AMD plots single thread boost with x86 extensions
Bulldozer injection
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Still intent on improving single thread software performance, AMD has outlined some planned additions to the x86 instruction set that will appear in chips shipping in 2009.
The SSE5 extensions should make life easier on software developers and lead to rather dramatic performance gains. In particular, AMD expects the tweaks to boost code used in the high performance computing, multimedia and security arenas. Customers will see the extensions in AMD's new "Bulldozer" core-based chips that arrive in 2009, first for PC chips and then for server chips.
AMD and Intel have turned to adding more cores per chip to improve their products' performance rather than amping up GHz as in the past. This shift, caused by heat issues, means that developers need to write more complex multi-threaded software than can spread well across all of the cores. The software industry, however, is moving relatively slowly with these efforts, leaving tons of single-threaded code that could use a performance aid one way or another.
According to AMD, the new extensions will bring a couple of major breakthroughs.
For one, AMD will follow the RISC crowd with support for 3-Operand Instructions - up from two. So, unlike in the past where you would do A plus B and then have to store the result of the operation in A or B, developers can now store the result in a third location. This should reduce the total number of instructions needed to perform certain tasks and require less effort on the part of developers to keep track of registers.
The support for 3-Operand Instructions allows AMD to roll out a "fused multiply accumulate" instruction as well. This melds multiplication and addition to permit "iterative calculations with one instruction."
"It is basically taking two consecutive operations that occur very often in sequence and just making them a single operation in the instruction set," said Michael Frank, an AMD fellow.
With the extensions, AMD has seen up to a 5x performance gain in AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption and a 30 per cent boost for DCT (discrete cosine transform), a mathematical operation used with audio and video codecs.
AMD has released the specification for the new instructions here.
COMMENTS
@Adrian Esdaile
Regarding your post:
7. http://www.monashreport.com/2007/07/09/revolutionary-trends-in-the-analytics-market/ - okay, now we're getting somewhere. A database forum... hmm, I've had to try to er, "persuade" a modern parametric CAD/BIM package drive a bloatasaurus SAP backend. I came out gibbering like this after only 2 months - but I had the good sense to quit that job! (The client keep wheeling out dusty guys in grey coats who looked like they had just seen sunlight for the first time in 15 years to tell us that, no, not ALL products used a 8-alphanumeric code, and that they updated the SAP lookup tables BY HAND; for a national supermarket chain...aaaiiiieeeeee my mind's going Dave! Daisy! Daisy!)
I love the picture in my mind of the "dusty guys in grey coats" - sounds to me almost like a scene from Dr. Who where the darleks are coming to get me.
Congratulations on practically making me fall off my chair. Now all the other people in my office think I'm completely mad.
amanfromMars - you give me a real headache - I have to read your sentences over and over and over - eventually giving up preferring to hope beyond hope that I don't end up crawling over into the corner dribbling profusely...
@Adrian Esdaile
RE: AMFM fanalysis
... or ...
9. Post-modern Techno-Poet. Among other methods, makes use of code-obfuscation techniques to turn simple sentences into complex verse, liberally laced with double-entendre, puns and recursion. ("Random" capitialization may be for Emphasis, to denote the DIVINE or to spell out words wIThin words [Recursion])
For instance, one possible translation of paragraph 2 would be:
All people are born with the same potential, (and are initially equal in their ignorance), but as they grow up, they are molded by their experiences, influenced by the place and culture they grow up in, making them unique individuals. When we in our hubris consider enforcing a "global culture" to enforce equality, we are overlooking the great cost to individuality.
Or, in reverse translation mode:
"Riding to work is dangerous, what with all the mobile users and one-armed bikers on the motorway."
Becomes:
"On our daily excursion to the Temple Of IT, we may inadvertently Merge with The Grim Rider, wielding a CELLphone instead of a Scyth, and saluting us Maniacally with two Mechanical digITs."
Mad dogs and Englishmen?
Crumbs, Adrian, thanks for the heads up ........ XSXXXX beer in the Sun scrambles Grey Matter.
Pssst......... Do you think the wily old fox is about to pounce on the Register ..... make them an Offer and deservedly, independently wealthy? After all, there no point in having Social Networking sites and Media companies if they and IT aren't internetworking properly for the family, is there?
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