GCN, AMD’s GPU Architecture Modernization
AMD’s Terascale architecture became very competitive as it matured with the HD 5000 and 6000 series. But using GPUs for general purpose compute was trending around the 2010s and AMD didn’t want to miss out. Terascale’s SIMD engines were distant relatives of the execution…
Inside Kepler, Nvidia’s Strong Start on 28 nm
Nvidia’s Fermi architecture was ambitious and innovative, offering advances in GPU compute along with features like high tessellation performance. However Terascale 2’s more traditional approach delivered better power efficiency. Fermi’s GTX 500 series refresh narrowed the efficiency gap, but then AMD hit back with…
China’s New(ish) SW26010-Pro Supercomputer at SC23
Computing power has emerged as a crucial national resource. Ever since the first general purpose computer, ENIAC, was used to calculate artillery and bomb ballistics, compute applications have exploded. Today, engineers use computer simulations to cheaply evaluate designs before using more resource intensive validation…
ARM’s Cortex A72: aarch64 for the Masses
ARM’s Cortex A72 is a 3-wide, speculative, out of order microarchitecture launched in 2016. During its prime, it saw service in several cell phone SoCs: Since then, the core has been superseded several times. But unlike its successors, the Cortex A72 has found widespread…
Core to Core Latency Data on Large Systems
Multicore CPUs have to give user programs a way to synchronize between different cores, and ensure a coherent view of memory. A write from one core has to be made visible to others, even though each core has private caches. Cache coherency protocols like…
CPU-Z’s Inadequate Benchmark
CPU-Z is a hardware information tool from a company called CPUID, not to be confused with the CPUID instruction. Besides showing basic CPU, motherboard, and memory information, CPU-Z features a built-in benchmark. While the benchmark isn’t its primary function, it has made its way…
A Brief Look at Apple’s M2 Pro iGPU
Integrated GPUs are often low-end affairs. Even when graphics performance matters, a combination of cost, die space, memory bandwidth, and power constraints prevent iGPUs’ performance from reaching into mid-range discrete GPUs’ territory. But every rule has exceptions. Consoles like Xbox Series X and PlayStation…
Cortex X2: Arm Aims High
Arm has traditionally targeted the low end of the power and performance curve, but just as Intel has been looking to expand into the low power market, ARM is looking to expand into higher power and performance segments. The Cortex X series is at…
Cinebench 2024: Reviewing the Benchmark
Maxon’s Cinebench is a perennial benchmark favorite. It’s free, easy to run, and scales across as many cores as you can give it. Its $0 cost allows the internet to provide plenty of results for reference. Consumers and tech reviewers alike therefore heavily use…
Arm Announces Total Design: Taking Neoverse CSS Forward
We recently covered the announcement of Arm’s Neoverse CSS Genesis N2 platform, a near off-the-shelf compute subsystem design created to accelerate the time to market for custom accelerators in leading edge infrastructure. We commented at the time that we could see Arm looking to…
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