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<p><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left; ">I still remember hearing about Intel's tick-tock cadence and not having much faith that the company could pull it off. Granted Intel hasn't given us a new chip every 12 months on the dot, but more or less there's something new every year. Every year we either get a new architecture on an established process node (tock), or a derivative architecture on a new process node (tick).</span></p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left; ">Last year was a big one. </span>Sandy Bridge<span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left; "> brought a Conroe-like increase in performance across the board thanks to a massive re-plumbing of Intel's out-of-order execution engine and other significant changes to the microarchitecture. If you remember Conroe (the first Core 2 architecture), what followed it was a relatively mild upgrade called Penryn that gave you a little bit in the way of performance and dropped power consumption at the same time.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; text-align: left; ">Ivy Bridge, the follow-on to Sandy Bridge should be a tick but because of significant improvements on the GPU side Intel is calling it a tick+. We managed to get our hands on an early Ivy Bridge system and ran it through some tests to determine exactly how much of an improvement is coming our way in a couple of months.</span></p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy-bridge-preview-core-i7-3770k">Read more...</a></p>
When we first looked at the Opteron 6276, our time was limited and we were only able to run our virtualization, compression, encryption, and rendering benchmarks. Most servers capable of running 20 or more cores/threads target the virtualization market, so that's a logical area to benchmark. The other benchmarks either test a small part of the server workload (compression and encryption) or represent a niche (e.g. rendering), but we included those benchmarks for a simple reason: they gave us additional insight into the performance profile of the Interlagos Opteron, they were easy to run, and last but not least those users/readers that use such applications still benefit.
Back in 2008, however, we discussed the elements of a thorough server review. Our list of important areas to test included ERP, OLTP, OLAP, Web, and Collaborative/E-mail applications. Looking at our initial Interlagos review, several of these are missing in action, but much has changed since 2008. The exploding core counts have made other bottlenecks (memory, I/O) much harder to overcome, the web application that we used back in 2009 stopped scaling beyond 12 cores due to lock contention problems, the Exchange benchmark turned out to be an absolute nightmare to scale beyond 8 threads, and the only manageable OLTP test—Swingbench Calling Circle—needed an increasing number of SSDs to scale.
The ballooning core counts have steadily made it harder and even next to impossible to benchmark applications on native Linux or Windows. Thus, we reacted the same way most companies have reacted: we virtualized our benchmark applications. It's only with a hypervisor that these multi-core monsters make sense in most enterprises, but there are always exceptions. Since quite a few of our readers still like seeing "native" Linux and Windows benchmarks, not to mention quite a few ERP, OLTP, and OLAP servers are still running without any form of virtualization, we took the time to complete our previous review and give the Opteron Interlagos another chance.
In the nearest future Intel is going to start selling their new quad-core LGA 2011 processor – Core i7-3820, which will boast low price tag of only $285. Let’s see how attractive the new product is going to be.
If you are a normal desktop user or even a power user with plans to run at over 4GHz, the vanilla LGA-1155 Sandy Bridge platform is good enough. You get some of the fastest CPUs on the market today paired with reasonably priced motherboards and the ability to use Quick Sync to transcode video...er...quickly. If that's not enough, Intel launched a higher end platform last month: the LGA-2011 Sandy Bridge E.
Take a regular Sandy Bridge, add PCIe 3.0 support, increase the number of PCIe lanes that branch off of the CPU (from 16 to 40 lanes), double the number of memory channels (4 x 64-bit DDR3 memory controllers) and you've got Sandy Bridge E and its LGA-2011/X79 platform. SNB-E is currently available in two forms: a $999 6-core Extreme Edition part (Core i7 3960X) and a $555 6-core unlocked version (Core i7 3930K). Neither is exactly cheap but if you need the PCIe lanes, core count and memory bandwidth, they are your only ticket.
Sandy Bridge E is a fairly niche platform to begin with, but what about the niche within the niche (extremeception?) of users who just need the LGA-2011 platform but not necessarily a 6-core behemoth? For those users, there's the Core i7 3820.
We will talk about the mainstream and entry-level AMD FX CPU modifications based on Bulldozer microarchitecture and featuring eight-, six- and four-core design.
<p><span style="font-size: small;"> Last month, AMD launched their Bulldozer architecture on desktops, and </span><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested"><span style="font-size: small;">the result</span></a><span style="font-size: small;"> was rather underwhelming; however, there are plenty of indications that Bulldozer simply wasn't architected to excel at desktop use models. AMD's "Interlagos" Opteron is now available, doubling the core count of the desktop part and placing its sights firmly on the enterprise server market.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"> The massive Multi Chip Module (MCM) contains eight processor cores (“modules” as AMD likes to call them) and can process 16 integer and 16 floating point threads per cycle. Each of the 16 integer threads gets their own integer cluster, complete with integer executions units, a load/store unit, and an L1-data cache. The Cluster Multi-Threading (CMT) architecture of Bulldozer should be perfectly suited for server applications that are mostly limited by memory accesses and integer processing. The 16 floating point threads have to share eight clusters of two 128-bit FP units, but those units can process FMAC and AVX instructions; recompile your HPC application with an FMAC and/or AVX capable compiler and the chip could become an HPC monster as well.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"> Server applications also like large caches, and Interlagos has plenty of SRAM cells. The Interlagos package has 32MB cache onboard (L2 and exclusive L3 combined). If all caching fails, it can access four memory channels of DDR3-1600, good for 51.2GB/s of theoretical bandwidth per chip. AMD also added power gating to the cores, so inactive cores can enter a very deep (C6) sleep state and save quite a bit power. This should significantly reduce power in idle and light loads.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"> With all of that potential, the initial clock speeds that AMD could be fit inside a 115W TDP envelope are a bit underwhelming. The fastest 115W Interlagos part right now, the Opteron 6276, has a 2.3GHz base clock. The current Opteron 6276 reaches the same clock speed at the same TDP using a less advanced 45nm SOI process. However, the longer pipeline of the new Bulldozer architecture allows the chip to use Turbo Core to boost to 2.6GHz when running most server workloads, and if only half of the cores are active, the chip is capable of 3.2GHz.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"> The initial desktop launch of Zembezi may have left us wanting more, and Interlagos might offer that. For server workloads at least, this all looks very promising. Let's see what the first "Bulldozer" based Opterons can do.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/5058/amds-opteron-interlagos-6200">Read more...</a><br />
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Six-core processors for enthusiasts are finally migrating to Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. And in the process they acquire quad-channel memory controller, integrated PCI Express 3.0 controller and extensive overclocking-friendly functionality. Are these innovations enough to help them set new performance records ?
<p><span style="font-size: small;"> If you look carefully enough, you may notice that things are changing. It first became apparent shortly after the release of Nehalem. Intel bifurcated the performance desktop space by embracing a two-socket strategy, something we'd never seen from Intel and only once from AMD in the early Athlon 64 days (Socket-940 and Socket-754).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"> LGA-1366 came first, but by the time LGA-1156 arrived a year later it no longer made sense to recommend Intel's high-end Nehalem platform. Lynnfield was nearly as fast and the entire platform was more affordable.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"> When Sandy Bridge launched earlier this year, all we got was the mainstream desktop version. No one complained because it was fast enough, but we all knew an ultra high-end desktop part was in the works. A true successor to Nehalem's LGA-1366 platform for those who waited all this time.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;">After some delays, Sandy Bridge E is finally here. The platform is actually pretty simple to talk about. There's a new socket: LGA-2011, a new chipset Intel's X79 and of course the Sandy Bridge E CPU itself. Read on for our review !</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/intel-core-i7-3960x-sandy-bridge-e-review-keeping-the-high-end-alive">Read more...</a><br />
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Over the past few months AMD and Intel have been actively promoting desktop processors with computational and graphics cores insides. During our comparative test session we studied hybrid products like that and compared the performance of AMD A8, A6 and A4 against that of Intel Core i3 and Pentium processors.
<p><span style="font-size: small;"> How do you keep increasing performance in a power constrained environment like a smartphone without decreasing battery life? You can design more efficient microarchitectures, but at some point you’ll run out of steam there. You can transition to newer, more power efficient process technologies but even then progress is very difficult to come by. In the past you could rely on either one of these options to deliver lower power consumption, but these days you have to rely on both - and even then it’s potentially not enough. Heterogeneous multiprocessing is another option available - put a bunch of high performance cores alongside some low performance but low power cores and switch between them as necessary.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span class="s1">NVIDIA recently revealed it was doing something similar to this with its upcoming Tegra 3 (Kal-El) SoC. NVIDIA outfitted its next-generation SoC with five CPU cores, although only a maximum of four are visible to the OS. If you’re running light tasks (background checking for email, SMS/MMS, twitter updates while your phone is locked) then a single low power Cortex A9 core services those needs while the higher performance A9s remain power gated. Request more of the OS (e.g. unlock your phone and load a webpage) and the low power A9 goes to sleep and the 4 high performance cores wake up. </span></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size: small;"> While NVIDIA’s solution uses identical cores simply built using different transistors (LP vs. G), the premise doesn’t change if you move to physically different cores. For NVIDIA, ARM didn’t really have a suitable low power core thus it settled on a lower power Cortex A9. Today, ARM is expanding the Cortex family to include a low power core that can either be used by itself or as an ISA-compatible companion core in Cortex A15 based SoCs. It’s called the ARM Cortex A7.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-size: small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/4991/arms-cortex-a7-bringing-cheaper-dualcore-more-power-efficient-highend-devices">Read more...</a><br />
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