[Leaplist] Different netbooks ... CPU and GPU limitations (or not) ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

Hyperthreading on a single or dual-core Atom is like putting a supercharger
on a Yugo.  Intel is marketing non-sense again.  The whole idea was to have
hyperthreading across multiple Atom cores.  Now it's being marketed like the
Pentium 4 was, totally useless.

Hyperthreading purposely kills performance of the Atom, everything
will run much, much slower.  The original idea for hyperthreading was
to distribute, say, five or even six (5-6) threads, across, say, quad (4)
of 2-issue Atom cores.  That would work well.  Not faster in immediate
performance, but more work done over time, despite inefficiencies.

Hyperthreading on a single or dual-core Atom is a joke, and will almost
always result in worse performance.  It's really designed so a batch of
Atom X cores (where X is at least 4) can run more like X+X/2 threads --
50% more.

Atom's are 2-issue, in-line, "I get it I do it" non-speculative, non-predicting,
non-anything.  They are simple in design for a reason -- lots of small cores
running lots of different threads from a pool.

-- Bryan

P.S.  Software RAID-5?  You're going to tie-up the entire interconnect
so you can't do jack with MythTV.  Understand one of the original targets
for a quad-core Atom was to _be_ the intelligence of a dedicated
RAID-5/6 controller -- not the end-system.

Maybe this is the best way to put it ...  ;)

"The Atom is a 2-issue micro_controller_ -- _not_ a micro_processor."


P.P.S.  The Marvell cards are actually designed with _software_ support
that is _not_ open source.  The Broadcom-Marvell approach is to give
you a basic, "part-hardware" software intelligence for RAID and _charge_
for the "part-software" management components in a varying "software
stack."  It's neither 100% hardware nor 100% GPL in software.


----- Original Message ----
From: Richard F. Ostrow Jr. <rich at warfaresdl.com>

I, too, have two atom-based systems - an Atom 320 (1.6 GHz w/
hyperthreading) that I was trying out as a mythtv backend, and an Atom 330
that I'm using in my car (1.6 GHz dual core w/ hyperthreading). The 320
actually had 4 SATA connectors that I ended up putting 4 1TB hard drives
into a software RAID-5 on. However, I'm afraid that I terribly
underestimated the CPU requirements of mythtv on the backend side... the
commercial scanning (which is really the only CPU-dependent task it has)
is now over a month behind on the recordings, working around the clock
24/7. Add to that the problem that the thing crashes mythtv for some
reason without explanation (a problem I did not have with my old athlon
64), and sometimes records video rather sloppily (jerky audio and
video)... and I'm about done with this system for that purpose. I was
hoping to reduce my power requirements, but it simply isn't going to work.

On the other hand, the Atom 330 in my car seems to be adequately up to the
task... it has no issues running my car pc software, doesn't fail to POST
with my touchscreen (as my last mini-itx form-factor machine (A Via
C7)did), and theoretically can run actively for quite a while on the car
battery before it would need to shut itself down to avoid running the
battery down too far. I had originally purchased a PCI GeForce 5600 for it
for my limited graphics processing needs, but find that the intel chipset
can actually handle what I'm throwing at it (to my surprise). My only
gripe with the thing is that it has a RAID daughterboard from Marvell that
falsely claims it has linux support (it was originally going to be my
mythtv backend server). The car has no need for such a thing, so I removed
it.

In both cases, they have a very wide temperature and humidity tolerance
(critical for my car, and important for my mythtv backend, which I've
located in my garage).

I should also note that neither of these are "netbooks" - I absolutely
refuse to pick up such a machine.

On Wed, January 13, 2010 11:23 am, Kevin Korb wrote:
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> I have 2 Atom based systems.  They have their uses but you are correct
> about them being weak.
>
> The first is my 10" EeePC with an Atom N270 (single core 1.6GHz).  I only
> use it for IRC, email, web browsing, ssh, Audacious, and the occasional
> classic arcade style game.  For those purposes it works decently.  The
> crappy SSD that Asus ships is actually more limiting than the CPU is.
> But
> the CPU is still strong enough that things like disk encryption and
> OpenVPN tunneling do not make a noticeable difference in performance
> (probably because the SSD is only slightly faster than a thumb drive).
> With my usage which generally involves both heavy wi-fi usage,
> encryption,
> and music playing I usually get right at 4 hours of battery time.
>
> The second is an Atom N230 (single core 1.6GHz) that I use as my
> firewall/router.  It is in a phone book size box that has 2 PCI slots so
> I
> had no trouble getting 3 NICs into it.  I don't use the video at all so I
> could care less about the performance there.  I like the low power
> consumption (about 1/3 of the power is used by the 2 PCI NICs I added).
> It is faster than the old AMD K6-2 500MHz system it replaced while using
> less than half the power so I am happy.
>
> Frankly I can't think of anything else I would use an atom for.  If I
> could get one that could handle a crapload of storage I might consider it
> for a file server (sort of a DIY NAS) but none of them I have seen would
> be capable of that.
>
> I would like to try a newer Atom Z530 based system though.  Those are
> dual
> core still 1.6GHz but they have some newer features like hardware
> virtualization.  It is probably still wimpy but it may be well suited to
> the low powered netbook market.  Were any of the ones you tested from the
> Z series?
>
> On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:08:46 -0800 (PST)
> "Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:
>> Okay, I've now had the chance to mess with various types of netbooks:
>> - Intel single/dual-core 45nm Atoms with the 65nm 965GSC
>> - Intel single/dual-core, ultra-low voltage 45nm Pentium with same
>> - AMD, single-core, low voltage 65nm Athlon 64 with 55nm M690E
>> - AMD, single/dual-core, low voltage 65nm Neo [x2] with 55nm M780G
>>
>> Let's get one thing straight, the 2-issue, in-line, non-speculative
>> Atom
>> sucks. You could quad core it and then you'll get what an aged AMD Neo
>> does. Anything with an Atom is going to be CPU limited.  Ironically,
>> the
>> 965GSC makes a great partner for the Atom here.  The nice thing is that
>> you do get 6 hours out of the sucker, and that should improve with
>> Intel
>> outsourcing to TSMC and their 40nm process for the GPUs.  I understand
>> the reasons for Atom, but as they have existed so far, they make poor
>> processor for a general purpose OS.
>>
>> nVidia has introduced it's Ion chipset for Atom.  But adding a GPU to a
>> processor that struggles with basic operations is not going to help
>> much.
>> As I said, the old 965GSC design is a perfect match.  ;)
>>
>> Now, ironically, I've had the chance to mess with some of the nexgen,
>> 45nm, ultra-low voltage Pentium processors, including dual-core.  Those
>> actually have a bit of kick to them.  GHz for GHz, they will slump
>> against AMD, but Intel has the power-GHz superior fab technology, so
>> they come out ahead in both performance and battery life.  Almost makes
>> you want to forget Atom, as they can give you 4 hours.  The pricing is
>> the only problem at this point.
>>
>> I haven't checked if nVidia has a solution for these ULV Pentium
>> designs.
>> If they use the same interconnect, they should.  I need to investigate
>> further, but there are few netbooks in this area so far.
>>
>> AMD has a problem.  They are still selling 2+ year-old technology, and
>> we're still waiting for 45nm products to hit the market.  You have a
>> choice of the low-voltage 65nm Athlon 64 or the optimized, but still
>> aged 65nm Neo [x2] single/dual-core.
>>
>> The Neo x2 is capable of keeping up with feeding the newer Radeon
>> 2100-3200 GPU cores (M690x and M740x/780x), definitely bests the
>> ULV Pentium dual-cores GHz for GHz, but at an extreme power penalty.
>> So the power and cost savings with Neo [x2] over Turion [x2] is
>> minimal,
>> and yesteryear's refurbished models are the only affordable under $500.
>> Same problem as the ULV Pentium on the pricing front (worse battery
>> than
>> it though).
>>
>> Which brings us to the low-voltage Athlon 64.  Here you have a 1.2GHz
>> Athlon 64, underclocked and power drops below 25W.  But then it can't
>> feed even the old 2100 GPU core (shrunk to 55nm in the M690E).  I know,
>> I just bought one.  It's great for normal usage, kicks the living crap
>> out of a dual-core Atom (ignore the artificial benchmarks, I've used
>> both myself on Linux and Windows), and then you have the GPU for
>> off-load of things the 965GSC just can't do.  And that's the funny
>> part.  You can jack up filtering, textures, etc... on that Radeon 2100
>> GPU without hitting the CPU at all (unlike the feature-set in the
>> 965GSC) -- "totally free."  But the GPU still can't drive/off-load the
>> actual CPU operations, so if the CPU is hit hard (doing absolutely
>> nothing to do with any 3D/rendering/playback), it doesn't matter.
>>
>> AMD does this to get the CPU power consumption down, and battery life
>> to 4-5 hours.  The chipset is already 10-15W at 55nm, and the new revs
>> will go to sub-10W at TSMC's 40nm (although Intel's new use of TSMC as
>> a
>> foundry might get interesting on speed-to-market).
>>
>> Now it's clear AMD took a major chunk of the market with the
>> low-voltage
>> Athlon+M690E combo.  Because _all_ of the Acer-Gateway and whitebox
>> models I've seen lately are sporting a ULV Pentium Single/Dual-Core
>> with
>> an Intel chipset like the X3000/4000 series.  It's funny because that
>> now
>> reverses the problem (and even kills the battery a little bit more than
>> AMD's aged solution).  The only AMD combos I can find are old models**.
>>
>> AMD has a great GPU, but is either CPU-limited or power-limited (by
>> CPU).
>>
>> Intel has a great CPU (ULV Pentium), but is always ships a GPU clunker
>> (in _real_ features, not those artificial "dumb framebuffer"
>> benchmarks), let alone in Linux (where the Intel driver totally lacks
>> IP
>> features of their Windows counterparts -- ATI and nVidia offer a closed
>> source driver for such).
>>
>> So, in a nutshell, there's no happy medium right now.  Maybe Intel will
>> stop fighting with nVidia and work with them for a combo to the ULV
>> Pentium. Then again, pricing is still an issue -- and I hope AMD's new
>> 45nm finally delivers what it should.  2GHz 45nm single-core
>> performance
>> of 4-5 hours with a 40nm M780G/T (Radeon 3100) or successor.  But right
>> now it seems there's still a lot of old stock out there.
>>
>> -- Bryan
>>
>> **P.S.  With that said, I still just bought the older LV Athlon + M690E
>> refurb combo for $270 from Woot.  The 1.2GHz Athlon 64 is capable of
>> meeting requirements for a 2GHz Penitum 4, and -- again, it's funny --
>> to jack up _all_ of the DirectX 9 / OpenGL 2.x features for shading and
>> textures with the Radeon X1270 (2100) integrated GPU and it makes
>> _no_difference_ in performance (because the GPU can handle them).  It's
>> that CPU doing background stuff in a title that seems to hit any
>> performance, not any rendering (the GPU is more than capable).  At
>> least
>> memory and disk are beyond the artificial XP netbook $5 pricing,
>> although it ships Vista, I'm running Linux on it anyway.  ;)
>>
>
>
> - --
> ~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~
>     Kevin Korb            Phone:    (407) 252-6853
>     Systems Administrator        Internet:
>     FutureQuest, Inc.        Kevin at FutureQuest.net  (work)
>     Orlando, Florida        kmk at sanitarium.net (personal)
>     Web page:            http://www.sanitarium.net/
>     PGP public key available on web site.
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