Is there any workflow for which you MUST use an Intel CPU?

[quiet_thinker]

Hi Guys,

 

I got in a bit of a discussion with my friend regarding the new Mac Pro, based on an article showing that the low end configurations are bad-value.

One of the differences regarding a set-up that this site used to show this difference - was a use of a Threadripper CPU.

 

Because of that, my friend said that it is not fair as there are technical differences in how these CPUs work.

Now, I know that is true. These CPUs do operate a bit differently from each other.

What I don't know and what I can't find on the web is - are there any real-world workflows that require you to use an Intel CPU?

 

Basically - can you say AMD = Intel in terms of possibilities, or are there specific workflows for which you simply can't use an AMD CPU?

 

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[Enderman]

No, just stuff that performs worse on AMD.

Unless you make some program yourself that requires the use of quicksync, in which case you wouldn't be able to use an AMD CPU.

But all programs out there that use quicksync can work without it.

[Devryd]

apple doesn't support amd, that is the only reason

[Juular]

Must ? No. Where Intel will have some upper ground ? Yes, anything that relies on ST performance mostly, like gaming, Adobe CC software (all of it, even Premiere), CAD, 3D modeling, possibly some software that relies on RAM performance heavily since Zen 2 are still a bit slow on this side. But all this might change with the next generations.

[Devryd]

the new threadrippers are so fast on single thread performance, they are comparable with not overclocked intel chips. Same goes for the Ryzen chips. Intel does have more overclocking headroom, which will widen the gap in single core performance, but stock to stock, there is only a really small difference

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, quiet_thinker said:

are there specific workflows for which you simply can't use an AMD CPU?

no consumer/prosumer workload that i am aware of. there are apperantly AI workloads where intel is the only x86 provider, but at that point you should be using a GPU anyways. and im pretty sure you can use other instructions for the same task.

2 minutes ago, quiet_thinker said:

Because of that, my friend said that it is not fair as there are technical differences in how these CPUs work.

with the exception of a couple of instructions, there really isnt a something you can do on intel you cant on AMD. 

 

their macro and microarchitecture is different, but they do the same stuff. 

Just now, Devryd said:

apple doesn't support amd, that is the only reason

hackintoshes have gotten around that, tho with some annoying limitations, but apperantly very easy installation process. 

 

tl;dr: there really isnt something one CPU can do while the other one cant. the speed at which they do it might differ, but that is a different story. 

[Master Disaster]

The only difference will be instruction set extensions like SSE, AVX etc (except for a few arbitrary exceptions Intel enforces for no real reason apart from greed such as ECC RAM support).

 

Both CPUs are running an identical base instruction set (X86-64) and each CPUs will ultimately do the exact same work as the other. The difference is efficiency and by extension time.

[GDRRiley]

16 minutes ago, Devryd said:

apple doesn't support amd, that is the only reason

The do not officially but hackintoshes on AMD are easy according to some people, Sazzylabs just did a 12 core ryzen build and it crushed almost everything.

 

14 minutes ago, Devryd said:

the new threadrippers are so fast on single thread performance, they are comparable with not overclocked intel chips. Same goes for the Ryzen chips. Intel does have more overclocking headroom, which will widen the gap in single core performance, but stock to stock, there is only a really small difference

intels 18 core has almost no headroom.

the 9900KS maybe has 5.2 in it without sub ambient cooling.

 

2nd-8th gen had lots but with 9th gen intel pushed them to the limit from the factory.

My 6600k is 35-40% past spec, good luck getting a 9th gen part to do that.

[DoctorNick]

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

The only difference will be instruction set extensions like SSE, AVX etc (except for a few arbitrary exceptions Intel enforces for no real reason apart from greed such as ECC RAM support).

 

Both CPUs are running an identical base instruction set (X86-64) and each CPUs will ultimately do the exact same work as the other. The difference is efficiency and by extension time.

ECC is actually working on a few AMD boards including the Pro WS X570-ACE

[quiet_thinker]

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

The only difference will be instruction set extensions like SSE, AVX etc (except for a few arbitrary exceptions Intel enforces for no real reason apart from greed such as ECC RAM support).

 

But doesn't that mean that there might exist applications utilizing those instructions and in turn requiring you to use Intel? How does AMD deal with the lack of those? Does the difference result only in performance loss?

[Master Disaster]

17 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

hackintoshes have gotten around that, tho with some annoying limitations, but apperantly very easy installation process.

Since High Sierra AMD hackintoshes have had new patches available which removes most of the limitations, the only thing that still doesn't work properly is CPU power management. In actuality its better than an Intel based hackintosh as you can install system upgrades direct from the app store without doing any additional steps.

 

The one place where it still sucks is the media creation process. Creating the install drive for an AMD based system is a pain.

 

Also its my understanding that recently a new bootloader has emerged which removes even more of the work as unlike Clover it requires zero configuration.

 

I'm very out of the loop with hackintoshing ATM as my 5700XT was unsupported until very recently. I might install Mojave this weekend and see how it all goes.

[porina]

28 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Unless you make some program yourself that requires the use of quicksync, in which case you wouldn't be able to use an AMD CPU.

But all programs out there that use quicksync can work without it.

 

24 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

with the exception of a couple of instructions, there really isnt a something you can do on intel you cant on AMD. 

This is about the only possible scenario I can think of also, if some software was hard coded to require a feature only present in Intel CPUs. If this exists, it'll probably be very niche. General software may make use of multiple codepaths for different architectures to get the best out of each of them, regardless of the feature set available.

 

There is also some non-zero risk that even with the same instruction support, there may be implementation differences sufficient to cause it to work on one and not the other. This shouldn't happen, but nothing is perfect. Again, this could be taken care off by either the code or compiler having knowledge of this and doing what is necessary to make it work as expected.

[Enderman]

6 minutes ago, porina said:

There is also some non-zero risk that even with the same instruction support, there may be implementation differences sufficient to cause it to work on one and not the other. This shouldn't happen, but nothing is perfect. Again, this could be taken care off by either the code or compiler having knowledge of this and doing what is necessary to make it work as expected.

It would have to be some very old or non-standard CPU (like a xeon phi) that requires a special operating system.

The operating system is the one that would not support standard instructions.

Which is why you can't run regular programs on something like a xeon phi.

[Master Disaster]

10 minutes ago, quiet_thinker said:

 

But doesn't that mean that there might exist applications utilizing those instructions and in turn requiring you to use Intel? How does AMD deal with the lack of those? Does the difference result only in performance loss?

In the home market, no. Anybody targeting an application to the masses will target as many instruction sets as possible to make the app as compatible as possible.

 

In business, very much yes. There are scientific applications which rely on AVX512 and as such will only work on high end Intel CPUs but those are incredibly niche. You're talking universities and large scale scientific organisations, the type of places that will probably have super computers in the basement. Insane simulation, protein folding, the kind of stuff scientists do but us at home will never do. In fact most of this kind of stuff would probably be custom written code specifically for the purpose.

[quiet_thinker]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

In the home market, no. Anybody targeting an application to the masses will target as many instruction sets as possible to make the app as compatible as possible.

 

In business, very much yes. There are scientific applications which rely on AVX512 and as such will only work on high end Intel CPUs but those are incredibly niche. You're talking universities and large scale scientific organisations, the type of places that will probably have super computers in the basement. Insane simulation, protein folding, the kind of stuff scientists do but us at home will never do.

Well, after all Mac Pro is not really consumer/home focused product  That is why I was discussing it in the first place. Knowing all the things you guys wrote, the next question should be - would it make a difference to Mac users (assuming there is a Threadripper Mac Pro)? Would it affect them, or are these solutions something that's for a completely different scope of users?

[quiet_thinker]

12 minutes ago, Enderman said:

It would have to be some very old or non-standard CPU (like a xeon phi) that requires a special operating system.

The operating system is the one that would not support standard instructions.

Which is why you can't run regular programs on something like a xeon phi.

But as far as I understand, in this usecase even a different Xeon wouldn't work, right?

So it's not about Intel vs AMD anymore, but about a very specific product.

[GoldenLag]

24 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

 

I'm very out of the loop with hackintoshing ATM as my 5700XT was unsupported until very recently. I might install Mojave this weekend and see how it all goes.

My only insight is from some hackintosh youtuber doing a Ryzen 3900x system 

 

Which was very impressed with how easy it was. And i can recall paying attention to at least 5 hackintosh videos from him. 

 

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, quiet_thinker said:

Well, after all Mac Pro is not really consumer/home focused product  That is why I was discussing it in the first place. Knowing all the things you guys wrote, the next question should be - would it make a difference to Mac users (assuming there is a Threadripper Mac Pro)? Would it affect them, or are these solutions something that's for a completely different scope of users?

These scenarios would be a different class entirely. They would have a problem and buy the hardware which best suits the solution and probably write their own custom software too.

 

We're talking weather simulation, space simulation, designing new medicines.

 

For average Joe Mac user, AFAIK at least, there's no situation where having an Intel would allow a workload that an AMD wouldn't.

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, quiet_thinker said:

Knowing all the things you guys wrote, the next question should be - would it make a difference to Mac users (assuming there is a Threadripper Mac Pro)?

Mac Pro users that use intel hedt it would make no difference if the CPU was a Threadripper afaik. Assuming Apple opened up to the usual MacOS stuff. Performance would be different.

 

Im hoping LTT compares their hackintoshes with the 28 core intel and 32 core AMD when they review the new mac. Since they would have all three on hand. 

 

 

[porina]

22 minutes ago, Enderman said:

It would have to be some very old or non-standard CPU (like a xeon phi) that requires a special operating system.

The operating system is the one that would not support standard instructions.

Not what I was thinking. Even for modern CPUs, there are a LOT of instructions. It could be that two manufacturers have a slightly different interpretation, giving different results, or maybe both did want to do the same but there was an error in the implementation resulting divergent operation. I can't give a specific example of either, but look at errata lists, it could be something working wrong, but everyone expects it to work wrong so it keeps working until a "right" implementation comes along and does something different.

 

22 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Which is why you can't run regular programs on something like a xeon phi.

The earlier ones were kinda more like a co-processor so arguably you can't treat it as a general x86 device. The later ones did run any x86 software, although slowly as Linus found out when he tried to game on one. They're basically atom cores with a fat FPU strapped on. If you don't use that FPU which is why it exists, you don't get any benefit from it, only the drawbacks.

[Enderman]

11 minutes ago, quiet_thinker said:

But as far as I understand, in this usecase even a different Xeon wouldn't work, right?

So it's not about Intel vs AMD anymore, but about a very specific product.

Yeah if talking about consumer CPUs this doesn't apply, it would be specific models for specialized applications.

But the 'not supporting instructions' part would be on the operating system side not the CPU side, assuming it has the standard x86 or x64 architecture.

[Enderman]

11 minutes ago, porina said:

Not what I was thinking. Even for modern CPUs, there are a LOT of instructions. It could be that two manufacturers have a slightly different interpretation, giving different results, or maybe both did want to do the same but there was an error in the implementation resulting divergent operation. I can't give a specific example of either, but look at errata lists, it could be something working wrong, but everyone expects it to work wrong so it keeps working until a "right" implementation comes along and does something different.

 

The earlier ones were kinda more like a co-processor so arguably you can't treat it as a general x86 device. The later ones did run any x86 software, although slowly as Linus found out when he tried to game on one. They're basically atom cores with a fat FPU strapped on. If you don't use that FPU which is why it exists, you don't get any benefit from it, only the drawbacks.

The instruction set of the x86 or x64 architecture is standard.

Otherwise you would require a different operating system for every model of CPU.

 

What limits the use of normal programs on a processor like a xeon phi is the operating system that communicates with the CPU.

Since it has a linux OS you can't run exe programs on it, but if you compiled a special version of a windows OS and libraries for it then yes you would be able to run regular exes on it because it has the x86 instruction set. It would run windows just like any i5 or i7.

 

As you can see, it is all about the OS that dictates what programs you can run.

The architecture x86/x64 is how both consumer AMD and intel CPUs are made, which means that with the same OS both CPUs can run exactly the same programs. The only difference then is the non-standard features provided by something like the iGPU, such as intel quicksync.

[MadmanRB]

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

No, just stuff that performs worse on AMD.

Unless you make some program yourself that requires the use of quicksync, in which case you wouldn't be able to use an AMD CPU.

But all programs out there that use quicksync can work without it.

Hello adobe premiere, stupid adobe they need to support nvidia and AMD GPU's soon but are probably paid off by intel to keep the competition down.

[Kilrah]

Adobe has supported nvidia and AMD GPUs for more than a decade. Just quicksync adds an extra boost.

[porina]

11 minutes ago, Enderman said:

The instruction set of the x86 or x64 architecture is standard.

Otherwise you would require a different operating system for every model of CPU.

The base features are likely bug free and consistent, but it can be the case the later extensions may be less so. Don't rule out the possibility of edge cases of errors in implementation too.

 

11 minutes ago, Enderman said:

What limits the use of normal programs on a processor like a xeon phi is the operating system that communicates with the CPU.

Since it has a linux OS you can't run exe programs on it, but if you compiled a special version of a windows OS and libraries for it then yes you would be able to run regular exes on it because it has the x86 instruction set. It would run windows just like any i5 or i7.

I'll have to see if I can find the video again, but Linus did run Windows on one to see how it would game. I think Linux was only required to make full use of its features, which Linus didn't care about cos gaming on 64 cores (not designed for that kinda use) was going to attract more views.