AMD Many-Cores Performance

AMD claimed that its 12-core CPU offers 88% increase on Specint_rate2006 and 119% on Specfp_rate2006. This comparison was made between the 2.2GHz Opteron 6174 (80w) and the Opteron 2435.

The 2435 had Specint_rate2006 score of 205, and Specfp_rate2006 score of 143. This means the 6174 achieves integer score of 385 and fp score of 313. This is substantially faster than Intel's fastest Nahelem Xeon processor (Xeon 5680, 3.33GHz, 130watt).

HP published its benchmarks for Opteron 6176 SE, with a 398 score for Specint_rate2006 and 318 for fp performance. Incidentally, this 8P Opteron 8435 machine achieved 730 in int performance.

Notably, the HP benchmark used a GCC derivative compiler called Open64.

With the Opteron 6100 series, AMD is firmly leading the the x64 market in both 2P and 4P segment.

In the GPU front, Nvidia's thermally-hot GTX 480 probably Osborned its other parts, while people are buying AMD's 5000 series like there is no tomorrow.

12-core opteron from HP

HP listed the DL385 G7 servers with 2x Opteron 6100 series processors, each containing 12 cores. This makes the DL385 a 24-core monster, with 256GB of RAM. The Intel based DL380 G6 only has 2x4 cores, and is limited to 192GB RAM.

It is also interesting to note that the 24-core Opteron box needs only a 460 watt power supply, while the Intel based DL380 G6 needs a 750 watt power supply for 2.53GHz and higher models.

Not to be left behind, SuperMicro announced a 1U server with 48 Opteron cores, and 2U system with 96 cores.

Significantly, AMD has eliminated the 4P tax. The "Many-Cores" Opteron CPUs are priced the same for 2P or 4P. This will be a major thing. It will make 4P more popular.

Google Chief Blogger Sentenced to Jail!

Shocking. An Italian judge sentenced Google executives David Drummond, Peter Fleischer, and George Reyes to six months of jail, because Google failed to censor some offensive kid beating video soon enough.

I thought these convicted felons were Google's people in Italy.

Not true. I just realized that David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, is in the U.S, blogging happily about Google's decision to leave the Red China, partly because the mighty company was hacked by Shandong Lanxiang Vocational School. So, in the eyes of the Italian judge, Mr. Drummond is a fugitive. I don't believe Italian courts allow Habeas corpus petitions, which was a feature of Anglo-Saxon tradition.

It is interesting to observe that Google informed the National Security Council first about its decision to leave China.

Incidentally, the British Military has accused Google of violating Official Secrets Act and making top secret military information available to potential terrorists.

China Reports Massive 2009 Industrial Output Increase

182 million Microcomputers (PCes) produced. Also, 41 billion IC chips, 13.79 million motor vehicles (including 7.485 million cars), 67.65 million LCD TVs, 568 million tons of steel...

Total grain output is 530.82 million tons, or 815 pounds of grain per Chinese. That's too much rice to eat.

In terms of housing, 3.2 billion m^2 is under construction. A lot of growth potential there.

In terms of trade, China imported $2.2 trillion USD of goods. I wonder how much of that was from the U.S.

U.S. did produce a large number of Ph.D.s off a Motel 6. A lot of these graduates are employed by the federal government.

Xinhua Says China Rejects a Political Google and Google Politics

China's Xinhua News criticizes Google's U.S. security and political connections. It points out that "Four of the [Google]'s former executives including Sumit Agarwal, who ... is currently deputy assistant secretary of defense, are now serving the US government."

The Xinhua News also points out Google's connection with the U.S. military, that Google masked out U.S. military bases on Google maps, yet displayed clearly China's military installations. Such information is potential aid to international terrorism. The Xinhua news further alleges that the U.S. has plans to use Google and YouTube to control the dissemination of information to the global population, and that U.S. employs an army of 90,000 hackers.

PLA details how they achieved peta flop with Opteron + Radeon

The People's Liberation Army tells the story of how they achieved PetaFlop with Opteron and Radeon. The difficulty lies in fully exploiting the potential of the GPU. Initially, they could only get 20% of the performance of the GPUs. After months of work, they attained 70% of the FP power of the GPUs.

3GHz Quad Core + MB for less than $100

I can't believe this. Bought a Athlon II X3 440 (3GHz Triple Core) and MSI 785G E45 motherboard for less than $100. The motherboard has the built in core unlock feature. Just change the bios setting, and now I have a quad core CPU running at 3GHz, and I haven't overclock this thing yet. The inexpensive yet feature laiden MSI board has a ton of features to overclock the beast.

Only idiots will buy expensive Intel stuff. Geeks never buy on brand like ladies. Why pay $500 for a 2.6 GHz Intel CPU while you can get 3GHz AMD64 for a fraction of the cost? The $400 you saved can buy an ATI 5830 DX11 GPU + a 24 inch LCD monitor for Eyefinity.

Update: Using AMD OverDrive, it was determined that the system can run at 3.5GHz (using stock cooler), to be conservative, I am running it at 3.42GHz right now. see CPU-Z capture.

Update: One reader points out that Intel's Core i7 is better at encoding media. But, with the additional cost, one can buy a ATI GPU which can do encoding 20 times faster.