Intel Exec does guerilla benchmarketing
Tom Kilroy, Intel's VP of the Digital Enterprise Group, which just saw its revenue dropping by $1 billion year over year, presented to financial analysts some wonderful graphs showing a 3GHZ Woodcrest server outperforming a 2.4GHZ Opteron server by 37%.
If true, this would indicate that Woodcrest has a 9.6% advantage over Opteron at the same clock (1.37 /3 * 2.4 -1).The problem? He used an application called SunGard ACR for the benchmarketing, instead of the industry standard stuff such as the SPEC marks. Was SunGard a server daemon? Or, was it a SuperPi type, where you don't exercise much I/O bandwidth? Mystified, I tried to google "SunGard ACR" to get some information, but the thing is quite elusive. Google doesn't give much hint on what the heck SunGard ACR is. In fact, when I googled "SunGard ACR", the first entry popped up was an Intel commissioned benchmark PDF* showing an Intel configured Xeon/Bensley server with 10K RPM disk faster than an Intel configured Opteron with a 7200RPM disk and a little known motherboard. Intel deserves some serious laugh.
It seems that Tom Kilroy is also a master in "guerilla benchmarketing". Fire a shot and seek cover, hit and run.
Previously, when another Intel VP accidentally used a common benchmark tool, the Clovertown (double Conroe) got fragged by an Athlon 64 at the same clock.
* Interestingly, the PDF was removed after we posted this article, a cached version is here. No, now even the cached version is gone.
posted by Sharikou, Ph. D. @ 4/28/2006 04:40:00 PM
11 Comments:
I think its one of those "Intel-optimized" benchmark softwares.
http://www.principledtechnologies.com/clients/reports/Intel/64bit_Financial_Models_Perf.pdf
As stated in the PDF, Xeon has about 20% advantage over Opteron.
Interestingly, Xeon W/ HT also performs another 20% advantage over Xeon W/o HT.
I've heard of SunGard, just never about their ACR product. SunGard seems to be a specialized enterprise software maker (among other things). I just found the following website with SunGard's products:
http://www.sungard.com/software/products_and_services.htm
I couldn't find ACR in there. However there was a product called ACIS. I wonder if ACR is a typo?
ACR stands for Adaptiv Credit Risk, which is a financial program that evaluates the performance of a financial services system.
www.principledtechnologies.com/clie
nts/reports/Intel/64bit_Financial_M
odels_Perf.pdf
take a look at the third slide
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31341
16MB L2?! now i believe everyone is going to see skyrocket benchmark results from intel processor
As part of Paul O.'s next 'big plan', they purchased the SunGard Adaptive software to restructure Intel.
If you read its summary:
http://www.sungard.com/adaptiv/default.htm
a) provides enterprise wide credit and market risk management and operations solutions [...]
b) Adaptiv assists institutions of varying size and complexity to deploy technology [...]
c) Credit and market risk management [...]
Unfortunatly for Paul O. they seem to consistantly come up with the same resulting fate for Intel (as can be seen on page 8 of the PDF file).
http://www.sungard.com/adaptiv/default.htm
I think that these benchmarks show the strength of Core. This architecture IS 5-20% faster than Athlon/Opteron. I think that Intel claims are true and biased sometimes. The only problem of Intel is that the design is compared against 3-year old Athlon design manufactured in FAB30 90nm.
Incoming changes in K8L should give 20% advantage and 65nm should bring another 20%. So the fastest NGMA will face HT 3.0+3.6GHz chip running as 4.2GHz current Opteron.
He must have tried hell lot of benchmarking softwares before he finally found one that favours Woodcrest over Opteron.
hey sharikou, do you think it is possible to email me the PDF file? thanks
hey sharikou, do you think it is possible to email me the PDF file?
Sorry. The web site removed the PDF before I thought about saving a copy. The MSN cached version is all we have now.
Hmmmm...
I know this is probably a little off topic, but with all the comparing of AMD Vs. Intel, I was wondering if anyone had any info on the "Bulldozer"??
Let me know if you do.
You think Intel's the only one doin' this? Check out http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/03/15/amd_turion_bench/ quotes "Chip and server makers have an awful habit of unintentionally highlighting their weaknesses by making a big deal of dubious benchmarks. Intel has done it. IBM has done it. HP has done it. Sun Microsystems has done it. And, most recently, AMD has done it when it launched the mobile Turion 64 processors last week." and even the more worst offender are AMD themselves. Read the whole article. This validates Turion's less than perfect TDP (losing out to Core Duo as highlighted in M@tbe.com's review). IMHO, after a 3 year slumber, AMD are rushing stuff out to compete.. AM2 is a prime example.
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