Analyzing Geekbench 6 under Intel's BOT
6 hours ago
- #Intel BOT
- #Benchmark Comparability
- #Geekbench Optimization
- Intel's Binary Optimization Tool (BOT) modifies executables to boost performance, currently limited to specific applications like Geekbench.
- Testing on a Panther Lake laptop showed Geekbench 6.3 scores increased by 5.5% with BOT, while Geekbench 6.7 scores remained largely unchanged.
- BOT introduces startup delays (e.g., 40 seconds on first run for Geekbench 6.3, reduced to 2 seconds later) and uses checksums to identify optimizable binaries.
- Analysis with Intel's Software Development Emulator revealed BOT reduces total instructions by 14% in the HDR workload, vectorizing scalar code for up to 1366% more vector instructions.
- BOT's optimizations are poorly documented and include sophisticated vectorization beyond simple code reordering, potentially giving Intel an unfair advantage in benchmarks.
- Geekbench plans to flag BOT-optimized results, as BOT undermines benchmark comparability by tuning code for peak rather than typical performance.