Intel Penryn - Exciting Stuff

Intel is just releasing detailed info on the next generation "Penryn"
processors. Pretty exciting stuff. Imagine a 3.0+ GHz quad core CPU
able to accelerate one of the cores to much higher clock speeds if the
other cores are idle.

<Intel EDAT: the End of the Multi-core Clock Speed Disadvantage?

Intel also talked about its "Enhanced Dynamic Acceleration Technology"
which is effectively integrated overclocking based on load. If you are
running a single threaded application (or a multi-threaded application
that's predominantly using a single thread), Intel's EDAT can power
down the second core and increase the frequency of the working core to
maintain the same thermal envelope at all times.>

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=2955&p=2

Other tidbits - 1600MHz FSB, lower latency FB-DIMMs for Xeon, 3GHz+
clock speeds, 6 - 12MB cache.....

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38566

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38568

 

But where are the SW benchmarks? I have tested the Intel DUO against
AMD and as far as SW performance is concerned there was not near the
performance increase that would be expected based on other
benchmarking. I don't get excited until I see double the SW
performance that I have on my current machine which is three years old
in four days.

TOP

 

Good point.
Anybody could point me to a significant bench for SW'06, as I will shortly
get a new machine that I indend to bench against those we have currently.
TIA

 

dude, how do you know your computer will be 3 years old in 4 days? i
bet you just happened upon the paperwork and seen a date. right?
tell good ol' bob z. he is right. you know, maybe you are on to
something. maybe this computer will start treating good ol' bob z.
better if we start celebrating its birthday. that'd be sorta cool!
:~)>

honestly, bob z. hasn't gotten into the hooch yet. maybe the coffee
just isn't working yet...

bob z.

 

Off topic - but I live near Penryn - Type in the post code TR10 8LT
into Google Earth and fly right to it.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penryn,_Cornwall

Jonathan

 

See the workstation reviews at MCAD onlline. (www.mcadonline.com)
The not only run the (worthless) SPEC Viewperf benchmarks, but the
meaningful SPECapc for SolidWorks 2005 benchmark. They also do a STEP
import test using SolidWorks (which AMD typically excels at) and other
"real world" benchmarks that no one else publishes.

Also see the CPU comparisons at www.digitlife.com. Here's the link to
the spreadsheet with the published test data.
http://www.ixbt.com/cpu/images/intel-conroe-2-13-ghz/results.xls.
They run SPECapc for both SolidWorks and Pro/E, as well as a MATLAB
test suite. (They publish Pro/E results as a ratio - higher is better
- and SolidWorks results in seconds - lower is better.)

www.cadcamnet.com also publishes excellent workstation reviews with a
good benchmark suite, but it is a paid site. The author, David Cohn,
publishes less detailed reviews on Desktop Engineering.

 

NOTE: If you view the "Workstation Supplements" online, you can't
open up the spreadsheets that report the individual benchmark results,
but if you download the supplements, the benchmark data is included in
the PDF.

 

On our system the date of inception is part of the Machine ID on the
network.

 

That's cool. bob z. wasn't trying to be rude with his previous post.

bob z.

 

Imagine how much we are crippled in the use of the coming 3-5 GHz 8
core units when SolidWorks glitches cause wasted hours per week on
workarounds and/or reboots?

No amount of CPU speed for me is going to make up for code that is not
ready to be the Alpha Pack Leading Sled Dog.

No lame dog please.

The hardware is not the limiting factor in my estimation... After all
the discussion over time and assurances of better Quality Assurance,
it is still the same as far as I see, and has been for at least the
last 5 years. Once a new year release of SolidWorks hits SP4-5, it
finally gets production ready for most companies who have to rely on
getting to work out.

It is April 1st, and it is no joke that I won't be thinking about
converting my files to SWks 2007, until at least mid-summer...again.

I worked for companies a long time back, who made various physical
consumer products, and they were always announcing the next new latest
greatest product BEFORE it had been debugged in a trial run of parts.
The sales departments were always so damned determined to promote,
that they couldn't just slow down and wait until the product was
optimized that they overrode the engineering department by hammering
on the CEO/Pres. who believed the swift talking, stylish sales manager
over the rumpled shirt Chief Engineer, who advised not to announce
before we had done proper testing of first articles.

At U.S. Divers, they "pre-announced" an oil filled depth gage (to
match ScubaPro), and then spent the next 3 years I was at the firm,
trying to get the product production ready.

Selling what you do not have is piss poor company management, and
could be argued to be serious management malfeasance (IANAL).

Bo

 

One big time saver with SW is so simple it is like falling off a log.
Simply wait for the last SP and then install the new release with the
last SP. This saves so much time and effort on several fronts.

1. Only one install per year. For installations with 3+ seats this is
a no brainer.
2. No need to spend time turning in bugs. You can't.
3. Learn what works and what doesn't before implementing.
4. Avoid bad releases. We missed 2005 this way and weren't a bit sorry
for it.
5. Learn of any hardware and OS issues before implementing.

One big issue that I haven't yet come to a satisfactory solution to is
conversion. This should be done with every release, some more than
others. This can take days or weeks and having to do this every year
with PDM is insane.

TOP

 

Top, that is the first complete no-brainer advice on upgrades I've
seen posted here.

Thanks - Bo

 

What is it that takes days or weeks exactly?

John

 

The last time I converted our vault. Consider what happens when the
vault is full of assemblies with 5-10k assemblies and the drawings
thereto. The conversion has to be run in each branch of the tree. Now
that we have PDM there is more complexity because of revisions being
kept. Do you convert the old revs or not?

TOP