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Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
51–60 of 209 posts
Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many users won't know how to disable Spectre and Meltdown mitigations. They will be active by default if the user installs all the latest updates.
For some reason, I doubt people in the server/workstation space don't know how to do this, especially if they are leaving double digit percentage gains on the table if they don't.
You are not supposed to disable the mitigations... Especially on servers and workstations... And keep in mind that the usual mitigations aren't even holistic. The only truly 100% secure fix for Spectre/Meltdown is to disable hyperthreading altogether.
Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
#53The article is more or less BS.
For one, the claim is that Intel misleads intentionally. Given the timeline there's no particular reason to think there is something intentional here. The AMD-optimized version of GROMACS just came out ~5 weeks ago.
Second, while this is misleading in a sense, it's in the way that benchmarks are all generally misleading. By their intrinsic nature they don't tell the whole story. (And of course marketing departments cherry-pick benchmarks to tell the story they want to tell. Also by intrinsic nature.)
BTW, this isn't even all that bad for Intel. The AMD chip might outperform the Intel one, but only if your software has been specifically optimized for it.
Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
#54They 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 nitpic…
> 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
It's more like regression to the mean.
Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You absolutely need Spectre/Meltdown mitigation otherwise someone could attack you with JavaScript running in your web browser. https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_make_Linux_run_blazing_fast_(... noibrs - We don't need no restricted indirect branch speculation noibpb - We don't need no indirect branch prediction barrier either nospectre_v1 and nospectre_v2: Don't care if some program can get data from some other program…
You just leaped to the unfounded conclusion that every computer needs to run untrusted JavaScript. The vast majority of computers have no such need. Especially in a performance-sensitive contest like buying CPU for your database server that lives in a datacenter and never runs a web browser you will certainly disable these security things.
Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
You absolutely need Spectre/Meltdown mitigation otherwise someone could attack you with JavaScript running in your web browser. https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_make_Linux_run_blazing_fast_(... noibrs - We don't need no restricted indirect branch speculation noibpb - We don't need no indirect branch prediction barrier either nospectre_v1 and nospectre_v2: Don't care if some program can get data from some other program…
You just leaped to the unfounded conclusion that every computer needs to run untrusted JavaScript. The vast majority of computers have no such need. Especially in a performance-sensitive contest like buying CPU for your database server that lives in a datacenter and never runs a web browser you will certainly disable these security things.
Disabling Spectre/Meltdown mitigations on a server especially would be the dumbest thing imaginable. These attacks are not restricted to JavaScript, they are side-channel attacks and have a huge exploitable surface. Just look at the number of patches for the MS SQL server needed to mitigate:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4073225/guidance-pr...
Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
You absolutely need Spectre/Meltdown mitigation otherwise someone could attack you with JavaScript running in your web browser. https://linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_make_Linux_run_blazing_fast_(... noibrs - We don't need no restricted indirect branch speculation noibpb - We don't need no indirect branch prediction barrier either nospectre_v1 and nospectre_v2: Don't care if some program can get data from some other program…
You just leaped to the unfounded conclusion that every computer needs to run untrusted JavaScript. The vast majority of computers have no such need. Especially in a performance-sensitive contest like buying CPU for your database server that lives in a datacenter and never runs a web browser you will certainly disable these security things.
I would think the "vast majority" of computers are used interactively by people using Web browsers. Surely the number of servers in the world doesn't massively outnumber clients, and most of the clients browse the Web?
Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Many? Anything running a browser needs it because of js. Anything running connected to the internet at all would be well advised to have them because you can take advantage of the exploits via the network stack. Anything running on a vm has to have them since microcode is set by the hypervisor. So, we're talking about desktops not used to browse the internet, and bare metal servers whose network stacks aren't exposed…
> So, we're talking about desktops not used to browse the internet
You can browse the internet without JS. Many people here seem to do so.
Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
#59I 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.
That's the thing - they keep doing it, which means regardless of people coming out with stories like this, it must be effective.
They can't fake public PassMark results though. They currently hold four of the top five results for high end processors there (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html) and a lot of the top price/performance results (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html). A lot of folks use charts like these to guide buying decisions or make recommendations to others.
Re: Intel publishes misleading benchmarks against AMD
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Many? Anything running a browser needs it because of js. Anything running connected to the internet at all would be well advised to have them because you can take advantage of the exploits via the network stack. Anything running on a vm has to have them since microcode is set by the hypervisor. So, we're talking about desktops not used to browse the internet, and bare metal servers whose network stacks aren't exposed…
I'm not clear what your point was about the VMs. Why do hypervisors need Meltdown mitigated?
I think you're underestimating the % of HPC networks with properly-configured firewalls and only running code from trusted sources.