a 
>>>>heavy CPU load. The OpenSSL tests show it being markedly faster in the 
>>>>smaller algorithms, but lagging way behind the 64-bit Athlon64 when the 
>>>>serious number crunching comes into play. Intel's press kit shows HT 
>>>>(and SSE3) giving an advantage when multitasking with four desktop 
>>>>programs in Windows XP. It's just too hard to show that reliably though. 
>>>>There's a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that AMD64 is faster on 
>>>>the desktop (in X) in 64-bit mode than the Prescott is in 32-bit, but 
>>>>I'm having trouble proving it.
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>I think it would be a mistake to assume the HT is what accounts for
>>>the performance difference.  There are so many other architectural
>>>differences it's hard to see how you could isolate the effects of
>>>HT.  My suspicition is that better performance on small 
>>>algorithms is due to them being more or less memory bound (and thus
>>>similar to the pure synthetic benchmarks).
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>By comparing the Pentium4 to the Athlon64 in i386 mode, you can better 
>>see the advantage of HT Technology. This is especially evident in the 
>>OpenSSL tests.
>>    
>>
>
>I strongly disagree.  All you can see is that they differ.  The
>architectural differences between P4 CPUs and current generation amd64
>CPUs are a whole lot more then HT.  You've got a different memory memory
>system, vastly different pipeline lengths, etc.  For that matter,
>on paper at least, I wouldn't expect HT to help much if any in this
>situation since you're not trying to do two things at once.
>
>-- Brooks
>
>  
>
I'm pretty sure I did mention that, but I'll go over the article to make 
sure it's clear that the reason why there is a performance difference 
could be due to a number of factors (which are listed here).

-Jem



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