Scientia's Flawed Analysis

Since most of you seem to have read Scientia's recent blog "Core 2 Duo - the embarrassing secrets" let me then respond to them here.

Scientia said: "The two things that Intel would rather you not know about Core 2 Duo are that it has been (1) tweaked for benchmarks rather than for real code, and that at 2.93 Ghz it is (2)exceeding its thermal limits on the 65nm process."

(1)”Tweaked for benchmark" - Is he suggesting that the Intel engineers at the early stage of designing a new architecture which was about 5 years ago imagined what the benchmark tests will be like today and made sure that "high benchmark scores" was on the top of the design priority list? I don't think so.

He makes a case as to why the benchmarks do not represent the ‘real code’ of the real world application. Of course it isn’t. Not because you don’t wish it to be unrepresentative of real world apps but because there is no practical way to quantify what a ‘real world application’ is. Just like the American constitution for example, it's not perfect but its the best of what we have.

By definition a benchmark is a standard which you can use to measure one against another. A 3D mark score doesn’t mean anything unless you use that score to compare another score. That is what a benchmark is and for the sake of practicality you can only sample a few real world scenarios to make comparisons. The bottomline is that Intel never defined what the benchmarks are and both AMD and Intel are measured with the same stick.

Complaining about how the benchmarks doesn’t represent the real world is analogous to saying that the 100 meter dash Olympic race doesn’t represent how fast the runner is in real world situations like for example running across the Siberian Thundra. Of course it isn’t. The whole point of benchmarking is not to show performance against the real world but to show how one is better than the other.


(2) “exceeding thermal limits” – Scientia made his case by using Intel’s temperature guides which suggests that TAT should be at 55°C and the extreme editions are running above the limits.

Absolutely incorrect. The thermal dissipation rating of the CPU packaging is a function of the design of heat spreader (IHS), thermal interface material (TIM) and the hot zoning design of the chip. Obviously the temperature limits defined by intel were derived from the capability of the IHS and TIM to dissipate heat at 55°C. This limit has nothing to do with the silicon thermal limit. Nothing is stopping Intel from slapping a thicker IHS and a more expensive TIM just to increase heat transfer (along with clock speed) while maintaining that 55°C thermal requirement.