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From: "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Historical evolution of CPU perf
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2024 20:18:40 +0100
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On Wed, 9 Oct 2024 13:23:22 -0500
BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/9/2024 11:33 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > I'm looking for a chart illustrating the evolution of CPU performance
> > (e.g. single-threaded or maybe performance per watt) over the years,
> > covering something like 1990-2020.
> > 
> > Any good candidates?
> > 
> 
> Yeah, I would also like something like this, or maybe some way to 
> "sensibly" compare the relative performance of modern stuff with vintage 
> stuff.
> 
> Like, for example, I can't make sense of whether the performance of my 
> current project is similar to similarly-clocked vintage hardware, or 
> potentially significantly faster.
> 
> Based simply on Dhrystone score, it would likely be placed in a similar 
> area to a 90s era PowerPC in terms of perf/MHz.
> 
> 
> 
> But, if I add an early 2000s laptop as a reference point, stuff gets 
> weird. In various benchmarks, the difference in performance is 
> significantly smaller than the relative difference in clock-speed.
> 
> Though, the laptop is also break-even with a RasPi2 in terms of general 
> perf (in theory, the laptop should be faster). Seems like the laptop 
> suffers a relative deficit in terms of memory bandwidth (*).
> 
> But, can note that Dhrystone doesn't really measure memory bandwidth...
> 
> 
> *: The 100MHz DDR1 RAM in the laptop gets roughly 7x the memory 
> bandwidth of a 16-bit DDR2 chip being run at 50MHz. Sort of makes sense 
> if one assumes 4x the width and 2x the clock-speed.
> 
> I am not sure if just the laptop, or if RAM access in general was 
> proportionally slower in the 90s. Or, if it is just a case that late 90s 
> / early 2000s, CPUs had gotten faster much faster than RAM had gotten 
> faster, so there was a performance lag here.
> 
> I suspect it may be the latter, if one linearly extrapolated backwards, 
> it would mean 486 PCs running at ~ 10-16 MB/sec for RAM bandwidth, which 
> in my own testing seems insufficient to run Doom at acceptable speeds 
> (actual 486's having no issues running Doom).
> 

As a complete non-cpu chap, what I care about is (my) consumer experience;
- i.e no delays. So ditch the fancy graphics - get me a fast boot time and
a responsive OS. Only a few are doing FFTs & so-called AI.

-- 
Bah, and indeed Humbug.