Intel Sandy Bridge-EP versus AMD Interlagos

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Chess Gator

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Jan 20, 2008
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Hello group,

In the 3rd quarter of 2011, Intel will be launching it's next generation CPU with Sandy Bridge-EP, which is expected to feature 8 cores, 16MB of L3 cache (although some rumours put this at 20MB), 4 DDR3 memory controllers, 2 QuickPath 1.1 links and 32 lanes of PCI-Express 3.0.

Sandybridge Architecture Overview:
http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT091810191937

In approximately the same timeframe AMD will be launching Interlagos Opteron, which is based on AMD's new Bulldozer core architecture, Interlagos has 8 Bulldozer modules, thus 16 cores per CPU!

Bulldozer Architecture Overview:
http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT082610181333&p=1

It looks like by the 3rd Quarter of 2011, Interlagos Opteron will finally be better than Intel CPUs for computer chess play!

Perhaps, someone more technical can comment.

Cordially,

CG
 
Well Intels 8 core Sandy Bridge EP also has SMT so 16 threads.

I am waiting to see what BD will be able to do. Its a interesting idea but all ideas have to be shown in action. Sometimes they turn out great and other times they turn out pretty crappy (Netburst, K10).
 


Its easier to speculate on something thats more solid and known. I.E. Sandy Bridge. We know its based around Core so we know that it should also provide performance enhancements. We knew that Deneb was Phenom with major improvements so we also knew it should provide better performance as well if we also considered the move to 45nm.

But with Bulldozer, its new. The idea behind it sounds good but we have never seen anything like this in action so its just hard to speculate with. We can say a 8 module CPU will be equal to or better than a true 16 core or we can say it wont be.

I personally prefer actual facts to speculation. All the speculation behind Prescott pointed towards better than Northwood. But that was wrong and is why I never went with a Prescott based Pentium 4. K10 was speculated to be better than Core 2.

But facts will present themselves in time. Plus with facts you can't hype. With speculation hype can grow out of control.
 
There truly isnt enough info on BD currently, and I believe this is hurting AMD
They did show some smaller renditions to potential clients, and they were thuroughly impressed.

Comparing something to a known constant always will have an advantage here.
Even if its awhile before BD comes to market, I think AMD needs to put out a lil more solid infos
 
The longer it takes, knowing its close, the worst itll look for AMD
Understand, Im saying this now, way early on, but as we creep closer to the expected delivery, Im hoping for AMDs sake, BDs abilities sake, we have much more info, especially with this unique approach
 


AMDs VP was the one who touted the claim of 40% better than Clovertown (the first set of Core 2 based Xeons) in a majority of workloads:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/amd-claims-quad-core-barcelona-will-outperform-intel-clovertown-by-40/236

It was a claim for server chips, which was wrong too in most server areas except for 4P+, that was perpetuated by a lot of AMD fanboys that K10, Phenom, would be 40% faster than Core 2 Quad.

That was major hype that pretty much killed Phenom when it hit performing worse than a equally clocked year old Core 2 Quad.
 
But it was carried all over as well, not just AMD fans.
Total distortion, and again, is why, with its new arch, new approach, AMD really needs to get this info out ASAP, over and over, so no misconceptions, no fanboy explosions done thru misconceptions etc
 
Think about the confusions Intel has caused with its simple variety
Does i3 have SMP, will i5 have more or higher turbo, or none at all etc

AMD/BD enters into some of this, plus its new concept/approach
 
I think that I will speculate. I speculate that the AMD processor will be faster than the Intel processor per core on multi-threaded programs but will be slower on single threaded programs at the same clock speed..
 
for now i'll wail till we have some hard data. On paper, the way BD is made sounds interesting and it should be fast but we seen where that went before.

Cant wait for some hard data.
 

imagesn.jpg

Was it this guy?
 


Here's what we know so far:

- Sandy Bridge needs a new socket (Socket R/LGA2011) while Interlagos is supposed to be a drop-in upgrade in G34 motherboards.
- Sandy Bridge will have 8 cores/16 threads in the 1P/2P segment and some unknown but probably higher core count in the 4P+ segment (Westmere-EX has 10 cores/20 threads.) Interlagos will be available in 12 core/12 thread and 16 core/16 thread variants.
- Both will support four channels of DDR3 running at least at DDR3-1600 speeds.
- Socket R/LGA 2011 is supposed to be able to use the same heatsinks as LGA1366.
- Interlagos's thermal envelopes will be fairly similar to Magny-Cours's.
- We know a little bit about the performance of some very early Sandy Bridge samples in a handful of benchmarks. We really know nothing about Interlagos's performance.
- We know Sandy Bridge will have 32 KB L1 I$ and D$ plus 256 KB of L2 per core, with the cores and some L3 tied together on a Nehalem-EX style ring bus. Interlagos will be an MCM like Magny-Cours, connected through HT links, but AMD is quiet on cache sizes.
- Both Sandy Bridge and Interlagos will have some sort of turbo mode.
- Both will be made on 32 nm HKMG processes.
- Neither is supposed to have an on-die GPU, unlike some of the planned desktop and mobile variants using the same architecture.

If I have missed anything, please add to the list.
 



Excellent post. Thank you.
 


You are pretty much dead on but I think there are a few things I can add:

-High end desktop Sandy Bridge B2 (LGA2011) will have 15 - 20MB L3 cache, 15MB L3 for 6 (12 threads) core and 20MB L3 for 8 (16 threads) core.
-Sandy Bridge EN (LGA2011) 1-2P server will have 20MB L3 and will come in 2-8 (4-16 threads) core variants
-Sandy bridge EP (LGA2011) 1-2P server will also have 20MB L3 and will have 4-8 (8-16 threads) cores
-Sandy Bridge EX (LGA2011) entry level 4P server will have 20MB L3 cache and be strictly 8 (16 threads) cores and will utilize 2xQPI 1.1 links
-All versions of Sandy Bridge will incorporate a 256bit ring bus to connect the cores
-All versions are rated at 35w-95w TDP except for Sandy Bridge EP and EX which rance from <80w-150w TDP, probably depending on the clock speed and amount of memory channels used
-Micro-op trace cache and enlarged, optimized branch predictor
-Peak memory bandwidth using 4x DDR3-1600 is 51.2GB/s, more than double what mainstream DT is at 21.3GB/s using 2x DDR-1333 and almost 2x more than Nehalem

Other than that I can't see much more. Westmere EX I think is just a side step until they can move to Ivy Bridge.

I would expect that a lot of server applications hungry for memory bandwidth will love anything on LGA2011. Thats a huge increase. Wish we had a idea of Interlagos memory bandwidth to see because the server market is where they make the most money.
 


Interlagos will support four channels of DDR3 running at a speed of DDR3-1600 or better, so the theoretical memory bandwidth will be at least that of Sandy Bridge. I have heard unconfirmed rumors of Bulldozer supporting DDR3-1866, since that is the highest JEDEC-approved DDR3 server memory speed. I would tend to believe it since some G34 boards like the ASUS KGPE-D16 have DDR3-1866 as an option for supported memory speeds. AMD is also well noted to hang onto a certain spec of memory and push up the clock speeds as much as they can before moving onto the next generation of memory.
 
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