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Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

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Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#261

Post by gray_-_wolf »

gowld wrote: post #248
yohann305 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certainly a myth. Everyone knows, including big companies, that as you grow in size you have a harder time innovating. The classic "lean startup" book mentions this issue and gives the example of Intuit's in-house accelerator/incubator. No way Intel doesn't know about it too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/04/19/in...

What myth? As you say, bigger companies have a harder time innovting.

Yeah, but it's not necessarily related to competion, size is primary factor. At least I believe that was his point.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#263

Post by mcv »

wolfgke wrote: post #147

My thougt based on the HN headline "Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed" (after having read the article, of course): Doesn't this show that it is time for someone to set up some kind of "ScienceLeaks" website, where scientists can upload research (results, papers, ...) anonymously which they are are not allowed to do legally because of various such "research-restricting" laws. ---…

  > Doesn't this show that it is time for someone to set up some kind of "ScienceLeaks" website
Good idea, but I doubt it's necessary here. I'm fairly sure this sort of EULA clause is unenforceable in many jurisdictions. Run the benchmarks in a country where they are legal.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#264

Post by Const-me »

pmjordan wrote: post #210
ksec wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Before Zen, we all kind of assumed they were so far ahead that AMD were more likely to be out of business before they would ever be a credible threat again. It depends where about on the timeline. AMD's hired of Lisa Su and Jim Keller in 2012, we all thought it was too little too late. Look back at the Roadmap Intel were giving at the time, I used to joke about Tick Tock were like the sound of AMD's death clock. In…

Broadwell and Skylake brings nothing much substantial. Ironically, Broadwell's 128MB L4 cache did bring a substantial performance boost to a whole range of real-world applications, but it seems it's so expensive to manufacture that they've subsequently dropped the feature except for Apple's iMacs and expensive laptops.

I have an inexpensive laptop with i3-6157u, with 64MB eDRAM. And yes, performance boost is substantial, for e.g. C++ compiler.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#265

Post by agumonkey »

headmelted wrote: post #50

Before Zen, we all kind of assumed they were so far ahead that AMD were more likely to be out of business before they would ever be a credible threat again. I actually thought Intel must have had some tricks up their sleeves in terms of performance gains that we hadn't seen yet, simply because there was no market need to roll them out and they had so many years of coasting on marginal gains. Seeing them taking this s…

After reading a few articles, here's what I got:

it seems that Intel couldn't jump into EUV manufacturing when they were in full domination because it was too expensive and new so they started improving multipatterning so improve resolution, which proved too hard to ship (hence the delays) meanwhile smaller players went their way until recently and now EUV is accessible so they can jump in swiftly while intel is still caught inside his intermediate strategy, lazy market behavior and unforeseen failures. They also have EUV planned but not until the next-generation. Note that even at larger pitch their process is near competitive with smaller ones today, but it sounds terrible.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#266

Post by mcv »

shakna wrote: post #132
akerro wrote: post #124

Can I publish benchmarks of 7zip, The Witcher 3 and OpenGPG from yesterday and tomorrow (after Intel patch, which was patched coincidentally)?

> (v) publish or provide any Software benchmark or comparison test results. This seems to exclude any benchmark that may be affected by the Software's performance... Which means any CPU benchmark. There is some play in the wording... And I'm taking the least favourable interpretation. But yeah... Seems like Intel have said no benchmarking, full stop.

  > Seems like Intel have said no benchmarking, full stop.
That doesn't mean it's enforceable. Companies say silly things all the time.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#267

Post by mannykannot »

These pernicious attempts to chip away at free speech through contractural riders is becoming more common and blatant.

The best way to combat this sort of thing is for journalists, and anyone else discussing the issues of this vulnerability, to make a point of bringing it up, repeatedly. Whenever performance is an issue, point out that Intel is restricting the impact from being evaluated, which suggests that it is bad. Whenever security is an issue, point out that Intel is restricting the dissemination of the mitigation by imposing self-serving conditions on its use.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#268

Post by snaky »

physicsguy wrote: post #186
Rjevski wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see there being a market for that. The reason nobody uses FPGAs at the moment is because nobody has them outside of specialized applications. If Intel can release a CPU with a built-in FPGA and everyone has one, software developers will take advantage of them. I can see stuff like video editing programs, compression algorithms, etc taking advantage of that.

The other thing is that they're a nightmare to programme and they're expensive!

Yes, but speedup can be huge. For example, for NFA processing, using (a couple of) 2W FPGA against 200W GPU "GPUs underperform FPGA by a factor ~80-1000x across datasets" http://people.cs.vt.edu/~xdyu/html/ics17.pdf

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#269

Post by wolfgke »

bearjaws wrote: post #238
giancarlostoro wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't this show that it is time for someone to set up some kind of "ScienceLeaks" website, where scientists can upload research (results, papers, ...) anonymously which they are are not allowed to do legally because of various such "research-restricting" laws. I don't go there since 2008 but why not just wikileaks?

Wikileaks is a Russian propaganda machine. They are only interested in Anti-America leaks, not all leaks.

> Wikileaks is a Russian propaganda machine.

> They are only interested in Anti-America leaks, not all leaks.

Everybody should make their own judgement on the political bias of Wikileaks (which is, in my personal opinion, a very good reason why monopolies are typically bad; in other words: there is a demand on multiple independent Wikileaks-like websites), but the statement that Wikileaks is only interested in Anti-America leaks does not hold in my opinion. See for example the following leak about Russia's mass surveillance apparatus:

> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/19/wikileaks-releases-documen...

Or let us quote

> https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/5mv07m/has_wikil...

"They released Syrian/Russian email exchanges, I don't know if it led to anything extremely controversial. In an interview, Assange said the main reason they don't receive leaks from Russian whistle-blowers is that the whistle-blowers prefer to hand over documents to Russian-speaking leaking organization.

And Wikileaks doesn't have Russian-speakers in their organization. You can tell your friend that if he or she wants Wikileaks to release damaging Russian documents, then he or she should hack the Russian government and give what they find to WL."

Or have a look at

> https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/5mv07m/has_wikil...

On

> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wik...

you can find a list of various counter-arguments to common criticisms of WikiLeaks.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#270

Post by ksec »

johnchristopher wrote: post #229
ksec wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Before Zen, we all kind of assumed they were so far ahead that AMD were more likely to be out of business before they would ever be a credible threat again. It depends where about on the timeline. AMD's hired of Lisa Su and Jim Keller in 2012, we all thought it was too little too late. Look back at the Roadmap Intel were giving at the time, I used to joke about Tick Tock were like the sound of AMD's death clock. In…

> If you loathe Intel after all the lies they have been telling and marketing speaks, you should buy AMD. > If you love Intel still after all, you should still buy AMD, teach them a painful lesson to wake them up. But how do I choose which AMD CPU I need ? Back in my youth p4 and athlon were easy to compare (freq., IPS and a modifier because AMD) but now I can't even tell the differences between any i5/3/7 and when I…

> but now I can't even tell the differences between any i5/3/7 and when I look at AMD names it's as confusing but with a different lingo.

They way I see it, I could look at AMD's Core count, Threads and Frequency, As they are clearly labelled, and that is it. On Intel's side you have features turned on and off for different i3/5/7/9, AVX speed difference etc I don't even want to bother looking it up.

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