Comments on: Istanbul and Nehalem repeat death match in the STREAM arena http://insidehpc.com/2009/06/30/instanbul-and-nehalem-repeat-death-match-in-the-stream-arena/ HPC news for supercomputing professionals Mon, 21 May 2012 17:48:07 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: Mark Hahn http://insidehpc.com/2009/06/30/instanbul-and-nehalem-repeat-death-match-in-the-stream-arena/comment-page-1/#comment-172624 Mark Hahn Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:47:30 +0000 http://insidehpc.com/?p=5942#comment-172624 as usual, intel and amd are trying to stay out of step with each other, so each has some advantage to crow about. overall, intel dominates the crow-ables, which isn't really surprising. but amd can crow about more cores and (as far as we know) better SMP scalability. have there been any reports of 4 or 8-socket nehalem boxes? IMO, much of the point of istanbul is actually the numa improvement, which applies more to > 2-socket boxes. in the end, intel is showing the advantages of more/faster ram channels, but also paying the price penalty. it'll be interesting to see when amd chooses to release ddr3 for opterons - obviously there are some codes where the relatively low BW is hurting them. it's a bit hard to understand why they're waiting, since time only lets the impression of intel's superiority solidify further. as usual, intel and amd are trying to stay out of step with each other, so each has some advantage to crow about. overall, intel dominates the crow-ables, which isn’t really surprising. but amd can crow about more cores and (as far as we know) better SMP scalability. have there been any reports of 4 or 8-socket nehalem boxes? IMO, much of the point of istanbul is actually the numa improvement, which applies more to > 2-socket boxes.

in the end, intel is showing the advantages of more/faster ram channels, but also paying the price penalty. it’ll be interesting to see when amd chooses to release ddr3 for opterons – obviously there are some codes where the relatively low BW is hurting them. it’s a bit hard to understand why they’re waiting, since time only lets the impression of intel’s superiority solidify further.

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