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Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

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Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#161

Post by bluedino »

marcan_42 wrote: post #117
bluedino wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't forget it's not just instruction sets; Intel is the reason we don't have ECC RAM on desktops. Of course we do: workstations. It's cheaper, that's why it isn't everywhere.

Intel's lower end workstation chips are the same silicon, and thus the same manufacturing cost, as their desktop chips. They just artificially disable features like ECC for product segmentation. It is unconscionable that something as essential as ECC is crippled out of the consumer line-up.

Except that the memory chips and motherboards also need to support ECC

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#162

Post by freemint »

marcan_42 wrote: post #38
SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #10

Stuff like this is why I plan to never buy Intel ever again. I always disliked Intel's strategy for market segmentation by disabling specific instructions, I much prefer AMD's strategy of segmenting just by speed and number of cores. It is really annoying that with Intel you can't run the same program on the server and on your desktop, it makes development and testing a huge pain.

Don't forget it's not just instruction sets; Intel is the reason we don't have ECC RAM on desktops. Every other high density storage technology has used error correction for a decade or two, but we're still sitting here pretending we can have 512 billion bits of perfect memory sitting around that will never go wrong, because Intel fuse it off on desktop chips. I guess only servers need to be reliable. AMD supports EC…

DDR5 is a form of ECC and DDR5 is only supported on Intel so far.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#163

Post by numpad0 »

qayxc wrote: post #34
marcan_42 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only upgrade microcode on any given boot, not downgrade it. Therefore, if the BIOS has already upgraded your microcode for you on boot, you can't undo that from the OS.

The BIOS doesn't upgrade microcode - the OS does. During boot there's usually no network connectivity, so how would the BIOS even know of an update, let alone acquire it?

Common misconception about Intel microcode ROM is it's some sort of Flash memory, it's not. Update vaporizes each reset and the same "update" is loaded on each bootup.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#164

Post by marcan_42 »

timpattinson wrote: post #133
marcan_42 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure downgrades are blocked. You need to hack the BIOS so the (volatile) upgrade never happens on boot.

I think for the subset of people that care about having AVX512 on their 12900K, and bother to disable the E-cores to achieve it, they will be using enthusiast motherboards that don't block bios upgrades in this way.

Microcode downgrades are blocked by the CPU itself; the BIOS doesn't get a say. You could downgrade the whole BIOS to stop the upgrade being applied on boot (maybe, some motherboards may try to block this too), but then you need to choose between uncrippled microcode and BIOS bugfixes and improvements.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#165

Post by jacobmartin »

MikeKusold wrote: post #142
tymscar wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore! Nvidia gpus can be passed through just fine with no fixes. I use mine like that daily

Are you doing a full pass through or vGPU?

Not the parent that you replied to, but I use full PCI passthrough for my Nvidia (RTX 3060) and it works just fine. I had no idea Nvidia had done this before or else I would've seriously reconsidered my choices for this build... Nevertheless it seems to work just fine.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#166

Post by jacquesm »

Fnoord wrote: post #51
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but with NVidia at least they get it right and do it prior to benchmarking and selling into the retail channel, rather than the other way around. And they - rightly - get plenty of flak for it.

Nvidia is great for Windows. As soon as you want to use Linux or macOS or Proxmox or anything, prepare for trouble. Its just not a FOSS-friendly company. Even on the Nvidia Shield TV (a great bang for the buck) they added commercials in the new UI. Though one might attribute that to Google, it is the only Nvidia device I bought past 5 years. And the only one which got a feature downgrade (or upgrade with a feature I…

I've been using Nvidia cards for years on Linux and never had a single problem.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#167

Post by jacquesm »

hetspookjee wrote: post #81
Fnoord wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia is great for Windows. As soon as you want to use Linux or macOS or Proxmox or anything, prepare for trouble. Its just not a FOSS-friendly company. Even on the Nvidia Shield TV (a great bang for the buck) they added commercials in the new UI. Though one might attribute that to Google, it is the only Nvidia device I bought past 5 years. And the only one which got a feature downgrade (or upgrade with a feature I…

haha it's staggering how big the presence of NVIDIA is in the deep learning community, yet after all these years it's still a painful process to get all the drivers up and running in the correct way. Their documentation surroundg CUDA and CUDNN are often out of date and/ or incomplete. Staggering

Interesting. I never had any issues, just download the driver, compile, install and done.

It even works with multi-screen setups and using the rest of the memory for CUDA.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#168

Post by josephcsible »

gambiting wrote: post #157
josephcsible wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with advertisement. You should not be able to retroactively make products that you've already sold to people be less useful, whether or not the feature you're clawing back was advertised.

I disagree completely. The product as sold wasn't compliant with its own technical spec sheet - now after the update it is. The feature isn't supported by that CPU and it should have never been exposed to the consumer. If you discovered that the CPU has 8 cores despite being sold as a 6 core, then removing 2 cores with a BIOS update wouldn't be "making the product less useful" either. It just makes the product exactl…

> If you discovered that the CPU has 8 cores despite being sold as a 6 core, then removing 2 cores with a BIOS update wouldn't be "making the product less useful" either.

Yes it would.

> what if using the feature actually damages the processor after a while?

Tell the owners this, and let them choose whether or not to take that risk.

> Intel isn't forcing anyone to install this BIOS update.

But then you'll be forever vulnerable to whatever the next variant of Spectre is. You can't cherry pick just the good parts of the update while excluding the bad parts.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#169

Post by eulers_secret »

jacquesm wrote: post #166
Fnoord wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia is great for Windows. As soon as you want to use Linux or macOS or Proxmox or anything, prepare for trouble. Its just not a FOSS-friendly company. Even on the Nvidia Shield TV (a great bang for the buck) they added commercials in the new UI. Though one might attribute that to Google, it is the only Nvidia device I bought past 5 years. And the only one which got a feature downgrade (or upgrade with a feature I…

I've been using Nvidia cards for years on Linux and never had a single problem.

I’ve used Nvidia on Linux since owning a 670. Their proprietary driver works only OK.

You don’t get flipped off by Linus T for having good drivers. You also don’t have to wait years for wayland to work if your driver is good.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#170

Post by steveBK123 »

duxup wrote: post #150
im3w1l wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the facts to all the suspicious people here, it made me realize something. Our zeitgeist sure is a cynical one.

Humans seem prone to find meaning and conspiracy amidst chaos and confusing circumstances.

There's a saying I like - Humans are deterministic machines in a probabilistic world.
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