Jim Keller, the CEO of tenstorrent, revealed the company’s predictions for CPU performance based on its own Ascalon processor core in comparison to rivals AMD’s Zen 5 and Nvidia’s Grace. Although Tenstorrent expects AMD’s Zen 5 to be the performance leader in terms of raw integer throughput, the Ascalon processor is expected to deliver market-leading integer performance-per-watt. Keller believes that AMD’s Zen 5 will perform integer workloads 30% faster than the Zen 4 of the current generation.
In the SPEC CPU 2017 INT Rate benchmark, which measures integer performance, Jim Keller presented the company’s performance predictions for Tenstorrent’s internally developed 8-wide out-of-order execution Ascalon processor’s RISC-V core against potential rivals. Ascalon 1.9 SPEC2K17INT/GHz and Ascalon 2.2 SPEC2K17INT/GHz are expected to reach 7.03 and 8.14 points, respectively, according to the company.
Tenstorrent’s Ascalon processor core is predicted to easily outperform Intel’s Sapphire Rapids (7.45 points), Nvidia’s Grace (7.44 points), and AMD’s Zen 4 in terms of performance (6.80 points).
However, AMD’s Zen 5 is anticipated to reach 8.84 points, making it the undisputed winner of integer performance in 2024–2025.
Tenstorrent reported that there is a significant flaw in his performance predictions: they are all projections rather than actual benchmarks or even simulations. Therefore, while we can anticipate Tenstorrent engineers to accurately model the performance of their CPU design and attempt to forecast what AMD could offer next, these are still predictions rather than actual benchmark results.
Even though it is extremely unlikely that AMD’s Zen 5 performance estimate is 100% accurate, it has garnered the most attention for obvious reasons. However, what is perhaps more significant is that Tenstorrent anticipates AMD’s Zen 5 to operate at speeds north of 4.0 GHz and with TDPs under 250W, as opposed to the Ascalon processor, which operates at speeds around 3.80 GHz with a TDP of roughly 200W.
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