As more details emerge regarding Opteron at this year's MPF, we thought it would be a idea to discuss the Opteron SPEC and bandwidth numbers disclosed by AMD at the MPF. Fred Weber's presentation, shows that the current 2 GHz Opteron samples with 1 MB L2-cache and dual-channel registered PC2700 DDR memory are to reach aSPECint2000 score of 1202, and a SPECfp2000 score of 1170.
These scores were obtained using Intel 5.01 compiler, in 32 bit mode. According to Fred Weber, a "real 64 bit" compiler should boost the Opteron's performance with by 20% (thanks to 8 additional registers in 64bit mode). However, the compiler will, of course, have to be as good as the current Intel one in terms of optimization to be able to realize that level of improvement. Below is a chart of current SPEC CPU2000 results with the Opteron estimates included. It is not known whether or not these estimates are for Base or Peak performance, but we will assume they are peak to be conservative.
As you can see, the 2 GHz Opteron - if it were to be released today - would by far be the fastest processor in integer intensive tasks. The improved branch predictor and lower latency of the memory subsystem are probably the reasons why the 2 GHz Opteron is no less than 29% faster than a 2.25 GHz Athlon. We speculate that the 5.3 GB/s bandwidth is the main reason why the 2 GHz K7 FPU is now able to beat the Pentium 4 at 2.8 GHz, something it couldn't do in the Athlon XP.
The industry does not sit still, of course. The Opteron is currently scheduled to be introduced during the first half of next year (roadmap) -- probably in Q2, with the desktop version expected to follow in the third-quarter. This is something that needs to be factored in when looking at these performance estimates.
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