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Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD

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Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD

#31

Post by melkiaur »

dbcurtis wrote: post #22
xenadu02 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used the Intel compiler. We know for a fact Intel’s compilers deliberately don’t optimize as well for non-Intel chips. That’s damning in and of itself.

That is a little disingenuous. The whole point of Intel’s compiler is to support Intel chips well. Results on other chips are what they are. No effort to make other chips perform eiher better or worse is expended. Keeping up with Intel chips is more than a full time job without other distractions. The question to ask is whether or not they used the best complier/swithes available for the other chips.

> No effort to make other chips perform [...] worse is expended.

I don't know about nowadays, but it used to be that the intel libs and compiler would specifically disable SIMD instructions if they found that the CPUid returned a non-"Genuine Intel" string. Doing nothing - and just relying on the CPU feature flags - would have been more fair.

Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD

#32

Post by wmf »

dbcurtis wrote: post #22
xenadu02 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used the Intel compiler. We know for a fact Intel’s compilers deliberately don’t optimize as well for non-Intel chips. That’s damning in and of itself.

That is a little disingenuous. The whole point of Intel’s compiler is to support Intel chips well. Results on other chips are what they are. No effort to make other chips perform eiher better or worse is expended. Keeping up with Intel chips is more than a full time job without other distractions. The question to ask is whether or not they used the best complier/swithes available for the other chips.

This is a debatable topic. The generated code could check cpuid and use whatever instructions are available but AFAIK it would check the vendor instead and not use SSE/AVX on non-Intel processors that support those instructions.

Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD

#34

Post by Vindicis »

pinewurst wrote: post #30

There's often a long lead time between writing up benchmarks/white papers and publication. At my last employer it could take well over a month to let everyone have their 2 cents and get through Legal for approval. This is a long enough interval to explain the old/new GROMACS usage. As the saying goes, don't attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity (including corporate bureaucracy).

Unless that company is well-noted for their malice.

Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD

#36

Post by xeeeeeeeeeeenu »

dbcurtis wrote: post #22
xenadu02 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used the Intel compiler. We know for a fact Intel’s compilers deliberately don’t optimize as well for non-Intel chips. That’s damning in and of itself.

That is a little disingenuous. The whole point of Intel’s compiler is to support Intel chips well. Results on other chips are what they are. No effort to make other chips perform eiher better or worse is expended. Keeping up with Intel chips is more than a full time job without other distractions. The question to ask is whether or not they used the best complier/swithes available for the other chips.

>No effort to make other chips perform eiher better or worse is expended.

This is not true. Intel compilers cripple non-intel CPUs on purpose, they generate code that literally checks whether CPUID is equal to "GenuineIntel" and if it isn't, it executes the less optimized code path[1].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_C%2B%2B_Compiler#Recepti...

Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD

#37

Post by pinewurst »

Vindicis wrote: post #34
pinewurst wrote: post #30

There's often a long lead time between writing up benchmarks/white papers and publication. At my last employer it could take well over a month to let everyone have their 2 cents and get through Legal for approval. This is a long enough interval to explain the old/new GROMACS usage. As the saying goes, don't attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity (including corporate bureaucracy).

Unless that company is well-noted for their malice.

That's not to deny the possibility of both. :)

Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD

#38

Post by crankylinuxuser »

sp332 wrote: post #16
Jonnax wrote: post #4

I recall a few months ago they released a marketing pack benchmarking themselves against AMD with a small print disclaimer that they hadn't applied the spectre/meltdown fixes.

Many applications don't need Spectre or Meltdown mitigations, but they should at least put the test parameters up front and not in the fine print.

The chips should be considered defective and "not as advertised" without spectre and meltdown in place.

They fucked up, and are trying to pawn the slowdowns as some sort of Faustian choice.

Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD

#39

Post by NicoJuicy »

They wouldn't have an answer to AMD untill 2021: https://newsroom.intel.com/news/2019-intel-investor-meeting/...

Ps. Long AMD, perfect execution the last two years. It's crazy, even their late firmware fixes improve performance as it had bad press for a moment for false benchmarks advertisement ( it was not false so it seems, the firmware was just not ok yet. Not everything is fully ok now, it's the only minor nitpick as far as I can tell )

And they are only just now starting in the server space and soon the laptop + graphics space. They are going mainstream ( OEM offering is still lacking, Microsoft Surface changed this) AND they still customize their superior offering for big customers.

In the contrary, Intel has a lot of failures the last 2 years. Spectre, meltdown, ... This isn't bad luck anymore, it's more like bad karma if you are religious.

If you think I'm opinionated. Just check /r/AMD vs. /r/Intel . AMD is even suggested in the Intel threat, lol

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