Opteron (Was: Re: Xeon as a worthwhile platform?)

[Mirar]

Joe R <vinnyjojo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Interesting. See? This is why I ask - I had no idea they were coming
> out with this ;)

> I know that a lot of GMP routines have code optimized via raw
> assembly-language code. This is a brand new processor and I'd assume
> that there hasn't yet been a chance to write the appropriate
> routines for this cpu. Does it matter?

AMD has done the right thing - it has what they call "dual core",
they have two instruction sets - both the old 32 bit "x86" or "IA32",
and a new 64 bit, and 5 ways of run the processor from what I've seen.

I saw some review that figured that the 64 bit was super-great when it
came to just bignum handling, but I don't recall the exact figures,
but something along the lines of double the prestanda of a 32-bit
Athlon on the same clock speed.

Which makes sense, since for instance multiplying two 1024 bit ints
requires way less instructions if you can use 64 bit registers.
It also has a larger L2 cache (1Mb?).

But I don't know much of it either. :) 

I found this article that I will read now,
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/amd-hammer-family/index.html

especially the tables near the end seems interesting.

/Mirar