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Intel unleashes Mac-bound "Woodcrest" server chip - Page 3

post #81 of 566
6/28/06 at 10:10am
Quote:
Originally posted by backtomac
When will hyperthreading be resurrected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperThreading
Quote:
Hyper-Threading is a specialized form of simultaneous multithreading, which has been said to be on Intel roadmaps for the generation after Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest.
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post #82 of 566
6/28/06 at 11:16am
Quote:
Originally posted by backtomac
When will hyperthreading be resurrected. Seems like a good way to enhance performance without increasing power requirements or heat.

I thought it generally wasn't as useful as anyone might have expected. It was useful for certain niche tasks but now that dual core is standard, it doesn't seem to be so necessary.
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post #83 of 566
6/28/06 at 11:30am
Intel has a cheap (at least according to them) water cooling solution. It was designed for Extreme Edition systems but I imagine it could be adapted to Woodcrest.

Intel and AMD are both working on "reverse hyperthreading", also known as Core Multiplexing Technology and is a rumored feature for the Core 2 Duo. In theory it would allow one thread to be split up among the two cores to increase performance.
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post #84 of 566
6/28/06 at 11:49am
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
Given even current Xeon and Opteron servers AFAIK do *not* use liquid cooling (admittedly they are different form factors of 1U, 2U or whatever rack style) ... the Mac Pros even the highest end will most likely *not* use liquid cooling. Some sort of smart heatpipe system with *ahem* thermal paste applied properly ... Fan noise should not be an issue with dampening material, 120mm fans or whatever.

I think Apple engineering will deliver internals that deliver the Woodcrest dualie/quad etc power that Mac Pros should have, and they should be able to manage the acoustics quite well. Well, that's the faith I have currently with the Mac Pros.

Washable filters that prevent dust buildup inside the case that you could easily slide in and out would be nice as well, but that's pushing the wishlist a bit.

Servers don't need liquid cooling because they don't have to be quiet as they're hidden away in server rooms with extreme air conditioning.

Ask any server admin and when they take their ear plugs out and their coats off, they'll tell you about their troglodyte existence in the server room and their desire to be sat next to a slightly toasty but quiet desktop computer.
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post #85 of 566
6/28/06 at 11:42pm
Heh. The server room should be renamed the "server cave"
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post #86 of 566
6/28/06 at 11:43pm
Core multiplexing [Hyperthreading for Core] link:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=104178

Hardmac.com has a sensible quick word on it:
"So in the future, non optimized applications will benefit from multicore CPU, even though it will never be as fast as a multicore-aware version of the same application. So this technology might be important for already existing applications, but developers should always try to get the best out of multicore CPU; especially for Pro applications."
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post #87 of 566
6/29/06 at 12:01am
Core multiplexing images below. Looks sweet in theory...!



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post #88 of 566
6/29/06 at 2:20pm
I sort of wish they wouldn't do it. This strikes me as more of a crutch for programs that aren't MP-aware. I think Apple's big developer boost in the next two years will be when they make Cocoa multi-threading as painless as possible, becuase by WWDC 2007, dual-core will be standard issue in almost all computers.
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post #89 of 566
6/29/06 at 2:31pm
If it works, it should be very welcome by the gaming community as there are a lot of single thread CPU hungry games out there.
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post #90 of 566
6/29/06 at 3:10pm
Quote:
Originally posted by ZachPruckowski
I sort of wish they wouldn't do it. This strikes me as more of a crutch for programs that aren't MP-aware. I think Apple's big developer boost in the next two years will be when they make Cocoa multi-threading as painless as possible, becuase by WWDC 2007, dual-core will be standard issue in almost all computers.

How many years have they had to improve Cocoa's multi-threading?

This solution seems a bit weird, it would effectively be a very wide issue processor, which makes me wonder why they did dual core. But I imagine that this would improve all programs, single or multithreaded. There will always be portions of programs that can't so easily be broken down to fit multiple threads.
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post #91 of 566
6/29/06 at 3:20pm
Why would you need threading on a level as high as Cocoa?
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post #92 of 566
6/29/06 at 6:25pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Chucker
Why would you need threading on a level as high as Cocoa?

What I meant was "in XCode". As in:

1) Write your normal application in XCode in Obj-C
2) Compile, and check some "multi-processor aware" box
3) There is no step three.

As I understand it, software programers are scared (wrong word) because effective multi-threading is a pain in the butt. Therefore, if Apple wants to make Obj-C attractive to developers, and get more Mac-only or Mac-first applications, they need to make programming for the Mac easy and powerful.
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post #93 of 566
6/29/06 at 6:49pm
It's not possible like that. Xcode cannot guess what parts of a software can run in parallel (synchronous), and what parts, instead, depend on each other already being finished (asynchronous).
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post #94 of 566
6/29/06 at 8:30pm
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
Core multiplexing images below. Looks sweet in theory...!

Too bad that in reality this core multiplexing tech and "reverse" hyperthreading is a bunch of hooey.
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post #95 of 566
6/29/06 at 8:48pm
Quote:
Originally posted by hmurchison
Hyperthreading on a Core Architecture processor is going ot be much harder. That's because we've taken the pipeline stages of the Netburst architecture down from a long 31 pipes to about 14 in the Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest core. That doesn't leave Intel a lot of room to utilize pipes that aren't being used (which is what HT technology does).

I think we'll see HT come back but it may take a bit of work.

Partially right murch. It is indeed a chip's utilization of the exection units that could make it a good candidate for SMT. Long pipelined processors make good candidates, but short-pipelined processors with lots of execution units also make good candidates.

Seeing as ICM has the most execution resources of any x86 CPU to date, it could make a better candidate than the Netburst architecture. I don't see SMT coming back as in Core2 CPUs, but for servers it is a cheap win and Intel could bring it back into a future ICM-based Xeon.

Technology is working against SMT however. What's the point of SMT when 8-core and 16-core processors will be available for consumers 2 fab nodes down the line, ie, 4 years into the future.

SMT could be the best of all worlds though. A 10-stage pipeline 6-way processor with 4+ integer units, 4 FPUs and 3+ L/S units with SMT could have been the best of all worlds scenario. It could have performed like a dual-core with 3 IUs, 2 FPUs, and 2 LSUs per core, or performed like 6-way processor with 4 IUs/FPUs at its disposal.

It would be quite a complex challenge to build, while mutl-core processors are quite easy to design and fab in comparison.
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post #96 of 566
6/29/06 at 10:13pm
Quote:
Partially right murch. It is indeed a chip's utilization of the exection units that could make it a good candidate for SMT. Long pipelined processors make good candidates, but short-pipelined processors with lots of execution units also make good candidates.

Thank you for making me a more informed AI Slut LOL. Is there a correlation between pipeline states and execution that's fairly common?

I agree about the cores it's amazing how fast we went from single core processors to 4-core in Kenstfield/Clovertown next year. Hell the more the merrier.
He's a mod so he has a few extra vBulletin privileges. That doesn't mean he should stop posting or should start acting like Digital Jesus.
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He's a mod so he has a few extra vBulletin privileges. That doesn't mean he should stop posting or should start acting like Digital Jesus.
- SolipsismX
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post #97 of 566
6/30/06 at 4:32am
[QUOTE]Originally posted by mwswami
If it works, it should be very welcome by the gaming community as there are a lot of single thread CPU hungry games out there.

A pity though in the latest games the GPU is the bottleneck. If there was some super-fast bus and some way for the CPU to "help" the GPU a bit, then that would be cool.

But right now, multiplayer, and even with physics, a single core AMD64 Athlon at 2.0ghz and 512k of cache, is enough for games.

The next step for better performance in games in order of importance is:
-high7 series nVidia GPU or x1800 ati
-1GB up to 2GB
-7200rpm up to 10,000rpm sata or RAID 0 to reduce load times

Like I mentioned somewhere else previously, the gaming upgrade path is a vicious, vicious, life-sucking money-sapping killer. I'm ready to switch to PS2/ XBOX360 sometime over the next few years.......... In July 2007 running the latest and greatest games on 1GB, 7200rpm sata, and nVidia 6600GT 128mb ram, well, it'll be on the "low" setting and there'll be quite some thumb-twiddling waiting for parts of the game to load and all that. Ironically, even at that stage only will single core CPUs just *start* to get maxed out. Anyways by July 2007 only dualcores will be on the market, I suspects.
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post #98 of 566
6/30/06 at 7:43am
I really disagree. An Athlon64 2000+ is far inadequate for smooth play in Battlefield 2, Unreal Tournament 2007, and other large-scale multiplayer games. Add physics to the equation, which are becoming more complex and more prevalent in new games, and a dual core, especially with today's new dual-core optimized titles, looks very appealing. The Unreal Engine 3, Epic Games' next-generation engine, is powering well over a dozen next-generation PC titles, and fully supports dual-core processors.
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post #99 of 566
6/30/06 at 8:36pm
Athlon64 3000+ at 2ghz ??
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post #100 of 566
6/30/06 at 8:42pm
So this is just great then. In 2007 I'll have to get an AthlonX2 or Intel Core-something, plus a high-7series nVidia card, plus another 1GB, plus set up RAID 0. Nice.

Looks like Half Life 2 (Episode 1 ++) will be the last major game I'll be able to enjoy smooth fun gameplay, and a few other major titles for the next year.

Once UT2007-engine driven games come out, yeah, 2007 looks like me switching to console gaming. UT2007 looks great, but the demands on hardware will be high. Vista can kiss my a$$, I'll stick to XP2 as long as possible. But gaming wise, *sigh*. Can't keep fuxxing constantly upgrading my PC. Just for one or two decent titles every few months*.

*Like Myst V I thought it would be great but -- WTF was going on with that? I could get past the first 10 minutes when you go to the beach and then there is some ladder you can't reach and weird writing on tablet stuff. WTF ??!!
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post #101 of 566
6/30/06 at 9:14pm
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
So this is just great then. In 2007 I'll have to get an AthlonX2 or Intel Core-something, plus a high-7series nVidia card, plus another 1GB, plus set up RAID 0. Nice.

I wonder how much RAID-0 would really help a game. There's been a little bit of debate about it, but I think the conclusion is that it doesn't help much if you are handling a lot of small files but it does help in handling a few very large files.
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post #102 of 566
7/3/06 at 7:18am
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
So this is just great then. In 2007 I'll have to get an AthlonX2 or Intel Core-something, plus a high-7series nVidia card, plus another 1GB, plus set up RAID 0. Nice.

Looks like Half Life 2 (Episode 1 ++) will be the last major game I'll be able to enjoy smooth fun gameplay, and a few other major titles for the next year.

Once UT2007-engine driven games come out, yeah, 2007 looks like me switching to console gaming. UT2007 looks great, but the demands on hardware will be high. Vista can kiss my a$$, I'll stick to XP2 as long as possible. But gaming wise, *sigh*. Can't keep fuxxing constantly upgrading my PC. Just for one or two decent titles every few months*.

*Like Myst V I thought it would be great but -- WTF was going on with that? I could get past the first 10 minutes when you go to the beach and then there is some ladder you can't reach and weird writing on tablet stuff. WTF ??!!

It's an Epic-made engine. Which means it kicks ass and, for its visual quality, runs better on low-end hardware than anything else. You can turn down the details all you want and dumb it down to look like Half-Life 2, and it'll most likely run like Half-Life 2, if not better. But you can also go for dual 7950s and look at this sort of deal:

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post #103 of 566
7/3/06 at 7:34am
Cool. Anyways just finished Half Life 2 : Episode 1. Runs nice on 2xAA, full details and 16xAF. HDR is nice. All at 1280x1024. Yeah, maybe 2007 won't be too bad, I'll run games at the lower settings which, like you say, would mean about Half Life 2 quality or faster given smarter 3D engines and all that.

Half Life 2 : Episode 1 and LOTR: BattleforMiddleEarth 2 has been good these past two months. Haven't played UT2004 for a while, I think I've played it too much past few years.

Next up I think I'll give CallOfDuty 2 a shot. Singleplayer missions should be interesting on that, and a change of genre from Fantasy/Sci-Fi to WW2.

Half Life 2 observation: Why are the same people that caused the "problem" in the first place by opening up the dimensional rift STILL in charge of the resistance? Isn't it Black Mesa's fault for the Combine coming into the normal dimension and taking over?? I didn't finish Half Life 1 so maybe I am missing something....
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post #104 of 566
7/3/06 at 12:27pm
Have you played Oblivion yet? If not, run to your nearest retailer. It is quite simply one of the best PC games I have EVER played...a true classic.
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post #105 of 566
7/3/06 at 1:00pm
Quote:
Originally posted by sunilraman
Cool. Anyways just finished Half Life 2 : Episode 1. Runs nice on 2xAA, full details and 16xAF. HDR is nice. All at 1280x1024. Yeah, maybe 2007 won't be too bad, I'll run games at the lower settings which, like you say, would mean about Half Life 2 quality or faster given smarter 3D engines and all that.

Half Life 2 : Episode 1 and LOTR: BattleforMiddleEarth 2 has been good these past two months. Haven't played UT2004 for a while, I think I've played it too much past few years.

Next up I think I'll give CallOfDuty 2 a shot. Singleplayer missions should be interesting on that, and a change of genre from Fantasy/Sci-Fi to WW2.

Half Life 2 observation: Why are the same people that caused the "problem" in the first place by opening up the dimensional rift STILL in charge of the resistance? Isn't it Black Mesa's fault for the Combine coming into the normal dimension and taking over?? I didn't finish Half Life 1 so maybe I am missing something....

One thing that most people don't think about, is that, at some point, not too far away in the future, we will have finally reached realism. At that point, what more will we need?

When we can have a computer generated game, or real time movie at 1920 x 1200p that can't be distinguished from a hi def movie, then we will have reached pretty much "The End". I suppose some wags will want to go to 2560 x 1600, or even further, but we won't see large screen displays in that rez for a while, and by the time we do, the boards will do that as well.

We need a proper Ray Trace for scenes. Correct luminosity for materials, etc.

The last thing needed is a "proper" physics model. The Ageia's PhysX doesn't cut it, as it only models effects, without any play interaction. When the physics model allows something like a player to be blinded in an eye momentarily because (s)he gets water from a splash in it,thus missing a shot, or something equivalent, it won't be ready.

But, when it is ready, everything will have fallen in place.

What is there after that, really?

How long will this take? No less than five years, but possibly, no longer than ten.

And then it will get cheap enough for everyone.
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post #106 of 566
7/3/06 at 2:37pm
Quote:
Originally posted by melgross
One thing that most people don't think about, is that, at some point, not too far away in the future, we will have finally reached realism. At that point, what more will we need?

Imagination?

IMHO, many of today's FPS games show a distinct lack of it.
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post #107 of 566
7/3/06 at 2:42pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Imagination?

IMHO, many of today's FPS games show a distinct lack of it.

Ah!

Sometimes I think that engineers have more imagination than the game designers themselves. How much is really new in games? Other than graphics, sound, etc, not much.

I argue with my daughter about that, but what does she know, she won't be 15 until September. Even if she can beat the pants off anyone.
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post #108 of 566
7/3/06 at 5:56pm
I think Crysis is getting pretty close to photorealism. Its developers have even said that it's close enough for them and now they're going to focus on videorealism, ie, animation quality, AI behavior, and the overall believability of the scene.



Honestly, that would be acceptable in Spiderman 3.
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post #109 of 566
7/3/06 at 6:42pm
Quote:
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Imagination?

IMHO, many of today's FPS games show a distinct lack of it.

I think there's a problem right there, there are so many "FPS" type games that it has pretty much exhausted the various potential scenarios that might require running around and shooting things, what we get now are generally refinements on the game play. Eventually someone will have to come up with something that is interesting, though I wish more developers would get out of that type of game because it is saturated.
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post #110 of 566
7/3/06 at 6:49pm
Thread Starter 
You see. It's stuff like this that makes me think that SLI is still a damn good idea to have for windows switchers, and Mac users if they chose to use it as a gaming machine as well. Not to mention Pro 3D.
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post #111 of 566
7/3/06 at 7:16pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Placebo
I think Crysis is getting pretty close to photorealism. Its developers have even said that it's close enough for them and now they're going to focus on videorealism, ie, animation quality, AI behavior, and the overall believability of the scene.

Honestly, that would be acceptable in Spiderman 3.

The images in this thread are very nice, and if that's rendered in real time, very impressive, but I don't think theyt would work so well on a larger screen as a linear movie.

As you seem to suggest, there are diminishing returns, and one should focus their efforts on where they get the best improvement for the effort.
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post #112 of 566
7/3/06 at 8:43pm
Quote:
Originally posted by onlooker
You see. It's stuff like this that makes me think that SLI is still a damn good idea to have for windows switchers, and Mac users if they chose to use it as a gaming machine as well. Not to mention Pro 3D.

What if we don't get SLI this time around though?!?

Maybe best BTO options might be:

nVidia GeForce 7950 GX2 for gamers & nVidia Quadro FX 4500 X2 for pros




That might be acceptable, but just barely

And only if Apple has the common sense to allow enough space between the main slot & it's neighbor

Thoughts?

;^p
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Late 2009 Unibody MacBook (modified)
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SuperDrive delete
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post #113 of 566
7/3/06 at 9:40pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by MacRonin
What if we don't get SLI this time around though?!?

Maybe best BTO options might be:

nVidia GeForce 7950 GX2 for gamers & nVidia Quadro FX 4500 X2 for pros


That might be acceptable, but just barely

And only if Apple has the common sense to allow enough space between the main slot & it's neighbor

Thoughts?

;^p

When it's the only alternative what else can you do? It's pretty pathetic to have to say that about your computer. This is the high end Mac for Chris-sake. Why should you be forced to settle like that? I think it's an image Apple shouldn't be proud of. This is old technology now. If it's not available it's way past just falling behind. It's inexcusable IMO.
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post #114 of 566
7/3/06 at 10:49pm
Quote:
Originally posted by onlooker
When it's the only alternative what else can you do? It's pretty pathetic to have to say that about your computer. This is the high end Mac for Chris-sake. Why should you be forced to settle like that? I think it's an image Apple shouldn't be proud of. This is old technology now. If it's not available it's way past just falling behind. It's inexcusable IMO.

I think that Crossfire is slated for the next revision of the 975. I read somewhere the other day that the only reason why they didn't have it now, was because of power regulation issues. I'm still not too positive about SLI though.
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post #115 of 566
7/4/06 at 2:12am
[QUOTE]Originally posted by melgross
One thing that most people don't think about, is that, at some point, not too far away in the future, we will have finally reached realism. At that point, what more will we need?.....When we can have a computer generated game, or real time movie at 1920 x 1200p that can't be distinguished from a hi def movie, then we will have reached pretty much "The End". I suppose some wags will want to go to 2560 x 1600, or even further, but we won't see large screen displays in that rez for a while, and by the time we do, the boards will do that as well.........


Nope, you're thinking old skool, mel, establishing a film-print photorealistic visual effect as the endpoint for video game experience.

Next stage, let's not forget my friends (as geeks we must keep it in mind..!) Do not be fooled by getting 100,000fps @ 2560x1600 with a 128-core nVidia GPU @ 100ghz and all that...!

Immersive Virtual Reality. THAT, my friends, is the next stage. Star Trek Next Gen's "Holodeck" as the high benchmark. THAT, is what comes next.
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post #116 of 566
7/4/06 at 2:17am
In my lifetime there has been great strides in computing technology. But this century needs the next big revolutions in energy and matter manipulation. I'd say we'd run the risk of completely annihlating our world in the process. But this area of energy and matter manipulation would be needed to make a real "holodeck". Or virtual reality by "plugging into the matrix", actually, that would work too. Think BIG, peoples
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post #117 of 566
7/4/06 at 2:21am
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Placebo
I think Crysis is getting pretty close to photorealism. Its developers have even said that it's close enough for them and now they're going to focus on videorealism, ie, animation quality, AI behavior, and the overall believability of the scene.... Honestly, that would be acceptable in Spiderman 3.


That's very cool. However, any VFX person will immediately point out the jaggies in the foreground (especially left-front) objects. It won't be acceptable for Spiderman 3
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post #118 of 566
7/4/06 at 4:05am
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Foo Fighter
Have you played Oblivion yet? If not, run to your nearest retailer. It is quite simply one of the best PC games I have EVER played...a true classic.


Is it RPG? Does it have a good single-player mode??
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post #119 of 566
7/4/06 at 4:10am
[QUOTE]Originally posted by onlooker
When it's the only alternative what else can you do? It's pretty pathetic to have to say that about your computer. This is the high end Mac for Chris-sake. Why should you be forced to settle like that? I think it's an image Apple shouldn't be proud of. This is old technology now. If it's not available it's way past just falling behind. It's inexcusable IMO.


Huh? WTF are you talking about? The highest-end gaming GPU is the 7900GTX. SLI'ed 7900GTX generally edges out the 7950GX2 at higher resolutions and settings.

Then on the Quadro side there's the Quadro FX 5500 and Quadro FX 4500 X2.

You sound like even these if offered in a Mac Pro would not be good enough???? In the older days I would say go get a Silicon Graphics machine and be happy but these days I don't know what other super-duper-high-end workstation you would use???

Anyway my guess for the Mac Pro is 7600GT standard, 7900GTX as option, and Quadro FX 4500 X2 as option. The Mac Pros I predict will NOT have SLI capabilities.

I guess your complain which would be valid then is lack of SLI-7900GTX as option and lack of Quadro FX 5500 as option, which would be fair enough. \
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post #120 of 566
7/4/06 at 9:09am
Thread Starter 
Your last sentence is what I said. If SLI on a single card is your only option what else can you do? But why should you be forced to settle? I never liked the SLI on a card idea. The only thing I I think is neat about SLI on a Card is having dual SLI on a card. Not that I'd do it because it's far too expensive, but I have been saving for a pair of Quadro FX 5500's for when the new PM is announced. I'm starting to doubt that I will be able to use them though. We'll see. I may just end up putting a pair of them in my Alienware, and waiting. Again. \ Time will tell.
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