[CubeBoy]

ct has recently published a handful of benchmarks for AMD's Opteron, scheduled for launch in 4 days, these benchmarks include standard workstations benchmarks as well as specmarks. Seeing that IBM has also released preliminary specmarks for it's PowerPC 970 cpu, I will post both composite scores and analyze what they mean for both chips.

Opteron 1.8 ghz
SpecInt base: 1048
SpecFP base: 998

PowerPC 970 1.8 ghz
SpecInt base: 937
SpecFP base: 1051

This bodes well for the PowerPC 970 as while the Opteron's Specmarks were actual marks done with all the perks, the PowerPC 970's Specmarks were preliminary done by IBM without altivec activated. It is estimated that a PowerPC 970 with altivec activated would get a equal if not better score than a Opteron in SpecInt and absolutely trounce the Opteron in SpecFP. The 970 will probably also scale higher than the Opteron, be superior in dual processor configurations, and be cheaper to manufacture. With AMD launching it's Opteron in 4 days and Intel sure to follow with Prescott, Noconas, and Itanium 3, it looks like we might also see a early launch of PowerPC 970s as well. Good days ahead, and soon.

[hmurchison2001]

CB-

Yeah I was suprised to see the Opteron debuting at less than 2Ghz. I curious to see how the Athlon64 and Opteron coexist together. I know the Opteron will be Workstation/Server. Hmmm it all depends on how Apple positions the 970. If they utilize the 970 in all machines the $1400-1500 Powermac will be competitive with entry level Opteron systems. I like that.

[Axo1ot1]

I'm creaming in my pants!

Too bad the next computer I buy is going to have to be a notebook

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by Axo1ot1:
I'm creaming in my pants!

Too bad the next computer I buy is going to have to be a notebook

Why so glum? Th 970 runs as cool as, or cooler than the G4 currently does...

No problem putting them in notebooks...there is rumour that the 970 could debut in a notebook

As soon as a 15 Alu 970 come out, I'm going mobile too

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by CubeBoy:
ct has recently published a handful of benchmarks for AMD's Opteron, scheduled for launch in 4 days, these benchmarks include standard workstations benchmarks as well as specmarks. Seeing that IBM has also released preliminary specmarks for it's PowerPC 970 cpu, I will post both composite scores and analyze what they mean for both chips.

Opteron 1.8 ghz
SpecInt base: 1048
SpecFP base: 998

PowerPC 970 1.8 ghz
SpecInt base: 937
SpecFP base: 1051

This bodes well for the PowerPC 970 as while the Opteron's Specmarks were actual marks done with all the perks, the PowerPC 970's Specmarks were preliminary done by IBM without altivec activated. It is estimated that a PowerPC 970 with altivec activated would get a equal if not better score than a Opteron in SpecInt and absolutely trounce the Opteron in SpecFP. The 970 will probably also scale higher than the Opteron, be superior in dual processor configurations, and be cheaper to manufacture. With AMD launching it's Opteron in 4 days and Intel sure to follow with Prescott, Noconas, and Itanium 3, it looks like we might also see a early launch of PowerPC 970s as well. Good days ahead, and soon.

A few questions:
1) For Altivec to boost SPEC scores, IBM or Apple would have to have an auto-vectorizing compiler. Do they?
2) What Noconas? I've heard of Prescott, Deerfield, Tejas, and a few others, but not Noconas.


Other than that, looks good. I'm actually kinda surprised the 970 beats the Opteron at SPECfp since Opteron still has the triple FPU from the Athlon. Lets just hope they both pass up the 1100/1100 score for the P4 soon...

[CubeBoy]

Originally posted by Catfish_Man:
A few questions:
1) For Altivec to boost SPEC scores, IBM or Apple would have to have an auto-vectorizing compiler. Do they?
2) What Noconas? I've heard of Prescott, Deerfield, Tejas, and a few others, but not Noconas.


Other than that, looks good. I'm actually kinda surprised the 970 beats the Opteron at SPECfp since Opteron still has the triple FPU from the Athlon. Lets just hope they both pass up the 1100/1100 score for the P4 soon...

1) I believe Metrowerk's compiler auto-vectorizes, I don't know how well it would do in SPEC though.

2) Noconas will be the next Xeon, it will include:
a)4 logical processors (Prescott has two, Pentium 4 has one)
b)32 kbyte data cache (Prescott has 16 kbyte, Pentium 4 has 8 kbyte)

Other than that, it's pretty much the same as Prescott, it'll probably be available in single and dual processor configurations. Deerfield will be the low-end Itanium 3, Madison will be the high end, nevertheless both are expected to have a SPECfp of at least 2000, Potomac is also on the horizon, it will essentialy be a dual core Noconas with 64 bit data width. I'm not sure when the dual core Itanium 3 will be announced. Also, no word yet on the Itanium that the former Alpha team and Itanium team are working on. Apparently Intel is not a big fan of the free flow of information.

[bousozoku]

I believe that Apple's version of gcc v3.1 does automatically emit vector instructions. MetroWerks has a checkbox for AltiVec support.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by bousozoku:
I believe that Apple's version of gcc v3.1 does automatically emit vector instructions. MetroWerks has a checkbox for AltiVec support.

I've used Apple's GCC. It supports Altivec in the sense that it recognizes "vector" and "pixel" and a few other things as keywords. It doesn't autmatically make things use Altivec. I don't know about Codewarrior, it would be cool if it did.

[CubeBoy]

Woohoo, Opteron is out today, Toms Hardware has already posted some benchmarks of it.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030422/index.html

Conclusion? Rules in servers, doesn't do so good in workstations.

[CubeBoy]

Looks like the official Spec scores are out. Unfortunately, it seems ct's marks were a bit err off.

The 1.8 ghz Opteron is the new x86 SPEC leader. It beat the fastest x86 offering, the 3.06 ghz Pentium 4 but still falls short of Itanium 2 or Power4.

Opteron 1.8 ghz
SPECint: 1170
SPECfp: 1219

[Thinine]

Safari really mangles that page. Yeesh.

[Anand]

SO IBM has signed up to use the opteron for their servers. Why note use only the 970? I still wonder why IBM is making the 970. It can't just be for Apple. Apple sells 1 million powermacs/year - if they are lucky! I guess we won't find out who the 970 is for until next year.

[Amorph]

Originally posted by Anand:
SO IBM has signed up to use the opteron for their servers. Why note use only the 970? I still wonder why IBM is making the 970. It can't just be for Apple. Apple sells 1 million powermacs/year - if they are lucky! I guess we won't find out who the 970 is for until next year.

IBM will cheerfully offer Opterons, Itanics, PPC 970s, and whatever else their customers might take a fancy to.

They're not at all averse to selling other people's hardware, as long as they get the licensing and service contracts.

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by Amorph:
IBM will cheerfully offer Opterons, Itanics, PPC 970s, and whatever else their customers might take a fancy to.

They're not at all averse to selling other people's hardware, as long as they get the licensing and service contracts.

This why I have a funny feeling that part of the deal with IBM, is that we will see them offering an x86 version of OS X on their servers...

If this were the case, they could cater for their clients every needs be it OS X, Linux, x86, PPC... you name it...

You have to ask what they are getting out of the chip deal, unless Apple go dual 970 for the whole range... which lets face it, isn't going to happen.

Peace,

Marc

[CubeBoy]

Originally posted by Anand:
SO IBM has signed up to use the opteron for their servers. Why note use only the 970? I still wonder why IBM is making the 970. It can't just be for Apple. Apple sells 1 million powermacs/year - if they are lucky! I guess we won't find out who the 970 is for until next year.

PowerPC 970s will primarily be used in blade servers, Opterons will be used in low end and possibly mid-range servers with 8 way configurations, Itanium 2 and Power4+ will be used somewhat in the midrange but mostly in the high end servers.

[DrBoar]

IBM blades.
IBM are happy to sell any server a customer is a customer. However, the more IBM stuff on the inisde the better, the happier they get. IBM hard disk instead of Maxtor IBM unix instead of Linux, IBM 970 instead of Intel or AMD CPUs.

Originally posted by Marc2211

You have to ask what they are getting out of the chip deal, unless Apple go dual 970 for the whole range... w.

For IBM there are advantages of selling blade servers with their own CPUs instead of others CPUs. Blade servers is a big but hardly endless market so if they can sell the 970 in other markets they will share the cost of development tooling etc on more chips. Faster ROI and more money in the bank

A good 970 customer is one that
A- Does not compete head on with IBM
Selling blade server CPUs to HP or Dell would not be that smart would it?
Apple is not overlapping much with IBM despite its blade server...

B-Can use poducts that IBM does not find useful.
IBM probably need the highrange 970 to compete with the AMD and Intels in blade servers. The slower 970 is possiby quite useful for embedded applications or for a computer manufacturer that currently use CPUs that are slower than AMD and Intels...
Apple: 1 GHz 970 would be a vast improvement over the single G4 in iMac and the PB. Even in the G4 towers single and dual 1 GHz 970 would be a substantial performance boost.

The thought that we have to wait until next year until the arrival of the 970 strike horror in me My hope and belif is that both IBM and Apple will have 970 boxes out this year. As IBMs plan is to produce 970 up to 1.8 GHz in 2H 2003 and Apple would get a speed boost using 970 at half that speed there really is no reason for Apple to wait until the 1.8 GHz is aviable. Apple 970 towers this summer at what ever speed is aviable is a must
Then they can introuduce speed bumps at a later date, but Apple need to ASAP show that there is a way out of the 4 year G4 failure.

The irony of the G4 marked as the first personal super computer and the unit of measure was "flops"... Sure it has been a super flop the only thing it had was consistency. It started by trailing way behind the 1 GHz AMD Athlon that came a couple of months after the introduction of the 500 no 450 MHz G4 and sure enough year after year the G4 has keept trailing way behind

[clarkgoble]

Just a bit more to add to the rumor that will not die.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/30372.html