The Intel AVX-512 SIMD 512-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set architecture are used for various compute-intensive workloads on workstations and servers, but the AVX-512 hardware threads are power-greedy, causing headaches for developers. Software icon Linus Torvalds recently condemned the AVX-512 and called on the company to develop a better solution for complex HPC problems. The creator of Linux went so far as to call AVX-512 a "powerful virus" and wished it to "die a painful death." Intel's Advanced Vector Extensions aim to dramatically improve the performance of workloads that rely on floating point calculations. HPC programs and various FP benchmarks that use optimized AVX-512 code provide significantly better performance than applications that rely solely on FPUs. However, AVX-512 units reduce CPU clocks due to high power consumption. "I hope that the AVX512 dies a painful death, and that Intel starts solving real problems instead of trying to create magic instructions and then create benchmarks that they can look good at," Torvalds said. "I hope Intel goes back to basics: restart their process and focus more on simple code that isn't HPC or another unnecessary special case."
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Torvalds added that he thought Intel should spend the budget for CPU transistors on regular FPUs or GPUs instead of AVX-512 because the former can benefit everyone, while only certain applications can benefit from AVX-512. "I want my power limits to be hit by some ordinary integer code, not some AVX-512 power virus that removes the maximum frequency (because people ended up using it for memcpy!) and takes out the cores (because these waste drives they suck up,” Mr. Torvalds exclaimed. Intel does not support all AVX-512 instructions on all of its processors. Server processors generally support extensions because many HPC workloads use the latest Intel extensions, but client processors Until recently, only supported certain AVX-512 instructions.In the meantime, Intel's latest Ice Lake chips and upcoming Tiger Lake processors support AVX-512 quite broadly, as the chipmaker hopes software developers will It should be noted that Linus Torvalds is not against extensions to the x86 instruction set architecture per se, but he does say that AVX2 is more than enough. "I absolutely hate FP benchmarks and I realize others care deeply," Torvalds said. “I think the AVX-512 is exactly what not to do. It's a great example of what Intel has done wrong, in part simply by increasing market fragmentation. Stop with the special waste and make all the basic common things that everyone cares about work as well as you humanly do. Then make an FPU that's just barely good enough, and people will be happy. AVX2 is more than enough. Via Real World Technologies