Wilco (wilco.dijkstra.delete@this.ntlworld.com) on April 6, 2021 2:09 pm wrote:
> Adrian (a.delete@this.acm.org) on April 6, 2021 12:01 pm wrote:
> > anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on April 6, 2021 10:48 am wrote:
> > > https://www.anandtech.com/show/16594/intel-3rd-gen-xeon-scalable-review
> >
> >
> >
> > Good:
> > The cheaper SKUs are no longer crippled by disabling 1 of the 2 FMA units.
> > No clock frequency penalty for AVX-256 and light AVX-512 instructions.
> > > For heavy AVX-512 instructions, the clock frequency 80% of normal frequency.
> > There are a few SKUs with good price/performance, e.g. Gold 6312U.
> >
> >
> > Bad:
> > The cheaper SKUs (Silver & Gold 5000) are crippled by low memory speed.
> > Hopefully ARK contains mistakes, because it shows even some
> > Gold 6000 SKUs as being crippled by low memory speed.
> >
> >
> > Very bad:
> > At the same number of active cores and the same power consumption, the clock frequency is much lower
> > than for Epyc 7003, so the performance is much lower for anything that does not use AVX-512 (the Ice Lake
> > IPC is a little lower than that of Zen 3, so at lower clock frequencies it does not have any chance).
> > Also the maximum single-core turbo frequency is much lower than for Epyc 7003.
> >
> >
> > Because of the previous facts, in their presentation Intel has wisely chosen to not show
> > any comparisons with competitors, except the few that could take advantage of AVX-512.
>
> The Ugly:
> Fastest SKU doesn't even beat Graviton 2 on SPECINT.
> Fastest 2S SKU is only 27% faster than 1S Ampere Altra despite double the threads,
> double the DRAM channels, 2.5-3 times the power and quadruple the list price...
>
> Not being able to match standard Arm cores is just embarrassing.

It would be indeed, although it matches and beats quite well a standard ARM *core* (see single thread numbers), just not a bunch of ARM cores in a chip. The latter is less embarrassing depending on the test, because of more cores fitting in, even AMD gets a run for their money on some of the tests.

But quibbling aside, that's quite a turnaround from you, "Not being able to match standard Arm cores is just embarrassing." when 10 years ago you were probably talking about how standard ARM cores already beat everything! Why the change of heart now? Did you see not only Apple and Intel but also AMD easily overtaking the old sluggish ARM cores and finally decide maybe they aren't actually God's gift to high performance CPUs?