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Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

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Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#111

Post by smolder »

StillBored wrote: post #65
pjmlp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many haven't yet grasped the future is heterogeneous computing, especially, when many desktops are actually laptops nowadays. Software working poorly in such setup means no effort was made to actually make it perform well in first place. Games requiring desktop cases looking like a rainbow aquarium with top everything will become a niche, in today's mobile computing world, and with diminishing sales and atten…

Is it? No one has come close to solving the problem of optimizing software for multiple heterogeneous CPU's with differing micro-architectures when the scheduler is 'randomly' placing threads. There are various methods in linux/windows/etc which allow runtime selection of optimized paths, but they are all oriented around runtime selections (ex pick a foo variation based on X and keep it) made once, rather than on cpu…

> No one has come close to solving the problem of optimizing software for multiple heterogeneous CPU's with differing micro-architectures when the scheduler is 'randomly' placing threads.

I think this isn't wholly correct. The comp sci part of things is pretty well figured out. You can do work-stealing parallelism to keep queues filled with decent latency, you can even dynamically adjust work distribution to thread performance (i.e. manual scheduling.) It's not trivial to use the best techniques for parallelism on heterogenous architecture, especially when it comes to adapting existing code bases that aren't fundamentally compatible with those techniques. Things get even more interesting as you take cache-locality, io, and library/driver interactions into consideration. However, I think it's more accurately described as an adoption problem than something that's unsolved. It took many years after their debut for homogenous multicore processors to be well supported across software for similar reasons. There are still games that are actively played which don't appreciably leverage multiple cores. (e.g. Starcraft 2 does some minimal offloading to a 2nd thread.)

Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#112

Post by amy214 »

pjmlp wrote: post #14
mort96 wrote: post #8

> E-Cores are turned off in the BIOS, because setting affinity to P-Cores caused massive stuttering in Call of Duty. I understand doing this for the purpose of specifically analyzing the P-core microarchitecture in isolation. However this does make the test less interesting for potential customers. I don't think many people would disable E-cores in BIOS if they bought this CPU, so for the purpose of deciding which CP…

I think many haven't yet grasped the future is heterogeneous computing, especially, when many desktops are actually laptops nowadays. Software working poorly in such setup means no effort was made to actually make it perform well in first place. Games requiring desktop cases looking like a rainbow aquarium with top everything will become a niche, in today's mobile computing world, and with diminishing sales and atten…

>desktops are actually laptops nowadays.

With concepts such as "chromebook" (semi-merging with android phones), apple convergence between iPhone and iComputer chipset and code, Samsung DeX (run samsung phone as a desktop), in my opinion the endpoint is:

- Your phone is your desktop is your laptop. It may dock with a keyboard/monitor. This will happen when software kit is integrated between phone and computer (Microsoft has tried this in the past - too early), and the formfactor is sorted. Also a key gating item is phone CPUS matching laptop performance - Also some form of local AI will be present everywhere - Also, sadly, the way things our headed, such a system will be hardcore locked down if it inherits more from the phone ecosystem than the OS ecosystem

Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#113

Post by vel0city »

const_cast wrote: post #107
vel0city wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sleep pretty much never works correctly on Windows laptops Sleep has worked pretty much fine on the vast majority of the Windows computers I've owned/managed, outside of a few troublesome devices such as this Legion Go and some network cards that would wake on any activity. Meanwhile about half of my Linux machines over the years routinely fail to wake from sleep. Even today I still get issues on a modern-ish Think…

> Sleep has worked pretty much fine on the vast majority of the Windows computers I've owned/managed Good for you, and I believe you. However you're the only person I've ever met with this sentiment. IME even multi-thousand dollar Windows laptops do not sleep right. Luckily, it kind of works out. Windows rots if it's left un-rebooted for a few days so forcing reboots with broken sleep almost optimizes the Windows exp…

I just did a trial after the changes I made to my Legion Go running Windows the other day. Woke the system from sleep on my desk after a day, dropped a couple percent of battery. Started a game, played for half an hour. Pressed the power button to sleep, set it down for a few hours. Picked it back up and pressed the power button. PIN on the lock screen, and I'm back in the game as if nothing happened. Didn't lose 1% while sleeping during that break.

EDIT: Put it to sleep to write the comment, picked it up 20 minutes later, woke straight to the game without dropping a beat again.

> I would never, ever put my Windows laptop to sleep with an unsaved Excel sheet open. If it wakes up, there's a good chance that application is mysteriously restarted. I don't trust anything on Windows.

I would never, ever put any Linux laptop I've owned regardless of distro to sleep with any unsaved work at all. There's a good chance it just won't wake up at all, much less have some app restarted. I wouldn't say I don't trust anything on Linux, but generally not waking from sleep.

The Switch is a purpose-built device and is excellent at sleeping, I agree. SteamOS seems to be pretty good at it as well, but it's also hyper optimized with a massive tech company focusing on an extremely limited set of hardware which happens to include the Legion Go at the moment. We'll see if other systems work as smooth once it starts supporting more hardware. It's good there's more competition out there and it's great SteamOS is as great as it is.

But honestly I don't have any problems gaming on a Windows handheld especially after fixing this sleep driver issue on this specific device. I do agree it's clunkier than it needs to be in many ways and I hope Microsoft makes improvements like what they're talking about with that Xbox focused gaming handheld.

Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#114

Post by const_cast »

vel0city wrote: post #109
const_cast wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sleep has worked pretty much fine on the vast majority of the Windows computers I've owned/managed Good for you, and I believe you. However you're the only person I've ever met with this sentiment. IME even multi-thousand dollar Windows laptops do not sleep right. Luckily, it kind of works out. Windows rots if it's left un-rebooted for a few days so forcing reboots with broken sleep almost optimizes the Windows exp…

> There was that one Windows handheld recently that released a SteamOS version It is the device I mentioned earlier. The same device I suggested wasn't sleeping right. And now sleeps fine for me, now that I've disabled that device from waking the machine. > I never, ever have this problem on Linux Good for you, and I believe you. I've experienced runaway processes many, many times on Linux systems. Its great when the…

> I constantly get sleep issues on my Linux hardware where it just fails to resume and sits at a black screen or throws kernel panics. I've got coworkers whose external displays don't get reconnected right from sleep. These are pretty bottom of the barrel experiences. Meanwhile, every one of my Windows machines sleeps and wakes without any issues.

Again, I believe you, but I've never seen this and I don't know anyone else who has ever seen this. Everyone I've ever talked to, ever, has said sleep on Windows does not work. That's a big reason they're on Macs.

Now, I don't like MacOS. So I use a Lunar Lake laptop with Linux, and sleep works. I have 2 1440p 240hz monitors connected over thunderbolt and those sleep and wake just fine too. Which, as an aside, is a testament to the hardware. Shoutout Intel.

And on the topic of drivers, yeah that's just a roundabout way of critiquing Windows. Those should be included in the kernel. It was a design choice to not do that, which really holds Windows back. Microsoft has been reversing course over the past 10 years or so, so we have precision drivers from Microsoft for touchpads for instance.

And, surprise surprise, those touchpads with first-party precision drivers built into Windows are the best touchpads.

Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#115

Post by ahartmetz »

jeffbee wrote: post #95
moffkalast wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally say AMD gets better latency on top of better bandwidth, are we reading the same sentences? Better = lower I would expect.

They're referring to the ordinary DDR5-on-a-stick Ryzen implementation, not the LPDDR5X Ryzen AI implementation. ETA: The only non-laptop results I have seen for the Ryzen AI place it worse than the 9950X, which has 2-channel plain old DDR5. The 4-channel LPDDR5X only wins when it can exploit the bandwidth and hide the latency, such as physics simulations. But for most applications the 9950X beats it. Hence my origin…

Strix Halo has a big GPU (for a laptop chip). GPUs love memory bandwidth and can tolerate latency, so... Strix Halo should be (and is) good at graphics and GPGPU.

Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#116

Post by Rohansi »

jeffbee wrote: post #77
moffkalast wrote: post #10

Say, is there any talk about Intel working on an AMD Strix Halo competitor, i.e. quad channel LPDDR5X in the consumer section?

I am still waiting on evidence that memory architecture helps anyone.

Apple's M-series of chips make use of more than two memory channels. I don't think there is evidence that it is actually beneficial for anything but marketing though.

Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#117

Post by bdavbdav »

mort96 wrote: post #8

> E-Cores are turned off in the BIOS, because setting affinity to P-Cores caused massive stuttering in Call of Duty. I understand doing this for the purpose of specifically analyzing the P-core microarchitecture in isolation. However this does make the test less interesting for potential customers. I don't think many people would disable E-cores in BIOS if they bought this CPU, so for the purpose of deciding which CP…

Frustrated with this in the Linux world too - trying to get proxmox to play nicely with P/E is a nightmare. The OS scheduler side of things is a PITA

Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#118

Post by vel0city »

const_cast wrote: post #114
vel0city wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was that one Windows handheld recently that released a SteamOS version It is the device I mentioned earlier. The same device I suggested wasn't sleeping right. And now sleeps fine for me, now that I've disabled that device from waking the machine. > I never, ever have this problem on Linux Good for you, and I believe you. I've experienced runaway processes many, many times on Linux systems. Its great when the…

> I constantly get sleep issues on my Linux hardware where it just fails to resume and sits at a black screen or throws kernel panics. I've got coworkers whose external displays don't get reconnected right from sleep. These are pretty bottom of the barrel experiences. Meanwhile, every one of my Windows machines sleeps and wakes without any issues. Again, I believe you, but I've never seen this and I don't know anyone…

As for monitors not being attached after sleep, I was mostly talking about macOS but I do get my comment isn't clear on that. It's an incredibly common issue.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250999629

As for drivers being in the kernel or outside the kernel, in the end if the vendor writes trash drivers they'll be trash drivers regardless of where they are. Clearly good touchpad drivers could have been written, but Synaptics just never gave a shit. But those same shitty touchpads were still often shitty even in Linux with open-source drivers. And what do you know, a vendor actually cares to make a good driver and things are better. We didn't even need to change the entire driver model for it to happen.

Back when I used nvidia graphics adapters a driver crash in Windows just meant maybe your app crashed, maybe it handled it gracefully and all that happened was the screen went black for a second. A driver issue on that same nvidia GPU in Linux means a kernel panic and the whole machine crashes, even things not running GPU workloads.

There are pros and cons each way about whether you bundle in the drivers into the kernel or have them live outside. Having it live in the kernel means if the vendor never bothers maintaining or opensourcing the driver you're just stuck on the old kernel. I've got a drawer full of computers which will never see a modern kernel and still keep all their functionality. A pile of e-waste because of the requirement to use that specific kernel the device shipped with, nothing else.

Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#119

Post by p_ing »

SleepyMyroslav wrote: post #105
p_ing wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD and Intel do work with Microsoft (and I'm sure provide code to the Linux scheduler) to optimize the NT scheduler appropriately. Sometimes it doesn't happen Day 1 which is only a problem for the consumers that notice.

Imagine going back when 12th gen was released and posting your post. Alas, nothing has improved in 5 generations of hardware that required complete PC rebuild each time since then. Buying intel for gaming is like a test for ignorance now. There might be a decade before any trust can be restored in the brand /imho.

Not sure what you're talking about, NT/Linux are well aware of the P/e cores and how to schedule among them for these past handful of generations.

I also moved to AMD (5800X3D) due X3D alone being a massive improvement for simulations. Intel is still better in the laptop space and just outright more available (though I'm Mac-only for day-to-day laptop usage).

Re: Intel's Lion Cove P-Core and Gaming Workloads

#120

Post by SleepyMyroslav »

p_ing wrote: post #119
SleepyMyroslav wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine going back when 12th gen was released and posting your post. Alas, nothing has improved in 5 generations of hardware that required complete PC rebuild each time since then. Buying intel for gaming is like a test for ignorance now. There might be a decade before any trust can be restored in the brand /imho.

Not sure what you're talking about, NT/Linux are well aware of the P/e cores and how to schedule among them for these past handful of generations. I also moved to AMD (5800X3D) due X3D alone being a massive improvement for simulations. Intel is still better in the laptop space and just outright more available (though I'm Mac-only for day-to-day laptop usage).

I am talking about gaming workloads being less efficient on particular E-core enabled CPUs. My point is that Day 1 has been generations ago and gaming workloads suffer the same as of that Day 1. Linked article does not mention running anything on Linux so not sure why to bring it up. Note that linked article sidestepped those issues by disabling E-cores.

Afaik Windows is delegating most of scheduling work to "Intel Thread Director".

What makes you sound optimistic about part "how to schedule" ? Do you have any links I can follow?

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