Some interesting Altivec figures

[KennyR]

Dunno if people are aware of this already, but... Wanna see how powerful Altivec is?

RC5 isn't a general benchmark, let's get that straight first off. It's not even a particularly useful one. It takes no account of system speed, and only uses raw number-crunching abilities of the CPU and its internal cache and registers.

But anyway, my Pegasos G3/600 can do around 2 million keys per second. My Athlon 1.3GHz PC can do around 4 million. Pentiums are considerably weaker, and maybe more modern Athlons are too.

But from what I've heard, Pegasos-2 G4/1GHz using the Altivec core can manage 10 million keys per second. Presumably an AmigaONE/G4 can do the same. G4 Macs certainly can.

Note that this is not an open invitation for another boring x86 vs PPC thread (since this info has little practicality in everyday use), and I just thought people would be interested in seeing the power of Altivec, when used for what it was really designed for - raw maths.

[KennyR]

More precise benchmarks.

[AntonioX]

May be i have to start using it again for team amiga, as I have a PowerMac duel 867  :-D

[bloodline]

KennyR wrote:
But anyway, my Pegasos G3/600 can do around 2 million keys per second. My Athlon 1.3GHz PC can do around 4 million. Pentiums are considerably weaker, and maybe more modern Athlons are too.

Well you show me some Athlon64 benchmarks and cheer me up :-D

Anyway, happy new year, and what the hell happened to your boings and Rank?!?! :-o

[KennyR]

Problem with more modern x86 is that they removed an instruction used by rc5, to streamline the core, or so I'm told - I don't know much about it. So Athlon64 wouldn't necessarily mean faster rc5 cracking, although it would beat the proverbial crap out of G4 every other way.

Isn't there an Athlon64 listed in that 2nd url I gave, too? Is it the same one you mean? If so it's about 6 million keys at 1.6GHz.

Anyway, happy new year, and what the hell happened to your boings and Rank?!?! :-o

I trancended. Happy new year, mortal. :-D

[Lo]

I trancended. Happy new year, mortal.

Ah,  hence the avatar.  Did you have to do in the DemiGod Santa Claus?   :-P

[Aragorn]

http://n0cgi.distributed.net/speed/
OGR
my AMD Athlon XP Barton 2600+
14,937,961 nodes/sec

PowerPC 744x/745x G4 1000
10,680,517 nodes/sec

[KennyR]

@Aragorn

That's OGR nodes. We're talking RC5-72 keys.

Edit: though it doesn't matter, sorry. I didn't see you were comparing different CPUs fairly.

[bloodline]

Aragorn wrote:
http://n0cgi.distributed.net/speed/
OGR
my AMD Athlon XP Barton 2600+
14,937,961 nodes/sec

PowerPC 744x/745x G4 1000
10,680,517 nodes/sec

That looks about right, and what one would expect if we were to compare Clock Speed of the AthlonXP (rather than AMD PR ratings) and the G4.

That seems to support my argument that clock for clock the modern PPC and Athlons are virtually identical in performance :-)

[AmFreak]

bloodline wrote:

Aragorn wrote:
http://n0cgi.distributed.net/speed/
OGR
my AMD Athlon XP Barton 2600+
14,937,961 nodes/sec

PowerPC 744x/745x G4 1000
10,680,517 nodes/sec

That looks about right, and what one would expect if we were to compare Clock Speed of the AthlonXP (rather than AMD PR ratings) and the G4.

That seems to support my argument that clock for clock the modern PPC and Athlons are virtually identical in performance :-)

Thats because OGR doesnt use altivec ...

[Piru]

PowerPC 744x/745x G4 1000
10,680,517 nodes/sec

Wow. What a poor result. Dunno if that's from old OGR core or something, but I get:

13,016,835 nodes/sec.

PowerPC 7447 G4 1000. That's 21.9% more than the result on the page. MacOS overhead perhaps? :-)

[Hammer]

RC5 isn't a general benchmark, let's get that straight first off. It's not even a particularly useful one. It takes no account of system speed, and only uses raw number-crunching abilities of the CPU and its internal cache and registers.

RC5 is not the only benchmark to test for raw number-crunching abilities of the CPU and its internal cache and registers.

Why not OpenSSL benchmarks (it should fit within full size L2 cache)?

But anyway, my Pegasos G3/600 can do around 2 million keys per second. My Athlon 1.3GHz PC can do around 4 million. Pentiums are considerably weaker,

Why not try it with Intel "Pentium M @1.3Ghz"?...

and maybe more modern Athlons are too.

In general terms, the Thunderbird  core (Model 4)  is considered weaker than Barton core (Model 10).

My old AMD K7 AThlon XP (Palomino Core) @1.5Ghz/FSB266/NT5.1, yields
 RC5-72: [5,640,341 keys/sec]

I may try it on the other Athlon XP 2.2Ghz/400FSB/nForce2 400 Ultra and/or HP’s spec Athlon XP 2.33Ghz later…

[Dr_Bombcrater]

RC5 depends heavily on specific bitwise rotation instructions, which are rarely used by anything else. The figures on that page don't tell you anything other than how fast those chips can run the RC5 client.

As I recall the old AMD K5 was a superstar at RC5 despite being an otherwise lacklustre processor simply because the instructions that RC5 executes repeatedly worked very quickly on the K5 core.

On the vast majority  of tasks a modern x86 processor will crush a G4, if only because PPC systems tend to have poor infrastructure surrounding the CPU (PC133 memory, slow busses, etc).

I think we need to accept that and move on. CPU speed is no longer a critical factor in how useful a machine is anyway.

[Hammer]

More precise benchmarks.

Some minor issues;

How does one get an AMD Athlon XP with "Palomino" core at 3200MHz?

My "Palomino" core max'ed out at 1.7Ghz with 1.8 core volts.

Some minor issues;

AMD Athlon XP (Barton)@ 2500MHz doesn't exist.
AMD Athlon MP (Core??)@ 2600MHz doesn't exist.
AMD Athlon XP (Barton)@ 2400MHz doesn't exist. The fastest Athlon XP with a Barton core is HP's Athlon XP 3200+ @2.33Ghz.
AMD Athlon XP (Thoroughbred) 2600MHz doesn't exist.

AMD Athlon's so-called rating is just model numbers.

I use dnetc v2.9003-481-GTR-03030111 for Win32.

PS; My AMD K7 Athlon XP 2600+ @ 2.08Ghz with Thoroughbred-B (256KB L2) core yields ~7,900,000 (with other server applications in operation).

Please note that there are several “Athlon XP 2600+” types in the market i.e.
1. Thoroughbred-A/B @ 2.16 Ghz 266FSB.
2. Thoroughbred-B @ 2.08Ghz 333FSB.
3. I’m not aware of a Barton core with a “2600+. model” number. Who knows what AMD can think of next?
4. Barton @ 1.8Ghz has a model 2500+.

[Kronos]

@bloodline

??
The number for the AthlonXP is about 40% higher than for the G4, and I have
a hard time believing that an 2600+ would actually runs at only 1.4GHz, the
same speed that my (1st gen) 1600XP runs at  :-o