Processors

Around mid-May I have upgraded punknix.com server which is a P1-AH2 barebone with the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e. Not only this CPU has a low 45W TDP (review can be find here: [newegg] and [tomshardware]), but also clocked at 2.6GHz. Hence, I expected this CPU can run faster and with cooler temperature than the replaced Athlon 64 X2 4400 2.3GHz. This CPU is the most best suited for my tiny punknix.com server with also runs 3 Xen DomU guests.

the 'cat /proc/cpuinfo' gives me this information:

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 107
model name      : AMD Processor model unknown
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 2612.100
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu de tsc msr pae cx8 apic mtrr cmov pat clflush mmx fxsr sse
 sse2 ht nx mmxext fxsr_opt 3dnowext 3dnow pni cmp_legacy extapic cr8_legacy 
 3dnowprefetch
bogomips        : 5225.80
clflush size    : 64
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps

The most disappointed thing after the upgrade is that I cannot find any update of the BIOS of P1-AH2 (M2N8L motherboard ) to recognize the newest CPUs. So /proc/cpuinfo reports "AMD Processor model unknown". Indeed, the CPU flags returns no "svm" flag. I doubted that would 5050e support hardware virtualization as I thought that all latest AMD CPUs after Pacifica should support SVM. This may be due to "unknown AMD processor" gives wrong report in cpu flags. But when I run a voyage kernel compilation test on DomU guest, it reports:

real	12m24.383s
user	17m2.576s
sys	1m56.547s

which is similar to my expectation. Or, may be SVM does not affect Xen paravirtualzation at all, but only affects kvm.

The sensors programs proved the new chip is COOLER!

k8temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
Core0 Temp:  +25.0 C
Core0 Temp:  +22.0 C
Core1 Temp:  +27.0 C
Core1 Temp:  +29.0 C

dme1737-i2c-0-2e
Adapter: SMBus nForce2 adapter at 4c00
V5stby:      +0.00 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +6.64 V)   ALARM
Vccp:        +1.18 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +2.99 V)
V3.3:        +3.29 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.38 V)
V5:          +4.99 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +6.64 V)
V12:        +11.83 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max = +15.94 V)
V3.3stby:    +3.27 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.38 V)
Vbat:        +3.00 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.38 V)
CPU_Fan:    2020 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
Fan2:          0 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
Fan4:          0 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
RD1 Temp:      FAULT  (low  = -127.0 C, high = +127.0 C)  ALARM
Int Temp:    +50.7 C  (low  = -127.0 C, high = +127.0 C)
CPU Temp:    +45.0 C  (low  = -127.0 C, high = +127.0 C)
cpu0_vid:   +1.550 V

The fan is running steady 2,000 RPMs at idle and 3,000 RPMs at load. When compare to 3000/5000 RPMs I saw with the old 4400, I am much satisfied. Temperature figures also showed 5050e is 5-10 C degress cooler.

New processors in 2004 H2

In the 2nd half of 2004, we again see a closer completion between AMD x86-64 and Intel Pentium 4. In RISC market, POWER5 benchmark stuns the industry, while various RISC vendors have updated their processors. The dawning Alpha from HP is in the list.

SPEC recently published the latest integer and floating point benchmark for IBM POWER5. The 1.9G chip scores 1398 and 2576 in SPECint2000 and SPECfp2000 respectively.

The integer performance is now on par with 3.4G Xeon and Itanium 2, while in floating point is now leading among all processors in the market.

In RISC market, IBM has been leading for a few years with POWER4. By introducing POWER5, IBM developed even a larger gap to other RISC CPU likes PA-RISC, UltraSPARC IV and Alpha. Surprisingly, there is one come closer to the competition, it is SPARC64 V from Fujitsu.

New processors in 2004 H1

The 1st half of 2004 still sees a tight completion between AMD x86-64 and Intel Pentium 4, while RISC chip market remains silent.

If you read the articles or press releases about, the latest development of CPUs from various chip manufactors, you will easily notice that they shared a common architectural characteristics: Dual Core.

Here are some dual core chips currently released:

• IBM POWER4 and POWER5 (Oct 2001 / July 2004) - more and more...
• Sun UltraSPARC VI (Feb 2004) - more...
• HP PA8800 (Feb 2004) - more...

Arstechnica always provides some interesting and enjoyable articles to read. Its processor series is my favourite. Here it comes an architectural history of Pentium. It is a very in-depth and technical article regarding to the design of Pentium. Nice one and highly recommended if you are interested in the internal of the world's most popular chip .

• Part I: From the Pentium to the P6
• Part II: From the Pentium 4 to the Pentium M and Prescott

New processors in 2003 H2

The CPU processor market in later half of 2003 had clamed down a bit. There are not many new CPU announcement in this period. However, we have seen AMD's race competition against Intel, which has been dominating PC and low-end server markets for years.

• AMD Athlon series - Athlon FX and Athlon 64 were announced. This report will reveal how the new processors compared to Opteron, as well as to their major rival Intel Pentium 4.
• Intel Pentium 4 - the benchmark of new 2MB Level 3 Cache 3.2GHz P4XE will show how well it compares to Athlon 64-bit processors as well as Itanium 2

New processors in 2003 H1

As time goes by, new processors come out to replace the old one. After the publish
of Processor Watch a while ago,
it soon becomes outdated. The first half of this year regarding to processor industry
is exciting. First, the announcement of AMD Opteron and Athlon 64 in April. Then there is
an update of Itanium 2 line, Madison, in summer. In WWDC on June, Apple announced PowerMac G5,
powered by 64-bit IBM PowerPC 64 and is claimed to be the first 64-bit
and "the fastest PC in the world".

From my previous article
,
it is known that a single Itanium 2 could perform sightly better than
Power4 used in Regatta p690. Not suprisingly, ZDNet
reports
that NEC already built
a 32-way Itanium server that beats 32-way p690 in
TPC

benchmark.

The Itanium 2 chips used by NEC is McKinley-base chips. This report hints that Itanium
servers could also be scalable when comparing to RISC-based 32-processor configuration.

Seeking of Faster Processor

My daily work related to develope a system that distributes financial market data in real time.
This requires a system be capable to deliver messages as fast as possible. In the first system we developed,
we found that the performance result in not we expect. After weeks of software tuning and code refactoring, the performance improves,
but it could be further improved if some of the codes are rewritten. Anyway, we are better off now. But I always had
an argument that performance of today does not mean for tommorrow, as we can deploy a system with a
faster machine in tomorrow, as long as Moore's law hold true.