Intel's Haswell Architecture Analyzed: Building a New PC and a New Intel
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 5, 2012 2:45 AM ESTPrioritizing ILP
Intel has held the single threaded performance crown for years now, but the why is really quite easy to understand: it has prioritized extracting instruction level parallelism with every generation. Couple that with the fact that every two years we see a "new" microprocessor architecture from Intel and there's a recipe for some good old evolutionary gains. The table below shows the increase in size of some major data structures inside Intel's architectures for every tock since Conroe:
| Intel Core Architecture Buffer Sizes | ||||||
| Conroe | Nehalem | Sandy Bridge | Haswell | |||
| Out-of-order Window | 96 | 128 | 168 | 192 | ||
| In-flight Loads | 32 | 48 | 64 | 72 | ||
| In-flight Stores | 20 | 32 | 36 | 42 | ||
| Scheduler Entries | 32 | 36 | 54 | 60 | ||
| Integer Register File | N/A | N/A | 160 | 168 | ||
| FP Register File | N/A | N/A | 144 | 168 | ||
| Allocation Queue | ? | 28/thread | 28/thread | 56 | ||
Increasing the OoO window allows the execution units to extract more parallelism and thus improve single threaded performance. Each generation Intel is simply dedicating additional transistors to increasing these structures and thus better feeding the beast.
This isn't rocket science, but it is enabled by Intel's clockwork fab execution. Designers can count on another 30% die area to work with every 2 years, so every 2 years they increase the size of these structures without worrying about ballooning the die. The beauty of evolutionary improvements like this is that when viewed over the long term they look downright revolutionary. Comparing Haswell to Conroe, the OoO scheduling window has grown by a factor of 2x, despite generation to generation gains of only 14 - 33%.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
245 Comments
View All Comments
stop-a - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
100% agree on the well engineered part especially on the antenna gate when Steve God was saying "you're holding wrong", plus the recently ingeniously designed sapphire glass lens camera when Tim Schmok was saying "stay away from bright light source". Boy, Apple products must be engineered straight from the heaven; they are just too perfect for a mere earthling to use.Paer0 - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
@stop-a. Since you are a 100% Apple hater, let me ask you this what computer do you use? And what OS do you use on it? I hope it doesn't crash several times a day. I use a MacBook Pro 2012 and I don't see anything come close.Urizane - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
You really shouldn't use the 'crash several times a day' piece anymore. I'm annoyed every time I see this. My Windows 7 machine has an uptime of 20 days and counting. Most of the time, it waits for me to connect to it via SplashTop or FTP, or it's recording TV shows, but when I play games, I stress it bigtime. Seriously, stop with the Windows constantly crashes crap. It's just plain false now.P.S. - 20 days ago, I brought it to another house, thus the interruption in uptime.
StevoLincolnite - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
I have a Dual socket 2011 motherboard with dual Core i7 3930K's both chips clocked to 4.6ghz, 32gb of ram, Triple Radeon 7970 3gb cards powering 3x 27" Dell U2711 monitors in Eyefinity.Kay go. Lets see if your Mac can keep up or a Mac workstation at the same price. (Hint: Not going to happen.)
Besides, Mac's look ugly, I prefer the whole she-bang of a side window with a nice water cooling loop and having the whole thing light up, not some dull silver box.
Plus, my system is completely stable. Never had a crash yet with Windows 7 and... I have access to the last couple of decades worth of software and games, not to mention emulation of other platforms.
I can also pretty much find software and hardware easily and it will "just work" I never have to ask the question of: Will it work on a Mac?
lmcd - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
I don't think you're in their target audience, for some reason. They're the best preconfigured system out there, especially once you ignore price.Magik_Breezy - Sunday, October 14, 2012 - link
You'd hope a manufacturer can "configure" a system for an extra $1,400Hardware: $400
I'm Apple: $1,400
Total: $1,800
With PCs manufacturers almost always loose money selling motherboards
vt1hun - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
Two Core i7s working on a dual 2011 socket motherboard? You need QPI links for that which only certain Xeons have. Sounds like your system will just NOT work !FunBunny2 - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
If Steve hadn't done what Apple does best (according to Steve) "steal" BSD unix, would you still be crowing?Magik_Breezy - Sunday, October 14, 2012 - link
His operating system doesn't crash 7 times a day because he doesn't run OS X, I'll rephrase that, because he isn't a retardHisDivineOrder - Sunday, October 7, 2012 - link
Let's not forget the obscenely high failure rates due of Macbook Pro's because they are huge, metallic, and yet refuse to have vents ruin the smooth awesomeness of their aesthetic.Whoops, for many it won't last more than two years, if that. Hell, if you're lucky, your battery will give out before your laptop cooks. Regardless, look up what Apple suggests and you'll get:
Buy another one. Yours is old. ;)