Reference

March 12, 2012, Filed Under: Computer Architecture, Computer Hardware, Performance, Reference

What good are “Large Pages” ?

I am often asked what “Large Pages” in computer systems are good for. For commodity (x86_64) processors, “small pages” are 4KiB, while “large pages” are (typically) 2MiB. The size of the page controls how many bits are translated between virtual and physical addresses, and so represent a trade-off between what… read more

April 2, 2011, Filed Under: Computer Hardware, Reference

AMD Opteron Processor models, families, and revisions

A handy reference list cross-referencing AMD Opteron processor model numbers, families, and revisions/steppings.

October 7, 2010, Filed Under: Computer Hardware, Reference

Opteron/PhenomII STREAM Bandwidth vs CPU and DRAM Frequency

In a recent post (link) I showed that local memory latency is weakly dependent on processor and DRAM frequency in a single-socket Phenom II system. Here are some preliminary results on memory bandwidth as a function of CPU frequency and DRAM frequency in the same system. This table does not… read more