Intel Binary Optimisation and Geekbench warning.

[Jimmyjames]

Geekbench just posted a tweet and a blog post warning people that scores from Intel cpus where Intel’s Binary Optimisation tool have been used, are not comparable. Only 6 applications are listed which use this tool, Geekbench being one.

This feels like Intel are acting a little shady. Is that unfair?

Geekbench 6 and Intel's Binary Optimization Tool - Geekbench Blog

www.geekbench.com

 

[Cmaier]

Certainly feels scammy to make an optimization tool that works on only 6 applications, 1 of which is the most important benchmark.

 

[KingOfPain]

It wouldn't be the first time that Intel cheated on benchmarks (I believe one of their compilers once recognized a benchmark and made optimizations that would not work in any other context) and it unfortunately won't be the last either.

EDIT: Reference for completeness: https://www.phoronix.com/news/oneAPI-DPC-Compiler-Cheat-SPEC

 

[leman]

It wouldn't be the first time that Intel cheated on benchmarks (I believe one of their compilers once recognized a benchmark and made optimizations that would not work in any other context) and it unfortunately won't be the last either.

All companies selling components based on benchmark results cheat. Not a long time ago AMD would enable unsafe CPU optimizations when they detected that a game is running. This resulted in occasional crashes, but hey, games crash, right?

 

[casperes1996]

I'm just pretty curious what the "Binary Optimisation Package" even does. - The fact it only works on a super limited set of programs is suspicious. I'd be OK with it if it, for example, statically analysed all applications for specific op-code patterns and replaced them with patterns that are better on a specific CPU but functionally identical. Like recognising something was compiled for generic x86 but being on a chip that supported SSE/AVX a specific pattern could safely and consistently be vectorised or whatever