Intel Binary Optimisation and Geekbench warning.

Jimmyjames

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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?

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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?
 
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
 
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
From what PCGamer says, it is not automatic. So think of it like how AMD/NVidia does graphics driver updates (optimizations) for specific games. Apparently they have GB6 listed as a proof of concept, it appears that they are mainly focused on using this for games. From what I can tell it isn't terribly useful if you are not CPU bound (so I guess those folks with high end cards running at 1080p low would be good candidates).
 
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?
That is a lot less scammy than hardcoding optimizations that only apply to a benchmark though. Some people could genuinely want to do that, and have better FPS at the expense of an increased risk of crashes.
 
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