The Intel Xeon E7-8800 v3 Review: The POWER8 Killer?
by Johan De Gelas on May 8, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- IT Computing
- Intel
- Xeon
- Haswell
- Enterprise
- server
- Enterprise CPUs
- POWER
- POWER8
7-Zip Decompression
Up next, let's see how the chips compare in decompression. Decompression is an even lower IPC workload, as it is very branch intensive and depends on the latencies of the multiply and shift instructions.
The slightly higher clock of "Ivy Bridge EX" is enough to keep up with "Haswell EX".
Meanwhile, once again the Haswell core proves to be a bit more capable. It sustains 20% higher IPC with one thread. But run 8 threads inside the most powerful RISC core ever, and the POWER8 beats the XEON E7 by a massive margin: it is almost 50% (!) faster. Wow. Don't believe it? see below.
Now, in defense of Intel, decompression has an exotic instruction mix. You should optimize for the common case, not for exotic software. So we were told by the RISC vendors 30 years ago...
Want more POWER8 benchmarks? Unfortunately we'll have to dissapoint you. The limited server we tested on was not able to run any of our server workloads as we only had one core and less than 2 GB to work with.
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TheSocket - Friday, May 8, 2015 - link
They sure wouldn't lose the x86-64 license since they own it and Intel is licensing it from AMD.melgross - Saturday, May 9, 2015 - link
But without the license from Intel, it is worthless. There's also the question of how that works. I believe that Intel doesn't need to license back the 64 bit extensions.Kevin G - Monday, May 11, 2015 - link
This one of the reasons why it would be in Intelsat best interest to let AMD be bought out with the 32 bit license intact. The 64 bit license/patents going to a third party that doesn't want to share would be a dooms day scenario for Intel. Legally it wouldn't affect anything currently on the market but it'd throw Intel's future roadmap into the trash.Death666Angel - Saturday, May 9, 2015 - link
Pretty sure some regulatory bodies would step in if Intel were the only x86 game in town. And x86-64 is AMD property.JumpingJack - Saturday, May 9, 2015 - link
Any patents on x86 are long expired, AMD only owns the IP related to the extension of the x86 not the instruction set.patrickjp93 - Monday, May 11, 2015 - link
Not true. The U.S. government has them locked up under special military-based protections. Absolutely no one can make and sell x86 without Intel's and the DOD's permission.Kevin G - Monday, May 11, 2015 - link
Got a source for that?I know that DoD did some validation on x86 many years ago. (The Pentium core used by Larrabee had the DoD changes incorporated.)
haplo602 - Friday, May 8, 2015 - link
hmm ... where's the RAS feature comparison/test ? did I miss it in the article ?TeXWiller - Friday, May 8, 2015 - link
In the E7v3 vs POWER comparison table, there should be 32 PCIe lanes instead 40 in the Xeon column.TeXWiller - Friday, May 8, 2015 - link
Additionally, it is the L3 in POWER8 that runs half of the core speed. L2 runs at the core speed.