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The MacBook Air CPU Mystery: More Details Revealedby Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/17/2008 12:00 AM EST
- Posted in
- Mac
42 Comments
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jessejames036 - Friday, September 05, 2008 - linkDoes anyone have an idea who is the supplier for the LED driver of the Keypad.
JP Reply
pink78 - Monday, April 07, 2008 - linkThere's actually some more about this Untel CPU in the Macbook Air:
diablosinc - Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - link"The fact that Apple can cram a nearly-2GHz Core 2 Duo into the MacBook Air either means that Moore's law has caught up with our desires or Apple is going to make it so you can no longer have children."
considering apple is the worst environmental offender of all of the major techies out there, i'm leaning towards the latter.
funny that they pander....i mean, er...market...to the "young and hip", who're typically the more "environmentally conscientious"...
any empires out there that don't make you hum the imperial march theme? Reply
blumenbach - Monday, January 21, 2008 - linkFinally a decent article on the MB Air from someone who has experience with ultralights. I've owned a couple of the Sony 505s, and I'm looking forward to running the MB Air through its paces. It's silly to compare the Air with either the MacBook or the MacBook Pro, because both are very different animals. What Apple has attempted to do--and perhaps succeeded--is to create a fully functional laptop with few compromises. As far as I know, only the Toshiba Portege has come close to this. I've had my MacBook Pro for almost two years now, and it's easily the best laptop I've ever owned (of about 15 or so). The build quality on the MacBook Pro is unsurpassed, and I'm assuming the Air will be of similar quality with its aluminum housing and other Apple components... but almost three pounds lighter! That's what makes the Air so exciting: it's a high performance and high quality notebook that is fully functional, all under 3 pounds and at a much lower price point than has been the case for ultralights in the past. My bet is that it will be a big success for Apple. Reply
quanta - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkThat's just what the world needs, another Crapple accessory with weld shut battery, memory, and hard drive slots, except it's 3 times as expensive as iPhone, and a whole lot more junk for Chinese recyclers to destroy their villages with. Reply
diablosinc - Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - linkdidn't see your post. see mine below, if you feel like some mutual "preach it, brother/sister"'s... Reply
samirpsamirp - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkI don't own a single apple product. But I admire/drool over their designs. My price calculations however don't work out. Because other designs offer far better specs at similar price points.
After following apple for a while my new pipe dream is: aesthetics at an affordable price point whoever does it. With enough volumes shipping may be apple will lower prices for some of the pleasant products or somebody else.
(having a hip device is not the prerogative for select few, apple seems to be making hip devices for masses. Oh! But the prices!!!) Reply
amx - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkAfter the launch of the Macbook Air and the CPU choice it is clear why other two laptops have not been updated. In my opinion Apple has already designed or refreshed the design of macbook and macbook pros. The Penryn ramp up is an important step for Apple to release those two laptops. They are after all the core computer products that apple sells. They have huge volumes now and penryn production at this moment probably could not support the apple volumes thus leading to huge shortage. I think Apple is waiting for a month or two two launch those products.
The CPU choice here also makes sense, since the margins for intel are great on the 65nm process and thus they could afford to shrink the package size. Who knows after Apple's move other companies might want Intel to deliver this 20mm package size. That would create many Macbook Air like competitors. Even laptops like Asus Eee PC could benefit from this processor. Reply
solipsism - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkThe developer notes for the MacBook Air state:
"Advanced Digital Media Boost supports Intel Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) versions 1, 2, 3, and 4 and allows the processor to execute most 128-bit instructions every clock cycle." Reply
solipsism - Saturday, January 19, 2008 - linkUpdate: They removed it from the dev paper 2 days after I posted this. Reply
Griswold - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkHmm, if it wasnt a dev paper, you would have found a way to grab them by their apples for false advertising! ;) Reply
solipsism - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link• http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareD...">http://developer.apple.com/documentatio...801/Arti... Reply
VooDooAddict - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkI was really hoping this would be the tablet PC alternative.
Rotatable screen, Waccom digitizer. Reply
daftrok - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkSo a 5 pound 1" thick 13" Macbook laptop is not portable enough for some people? Is losing 0.24 inches in thickness and 2 pounds really worth the sacrifices one must take when buying this device (oh, and 800 dollars). I, for one, do not believe that this is so.
Another thing I disliked on the Keynote was its comparison to the TZ series. Steve can say all he wants about how the speed is slow and its thick, but I would be very impressed if Apple made an 11" laptop with a 1.6 GHz C2D processor; 13" laptop, not so much. Granted its thin but at the same time you have more room to work with. Also the TZ series has a much greater battery life, mobile broadband connection, a 1.3 MP webcam, fingerprint reader and carbon fiber casing.
So, in short, this was a bad move on Apple's part. They already have a 13" laptop and its called the Macbook, there's no need to make another. It would have been nice/made sense if they made a 12" touch laptop with those specifications and around a 1500 dollar price point.
Another thing I was hoping for was a replacement for the Macbook. Just make an Aluminum 13" Macbook with LED backlighting and the new 45 nm Penryn processors and just have one upgradeable model at $1099 (I'm sick and tired of the ripoffs they are pulling with the Macbooks). Reply
Tegeril - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkThis system gets 1-2 more hours of battery life than the aforementioned Macbook. Reply
Lonyo - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkSo take a spare battery. Reply
plewis00 - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkPerhaps the largest point you missed about the TZ series is that it has an optical drive. It also has 2 USB ports and because of all the built-in stuff you don't need to use them as badly as on the Air. Reply
Bremen7000 - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link"You can probably save yourself some coin by snagging a 32GB drive aftermarket..."
Is the HD even user-replaceable? I wouldn't be surprised if the whole laptop was seam-free like an iPod/etc (other than cooling vents). Reply
Mathue - Monday, January 21, 2008 - linkLooks like only a few screws for the HD replacement near as I can tell. Reply
daftrok - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkIt is. You can't even change the battery. Reply
Mathue - Monday, January 21, 2008 - linkWhat, you can't operate a screwdriver? Reply
plinden - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkNope, I took a look at one yesterday at the expo.
It's not seamless. The bottom has about a dozen screws. I spoke to a rep and he told me everything's soldered to the board and only an Apple tech could change anything. So your warranty would be invalid if you changed the HDD or battery or RAM yourself.
That said, since the insides are so easily accessible and an Apple tech can replace the HDD, battery and RAM (from my experience of Apple "geniuses", they're good but not with any technical skill better than I have) you could probably change things yourself if you had any level of soldering skills above beginner. Reply
8steve8 - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link
here is a good table of ultra laptops
personally id like a 4gb penryn air with uefi 2.0
2gb ram when ram is practically free.... well that sucks. Reply
michal1980 - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkYou get some of the other laptops pointed out in the other thread. Because a 3/4 inch thick laptops around 3lbs that come with all the ports, and disk drives exsit on the market.
Yet once again the media, and to some degree Anandtech, seem to potray apple as some revolutionary company that is doing things no one ever has done before.
And yes the ipod when it came out set a standard... But the ipod time is over. And now apple is just making 'pretty' things. And without even saying they are first, let the media do it.
For example: after every mac event or launch, the local news stations cover it, and talk about all these great new apple product.
Then the next day on local radio the talking heads that dont know much about tech,ooh and ahhh over apple, and the new air.
Dell/hp/sony/toshiba/asus can launch a product.... and the media is silent.
Whats this media love affair with apple?
Apple can start selling apples tommorow, and the media and the drones will ohh and ahh, saying that they've never seen an apple before and it tastes so good. Reply
yesno - Monday, January 21, 2008 - linkThe media love affair with Apple is that it takes technologies that already exisit, and packages them in a form that is actually useful.
There are fewer iPhones than Windows Mobile phones, but far more data traffic from iPhones than from Windows Mobile. Not just a litte bit more.
Why? Web browsing on a cell phone certainly isn't "new." But Apple is the first company to make the experience pleasant, easy, and accessible to people who don't want to futz around with engineer-desinged usability nightmares.
One example on the Macbook Air is Apple's implementation of remote drive sharing and Netbooting, which is, by far, the slickest and best implemantation of that old technology that I've ever seen.
They're even better at making useable Unix tools than other companies. The command syntax of hditutil, for instance, is much better than your typical cryptic Unix syntax.
I know A LOT about hardware, software, and technology. I know more than anyone else that Apple's technologies aren't usually "new" in the sense that no one has ever done thing "x" before. And yet, I will usually buy an Apple product rather than a competing product, usually paying more for the privilege. Because I know that it work the first time around, well and intuitively. My time is valuable.
Just like I set up Linux machines for people, but wouldn't use one for my ordinary desktop environment, it is possible to know and understand technology and still prefer Apple products. Reply
rADo2 - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link"seem to potray apple as some revolutionary company that is doing things no one ever has done before" - but isn't that true? There is **no other company** that cannot fit Ethernet port, at least 3 USBs, PCMCIA card reader, DVD-RW writer, flash card reader, and many other neccesary things into 3 lbs. computer.
Apple did it first!
It is the first company that created a notebook that cannot have external mouse and USB dongle connected at the same time, the first company that created a notebook that cannot play DVDs and/or insert CDs, and the first company that prevents you to connect to hotel internet (via Ethernet port).
You see, Apple is first for many things :-) (it does not matter all of them are negative)
Unlike e.g. Toshiba, less than 2 lbs. in its R500, DVD-RW, Ethernet, card reader, PCMCIA, all included.
http://toshiba.com/R500">http://toshiba.com/R500 Reply
lemonadesoda - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - linkI do agree with your "business use" missing features. Most people with deep pockets dont want TWO laptops, just one. And that means a laptop that can be used on business and travel.
No ethernet port is a big omission.
No PCMCIA port is a big omission too. (Even if only to add environment certified high security wifi, or an ethernet card).
...although a LOT cheaper to build.
But 2 USB ports are needed as a minimum! Especially when without the ethernet and PCMCIA. Reply
Mathue - Monday, January 21, 2008 - linkMan, you are incredibly bitter for someone who hasn't even seen this notebook in person. Seriously, you need to walk away from the online tech news for a bit. Reply
michael2k - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkDoes it help that Anand wants one too? Reply
Griswold - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkYou hit the nail on the head. One possible explanation for this type of mass behaviour could be that apple managed to plant this little seed into the minds of the general public and the media drones, that tells them to think that apple and its products are, without exceptions, "cool and hip". And because most people want to be considered "cool and hip" instead of boring and square, they love to talk about it, hoping to catch some of the imaginary shining light that surrounds the product for themselves and of course to cater to the alleged public demand to hear about amazing thingies all day long. Similar to the funny things people will do and say to get associated with movie or music stars...
This has nothing to do with the actual quality of the product (and apple does have nice products), its rather a brilliant marketing feat they pulled off at some point in time that enhances the value of their company and products without spending too much on marketing - the media drones will do it for them. Brilliant, just brilliant. And perhaps the best thing apple has ever achieved. Reply
BladeVenom - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkIt's just the media. While Steve Jobs is a media Svengali, it's only the media who are eating out of his hand. The general public is smarter than that and see Apple for what it is. They only had a 5.7% market share this year in the US, and far less elsewhere. Reply
0roo0roo - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkit is not just the media. media hype can get people to buy maybe one product one time. it cannot make them come back. frankly apples been around and successful for so long the media hype argument needs to be shelved. Reply
michael2k - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkAll indications are that Apple has 7% marketshare in the US.
Probably by the end of this year it will be 10%. It wasn't long ago that they only had 4% in the US.
So, no, it's not just the media. The general public actually is buying Macs. Look up Apple's quarterly results and you'll see that too. Reply
Griswold - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkNo, the general public is not much smarter than that. See the ipod and how people rush to stores only to get the latest model whenever there is a new one. And the (now somewhat calm) iphone hype.
Dont just look at computer market share figures... thats not their cash cow anymore.
Besides that, the media drones only cater to the needs of the dummies listening to them in the first place - principle of supply and demand. Reply
brianb - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linkForm factor of the MBA is definitely the tastiest I've seen, but the notebook is still a little heavy for an ultraportable. The toshiba portege r500 is only 1.7 pounds. Now, I have a Mac and what I want Apple to improveve on is the MacBook glossy screen. It's a total wash out as seen on this video (http://www.maccomplainer.com/macbook-complaints/ma...">http://www.maccomplainer.com/macbook-co...s/macboo....
Some people practically "live" in their notebooks working long hours on it, but unlike Sony, HP and Dell, Apple chooses a substandard screen. Reply
brianb - Friday, January 18, 2008 - linksorry, the link is:
http://www.maccomplainer.com/macbook-complaints/ma...">http://www.maccomplainer.com/macbook-co...ts/macbo... Reply
Ratinator - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - link"The love affair"
I think it is just the type of marketing they do. They hope to hit the hundreds of thousands of people out there that don't have a clue and suck them in.
For those that know better or are smart enough to seek out a friend a who does know better aren't as affected.
My father in law is an excellent example. He doesn't know better but he thinks he does. I have 15 years experience in software/hardware etc. He will ask my advice on something and then usually does something completely different. Usually because he heard something on TV or one of his friends who doesn't have a clue told him different.
It's amazing how many of this type of people are out there. Reply
Mathue - Sunday, January 20, 2008 - linkReply to Ratinator:
My Ghod I wish marketing products was as simple as you think it is. I _strongly_ doubt Apple could have grown so much over the past five or so years (Maybe it's longer?) on mere 'marketing to people without a clue'. I get SO SICK of my executives belief that marketing crap will make people buy crap, there's five years of proof where I used to work that that is a complete and utter pipe dream. Reply
0roo0roo - Friday, January 18, 2008 - link
I think it is just the type of marketing they do. They hope to hit the hundreds of thousands of people out there that don't have a clue and suck them in.
if it were easy as marketing everyone would be pulling apples. Reply
michal1980 - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkoh I wish I could edit:
Becuase I want to add,
how can apple be praised for high design when they leave things off... But other manufactures get ripped for missing port x,y,z.
Dell should release a notebook with no ports. not even a power plug, or a usb port. Talk about RADICAL.
oh and the graphics solution, can't intel get a faster chip that the old g9x5 chip? Reply
andreschmidt - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkThe MacBook Air shares the same Intel GMA X3100 as the MacBook.
It does not use the Intel GMA950.
I would guess they also get credit for designing something that actually looks good while getting the job done. Reply
tayhimself - Thursday, January 17, 2008 - linkA couple of things :
Google ". No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
Design has nothing to do with inclusion and exclusion of ports, but the user and product interaction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_design">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_design
Its the wrong product for you, but it MAY be the right product for others. Who knows it could be a Mac Cube or as successful as the original iMac (which I doubt). In any case I like it and am going to buy it. Reply


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Additional Details on Sandy Bridge-E Processors, X79, and LGA2011by Kristian Vättö on 4/26/2011 12:46 PM EST
- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- roadmap
67 Comments
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DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkDo you have any confirmation from Intel about x79 using a QPI link instead of DMI? The older rumor/leaks I've seen on LGA2011 all listed it as using the latter to connect to the southbridge. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkThe information we have doesn't specify the link type/speed, which is why we say "assuming it uses a similar QPI link..." If it's DMI, then the additional storage-dedicated lanes make a lot more sense, but then the PCIe links would have to come straight from the CPU or they'd saturate the DMI link, right?
The Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge platforms both use DMI, because the CPU has the PCIe graphics link, but I believe that's the whole point of LGA2011. Also, as noted above there's a huge increase in the pinout of LGA2011 relative to LGA1366, and I can't think of where they would use all those extra pins if they're not doing a full QPI link. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkOkay, discussed with Anand and updated. It's no *entirely* clear whether SNB-E will use QPI or DMI. Given the extra four lanes for storage, DMI would be very likely. What does this mean for Xeon, though? Maybe the chips have the option to do QPI or DMI, but they're using DMI on single socket configurations and consumer models, and QPI will only be on multi-socket. Or maybe they'll use a different die for Xeon. Lots of possibilities, but the text now reflects the fact that some of this isn't entirely clear, and we make some educated guesses as to what's going on. Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI've been scratching my head about the pincount as well. LGA 1567 is quad channel and 4x QPI, so the only new on die features adding pin count would be the PCIe lanes, and DMI link (4x PCIe). Each lane is 4 data pins, so 40 pcie lanes (32 +4 sata + 4 dmi) is 160 pins for data, and a few more for control/clock/etc (Wikipedia isn't clear which control signals are per slot which are shared), for maybe 200ish total. I'm going to assume that intel will also be using this socket for their forthcoming 4/8way boards and will keep the four QPI links. If they drop back to only two there're another 164 pins unaccounted for.
Maybe the remaining 250ish are just extra power/ground connections in order to support bigger/faster chips? Reply
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkhttp://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-x79-roadmap-leak...
That says that the SATA ports will have total bandwidth of 8GB/s (64Gb/s) due to the four extra PCIe lines. That would be enough even for 10 SATA 6Gb/s SSDs. A big upgrade from X58 though, since it tops out at around 660MB/s from what I have heard.
This is starting to be very complex lineup for Intel if some parts use QPI and others DMI, let alone what LGA 1356 will add to the mixture :D Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linksome parts using QPI and others DMI is the same situation as we had with LGA1156/1366, so I don't see anything changing.
LGA 1356 rumors are operating at a much lower level than LGA1155/2011 rumors have. It's an open question if it's a real product or not. My guess is that it either always was vaporware, was a real part at one point but completely discontinued to only have 2 sockets vs 3 for the last architecture, or is a plan B part if bulldozer turns out fast enough that quad core/dual channel Ivy Bridge CPUs aren't fast enough to compete in the $200-300 range, and hexcore dual channel DDR3 IB chips would be badly memory bottle necked. Reply
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkThe LGA 1356 is pretty much confirmed from what I have read and heard from my sources. Currently it looks like it will be meant for low-end DP systems so it is unlikely that we will see any consumer parts for that socket (i.e. only Xeons).
That would mean that there will be three sockets of SB Xeons (don't forget E3 lineup for LGA 1155 socket). Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkAnything publicly available on highly trustworthy sites? I don't think I've seen anything on sites I consider A list for reliability. This isn't to say I think all the sites reporting the rumors are questionable. some might quality, but there're far more sites reporting rumors than I normally follow and can evaluate. Reply
Casper42 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI was in a briefing by Intel in Feb and one of the things I remember complaining about was the complexity of the SB lineup in servers.
I remember seeing the following:
1 way with Dual Channel
1/2 way with Triple Channel
2/4 way with Quad Channel (4 way design here would need 2 hops for some chip-to-chip communication due to limited QPI links so it was like the poor man's 4 way box)
4/8 way with Quad Channel (this had more QPI links thus making it a proper 4 way box)
I wanna say they were socket H, B2, R and lastly EX-B for the big boys. (same order as specs above)
I straight out called them out on it as AMD has boiled their lineup to a simple 1/2 Dual Chan socket and a 2/4 Quad Chan socket. Much easier to build servers when the chips are clearly delineated.
So assuming 2011 is R and I know 1156 is H, that certainly leaves room for 1356 to come in as B2. EX-B will likely be the last addition as it will supplant the soon to be released Westmere-EX chips. The monster 10 core 30MB cache ones. Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - linkhttp://www.cpu-world.com/news_2011/2011020803_Deta...
Socket B2 is same as LGA 1356. Obviously, I cannot confirm that this is 100% accurate. It does make sense though. Currently Intel doesn't offer much in the low-end DP market due to their high prices. Maybe LGA 2011 parts are simply too expensive for Intel to manufacture, so they couldn't replace the E5502 for example.
LGA 1356 with crippled features would let Intel stay competitive, even in lower-end markets. Cut down the PCIe lanes, stick with triple-channel, possibly no ECC and stuff like that.
Server grade stuff is not usually reported by these regular news sites so getting information that is available for everyone is harder. Subscription is usually required to get access to information like this. I don't have access like that so this is just what I heard from a friend of mine who has access to this kind of information. Reply
SteelCity1981 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - link"USB 3.0 support is still missing,"
Seriously Intel? I mean, seriously intel this is your new highend chipset and you still aren't going to support USB 3.0. Freaking stupid........ Reply
Kaboose - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkIntel is probably trying to get people to adopt their lightpeak/thunderbolt technology instead, but i agree USB 3.0 WOULD be a nice thing to have. Reply
Ammaross - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkIt's not because they're pushing LightPeak, since they'd have onboard support for LightPeak instead of USB3 to actually make that assumption work. My bet is they're just behind on specs. Reply
Marlin1975 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkThats because they are trying to push their new connection.
AMD will have native USB3 on the Llano chips. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI think it has more to do with the fact that X79 was probably specced out and started at the same time as the 6-series chipsets. The upcoming Ivy Bridge platform should have both native USB3 and ThunderBolt support. Reply
greylica - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkGazzilions and Bazzilions.... Reply
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkX79 is an enterprise level chipset and they are more complex than consumer (LGA 1155) stuff. Since they are more complex, they require more money and time to be done right, thus it is easier and cheaper for Intel to not include USB 3.0 in X79.
As consumer stuff isn't as complex, adding USB 3.0 to Ivy Bridge is easier Reply
Spivonious - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkAside from external hard drives, what needs the speed of USB 3? I think Intel is playing it smart here and waiting to see what the market response to USB 3 will be. Reply
name99 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - link"Aside from external hard drives, what needs the speed of USB 3?"
That's a pretty big aside...
Yes, no-one is asking for USB3 printers. So what?
We want faster external and portable drives. This is a perfectly reasonable request. For most people, the speed of their storage is THE determining factor as to the perceived speed of their computers, not the CPU specs.
At some point, there will probably also be a transition period between 1G and 10G ethernet, where it would be nice to retrofit 10G ethernet to an older machine through USB3.
It's nice to hope that one can get USB3 through Thunderbolt, but right now there are, as far as I can tell, precisely ZERO USB3<-->Thunderbolt bridges available for purchase. Reply
GullLars - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link"For most people, the speed of their storage is THE determining factor as to the perceived speed of their computers, not the CPU specs."
I can confirm this as absolutely true.
For >90% of consumers, a 2-2,5GHz C2D is fast enough, 2-3GB RAM decent, and NV x20/x30 or AMD x3xx/x5xx sufficient. Give them a decent SSD for OS + Apps and they'll sing you praises.
I've been using SSDs since 2008, and whenever i have to use a computer with a HDD (system drive), regardless of CPU and RAM, i feel like i want to smash my head against the wall or throw the computer out the window.
Since i upgraded my family and friends computers with SSDs, there have been virtually no complaining about them slowing down, and those who used to buy a new computer every 2-3 years now have no desire to do so (other than a couple of gamers :P). Reply
MrBlonde - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkIf Intel planned USB 3 on this generation of I/O controllers, they'd have started before USB 3 was finished. And if they tried to tack it on afterwards... they could have something like the Cougar Point flaw. This would also be unfair to AMD because they have to wait for Intel to release USB 3 specs then design the specs into AMD chipsets. Reply
slyck - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkAnd we all know Intel wouldn't want to be unfair to AMD. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI have a great idea! Let's all rush out and spend $700 on a cpu/mobo/RAM and then have to bend over for some third party's usb 3.0 card or chipset, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. It's funny, because one of the biggest bottlenecks on today's computers is usb transfer speeds. It is really becoming quite annoying. Reply
ggathagan - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - link...which is why Intel developed Thunderbolt. Reply
skrewler2 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkThat quad channel is awesome.. prices have dropped to where putting 32GB in it wont break the bank.
Any idea what onboard storage controller we're talking about? Reply
skrewler2 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkAlso.. I assumed the boards will have 8 DIMM slots. Any word on whether boards will have 4 vs 8? Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkRumors I've seen earlier indicated that LGA 2011 systems using unbuffered (normal) ram would only support a single dimm per channel in order to increase the maximum validated speed. A few blurred mobo pictures leaked months ago showed 2 memory sockets on either side of the CPU. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI would guess eight slots, though it's up to the motherboard vendor as well. We know it's easy enough to put two DIMMs on a single channel, so it's just a matter of finding space. I expect we'll see 4-slot mATX and 8-slot eATX, and the regular ATX will be a mix of both. Reply
cactusdog - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - linkCould be, but with 8GB Dimms coming i dont see a need for any more than 4 slots on consumer boards. Especially when 1 dimm per channel means higher speed and lower latency. But yeh i agree server boards will probably have 8 slots.
Thanks for the info, cant wait for this platform. Reply
GullLars - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link8GB DIMMs won't be cheap for consumers. 4GB DIMMs are finally approacing 2GB ones in $/GB, so i'm guessing early (first 6 or so months) 8GB DIMMs will be about twice the $/GB of 2GB DIMMs for the same speed and latency. Reply
evilspoons - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI'm dying just waiting for Z68 to show up so I can buy myself a 2500k or 2600k. I think LGA2011 would be a better fit for me but dang, my Q6600 is a bit old and creaky.
(FWIW it's pretty amazing I've forgone upgrading for the last 3.5 years and hardly even noticed until the last couple months. Not bad for someone who used to upgrade twice a year!) Reply
7Enigma - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkSame here! Currently on a E8500 with ATI 4870 and really starting to get the upgrade itch. The whole Sandy Bridge fiasco with overclocking or on-board graphics but not both kept me calm the last couple of months (not to mention the SATA mobo bug) but it's starting to get tough not to bite the bullet and rebuild.
choices choices. Reply
GullLars - Friday, April 29, 2011 - linkBoth you guys, if you don't have SSDs already, that could tide you over to Q4. If you do, i can understand your itch to upgrade. I gave into it on an AMD system this fall, and couldn't wait for bulldozer. It did earn me the PCMark Vantage WR for AMD systems though :D (with only air-cooling) Reply
JMS3072 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkOne important thing to note is that you'd need 4 DIMM slots populated to get full quad-channel badnwidth. I also suspect that we're going to see a return to 4 slots on most boards from the 6 present on most 1366 boards- which means that if you build a rig to take full advantage of the quad-channel architecture, upgrading your RAM later on is going to get pricey. Reply
Casper42 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkExcept that you can get 16GB of RAM these days for like $150
I can only imagine that unless the Japan situation has a major impact on prices, that this could be even cheaper by the launch date.
And by then, the enthusiasts who can afford a $500/1000 CPU and $300 mobo could probably afford to load that thing with 8GB DIMMs as well. Reply
cactusdog - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - linkAlso, we are at a point where memory upgrades are pointless. Everyone has more than enough memory these days.
A 4x4GB kit is going to be plenty for a long time to come. Even a 4x2GB kit is more than enough for the home user for the next 3 years at least. Reply
JMS3072 - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link1981 called. Bill Gates wants his quote back. Reply
cactusdog - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - linkhaha i didnt say ever.....the thing is people will move on to the next platform before there is a need for more than 32GBs of memory. They'll probably upgrade 3 or 4 platforms before then. Reply
DanNeely - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - linkThe bigger issue for most users is that w7 home premium can only use 16gb. To go higher you need to upgrade to pro/ultimate which nets you 192gb. Reply
GullLars - Friday, April 29, 2011 - linkWell, not entirely pointless. If you have a >4GHz Hexacore, a RAM-disk to install all apps or even some games on would certainly net a noticable bump, even over the insane SSD RAIDs you can make on X79.
I'm on a AM3 rigg currently holding the PCMark Vantage WR for AMD systems (only about 17K marks though :P), and my bootdrive is a 256GB SSD RAID (4x64GB) pushing well over 1GB/s and 100.000 IOPS, but still i can notice a bump in speed with a RAM-disk for certain apps. Most of the time though, my 4,4GHz 1090T just maxes one core or maybe two, since most programs still are not heavily threaded. Reply
mfago - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI had recalled LGA2011would be 40 lanes of PCIe 3.0? Any news on this?
Thanks! Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - link32 main slots, 4 sata extra BW, 4 DMI = 40 total. (About half the LGA1155/1156 prerelease reports counted the DMI lanes in the total PCIe count). Reply
JMC2000 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI think PCIe 3.0 will be included in Ivy Bridge chips, but the spec was released too late to make it into Sandy Bridge. Reply
Filiprino - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI thought 8 core Sandy Bridge-E were planned for LGA2011. Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkSame here and I've seen them on recently leaked roadmaps. Maybe they're not launching at release time, or they'll be coming out as XEON's not consumer branded parts. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkI believe those are going to arrive some time in 2012, but don't quote me on that. LOL Reply
hansmuff - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkThat's a lot of extra traces to put between CPU and memory. It seems to me that this will be an expensive platform compared to 1155.
Couple that with the "limited unlock" of that 4-core i7 they will put into the 2600K price range, and I'm not entirely sure of the value of the "low end" 2011. The 2600K seems to have no trouble running at 4.4GHz for a lot of people, so I'd set that as a benchmark.
The memory throughput is of course fantastic, and I believe that to be a very significant development. It is important to give 4+ cores enough bandwidth to actually work their magic. Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - link2 channels of DDR3-1333 were fast enough to keep lga1156 CPUs from bottlenecking on memory IO in anything Intel considered normal use (vs a memory bench), while SB is faster than Lynnfield, the addition of official DDR3-1600 support should largely counterbalance it. The LGA2011 quad's extra bandwidth will be about as useful as the 3rd channel of the LGA1366 quad's were. Reply
hansmuff - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkInteresting. Makes even more of a case for the platform to be expensive, if the "low end" quad doesn't outperform the 2600k significantly.
I suppose that on a 6 core chip the quad channel (or at least a triple channel) would make sense though, no? Reply
cactusdog - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - linkExactly, things change when you have a 6 or 8 core CPU. Plus 1 dimm per channel is going to make it much easier to reach those high speeds and with lower latency and less voltage. Reply
Concillian - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link
Couple that with the "limited unlock" of that 4-core i7 they will put into the 2600K price range, and I'm not entirely sure of the value of the "low end" 2011.
Intel is not in the business of having a "value low end" processor anymore. They are very much insisting you spend money for the performance at this point. That much was already clear with 1155 and shouldn't come as a surprise that they're doing it again with 2011. They have specifically engineered this generation to separate as much money as possible from enthusiasts.
It appears to be working well for them so far, lots of people are buying more processor than their demographic would have in the past. They're spending more on motherboards too. Intel is raking in the benefit of having so little competition on the high end. Reply
Michael REMY - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linki really wonder why the number of usb port increase at each chipset generaton !
in 20 years of computer science, it hardware, i never knew a person need such ports !
i'd prefer more memory cache instead more usb ports !
my notice is valuable also for sata port number !
hard drive capacity grows up so ! number of hard drive decrease in the same time !!! Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkUSB2 controllers are tiny, even on the legacy processes many southbridges are built with. As legacy IO ports are going away they need to pile on more USB2 controllers to keep the IO panel mostly filled up and to still have enough headers for cases with 4 built in ports and a card reader in one of the drive bays. Reply
Lonyo - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkYou can use that many if you really want, e.g. external drive + keyboard + mouse + USB drive + phone cable + printer + USB wi-fi device + another external drive + another USB drive + card reader.
That's 10 right there. This is an enthusiast board after all.
The 14 SATA ports is a little excessive, although it might be useful for more enterprise oriented motherboards where you might want lots of drives. Reply
DanNeely - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkAs for the sata ports, Intel's trying to squeeze out the 3rd party controller most higher end mobos have added. With LGA2011 dropping the PCI bus entirely this might not just be a case of trying to make sure that the extra dollar goes to them, because the several other misc devices that used to be piled onto the PCI bus are now having to compete with everything else for the 8 PCIe lanes on the SB. WIth no native USB3 support I suspect most full ATX enthusiast boards are going to end up resorting to PCIe multiplexer chips, or a PCI-PCIe bridge in order to fit everything in, while still putting at least a 1x PCIe slot in every available spot on the board. Reply
name99 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkThe SATA ports make no sense. The USB are used in many surprising ways.
On Mac portables, for example, USB is used for at least the internal kbd and trackpad, the webcam, bluetooth, the IR port. With two or three user USB ports, that gets you to 7 or 8. On a desktop mac you have the same stuff and maybe 5 USB ports. (And that's not dumb --- I use all 5 USB ports on my Mac mini HTPC, for example).
I may have left some stuff out --- not sure how audio (out or in) is handled these days, for example. Also 802.11g I think used wifi (can't remember), but obviously n does not. Reply
name99 - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkOh, yeah, also include at least an SD slot for modern macs. Reply
Blaze-Senpai - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkHopefully Intel doesn't just start tacking on a pin to the socket every year now... would turn into more of a mess than it is now. Reply
Hrel - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkThis is getting rediculous. I really wish I had the influence to organize a global boycott on Intel until they get with the freakin times and put a USB 3.0 controller on their chipsets. I'm not buying another motherboard until EVERY USB port on it is USB 3.0.
Seriously, WTF Intel?! WTF! So help me if you guys don't knock this shit off I'm going pure AMD out of spite. 50% profit margin is PLENTY! Stick with ONE socket for at least a couple generations. Like LGA775. As soon as it's physically possible, support the newest technologies and don't expect your customers to pay an arm and a leg for them. EVERY SATA port should be 6MBPS, EVERY USB port should be 3.0. Motherboards should NOT have major issues months after release.
Gah, F it. At this point CPU power with just about anything is "good enough". Unless things change drastically in a year or so I'm now ONLY buying AMD. Reply
slyck - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - linkThat's why I'm going bulldozer. My Core2Duo has been great, and Intel's chips have the best cores. But their market segmentation games are beyond ridiculous, are are their naming schemes and planned obsolesence. LGA2011 is going to be expensive, just to get the same options you have had with more affordable AMD chipsets for years now. Reply
rahvin - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - linkI bought an ASUS board with 4 USB 3.0 ports. Two rear and an internal header, the MB comes with a 3.5" breakout box for the front. The thing is the header on the 3.0 port is HUGE. It easily occupies the space of 2 SATA ports. Just guessing without measuring I'd say it's 3 times the size of a USB2 header.
You aren't going to see a lot of USB3 headers on a board, they aren't going to have space for them. The shear number of pins and traces required is going to prohibit it. My guess is that in the future the most you will ever see is 2 rear and a single header for 2 front mount USB3. Anything more than that and you will pay serious money for the traces. Couple in that USB3 has a max cable length of about 1 meter (3 feet) and I just don't see widespread replacement of USB2.
Given that USB3 is only really needed for large data transfers which is pretty much hard drives and cameras (debatable) I think Intel's plan on this is going to be the winning path. That plan is for thunderbolt to be the path for USB3 with a breakout box. Believe me, I felt just like you did until I saw the header size, I can't believe it is going to be deployed in large numbers on any board because it would cost a fortune to take up that much real-estate on a board. Reply
GullLars - Friday, April 29, 2011 - linkWell, since USB3 supports USB2, having just 4 native USB3 ports (that is full bandwidth and power on all at the same time) would be preferable to 14 USB2 IMO. You could have 2 full BW ports and 1 split into 4 ports (hub style) at the IO panel = 6 ports, and 1 internal header breaking out to 2/4/6 physical ports for the front.
For support of older cases, an additional internal header for 2/4 USB2 ports can make sense. Reply
sicofante - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - linkAny idea if the SNB-E Xeons might support overclocking by being unlocked as the Core i7 parts? Reply
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text:
The AMD FX (Bulldozer) Scheduling Hotfixes Testedby Anand Lal Shimpi on 1/27/2012 12:47 PM EST
79 Comments
Back to Article
Beenthere - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkThe Hot Fix is better than No Fix and Win 8 beta looks to be a few percent better than the Win 7 Hot Fix. So it's all good but nothing startling. Combined with Vishera/Piledriver should provide a nice performance bump however. Reply
Ramon Zarat - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link"The Hot Fix is better than No Fix".
A fix than bring no additional value (less than 2%, well below statistical significant value), and at the same time, by its simple presence, introduce the potential of conflict and instability (simple law of entropy) can only be detrimental to a system, not positive.
Another way to look at it: If my car is broken to the point of being unusable and I apply 1500$ worth of parts and labor and in the end it make no difference in its usability, why spend the 1500.00$ in the first place? New parts are better than no new parts?
I love AMD as a company, I really do. The truth is Bulldozer in conjecture with present operating system is broken and dysfunctional with embarrassing sub-par performance and inacceptable power consumption per instruction for what is supposedly a 8 cores CPU that cannot even approach a 4 cores 2500K performance in 90% of scenarios. AFAIK, that applies to ALL operating system including Linux and Mac. I even have my doubt a perfectly Bulldozer tuned OS would be able to compete with Intel offering. I'd like nothing better to be proved wrong on that one.
AMD knew from day 1 (years ago) that their new unconventional architecture would face issue such as this one, but it's only now, months after the actual launch of the product that they are working on fixes that fix nothing? Great example of bad management / strategy / planning and lack of foresight from AMD. I hope they have learned a lesson because underdog can't afford such huge misstep too often and hope to stay alive in the long run. Reply
bigboxes - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkBut can I download more torrents with this fix? Reply
ThomasS31 - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkWhy you have not tested core usage / clock gating and power consumption?
I thouht the main problem of scheduling related to that as well... Reply
Lugaidster - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkThis!
Is power consumption altered with this hotfix?
Cheers Reply
MrSpadge - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - linkPower consumption for given "mixed workloads" should be altered.. increased, actually, since more modules are active. Overall energy consumption, on the other hand.. I don't know. More power draw but for a shorter time.
MrS Reply
Marlin1975 - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkAnybody notice the differance between the first hotfix and the 2nd?
The first one even helped some Intel CPUs. The 2nd one seems to not help either AMD or Intel as much??? Reply
saneblane - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkI fail to see what was fixed, i give them credit for adding 2 more fps in x264 second pass. But come on this is just stupid. their is no performance increase that is going to be noticed or seen by this so called hot fix. We already accept the fact that bulldozer failed on the desktop in it's first showing, why remind us again. Things like this make people lose confidence in you, just lay low and try to improve Piledriver. Reply
Lonyo - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkBecause this won't probably help future AMD CPUs?
It's something Microsoft will need to deal with, and possibly already have with Win 8. It's free performance, and it helps pretty much test future similarly equipped AMD CPUs.
What are they supposed to be doing, other than giving free performance gains to Bulldozer users? Reply
saneblane - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkwell if you think the hotfix is worth wild, then i guess AMD has done it's job. Their is always more people that are easily fooled than the ones who can see the truth. Free performance??? Give me a freaking break, i waited years for bulldozer, and your going to tell me about a cpu that cost more than an i5 2500 and losses in almost every benchmark and games.That this hotix is free perfomance, haha. Zambezi users are paying a lot for this so called "free" when even i5 2500 beat the crap out of it, i guess sandy bridge has a lot of "free" performance too. Reply
Beenthere - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkThe Win 7 Hot Fix speaks for iteslf. As noted it's a small bump - but it's free. It's not AMD's fault that Microsucks O/Ss sucks. It's reported Linux does a better job of scheduling, probably because it's used on a lot of servers with heavy work loads.
I always tell people to buy what makes them happy. If you're happy with a product from a convicted criminal corporation and chose to support their efforts to eliminate consumer choice and drive up PC hardware prices - that's your choice and you're perfectly free to do so. Bashing AMD is not going to change reality however, no matter how disappointed you are in them.
In reality ANY of todays current model CPUs have more than enough computing power for 90+ percent of PC users. If all you do is run benchmarks then you could be misinformed...
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2120866/i... Reply
gamerk2 - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkFunny, considering different Linux distributions use different schedulers. Lets not also forget there is OVERHEAD to doing a lot of processing within the scheduler, and keeping track of thread/resource use can be a pain. Reply
sor - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkHuh? The process scheduler in Linux is dependent on which version of the kernel you have. Any current distribution should be using CFS. You may be confusing this with the options of IO schedulers. Reply
B3an - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkOh grow up you immature moron (typical Linux user!). And Apple are FAR worse now than MS ever was, as well as bigger. BTW it's not the 1990's anymore, Reply
frozentundra123456 - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkI cant believe people are still blaming Microsoft for bulldozers failure. It seems to me that the responsibility of a company is to bring out a product that works in the current environment, i.e. that works efficiently with win 7. Especially when you control a small portion of the market, you should make a product that "just works". You shouldnt expect the software to be rewritten for your product. And Intel doesnt seem to have any problem making processers that work efficiently with the current environment. Reply
Morg. - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - linkI like the *could* be misinformed -- if Intel didn't want benchmarks and reviewers to like them, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't do anything for it ;) Reply
cigar3tte - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkI don't normally bother, but there is way too many here...
Worth wild = worthwhile
It's = its
Their = There
Your = you're
Losses = loses
And yeah, it's more of a free fix than free performance. Bulldozer users are getting back what was lost, rather than gaining something. Reply
snouter - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link"there are way too many"
I don't normally bother either. Reply
jonup - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkYou can always look at a glass as half-full or half-empty.
@typos: Sad part is that some of them are native speakers. Reply
gevorg - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkCan the Sandy Bridge CPUs benefit from this by any chance? Reply
wumpus - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkI'd have to believe that any CPU with SMT enabled will benefit. That is, unless they already have this feature. Of course, Intel has been shipping SMT processors since P4. I'd like to believe that microsoft simply flipped whatever switch to treat bulldozer cores as SMT cores, but I don't have enough faith in microsoft's scheduling to believe they ever got it right. Reply
hansmuff - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkAt least Windows 7 (haven't tested anything else) schedules threads properly on Sandy Bridge. HT only comes into play once all 4 cores are loaded. Reply
tipoo - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkWindows already has intelligent behaviour for Hyperthreading. I don't think this will change anything on the Intel side. Reply
silet1911 - Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - linkYes, a website called Jagatreview have review a 2500+patch and there is a small performance increase
http://www.jagatreview.com/2012/01/amd-fx-8120-vs-... Reply
tk11 - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkEven if if a scheduler did take the time to figure out when threads shared a significant number of recent memory accesses would that be enough information to determine that the thread would perform optimally on the same module as a related thread rather than an unused module?
Also... Wouldn't running code that performed "intelligent core/module scheduling based on the memory addresses touched by a thread" negatively impact performance far more than any gains realized by scheduling threads on cores that are merely suspected to be more optimally suited to running each particular thread? Reply
eastyy123 - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkcould some explain the whole module/core thing to me please
i always assumed a core was basically like a whole processor shrunk onto a die is that basically right ?
and how does the amd modules differ ? Reply
KonradK - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkLong sory short:
Bulldozer's module consist 2 integer cores and 1 floating point (FPU) core. Reply
KonradK - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link"Story" no "sory"
I'm sorry... Reply
Ammaross - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link"Bulldozer's module consist 2 integer cores and 1 floating point (FPU) core."
However, the 1 FPU core can be used as two single floating point cores or a single double double floating point core, so it depends on the floating point data running through it. Reply
KonradK - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkNot sure what you are supposing.
Precision is the same, regardless of fact whether one or two threads are executed by FPU core. There are single or double precision FPU instructions, but aech thread can use any of them.
However if you mean single or double performance:
If two FPU threads will run on the same module each of them will have half of performance in comparision tothe same two FPU threads running on separate modules.
Just in first case one FPU is shared by two threads.
And it is whole point in the hotfixes - avoiding such situation as long this is possible. Reply
KonradK - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link"Ideally, threads with shared data sets would get scheduled on the same module, while threads that share no data would be scheduled on separate modules."
I think that it is impossible for sheduler to predict how thread will behave and it is not practical to track the behaviour of running thread (tracking which areas of memory are accessed by threads would be so computational intensive as computational intensive is emulation).
So ultimately there is choice between "threads should be scheduled on separate modules if possible" or "do not care which cores belongs to the same module" (pre-hotfix behaviour).
Second means that Bulldozer will behave as PIV EE (2 core, 4 threads) on Windows2000, at least for threads that uses FPU heavily. Windows 2000 does not ditinguish between logical and physical cores. Reply
Araemo - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkI've noticed that windows doesn't always schedule jobs well to take advantage of Intel Turbo Boost.. I realize that it probably doesn't have a noticeable level of impact, but I do notice that running only 1 thread of high-cpu-utilization still doesn't often kick turbo above the 3/4 cores active frequency.. I can use processor affinity on the various common background tasks to pull them all to 1 or 2 cores to activate full turbo, but if a process is only using a percent or so of cpu resources, why schedule it to an otherwise-inactive core if there is an already-active, but 98% un-utilized core available? I think the power gating efficiencies would actually be more useful than the pure mhz-related turbo efficiencies (Running 2 cores 100Mhz faster is probably going to waste less power than you gain by shutting down the other two cores completely/partially).
Is there anything to address that behavior? Reply
taltamir - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkWouldn't those hotfixes improve performance on intel HT processors as well? Reply
tipoo - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkNo, Windows already leaves virtual threads from hyperthreading alone until all the physical cores are used, so this won't improve things on the Intel side any. This is specifically for Bulldozer and future architectures like this. Reply
Hale_ru - Monday, February 06, 2012 - linkBullshit!
Win7 had nothing to do with Intel HT until AMD hit them in the head!
I had so much asspain with Win7 shity CPU scheduler on FEM and FDTD simulations.
8HT-core setup just reduces overall performance up to 50%(a HALF!!!) comparing to NO-HT setup.
Simpel task manager checkup showed that Win7 just was putting low-threaded processes on the same core without an option. Just simplest increment scheduler they have for Intels. Reply
Hale_ru - Monday, February 06, 2012 - linkSo, it is recommended to use AMD optimization patches (only the core-addresing one, not the C6 state patch) on any Win7 machine using simple multithreaded mathematics. Reply
hescominsoon - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkShared cpu modules that have to compete for resources? Reminds me of HT v1. IMO this is basically a quad core chip with the other 4 threads available in the primary core isn't being used all the way. I've looked at the design and it's just nonsensical. This is not a futuristic bet but a desperate attempt at differentiation...with most likely disastrous results. AMD has now painted themselves into a niche product instead of a high performance general purpose cpu. Reply
dgingeri - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkI like the design of the Bulldozer overall, but there is obviously a bottleneck that is causing problems with this chip. I'm thinking the bottleneck is likely the decoder. it can only handle 4 instructions per clock cycle, and feeds 2 full Int cores and the FP unit shared between the two cores. I bet increasing the decoder capacity would show a really big increase in speed. What do you think? Reply
bji - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkI think that if it was something easy, AMD would have done it already or are in the process of doing it.
I also think that it's unlikely that it's something as simple as improving the decoder throughput, because one would think that AMD would have tried that pretty early on when evaluations of the chip showed that the decoder was limiting performance.
These chips are incredibly complicated and all of the parts are incredibly interrelated. The last 25% of IPC is incredibly hard to achieve. Reply
bobbozzo - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkThe hotfixes also support Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Reply
Ammaross - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkThe FX-series chips have been shown to be RAM-dependant as well. Strangling these things with 1600MHz RAM when AMD themselves recommend a minimum of 1866MHz for these chips, but recommend 2166MHz RAM.
Anand, perhaps you should show charts that demonstrate whether you're able to repeat these claimed results? Reply
tipoo - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkI didn't know they recommended 2166. Separate article on Bulldozer memory scaling, perhaps? ;) Reply
CUEngineer - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkI hate how press and AMD try to play off that a bulldozer module is like a dual core or similar to SMT... IT IS NOT.
Its simple, there is a single Front end in the module to fetch instructions, this defines the module to be a single "core".... adding integer pipes and making the pipe wider or adding more execution units is simply super scaler architecture they are trying to make wider...
Id like to see their performance analysis because i the ROI is gone when you make your core too wide and thats what they did and they get tremedously underutilized and waste power... GG AMD. Reply
silverblue - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkI thought the defining property of a "core" was its integer execution hardware? Reply
KonradK - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link"You can either do two 128-bit operations at once, or one 256-bit operation at once, on a single module. "
This means also that two 128bit operations from one thread may be executed at once (as long second does not depend on result of first).
So ultimately benefits of Bulldozer's architecture are no more and no less than benefits than comes from any Hyper-Threading.
Two threads may run on one core at its full speed as long as any of them does not utilize execution units in more than 50% (that is true for not well optimized, and some other specific, programs).
They will not run faster than the same threads running on separate cores. Reply
descendency - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkThe problem here is that the scheduling isn't the problem.
It's the single core (per clock) performance. This thing is more expensive than a 2500k and yet has to compete with it.
In all honesty, if you are looking for a gaming PC that is still decent in other apps, I'd recommend a 1050T and spend the savings on a better GPU. With an AM3+ motherboard, you can wait for AMD to fix the hardware. Reply
saneblane - Friday, January 27, 2012 - linkI don't need it, I run i5 2500. It's kind of amazing that people are still confused about whether bulldozer on the desktop failed. If you are one of those people who think that Bulldozer is worth the money, then you deserve to buy it. Denying the truth just makes all of you look stupid. Bulldozer only manage to bulldoze itself, sales figures doesn't matter to me, because I am not AMD nor do I have stock invested in them, so sales figures is irrelevant to most people except AMD, and stock holders. It's because of people like you that kiss AMD's ass for all of the there highend failures, that even to this day Amd doesn't see the need to improve themselves because people would buy whatever they make. What a bunch of fools you all are. Reply
Flunk - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkI think his point is more that while this does improve bulldozer performance a little bit, it doesn't do anything to make it anywhere near competitive with Intel's offerings. Therefore the product is fairly useless. Reply
bji - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkAs always, people neglect price when they describe product merits. Bulldozer is not a "fairly useless" product because it competes well with Intel CPUs in its price range. No, it does not compete with high end Intel CPUs, but those are not in its price range. AMD has no choice but to price the part so that its value proposition is comparable to Intel parts of the same performance, otherwise the part would not sell. This may make AMD less money but for the consumer, it is a fine CPU in its price range. Reply
Ratman6161 - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkJust checked NewEgg and an 8150 is $40 more expensive than a 2500K and $30 less than a 2600K. -so if falls right in between on price.
Looking at the benchmarks, if gaming is not your primary concern then on a performance basis, the 8150 competes roughly with the 2500K. If gaming is your primary concern then the 2500K is the clear winner on performance.
So best case the 2500K and 8150 are evenly matched and worst case the 8150 gets trounced. So it has no business being priced $40 higher. To me, to be competitive it needs to be the same to lower price than a 2500K. And if you are someone willing to spend $40 more, you might as will just go $70 more for the 2600K.
So I just can't see how anyone can say it compares favorably with the Intel products in its price range. Reply
Ratman6161 - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkWith an Intel i3 2100. I suspect the gamers might actually be better served with the i3 than AMD's 8150 other than the inability to overclock the i3. Think of how much better a GPU you could get by saving about $150 by going with an i3 over an 8150.
Just sayin... Reply
medi01 - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - linkDid you forget something important?
Taking into account, cough, motherboard prices, cough?
The "you can get much better GPU for XX bucks" stands for pretty much any non low end CPU. Reply
xeridea - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkAMD did a blind test with the 2700k and 8150. 28% chose 2700k, 51% chose 8150, 20% undecided. It is a possibly an anomaly that the 8150 got more votes, but it at least shows that it is competitive as a gaming CPU, even compared to the 2700k which costs $100 more.
IIRC the 8150 is competitive and sometimes beats the 2500k and even beats the 2600k in some highly threaded situations.
Your figures are wrong. Intel has the 2600k for $325 and the 8150 for $270. This means the 8150 is $65 less than the 2600k, not $30. It is $40 more than the 2500k but you have to consider generally higher cost of motherboard/memory with Intel, and guaranteed socket incompatibility with every CPU. Reply
arjuna1 - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkYeah, Imagine how pathetic can a life be when you need to sustain your ego by hating the competing brand of your PC's cpu. Reply
Fox5 - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkWasn't the point of the hotfix to consolidate threads onto modules, so that modules could be gated and turbo core enabled? Isn't that where the performance boost is supposed to come from? Reply
KonradK - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - linkWindows 7 sheduler since beginning tries to group many threads on single core. It is mainly for maximize effect of power gates. I'm not sure whether core must be completely idle for turbo core/turbo boost to be enabled.
Purpose of hotfix was to make sheduler distingushing between cores beloging to the same, or separate module. Reply
Mech-Akuma - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkThis is what I thought as well. I remember reading somewhere when Bulldozer launched that Win7 prefers to primarily direct all threads to cores inside different modules. This would cause modules not to be able to enter C6 sleep and therefore the performance improvement of Turbo Core would be drastically cut. However since each module does not need to share resources (while each module is only using 1 core) performance is picked up there.
However this contradicts what this article says about pre-hotfix scheduling. Could someone clarify how pre-hotfix scheduling worked? Reply
silverblue - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkToms did the same thing. However, I'm not sure it'd make much difference. Reply
richaron - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkAs far as I'm aware 1600 is the most developed ram at the moment. I consider anything faster as simply overclocked 1600; more "bandwidth", more voltage, but lower cas latency.
I'm not sure what the reviewers were thinking, but they probly know more than most of us... Reply
KonradK - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - link"No. Bulldozer adds silicon that actually executes instructions. [...]"
Whole idea of Hyperthreading is to let a second thread utilize resources of core wasted by first thread (and vice-versa).
Depending on fact how much the execution units are replicated and how (un)optimally written is code amount of wastes (and benefits from Hyperthreiding) will be lower or greater.
Maybe the execution units of Bulldozer's FPU are replicated to the such excent that it will be wasted in most cases unless used by two threads simultaneusly.
But performance of two (FPU intensive) threads running on the same module will never be equal to the performance of two threads running on separate modules.*
Otherwise hotfixes to sheduler would be useless.
*) Assuming that CPU is not fully loaded i.e. some cores remains idle. Reply
Conficio - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - linkThis kind of problem, more intelligent schedulers for a new architecture cries for open source to be the experiment and proofing ground.
So I'd like to know what the scheduling behavior of Linux, BSD (and in extension Mac OS X, once Apple does use the architecture) is? Has AMD any experience? Do they work with any Universities to find optimal algorithms for this new architecture?
If such new architectures where the "core" concept blurs will be more common in the future, there is sure some research that can shed some light on this topic. Does any body know? Reply
just4U - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkI had to figure out what to do for our secondary system. Eventually I decided on the FX6100 which I picked up for $145... so a little bit more then a midrange I3. The board I got was a Asus M5A EVO for $110. That system is pretty fast... and I think overall a little better then what I'd have gotten out of an I3. I am on a i5 2500K everyday.. and before that a i7 920 setup..
These new FX proccessors are not what some reviewers make them out to be. Their actually pretty good for their price range. Are they going to win any awards? Likely not.. but for most of us your not going to be pulling your teeth and whining about it being slow because their not. Reply
Mugur - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkI wonder if the fact that the memory controller is running at 2-2.2 Ghz instead of the full cpu speed on Intel (the uncore part) and the cache latency is higher on AMD maked also FX cpus not competitive in single threaded tasks?
Regarding the memory speed, I remember that high speed DDR 3 is required for the AMD APU line, not the FX line...
I recently changed my gaming machine from a Phenom II X2 BE 3.3 Ghz (ran at 3.8 Ghz) to a Core i3 2120 and although some tasks in Windows seems a little slower (like browsing with a lot of pages opened - I have no ideea why - maybe the amount of cache PII had compared with the i3?), the gaming (Battlefield 3) improved a lot.
I wanted to go FX route, but simply looking on some gaming benchmarks made me go Intel (and the fact that I found a cheap Z68 Gigabyte board, people are not taking into account that sometimes a good Z68 board is twice the price of a good AMD board). The other components were a 60 GB SSD / 500 GB HDD, 8 GB DDR1600 and a Radeon 6870.
What I wanted to point out is that AMD does not compete through price properly with the FX line. A Core i3 2120 is about the same price like an FX 4100 and a Core i5 2500k has a lower price than an FX 8150. Only a high end Z68 board is (much) more expensive than an 8xx/9xx AMD AM3+ board... Reply
Scali - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkWe've seen linux kernel patches for Bulldozer that have about as much effect:
Let's just blame AMD, shall we? Reply
richaron - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkI've seen linux benchmarks, before any patch, which show the 8150 perform much better compared to the 2500k. Check the Phorinox benchmarks (unfortunately there's no 2600k in them).
Let's just blame Microsoft, shall we? Reply
Scali - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - linkWell no.
The point here is that kernel patches don't really have much of an effect on Bulldozer performance. There's no 'magic bullet'.
If the 8150 performs better compared to the 2500k in linux, that is a different story.
How does performance in linux compare to Windows?
It could also be that linux is just slower on the 2500k than Windows is (which I'm quite sure to be the case).
So no, I'll just blame AMD. The Bulldozer module architecture just doesn't work. Reply
superccs - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkHow come this was not developed in association with windows BEFORE release....???? That's like releasing a new GPU without having a firmware that runs the new feature set.
I sure hope the recent house cleaning at AMD got rid of some of these upper level jack@sses responsible. Reply
wingless - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkThe 4100 and 6100 look like they could gain a bit from this patch as well. Will there be a test with them included? Reply
just4U - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkI don't see either of them on bench results. Did Anand even review them? I don't think they did. Reply
Trailmixxx - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkHas droppend from over by a factor of 5 on my system after applying the hotfixes. Can someone else confirm this? And possibly on an Intel system as well? Reply
b_wallach - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkOne problem this cpu has had from day one has been it's overpriced by newegg and others. AMD wanted it sold for around 240.00. Because of the high demand and low volume they jacked the price up because they could "get away with it"
If you put it's cost where AMD wanted it to be the picture becomes a bit clearer.
I keep getting the feeling that all anyone would want AMD to do is make a Intel clone to perform equal to intel's cpus. That is stupid and backward thinking. Innovation takes guts because there is more chaos attached to it but that is how we step forward into new and better things. Without it we start to just stagnate.
I am more inclined to go with AMD because they are willing to innovate, to take a chance to make a cpu from a different angle.
And while this can be troublesome as we now see and will have growing pains I'm going to keep up hope that when it's software issues are worked out and some of it's latency is also worked out with the next gen at least they are trying to make a better item instead of just being a Intel drone company.
And like some more long range views have pointed out, while it's having issues in some area's it excels in some others like multitasking or running more than one or more programs at the same time. No more programs going crazy when something like Norton's decides to run a virus check in the back ground ect..ect..
If all people want is clones than buy only Intel if you want.
But if you manage to talk everyone out there to just do this and AMD goes away don't come back here crying about how much your next computer will be costing you because it will be a LOT more expensive and new cpu's from Intel will shrink to a trickle as there is no longer a need for them to do so.
This is a good reason alone to support AMD no matter what they make.
The whole AMD only or Intel only is such a load of crap in the long run. Both work well with current software. The real issue is will AMD be able to survive and if not will they take ATI with them as well?
If so the whole computing landscape will change to a very dark and nasty place. Intel and Nvidia would love it, the rest of the computing world would suffer total despair. It's easy to loose a business, it's next to impossible to start it back up again so if AMD keeps getting trashed by the media and people fall into that line the outcome will not be a pretty one.
It's almost too obvious that the bulk of the people here weren't around or old enough to remember when it was just Intel and their 286 and 386 days. They cost a ton of money back then, computers were not cheap. It gave Apple and even Atari some business and AMD started to come alone as well and the cost slowly came down because they could survive in that kind of setting. But times have changed way to much for that to be repeated.
It's too bad more people don't think along the what if line so they will know what to look forward to in a best or worse case scenario.
It's one reason why I'll use a AMD cpu. I can run anything I want to just fine and do it at a reasonable price. And it's mixed with a little thank you for getting prices down to affordable levels.
That is worth supporting.
I keep getting the feeling that people think of these as "I have the fastest computer on the block, look at me", the keeping up with the neighbor scenario that is funny in the best of times and horrible in the worst of times.
And I don't care where that takes them in the long run because I never want to think that far ahead.
Heck, I seldom see any long range thinking at all on the internet and that is scary. And I always thought that was just a politicians disease.
If you could really stop and think you'd know just how much better we are today because of AMD's willing to take chances and try something new, and without them we might still be running 32bit single core cpus.
I'm not being a AMD fanatic, just a realist. Reply
saneblane - Monday, January 30, 2012 - linkAmd first introduced a lot of the features that Intel used on Core architecture and Intel didn't mind copying them. So if even a company as big as Intel can copy, Why can't Amd. The cross license agreement between them was for this very same reason, Amd should take the best of every feature set that is used on x86 processors and make a good cpu with them, it seems to me that Amd might have too much pride for that, but speaking from a business stand point, it's the best thing they can do until they have gain more money. Reply
Scali - Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - linkThe cross-license agreement is only about the use of the x86 instructionset and its extensions.
Specific implementation details such as Intel's caching, HyperThreading, manufacturing process and whatnot don't fall under that license. Reply
Scali - Friday, February 03, 2012 - linkI was around in the 'Intel only' days as well...
And I find it funny you say "It gave Apple and even Atari some business".
Apple and Atari had been around in the home/personal computer market before IBM. It was the IBM PC that was trying to take business away from them, not the other way around.
I'm not so sure how much AMD contributed to getting cost down, if the cost went down at all...
A high-end 486 CPU cost about the same when AMD released the Am386 (its first x86-competitor) as a high-end Core i7 costs today.
I think the main differences are that the rest of the computer became a lot cheaper (monitors, PSUs, HDDs, motherboards, memory etc), and that these days, the mainstream and low-end ranges are often based on the same architecture, where in the old days the 'mainstream' alternative to a 486 would be a 386, and low-end would be 386SX or 286. So only high-end was state-of-the-art, if you were on a budget you bought older architectures at reduced prices.
I don't think AMD had much of a share in either development. Reply
Veroxious - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - linkMy real gripe with Bulldozer is the fact that it competes with the 2500 but does not even have on die graphics. Less performance and product for your money = FAIL! Reply
matt0609 - Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - linkhow come no one does reviews by manually setting the threads and memory per core, adobe after effects cs5.5 allows this, and my 8120fx renders a heavy themed project file pretty quick... Reply
markmpx - Friday, March 16, 2012 - linkThere are things that BD does well, and things it does badly (like most games). Its not good for many
windows users, but actually not bad for many linux users. Its a pity we didnt get a chip that performed
better that SandyBridge at a lower price, but that was too much to hope for.
Some real applications it does ok at :
Its sad that BD performs poorly at single threaded applications, AMD didnt quite get the mix right in this
design and will hopefully improve it in subsequent versions of the chip. I like the fact they dont keep changing the cpu socket, while recently Intel have released 1155,1156,1366 and 2011 sockets !
For my current applications a cheap 990FX motherboard (which all seem to have working IOMMU support)
and a cheap bulldozer, can do much the same job as a i7-3820. Its also a nightmare to find an Intel board for a 3820 chip that supports Vt-d properly on both the motherboard and bios.
So for things like Xen, AMD isnt a bad choice.
We are still lucky that AMD are competing with Intel. Competition and innovation benefits us all and helps
keep prices reasonable. (With WD and Seagate, buying Samsung and Hitachi, competition in hard drives has all but disappeared. No wonder we pay so much for hard drives now ! Reply
smith1968 - Friday, March 16, 2012 - linkI have been using AMD cpu's for years, bought an FX-6100, stuck it on my 890Fx motherboard, and i noticed great improvement in gaming. I don't know why people say it's 'useless' or other negative views but for me i can play Battlefield 3 in Ultra mode 1920x1080 and get between 43 - 48 fps which is fine, that's only on high action parts of the game, sometimes jumps upto 60fps absolute max. I only have a HD6950 2GB, not unlocked or overclocked and 8GB of memory on an MSI 890FX. Paid £114 all in for the CPU, i'm not complaining, if gaming was worse than my unlocked Phenom II 550 i would of sent it back.
Hotfix did not make any difference that i can notice, my machine is for gaming. It might not be as great as the i7 but so what, as long as my machine does the job i need it to that is all that is important, all these benchmarks that are not doing the Bulldozer cpu's any favours have not put people off, we all can't afford intel. Reply
garadante - Friday, April 06, 2012 - linkI know the architectures are very different, but the entire scene with AMD's Bulldozer architecture reminds me so very much of the scene with the CELL processor when the PS3 launched. And, the aftermath. The CELL processor had so much going for it at the beginning. It had extremely strong computational potential and pre-launch, the computational powerhouse aspect of the PS3 was it's biggest argument. In terms of raw power, it was the king of the consoles. But look at what happened. CELL is effectively dead in anything that isn't a niche server market as far as I'm aware, or concerned. It didn't matter that the architecture had incredible potential, it required a radical change in the way software was developed (game developers for the PS3). And the game developers never really grabbed the bit by the teeth. Perhaps they've gotten better at utilizing the CELL architecture now, but that doesn't matter, as all of the rumor mill is pointing towards x86 processors for -all- of the new consoles. CELL isn't even in contention, and I highly doubt that any console company is going to try to force a radical architecture change on the market anytime soon.
My point with this is that we can't assume Microsoft will ever code properly for Bulldozer architecture, ever. Unless Bulldozer can sway over developers towards looking at it with future prospects in mind, it wouldn't surprise me to see the software industry modify there software to the bare minimum to work well enough with Bulldozer, then abandon it at the first chance. I know that comparing the processor market with the console market is like comparing apples to oranges, and even when saying the next generation of consoles are all going to have x86 processors, the market there has changed a lot in six years as well. I just want to bring up this comparison, and perhaps some other people who remember the pre-launch PS3 hype and the seemingly overwhelming advantage the console had in potential, and how that never panned out as hoped, can bring some new points to the Bulldozer conversation. Reply


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TRIM & RAID-0 SSD Arrays Work With Intel 6-Series Motherboards Tooby Kristian Vättö on 11/28/2012 11:53 AM EST
36 Comments
Back to Article
AFQ - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkKristian, which software is this that you used to test the drives? and the first graph is of new RAID array. Second is without TRIM and third is with TRIM, right? Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkI used Iometer for filling and torturing the drives and HD Tach for testing (it writes compressible sequential data across the whole drive). HD Tach is no longer being updated but you can still get it:
I believe HD Tune has a similar graphing feature as HD Tach, so it might work as well.
The first graph is after secure erase to give us clean-state performance. Second graph is without TRIM and the third one is with TRIM. Reply
AFQ - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkCan you do a little guide about how to test the drive with IOMeter? Its like really advanced and technical. Reply
vol7ron - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkYou should ask these questions in the forums. Reply
JonnyDough - Friday, November 30, 2012 - linkTroll. Reply
ney2x - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkFirst comment, first great news! Congrats Anandtech.com and Kristian Vättö (Hellhammer) Reply
mooninite - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkLinux supports TRIM on the RAID layer on any chipset without the need for a hack or tweak.
I have a RAID 0 on two X25-V drives on a old P45 chipset. I'd be SOL if I ran Windows. Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkBut what you have is a software RAID-0 array, correct? Software RAID-0 and TRIM has worked for ages but "real" RAID arrays created using Intel RAID ROM have not supported TRIM until now. I don't think the OS is the key here as long as it has proper driver support; the OROM didn't support TRIM on RAID-0 arrays before. Reply
ender8282 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkIs the Intel RAID truly 'hardware RAID' or is it just like the vast majority of other on-board RAID controllers the work is being doing by software running in the OS (maybe down at the driver level)? Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkIntel RAID is often called "firmware" RAID because it's not truly hardware but it's not the same as software either. Software is strictly software and will only work with one OS because the RAID is loaded when the OS is. I believe firmware RAID is a combination of both because you need drivers for it but it works with any OS (even BIOS sees the drives as one volume). Reply
ender8282 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkOK that sounds a lot like what ever it was that I had on an old Abit motherboard. My experience with that setup was that unless the correct drivers were installed under windows, things didn't work right. Under Linux (mandrake I believe) it showed up as a bunch of different drives. Unless firmware raid has come a long way and supports more operating systems then just Windows, I fail to see how it is any better than software raid on Linux.
Does software RAID under windows support trim?
On a related note has AnandTech ever done any benchmarks between hardware, firmware, and software raid? I would be interested to read that article... Reply
ender8282 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkProbably a biased take but I found this [1] whitepaper gave a nice summary of the difference between hardware, firmware, and software.
[1] http://www.adaptec.com/nr/rdonlyres/14b2fd84-f7a0-... Reply
tecknurd - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkI disagree. The BIOS is firmware of the motherboard. Firmware is basically software for hardware that is loaded upon boot up and is not connected to the operating system in anyway. The BIOS includes RAID as software. When RAID it utilized from the motherboard, the software is loaded into memory. Mainly Windows will see this RAID software as any hardware RAID controller. Other operating system like Linux will not unless a userspace software is run first like dmraid.
Stating Intel RAID as "firmware" RAID is a bunch of FUD. Intel RAID just does not have support to carry over the TRIM command compared to other modes of the Intel controller like AHCI.
IMHO, Intel is all about pristine. The hack you explain is probably unsupported by Intel because is not stable and not reliable by Intel's standards. Reply
extide - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkIt is firmware RAID, and the software part is the driver. The RAID calculations are done in software on the main CPU, basically in the drivers. You would also need a matching driver in linux to use the 'firmware raid' as opposed to using completely software raid like dmraidc mdadm, etc. Reply
tecknurd - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkAgain it is not firmware RAID until you provide proof. Reply
mooninite - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - linkmdadm is used for Intel RAID as well as software Linux RAID. The Intel BIOS just writes out a special file format just like a file format for software Linux RAID. There is no decoder chip or firmware interface. Reply
JonnyDough - Friday, November 30, 2012 - linkI don't think you know what you are even saying. You must work for Intel and are trying to disprove this working fix because of "profit margins." The code was written by Intel and made to work by community software hax. Get over yourself. Reply
mooninite - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - linkKristian,
Intel RAID is *not* hardware. It is a software file format of the drive called IMSM. The OS has to do all the work to read and write to the drive. There is no hardware RAID chip involved. Reply
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkYou still are SOL mooninite, or you'd have Linux on a decent motherboard, and then you wouldn't need it anyway.
Oh well that's how the tor valds. Reply
Conficio - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkAnyone experience (or read about) how this works in a hackintosh? Reply
vailr - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkThere's also an updated motherboard bios for the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R that includes the updated Intel RAID firmware 188.8.131.522:
So: updating most P45 chipset boards should also be a viable option.
Also:t you're using an older 22.214.171.1240 RST driver.
Latest version: 22.214.171.1242 WHQL
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20raid.h... Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkI'm very tempted to try this, now that I have two 128GB Samsung 830s, just not sure it's even worth the slight hassle... The instructions look simple enough, but what I'll gain is mainly the use of both drives as a single volume, since the increased sequential I/O isn't gonna matter much when every other drive on my system is a mechanical drive. I doubt any of my apps are really gonna see an usability improvement going from 500/350 sequential read/write max to 1000/700. :p Reply
Sunburn74 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkIf you feel your ssd is fast enough then fine, but honestly there's a reason sad makers are still pushing speeds up as best they can. Heck its why sata3 is in the works. If ocz or corsair released a sad with sequentialsin the 1000s and random performance similar to the rest of the pack they'd be lauded as kings. Raid 0 accomplishes the same thing and now the one penalty has been made a non issue Reply
Sabresiberian - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkI actually didn't know Intel had made their RAID chip TRIM friendly at all (and was wondering what was taking them so long, heh), so this article is very good news for me, even though I don't have a 6-series MB.
Thanks Kristian for the great article covering a topic most power builders will be interested in.
;) Reply
vol7ron - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkI'm not sure it's necessary to secure erase SSDs. At least, I didn't think it was in the past. Perhaps this would be something worth evaluating for the future. Reply
Gigaplex - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkIt's necessary to clean up LBAs to return back to stock performance when there's no TRIM support. It's not just a case of overwriting all the data on the drive like with mechanical drives (especially with SandForce compression/deduplication), there are special SSD tools that send a secure erase instruction to the drive. Reply
extide - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkThe secure erase always returns the SSD to a "like new clean slate" state. This is especially important in articles like this where you need to always start from a know control state that is always the same. Reply
Sunburn74 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - linkSecure erase wipes all data from the drive including the is. It was a tremendous pain in these if your using it to maintain performance. In addition you burn through write cycles quicker. Reply
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, December 29, 2012 - linkIn spite of the hassle, first of all you're not "burning through" write cycles quickly, so there's no giant crisis "burning through them even quicker".
You're crawling very slowly, nearly imperceptibly through write cycles.
You will throw away the drives for being pathetically slow before write cycles are an issue, and that's what will burn you in the end. Reply
Truegee1985 - Friday, November 30, 2012 - linkI want to know if Intel's SRT version 11.6 trim support for Raid-0 on z77 chipset also work with Windows 8 Pro. I am currently using a z77 motherboard with an Ivy bridge cpu. Reply
TheBeagle - Monday, December 03, 2012 - linkWhile I certainly appreciate all the technical discussion in this and other similar articles, it would be a very great service to the enthusiast, as well as the average user, to simply and straightforwardly set forth what forms of RAID with TRIM can be used with SSDs, and any special circumstances where such a general statement of usability does not apply.
There is a whole lot of mis-information circulating on the Internet about RAID and TRIM, and some simple guidelines would be of serious assistance to dispel the myths. Any such guidelines should include the minimum hardware and driver versions that need to be employed to obtain operational TRIM within a RAID array. Thanks. Best regards to all. TheBeagle Reply
hechacker1 - Monday, December 10, 2012 - linkI was updating my bios with intel's (at the time) new 11.5 rom, but on my x58 chipset.
After I did that, I noticed that the SRT functionality was available to me. With one 11.5 version, the option was available, the next version, it was greyed out. I wonder if SRT is also just firmware/CPU based and really doesn't depend on the controller. Reply
starwarsmike - Thursday, January 03, 2013 - linkHi firstly thanks for above info much appreciated....
Can someone tell me if the above method to allow trim pass-through works with windows 8?
Cheers Michael Reply
Firebat5 - Sunday, December 08, 2013 - linkThanks for bringing this info to light. Wasn't sure if Fernando's forum was legit. With endorsement from you guys I went ahead and flashed a modified BIOS (thanks Fernando!) with the upgraded OPROM. Thanks guys! Reply
i3v - Friday, June 10, 2016 - linkI suspect, that the proposed method may not work, if SSD does not support DZAT (Deterministic Read Zero After Trim). This document provides some details, related to DZAT vs Deterministic Read After Trim (DRAT). Missing these two "features" does not actually mean missing TRIM.
Here's a post about an SSD that only supports DRAT: http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/SanDisk-ReadyCache-SS...
Another example: my "Kingston SHPM2280P2H/480G" seem to have neither DRAT nor DZAT, at least hdsentinel ( http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#trim ) shows that "Deterministic read after Trim" is not supported. Thus, trimcheck-0.7-win64.exe shows that TRIM is off. Still, my Windows 10 correctly detects that this drive is an SSD (disk optimizer tool suggests to TRIM, not to defragment). And hdd sentinel shows that TRIM is supported and functioning (even though I do not understand how it checks this) Reply
i3v - Friday, June 10, 2016 - linkPS. It looks like the first link in my previous message is missing. Here it is: https://www.media-clone.net/v/vspfiles/downloads/D... Reply


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Guess I am uneducated because I have never heard of Kiln Gods before. Is this some type of inanimate object that is burned in the kiln? I know different cultures have rituals for all sorts of things but this is new to me.
The notion of kiln gods in the USA is a sort of playful idea that a kiln's fickle temperment (this is especially true for old up, or downdraft kilns) can be tamed or turned in favor of the ceramists needs if clay figures or creatures are placed on the roof or door arch area of the kiln.
Potter's in China do not make figures for individual kilns, however, ceramic producing regions or cities all have their own kiln dieties that form part of the pantheon of gods that make-up that area's folk religion or popular religion beliefs.
Thank you for the information. My education has been updated or backdated considering how long this practice has been going on.