I think it's obvious from number of ALUs that 40% improvement is for scalar single-thread code that greartly bemnefits from access to all 4 integer ALUs. Of course, it will get the same benefit fro any code running up to 8 threads (for 8-core Zen). But anyway it should be slower than KabyLake since Intel spent much more time optimizng their CPUs
For m/t execution, improvements will be much smaller, 10-20%, i think. Plus, 8-core CPU will probably run at smaller frequency than 4-core Buldozers or 4-core KabyLake. AFAIK, even Intel 8c-ore CPUs run at 3.2 GHz only, and it's after many years of power optimization. We also know that *selected* Zen cpus run at 3.2 GHz in benchamrks. So, i expect either < 3 GHz frequency, or 200 Wt power budget
"For m/t execution, improvements will be much smaller, 10-20%, i think."
There are bottlenecks in Bulldozer-family when a module is running two threads. An improvement of 40% for m/t Zen execution in respect to Bulldozer m/t execution is possible. It is a question of what the baseline of measurement is.
M/t execution in Bulldozer already can use all 4 INT alus, so i think that 40% IPC improvement is impossible. In other words, if s/t IPC improved by 40% by moving from 2 alu to 4 alu arrangement, m/t performance that keeps the same 4 alu arrangement, hardly can be improved by more than 20%
you can measure instruction per cycles for a thread, 3 threads, core, cpu or anything else. what's a problem??
My point is that s/t speed on Zen is improved much more than m/t speed, compared to last in Bulldozer family. So, they advertized improvement in s/t speed, that is 40%. And m/t improvement is much less since it still the same 4 alus (although many other parts become wider).
Except you're absolutely wrong, the performance increases will be much higher for MT than ST.
Bulldozer was hindered by the module design, so you had poor MT scaling - not an issue with Zen. On top of that, Zen has SMT, which should add another 20% or so more MT performance for the same number of cores.
A 40% ST improvement for Zen could easily mean a 100% performance improvement for MT.
It's not "on top of that". Zen is pretty simple Bulldozer modification that fianlly allowed to use all 4 scalar ALUs in the module for the single thread. It's why scalar s/t perfroamnce should be 40% faster. OTOH, two threads in the module still share those 4 scalar ALUs as before, so m/t perfromance cannot improve much. On top of that, module was renamed to core. So, there are 2x more cores now and of course m/t performance of entire CPU will be 2x higher
It is possible that AMD already count SMT (hyperthreading) into those 40%.
Their slide which states "40% IPC Performance Uplift" also lists all things that AMD used to achieve those 40%...and first among those listed things is "Two threads per core". So if AMD already counted that into their 40% IPC uplift, then 'real' IPC improvement (for single thread) would be much lower.
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Bulat Ziganshin - Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - link
I think it's obvious from number of ALUs that 40% improvement is for scalar single-thread code that greartly bemnefits from access to all 4 integer ALUs. Of course, it will get the same benefit fro any code running up to 8 threads (for 8-core Zen). But anyway it should be slower than KabyLake since Intel spent much more time optimizng their CPUsFor m/t execution, improvements will be much smaller, 10-20%, i think. Plus, 8-core CPU will probably run at smaller frequency than 4-core Buldozers or 4-core KabyLake. AFAIK, even Intel 8c-ore CPUs run at 3.2 GHz only, and it's after many years of power optimization. We also know that *selected* Zen cpus run at 3.2 GHz in benchamrks. So, i expect either < 3 GHz frequency, or 200 Wt power budget
atomsymbol - Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - link
"For m/t execution, improvements will be much smaller, 10-20%, i think."There are bottlenecks in Bulldozer-family when a module is running two threads. An improvement of 40% for m/t Zen execution in respect to Bulldozer m/t execution is possible. It is a question of what the baseline of measurement is.
Bulat Ziganshin - Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - link
M/t execution in Bulldozer already can use all 4 INT alus, so i think that 40% IPC improvement is impossible. In other words, if s/t IPC improved by 40% by moving from 2 alu to 4 alu arrangement, m/t performance that keeps the same 4 alu arrangement, hardly can be improved by more than 20%looncraz - Wednesday, August 24, 2016 - link
IPC is NOT MT, it is ST only.IPC is per-core, per-thread, per-clock, instruction retire rate... which generally equates to performance per clock per core per thread.
Bulat Ziganshin - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
you can measure instruction per cycles for a thread, 3 threads, core, cpu or anything else. what's a problem??My point is that s/t speed on Zen is improved much more than m/t speed, compared to last in Bulldozer family. So, they advertized improvement in s/t speed, that is 40%. And m/t improvement is much less since it still the same 4 alus (although many other parts become wider).
atomsymbol - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
AMD presentation was comparing Zen to Broadwell in a m/t workload with all CPU cores utilized.From
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/528/AMD_A10-Serie...
you can compute that the Blender-specific speedup of Zen over a previous AMD design is about 100/38.8=2.57
Bulat Ziganshin - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Can you compute IPC improvement, that we are discussing here?looncraz - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Except you're absolutely wrong, the performance increases will be much higher for MT than ST.Bulldozer was hindered by the module design, so you had poor MT scaling - not an issue with Zen. On top of that, Zen has SMT, which should add another 20% or so more MT performance for the same number of cores.
A 40% ST improvement for Zen could easily mean a 100% performance improvement for MT.
Bulat Ziganshin - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
It's not "on top of that". Zen is pretty simple Bulldozer modification that fianlly allowed to use all 4 scalar ALUs in the module for the single thread. It's why scalar s/t perfroamnce should be 40% faster. OTOH, two threads in the module still share those 4 scalar ALUs as before, so m/t perfromance cannot improve much. On top of that, module was renamed to core. So, there are 2x more cores now and of course m/t performance of entire CPU will be 2x higherNenad - Thursday, September 8, 2016 - link
It is possible that AMD already count SMT (hyperthreading) into those 40%.Their slide which states "40% IPC Performance Uplift" also lists all things that AMD used to achieve those 40%...and first among those listed things is "Two threads per core". So if AMD already counted that into their 40% IPC uplift, then 'real' IPC improvement (for single thread) would be much lower.