The Interesting Tale Of AMD's FirePro Drivers

[Michael]

And on the other hand there's way too much contrast on the zebra coloring of the column and row titles. The rest of the cells have a background color that is way too dark.

It's all controlled by external ~/.phoronix-test-suite/graph-config.xml.

[bug77]

And on the other hand there's way too much contrast on the zebra coloring of the column and row titles. The rest of the cells have a background color that is way too dark.

I see four types of gray. That's more than halfway to a greyscale rainbow.

[b15hop]

I see four types of gray. That's more than halfway to a greyscale rainbow.

You're surprised that, there is so much grey? The website isn't much better. I'm sure the website could be improved a bit too for that matter heh. =)

Regarding the drivers spiking 20% and then dropping in performance. My understanding from a programming perspective is that optimising code usually creates unmaintainable code. Verses code that is neat and easy to read, which can easily have new features added. It's an old conundrum to coding that goes way back. I think it's the reason why the wheel of compilers and languages keeps being reinvented. So the developers probably did include some speed improvements, which might have also made it more difficult to update the code, and so therefore regressed back to the older code. I could be wrong...

[deanjo]

My understanding from a programming perspective is that optimising code usually creates unmaintainable code. Verses code that is neat and easy to read, which can easily have new features added. It's an old conundrum to coding that goes way back. I think it's the reason why the wheel of compilers and languages keeps being reinvented. So the developers probably did include some speed improvements, which might have also made it more difficult to update the code, and so therefore regressed back to the older code. I could be wrong...

That is the biggest crock of crap I have read. A talented and competent programmer can make optimized and readable code. Of course the person reading the code has to have at least the understanding of what the optimizations do for it to make sense.

[mirv]

That is the biggest crock of crap I have read. A talented and competent programmer can make optimized and readable code. Of course the person reading the code has to have at least the understanding of what the optimizations do for it to make sense.

Yes, just like the infamous "fast floating point square root" is readable.
Anyway, it's quite possible that marketing was pushing for something to show off, and time constraints caused a few issues.
It's also entirely possible for optimisations to have some unwanted side effects, and so had to be removed.
And you're quite correct - the person reading things has to understand what's going on. It's quite common for one person to know everything, and it makes complete sense to him/her, and for another person to look at it and not make heads or tales of things.

[curaga]

It very much looks like AMD spun there a bit. Or is it just coincidence that the performance spiked at the launches of the quarterly FireGL driver, and lowered back after that?

Alternatively, the quarterly driver comes from somewhat different branch than the monthlies, and anyone wanting performance should be running the quarterlies.

[bug77]

You're surprised that, there is so much grey? The website isn't much better. I'm sure the website could be improved a bit too for that matter heh. =)

Not surprised at all and I like the site as it is. I was just noting that for that particular table the grey shades seem to be used liberally. And with little thought about ergonomy I might add.

Regarding the drivers spiking 20% and then dropping in performance. My understanding from a programming perspective is that optimising code usually creates unmaintainable code. Verses code that is neat and easy to read, which can easily have new features added. It's an old conundrum to coding that goes way back. I think it's the reason why the wheel of compilers and languages keeps being reinvented. So the developers probably did include some speed improvements, which might have also made it more difficult to update the code, and so therefore regressed back to the older code. I could be wrong...

It's got nothing to do with maintainability. You have to be a very poor programmer to hit that problem (you just have to document your code if it's not easily readable). What can happen is you find a smart and new optimization. You add it to the code and test it as best as you can. It works. Then you release the new driver and a bunch of people using applications you never thought of, start reporting problems. Then you either have to remove your optimization or add additional checks which will have some negative impact on performance.

[smitty3268]

I've posted about this a couple times in other threads to readers wanting similar tables.... It's already implemented in the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org to auto-generate nicer tables. Here's an example of a completely auto-generated one right now:



PTS takes care of figuring out everything and coming up with a table to highlight the differences. Once Phoronix.com is using the OpenBenchmarking.org-embedded graphs rather than static PNG files (within a couple weeks hopefully), those tables will be included, but I am not bothering with any stopgap measures in the meantime or anything that requires more manual work on my part.

Yes, we've been hearing that for months now. I really don't understand why you can't take the 15 seconds it LITERALLY takes to massively improve your articles - do you not bother running a spellcheck because it's too much work?

Anyway, in more constructive criticism: I think the simpler table posted earlier still looks way better than the PTS generated one. There's simply no need to have every version of the drivers have their own column, it makes it too wide to be useful. I assume that even if you took out the 1 row that changed (OpenGL version) it would still list them as separate columns? I see what you're trying to do here and the automated generation is neat but IMO it still needs some work.

[Michael]

I assume that even if you took out the 1 row that changed (OpenGL version) it would still list them as separate columns? I see what you're trying to do here and the automated generation is neat but IMO it still needs some work.

It would still stay the same width since the display driver differs too. But if those two rows were removed, it would compact as much as possible.

[smitty3268]

it makes it too wide to be useful.

Too wide to be easily readable, is what i meant to say. On a more positive note, it's massively better than the current status quo.