Thinkpads Forum

> Depends on what is done.

Sure, talking about most of the users will use their lappies.

> Getting good marks in SuperPi doesn't mean that calculating Pi like
>that is the only thing it can do that fast. Should any other application
> require extremely fast throughput of many calculations per unit time, > then you are starting to get closer to what SuperPi is actually telling > you. You would probably notice it in Excel.

Not even, SuperPI is only about calculating a number with a high number of iterations and nothing more. It only uses Integers. It has NOTHING to do with FPU power.

are you sure it doesn't use floats? if so, the tool is very useful, especially for those of us that do programming, modelling, and mathematics.

thibouille27 wrote: Not even, SuperPI is only about calculating a number with a high number of iterations and nothing more. It only uses Integers. It has NOTHING to do with FPU power.

Ehhh? It only uses integers? To calculate Pi?
No, not quite. Pi is an irrational number, you can't use a single expression of integers (unless in an infinite sum in which you *could* use integer ratios) to express it. If defined as the Circumference over the Diameter, it is *still* an irrational number....Simple math here.

There are many ways you can go about calculating Pi, but when you get down to it, it is a measure of how well the processor executes the calculations per unit time. AS such, it does indeed remain at least a partially relevant benchmark.

well.. simple math can be represented innumerable ways through programming. but you will find that good programmers almost always use power series for such numbers and functions.

back to the topic...

lucas wrote:well.. simple math can be represented innumerable ways through programming. but you will find that good programmers almost always use power series for such numbers and functions.

back to the topic...

Even using a power series; to a point, the type of program you are running it on doesn't make a difference, until you get to extremely large values and large calculations. That is going to be noticed no matter what you do (assuming, as you point out, that the program itself is optimized). Does this make a difference for Excel? Yeah, but it is small. Does it make a difference for Word? Yeah, but that difference is *realllly* tiny. Everything that gets processed at all is, in the end, subject to the limits of the processor; you will, however, begin to notice the limitations of the program and OS far before those of the process in applications such as Word simply because something like Word doesn't take full advantage of the CPU and it doesn't concern itself with throughput of calculations but rather how many tasks can get done in any given moment.

[censored] your good

I do think the merom is a wonderful development but I wonder if it is sufficiently groundbreaking to make you buy a new computer just for the sake of it… I’m still pondering if I should take advantage of the back to school sale – I do have to buy a computer, I’m not in a hurry but I’m afraid the new merom systems will take a lot of time to appear (I don’t even know about Intel’s plans for lower voltage processors – the ones used in the X60s) and I’m also afraid the price is going to be higher…

Having said this, am I right in assuming that the big change is going to come with Santa Rosa, in other words, Merom is an improvement but you can perfectly live without it, on the other hand Merom+Santa Rosa might make you look at your computer as a little bit outdated…

nuno77 wrote: Having said this, am I right in assuming that the big change is going to come with Santa Rosa, in other words, Merom is an improvement but you can perfectly live without it, on the other hand Merom+Santa Rosa might make you look at your computer as a little bit outdated…

Yup; the Santa Rosa Merom is going to be a 64-bit Dual Core, not just 32-bit. Which is a big leap in and of itself. The Kedron wireless card, which will be part of the real Santa Rosa chipset will also most likely support the 801.11n standard as well. So that is a step ahead as far as wireless goes, how much, though, remains to be seen.

christopher_wolf wrote:

nuno77 wrote: Having said this, am I right in assuming that the big change is going to come with Santa Rosa, in other words, Merom is an improvement but you can perfectly live without it, on the other hand Merom+Santa Rosa might make you look at your computer as a little bit outdated…

Yup; the Santa Rosa Merom is going to be a 64-bit Dual Core, not just 32-bit. Which is a big leap in and of itself. The Kedron wireless card, which will be part of the real Santa Rosa chipset will also most likely support the 801.11n standard as well. So that is a step ahead as far as wireless goes, how much, though, remains to be seen.

Just to clerify the Merom has only 64bit extensions right. Its not a full fledged 64bit processor?

nuno77 wrote:snipped

Thats why I bought mine now. Same reasons you mentioned, price, options, etc etc. If anything 30 day return policy, merom comes out and the price is same or better for the same stuff then ill return it.

Saml01 wrote: Just to clerify the Merom has only 64bit extensions right. Its not a full fledged 64bit processor?

That, yes. It will support, as it is a variant of the Conroe, the EM64T instruction set which is Intel's implementation of the 64-bit extensions that AMD originally decided to use on top of IA32 (AMD64). For the most part, it can be thought of as a "64-bit CPU" rather than just a tacked on extension set. Also keep in mind that PAE is also another extension, just one that allows a 4GB+ addressing capability to the CPU. That said, it should play nice with 32-bit applications and a 32-bit OS, although you would want something that has extensive 64-bit support to really take advantage of all the features available on the new Santa Rosa Meroms.

yeah, i don't know what the rush is to get on 64-bit considering that most people still run 32-bit windows with 32-bit drivers and 32-bit applications.

i'd run bsd except it doesn't support the new thinkpads very well..

lucas wrote: i'd run bsd except it doesn't support the new thinkpads very well..

PC-BSD and OpenBSD seemed to perform just fine on my T43 and the X40 I tried them and Plan 9 on; even better considering it handled the ACPI a bit better than some linux distros I tried on them.

About 64-bit, Apple is probably one of Intel's clients that would like to have the Merom Santa Rosa ever since they switched over to Intel off of PPC; which, I might remind everybody, was 64-bit and had excellent performance as both a workstation and a mobile processor, but I digress....

to be fair, openbsd performs suboptimally, due mainly to their project goals. but their device support for the x series is great (because many obsd devs use the x40/x41 personally).

ppc was a fine architecture, but it didn't progress as it should have and drastically fell behind its ia32/64 counterparts.

i'd love to run a bsd on here if they'd get azalia(4) working better.