Linked by Amjith Ramanujam on Thu 31st Jul 2008 20:51 UTC, submitted by snydeq
While using an AMD Barcelona server to create a portable benchmarking kit, InfoWorld's Tom Yager discovered something unexpected: "I could incur variances in some benchmark tests ranging from 10 to 60 percent through combined manipulation of the server's BIOS settings, BIOS version, compiler flags, and OS release." Yager put this matter to AMD's performance engineers and was told he was seeing an effect widely known among CPU engineers, but seldom communicated to IT - that the performance envelope of a CPU is cast in silicon, but is sculpted in software. "Long before you lay hands on a server," Yager writes, "BIOS and OS engineers have reshaped its finely tuned logic in code, sometimes with the real intent of making it faster [...] sometimes to homogenize the server to flatten its performance relative to Intel's."
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Member since:
2006-01-19
Yes, this is called "chip tuning" of a car.
And believe me, it is a really bad idea. I am a calculation engineer for piston engines, I know what can go wrong.
Car manufacturers put the fuel injection parameters into their chips to find their way in between the following border lines:
- Try to have low fuel consumption (OK, that is not really true in the USA)
- Meet the emission legislation throughout the lifetime of the car
- Don't destroy the engine
- Don't destroy the gearbox
- Don't make the car undriveable
- Don't make the car noisy
With chip tunig you are likely overstepping several of these border lines.