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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

#171

Post by marcan_42 »

bluedino wrote: post #161
marcan_42 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

ECC costs $0 to support in motherboards (8 extra traces per DIMM slot; traces are free). Memory is where the consumer gets to choose whether to spend extra on ECC or not. There is absolutely no reason why consumers should be forced to pay extra for a CPU to get ECC when they are literally getting the same piece of silicon.

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

#172

Post by jeffbee »

square_usual wrote: post #44
codeflo wrote: post #11

If all of this was planned (and I’m not saying it is), that would have been very clever. It would work like this: 1. You “accidentally forget” to disable the feature in hardware. Given how competitive the market is, motherboard manufacturers can be relied upon to enable it in their “1337 OVERCLOCKZ” mode. No conspiracy is needed. 2. You “tolerate” this practice just long enough to win the critical initial wave of rev…

Is AVX-512 even useful in benchmarks? I thought it was mostly used for specialized workloads, and was basically useless for end users and gamers.

AVX-512 is so useful in benchmarks that sites like Anandtech intentionally build their benchmarks without it, because the presence of AVX-512 spoils the whole horse race narrative they are trying to sell.

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

#174

Post by wtallis »

freemint wrote: post #162
marcan_42 wrote: post #38

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. 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.

The DDR5 memory bus used by Intel's latest consumer processors does not have ECC enabled. The memory dies themselves have some internal ECC that is not exposed to the host system and is not related to the fact that they use a DDR5 interface; all state of the art DRAM now needs on-die ECC due to the high density.

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

#175

Post by jeffbee »

formerly_proven wrote: post #98
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel is the reason we don't have ECC RAM on desktops. Intel has offered ECC support in a lot of their low-end i3 parts for a long time. They’re popular for budget server builds for this reason. The real reason people don’t use ECC is because they don’t like paying extra for consumer builds. That’s all. ECC requires more chips, more traces, and more expense. Consumers can’t tell if there’s a benefit, so they skip i…

> Intel has offered ECC support in a lot of their low-end i3 parts for a long time. They’re popular for budget server builds for this reason. Intel removed ECC support in the 10th gen so you have to go for Xeon nowadays.

With DDR5 you can have (a form of) ECC on all current 12th-generation Core CPUs. That is, if you were able to find DDR5 DIMMs on the market, which you currently cannot.

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

#176

Post by jeffbee »

marcan_42 wrote: post #171
bluedino wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

ECC costs $0 to support in motherboards (8 extra traces per DIMM slot; traces are free). Memory is where the consumer gets to choose whether to spend extra on ECC or not. There is absolutely no reason why consumers should be forced to pay extra for a CPU to get ECC when they are literally getting the same piece of silicon.

It's odd how indifferent you are being about the energy costs of ECC. Memory now dominates the energy story of many systems. Filling an x86 cache line from DDR4 costs 1000x as much energy as a double-precision multiplication operation. ECC memory costs 12.5% more energy. That's a big, big difference.

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

#177

Post by bee_rider »

xlazom00 wrote: post #95

Any idea how big area from CPU silicon AVX-512 really is? If it share some parts with AVX-2 or not

The article as some bits of the chip marked off (with big red X's). They look reasonably sized to be the AVX-512 parts, in the sense that they are quite large but not the majority of the chip or anything.

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

#178

Post by jacquesm »

eulers_secret wrote: post #169
jacquesm wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok. On my end the first one I had that could do fast compute was a GTX 280, then a 590, then a 1080ti which I still have.

Maybe I've just been lucky but over all that time not a single glitch. The main gripe I have with them is having you jump through hoops to be allowed to download certain libraries. That's just a complete nuisance. And I think their TOS are unethical.

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

#179

Post by flatiron »

Fnoord wrote: post #42
flatiron wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m waiting for amd to do TB4 so I can get a ryzen framework laptop.

Yeah, AMD Ryzen Framework laptop would be amazing. (Would also have ECC support?) They'd have to license TB from Intel. I don't know about TB4, but TB3 is royalty-free, just gotta pass a certification. TB3 or better would be great for eGPUs in general. Not sure I personally would need TB4. Also, I wonder if Framework would be usable with say Proxmox and macOS (or 'native' Hackintosh?)

if you are getting a framework to run a hackintosh why would you not get a macbook air? prolly cheaper in the long run and the M1 is a pretty great chip.

i just can't wrap my hands around macOS and I used to work at apple. I'm just so used to linux for everything.

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

#180

Post by Fnoord »

fsflover wrote: post #152
Fnoord wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets compare it to all the other options, shall we? Perfect is the enemy of good, and your uncompromising way of doing things (including not loading microcode 'because it is closed source') is, to put it simple: harmful. And unusual, as well (its not a dealbreaker for many people). The laptop is modular and repairable, just like a Fairphone is modular and repairable. Its a great step forward and, while not perfect an…

> your uncompromising way of doing things (including not loading microcode 'because it is closed source') Libreboot disagrees with that: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2022-... . Also, FSF would never endorse an Intel CPU with disabled Intel ME. It must be fully removed to get the RYF certification.

..and still, a Fairphone is more free than almost every smartphone out there. And still, a Framework is more free than almost every laptop out there. Because they are easily repairable because of their modularity. Something, yes, Thinkpads used to be too. But you're bound to old, refurbished ones (X230/T430 apparently) [1]. You don't care about that, you only care about one thing, and the rest is seemingly rationalized as irrelevant. Again, perfect is the enemy of good, akin to release early, release often.

[1] https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified-hardware/

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