Re: Code breakers beat security scheme of car locks, gas pumps

From: Uncle Al (UncleAl0_at_hate.spam.net)
Date: 02/06/05 

Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2005 18:33:29 -0800

Ian Stirling wrote:
>
> Uncle Al <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote:
> > Ian Stirling wrote:
> >>
> >> Uncle Al <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote:
> >> > Ian Stirling wrote:
> >> <sniop>
> >> >> However, it depends on the resources of the attacker.
> >> >> I'm not very worried if it takes ten thousand PCs a year to crack one car.
> >> >
> >> > Once the algorithm is broken you eavesdrop on cantu or respondu.
> >>
> >> Which doesn't matter.
> >> If it costs you $1M to crack a car code, then unless you've got a very
> >> special car, it's not a problem.
> >>
> >> (However, I note that it takes about 20 PC-weeks to crack a key, with
> >> non-special hardware)
> >> Or not that large an investment.
> >
> > If you run in Linux, 1.4X faster than in Windows. If you run in AMD,
> > then 1.4X faster than in Intel. My new iron, an Athlon 55FX
>
> Unless you know the algorithm, you can't generalise.
> On some Intel may be faster, on some AMD.
> I'd hesitate to say windows may be faster, as if it is, it's usually possible
> to modify linux to be as fast.

A large selection of video compression software was quietly bought
into by Intel and written optimized for Pentiums. If you are creating
mpegs you definitely want a Pentium unless you really know your
software. If you are doing anything else, an Athlon on a good
motherboard will run much faster for the same price. The top Athlon
55FX costs about $200 less that the top Pentium. Live with it.

The fastest Pentium mobo has a 1.2 GHz memory controller. My AMD 55FX
has a 2.6 GHz memory controller - inside the CPU not plumbed into the
mobo. The much larger and more efficient AMD memory caches mean a lot
of the bytes wandering through a Pentium system never leave an AMD CPU
until they are done. AMD uses DDR RAM that is wickedly fast at a fair
price. Pentiums use DDR2 RAM "that has the potential to exceed DDR
RAM in speed" and costs like sin.

Hyperthreading little programs in one Intel CPU can be pretty good.
Hypertransport across multiple AMD CPUs is awesome. Four Pentiums
will parallelize to about 2X throughput if memory is involved. Four
Athlons will give you about 3.96X throughput with at least doubled
memory bandwidth vs. single chips. Absent a rigged demo (mpeg
compression) AMD waxes Intel's ass Athlon/Pentium and Opteron/Xeon.
I've seen no evidence other than Itanium2s being a proprietary dead
end. AMD has not commercially gone to 90 nm architecture yet and it
still runs cooler than Intel. Intel is doomed.

I've never seen an app ported to both OSs that ran faster in Windows
in the same hardware.

NASA built its "Columbia" supercluster with Intel Itaniums. After
various public boastings NASA (with crappy performance and a power
bill the size of a, well, NASA project) is dumping the Itaniums at
warp speed and replacing them, at full added cost, with Itanium2s.
Had they used Opteron-800 series or G6s they would have enjoyed
massive performance enhancements, a much smaller power bill (including
cooling), and a smaller footprint. BTW, smaller means faster all by
itself. 

-- 
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
 (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Processors
    ... the big difference is that Pentium and Celeron ... AMD is a company that makes processors;-) ... Pentium and Celeron come from the Intel stable. ... Turion (although they make low-power chips like the Geode and many other ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: Amd-Intel
    ... > Who is AMD? ... > Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. engages in the design, manufacture, ... > Who is Intel? ... it was too slow to compete effectively with Intel's Pentium ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips)
  • Re: What is Intel IA-32?
    ... > IV, Celerons, AMD chips, and everything else that acts like a pentium. ... it's what Intel used to call "x86" but they changed to "Intel ...
    (alt.lang.asm)
  • Re: G4 vs. Intel/AMD Performance
    ... AMD even smokes the Pentium M in performance. ... about the Opteron when you talk about performance. ... > and Intel on the low side. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Processor Speeds
    ... THAT bad about Intel, the equivalent performing machine to that one will ... >> Pentium 4. ... >> Celeron. ... I'm probably choose a fully fledged AMD ...
    (alt.marketing.online.ebay)