Replies to post #81997 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[chipguy]

The memory controller got a major overhaul though. AMD claims up to 40% bandwidth improvement from:

- Larger buffers (~2-4x)
- Write bursting
- Optimized paging
- New and improved prefetching

I suspect the typical improvement seen by apps will be
substantially less than 40%. If it is even 10% then the
peak FLOP/s to bandwidth "machine balance" ratio of
Barcelona will still worsen by 72% vs K8 at the same
CPU frequency. Ironically for AMD the much lower CPU
clock frequencies of Barcelona will cushion growth in
application inefficiency from worsened machine balance. ;-)