Resources about Intel® Transactional Synchronization Extensions (Intel TSX)

[Roman_D_Intel]

Hi,

you might find this collection of technical material about Intel TSX instructions useful: http://www.intel.com/software/tsx

By a suggestion from some senior forum contributors I am making this post sticky.

Best regards,

Roman

[ILevi1]

Here is what people say about transactional memory and some other IA features in comments on recently published Haswell reviews on the Internet:

I read with some concern that the TSX instructions aren't going to be available on all SKUs. This is the main thing that I've been looking forward to on Haswell! Not providing the capability across the family is reminiscent of the 486SX/DX debacle. TSX could be huge for game physics as it would allow for far more consistent scaling. I know it is supposed to be backwards compatible, but what's the point of coding to it if it isn't always there?

I am not sure if the assertion about game physics is true, but the following reply touches one very important point:

And as you say (and like with VT-d or other tech) I think Intel is being stupid and self-defeating by trying to make it an artificial differentiator. Unlike general basics of a chip such as clock rate, cache, hyperthreading or raw execution resources these sorts of features are only as valuable as the software that's coded for them, and nothing kills adoption amongst developers like "well maybe it'll be there but maybe not."

I think they have a point and that someone higher up in product design division should know about it.

[bronxzv]

Igor Levicki wrote:

Here is what people say about transactional memory and some other IA features in comments on recently published Haswell reviews on the Internet:

I read with some concern that the TSX instructions aren't going to be available on all SKUs. This is the main thing that I've been looking forward to on Haswell! Not providing the capability across the family is reminiscent of the 486SX/DX debacle. TSX could be huge for game physics as it would allow for far more consistent scaling. I know it is supposed to be backwards compatible, but what's the point of coding to it if it isn't always there?

I am not sure if the assertion about game physics is true, but the following reply touches one very important point:

And as you say (and like with VT-d or other tech) I think Intel is being stupid and self-defeating by trying to make it an artificial differentiator. Unlike general basics of a chip such as clock rate, cache, hyperthreading or raw execution resources these sorts of features are only as valuable as the software that's coded for them, and nothing kills adoption amongst developers like "well maybe it'll be there but maybe not."

I think they have a point and that someone higher up in product design division should know about it.

thank you to raise the issue here, I have remarked a lot of bad press too, a typical example here : http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2323577

[Bernard]

>>>TSX could be huge for game physics as it would allow for far more consistent scaling.>>>

It could be helpful in general multithreaded programming.

[andysem]

The lack of TSX in 4xxxK CPUs is one major reason I'm hesitating to upgrade to Haswell. Releasing top-level CPUs without this feature and middle-range CPUs with it is absolute nonsense, IMHO.

[Sergio_J__C_]

what type of information? manuals? tutorials? blogs?

[D__Hugh_R_]

A couple of years ago, I actually bought a Haswell processor (i7-4770) just to get TSX.  Then a firmware update took it away.  I feel a little cheated.