Linus Torvalds hopes Intel AVX-512 dies a painful death

Posted on Monday, July 13 2020 @ 9:47 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
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A year or two ago, Linux founder Linus Torvalds said he would take a break from making harsh comments. Now he's back and making some amusing comments about Intel's AVX-512 instruction set. Torvalds begins his critique by stating he hopes "AVX512 dies a painful death." He adds that he sees no real-world benefits of AVX-512 and calls it a set of "magic instructions" for scoring high in specifically-tailored benchmarks:
And AVX512 has real downsides. I'd much rather see that transistor budget used on other things that are much more relevant. Even if it's still FP math (in the GPU, rather than AVX512). Or just give me more cores (with good single-thread performance, but without the garbage like AVX512) like AMD did.

I want my power limits to be reached with regular integer code, not with some AVX512 power virus that takes away top frequency (because people ended up using it for memcpy!) and takes away cores (because those useless garbage units take up space).

Yes, yes, I'm biased. I absolutely destest FP benchmarks, and I realize other people care deeply. I just think AVX512 is exactly the wrong thing to do. It's a pet peeve of mine. It's a prime example of something Intel has done wrong, partly by just increasing the fragmentation of the market.
Full details at Phoronix.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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