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The last makes you see God, man! I'm still reelin' in the years.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/Digit alMedia/43264A_hi_res.jpg

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The last makes you see God, man! I'm still reelin' in the years.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/Digit alMedia/43264A_hi_res.jpg

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/Digit alMedia/43261A_hi_res.jpg

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/Digit alMedia/43263A_hi_res.jpg

The last makes you see God, man! I'm still reelin' in the years.

They already do. They call it Geode http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/Pro ductInformation/0,,50_2330_9863,00.html.

AMD's lowest power usage CPU's are currently 35W and made on 90nm SOI for AM2 socket with F2 Stepping. They range from a 1.6 Ghz Sempron on the low end up to a 2.0 Ghz Athlon X2

You can get info on all available models at these urls:

Compare Desktop Processor Specifications

Compare Server/Workstation Processor Specifications

AMD Processor Pricing

The question is of course can you buy one retail?

> The "500" is part of the marketing name. In no way does the core run at 500 MHz.

According to the specifications is uses LX-700, which runs at 433MHz (more info here). Not far from 500MHz.

Core electronics:
* CPU: AMD Geode LX-700@0.8W
* CPU clock speed: 433 MHz

Actually, with the newest rash of processors released by AMD, they've been taking a huge step back.

If I'm not mistaken, every new processor they've released has been based on their older 90nm cores. They've all but abandoned their 65nm cores that also happen to have the 65W TDP.

I really don't know why AMD is taking a step back when they supposedly have a smaller process that they have proven they can use, especially when these processors would technically be cheaper to produce, and run cooler.

Actually, with the newest rash of processors released by AMD, they've been taking a huge step back.

If I'm not mistaken, every new processor they've released has been based on their older 90nm cores. They've all but abandoned their 65nm cores that also happen to have the 65W TDP.

I really don't know why AMD is taking a step back when they supposedly have a smaller process that they have proven they can use, especially when these processors would technically be cheaper to produce, and run cooler.

No, I'm sure he meant what he said. It's very common to call it that.
Used here for example...
Although AMD renamed it
So did Intel

Umm... most complex hardware *is* buggy. That's why datasheets often have errata issued with them, listing the different revs of silicon and what doesn't work...

For example, here's the summary one for the Athlon 64 family (warning - pdf link):
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/25759.pdf

It's also why modern BIOSes and OSes apply microcode updates to the processor - to fix "hardware" while it's in the machine. They literally rewrite the microcode that runs the processor on boot to correct certain types of issues.

I spent days in a previous job chasing around problems with one particular batch of small microcontrollers. Turns out, I eventually noticed that all of the misbehaving ones were rev B silicon, which eventually lead me down the path to the errata sheet. Turns out, our code, which worked perfectly on every other rev, had fallen into one of the rare pitfalls of that revision.

FPGAs are a horrid idea for mass production. They're usually either slower or utter power hogs. If it's a low-production device, or something that needs regular field updates, then great, but for mass-produced bits, it just won't work out well. I just can't see putting an "FPGA area" into regular ASICs due to the massive amounts of stuff you'd need to wire around in order to divert lines away from the usual areas of silicon over to the FPGA area. Plus there's all that wasted silicon if the FPGA area was never used, which would decrease yields and raise costs.

I generally agree with your statement. One warning: be careful when using the latest ATI drivers http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/vista64/common- vista64.html . 7.3 hosed my system (BSOD) and the uninstall doesn't work in safe mode. My advice is to stick with 7.2 for now.

... use its Cool'n'Quiet if your motherboard has this CPU and supports it. It's nice when idled and not using the machine so much (e.g., surfing the Web).

Now, if I could make my Windows XP Pro. SP2 stable. Others and I can't figure out why I get blue screens with Cool'n'Quiet enabled.

He's not making it up, why would he?

It's who you ask, not how... although being nice always helps:

Dirk Meyer


His executive bio is here. Please ask him, nicely, to open the hardware documentation, and if he could provide some resources (people, money, hardware) to the X.org team so they can build drivers.

It's who you ask, not how... although being nice always helps:

Dirk Meyer


His executive bio is here. Please ask him, nicely, to open the hardware documentation, and if he could provide some resources (people, money, hardware) to the X.org team so they can build drivers.

What platform-specific hardware do I have then? ATI X1900 XTX, a Creative Live! 24-bit soundcard, an nForce 560 motherboard, an AMD 64 3800+ processor that I put together myself. Obviously so substandard that it Supreme Commander is playable at 1280x1024 at maximum graphics quality, and under Vista it hasn't crashed once. Ubuntu tried to tell me my hard-drive was corrupt when I tried to install it. Running off the live CD it couldn't detect my keyboard. These are problems that I wouldn't expect from any OS, and with Windows I didn't have them.

Face it, if I could find a distro that worked properly I could just move, but I don't want to.

Stop making excuses.

Personally I don't think it's quantum computers that will be the breakthrough, but simply a different architecture for conventional computers. Let me go on a little tangent here.

Now that we've reached the limits of the Von Neumann architecture, we're starting to see a new wave of innovation in CPU design. The Cell is part of that, but also the stuff ATI and NVIDIA are doing is also very interesting. Instead of one monolithic processor connected to a giant memory through a tiny bottleneck, processors of the future will be a grid of processing elements interleaved with embedded memory in a network structure. Almost like a Beowulf cluster on a chip.

People are worried about how conventional programs will scale to these new architectures, but I believe they won't have to. Code monkeys won't be writing code to spawn thousands of cooperating threads to run the logic of a C++ application faster. Instead, PhDs will write specialized libraries to leverage all that parallel processing power for specific algorithms. You'll have a raytracing library, an image processing library, an FFT library, etc. These specialized libraries will have no problem sponging up all the excess computing resources, while your traditional software continues to run on just two or three traditional cores.

Back on the subject of AI, my theory is that these highly parallel architectures will be much more suited to simulating the highly parallel human brain. They will excel at the kinds pattern matching tasks our brains eat for breakfast. Computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing; all of these will be highly amenable to parallelization. And it is these applications which will eventually prove the worth of non-traditional architectures like Intel's 80-core chip. It may still be a long time before the sentient computer is unveiled, but I think we will soon finally start seeing real-world AI applications like decent automated translation, image labeling, and usable stereo vision for robot navigation. Furthermore, I predict that Google will be on the forefront of this new AI revolution, developing new algorithms to truly understand web content to reject spam and improve rankings.

It did detect *my* widescreen laptop (new HP nx9420). Looked damn ugly though (low res) with the VESA driver.
With the AMD/ATI fglrx driver loaded I get 1680x1050. You should be even better off if you have an NVIDIA graphics card.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

• Athlon 64 X2 is their dual-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 939 motherboards.
• Athlon 64 FX is their high-end single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, Socket 940, and Socket F (server) motherboards.
• Athlon 64 is their mid-range single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, and Socket 754 motherboards.
• Sempron is their low-end ("value") single-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 754 motherboards.

• Athlon 64 X2 is their dual-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 939 motherboards.
• Athlon 64 FX is their high-end single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, Socket 940, and Socket F (server) motherboards.
• Athlon 64 is their mid-range single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, and Socket 754 motherboards.
• Sempron is their low-end ("value") single-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 754 motherboards.

• Athlon 64 X2 is their dual-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 939 motherboards.
• Athlon 64 FX is their high-end single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, Socket 940, and Socket F (server) motherboards.
• Athlon 64 is their mid-range single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, and Socket 754 motherboards.
• Sempron is their low-end ("value") single-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 754 motherboards.

• Athlon 64 X2 is their dual-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 939 motherboards.
• Athlon 64 FX is their high-end single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, Socket 940, and Socket F (server) motherboards.
• Athlon 64 is their mid-range single-core offering, available for Socket AM2, Socket 939, and Socket 754 motherboards.
• Sempron is their low-end ("value") single-core offering, available for Socket AM2 and Socket 754 motherboards.

First of all, you don't even understand the terms:

TDP = Thermal Design Power. Not "total". Get your facts right.

You are totally wrong about TDP: TDP is entirely a marketing construct. It is based on a typical scenario. They choose a point arbitrarily that doesn't cause too much perf. loss from PowerNow!, but still reduces thermal solution cost. It's market pressure.

Second: RTFA.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2068252 ,00.asp

"AMD's argument goes like this: Modern desktop and notebook processors constantly scale up and down between full speed and an idle state, which AMD has branded "Cool 'n' Quiet". At a given time, pushed to full load by an application, AMD's chips run hotter and consume more power. But across a typical computing day--where a user might check his email or surf the Web--the processor idles more often then not. At idle, AMD's 90nm Athlon 64 X2 consumes 7.5 watts. A 35-watt, 65-nm chip will idle at 3.8 watts, AMD said. By comparison, the 65nm Core 2 Duo idles at 14.3 watts."

Marketing drones on the prowl. AMD took Intel's spec, changed what is considered a "typical" day, and said, "Hey look, we win!!!" I'm sure Intel will respond in kind.

AMD does not give MAX, if they did, they wouldn't be able to sell their products to any platform vendor. No one has spec'd MAX since pre 1GHz days.

Repeat after me: AMD DOES NOT SPEC MAX POWER. AMD DOES NOT SPEC MAX POWER. AMD DOES NOT SPEC MAX POWER>

Don't believe me? Here is their POWER THERMAL DATA SHEET, and it only specs TDP.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/30430.pdf

PowerNow! defines TDP as the max power of the CPU under TDP conditions. There's the rib. TDP conditions (see page 83 of aforementioned documents) are not explained, "please see your FAE for details." But we already know the answer to that.

Intel and AMD both spec to their own versions of what TDP means. Been that way since the 100W+ CPU appeared on the market.

Info here.

Listen. Learn. http://developer.amd.com/techchat.jsp

Nice try, AMD hasn't been claiming any sort of quad-core processors - that's Intel

It doesn't matter what Intel chooses to call it (they have changed their mind 3 times: IA-32e, EM64T, Intel64). The fact is, Intel cloned the AMD64 architecture. AMD wrote the architecture specs and they gave it the name AMD64. When you install NetBSD or OpenBSD on a 64-bit Intel processor, you install NetBSD/amd64 or OpenBSD/amd64, these guys adopted the proper architecture name.

Other vendors use other names, Microsoft and Sun use x64, some use x86-64. Should you use these names ? No. Just stick to the official arch name, AMD64. When AMD cloned the IA32 (aka i386) architecture, AMD processors were (properly) recognized as being IA32 or i386 processors, so let's do the same for this generation of processors and use the proper name: AMD64.

I'm pretty sure the GP was joking, though, about MS suing AMD for using the word "Live."

The funny thing about your post is that AMD worked with/ licensed a lot of IBM's technology to be able to get to 65nm

AMDs 65nm processes have evolved from a technology agreement with IBM that has been highly beneficial to AMD.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoo m/0,,51_104_543~114609,00.html

Just looking at the article makes the organization behind BadVista laughable and completely immature. There are quite a number of significant problems with Windows Vista, yet the site seems to make the most mention of problems that, as said before, are completely speculative and misconstrued.

I will disclaim here that I have no problems with GNU/Linux Operating System. I have used several distributions in the past, but despite its problems, I think it is a decent OS. With that said and the fact that the FSF is behind this, I think that the group should have thought of how many of their 'not-have' reasons apply to their favorite OS as well:

Has anyone tried to access SMB1 shares on Fedora Core 5 or 6? It's horror! I could go on and on, but it just shows that this is opinion.

Uhmm...maybe it's because it hasn't been publicly released yet? Counterexample: ATI just updated their drivers four days ago as their last preparation for RTM release. And this begs the question: where are the Linux drivers, FSF? I would love to get my external 5.1 surround sound card working sometime before I graduate (3 years from today)...

Has this guy tried to install a full Linux install. NO, I'm talking about the install that actually gives you everything. That's well over 10 GB.

The funniest one on that list to me was:

Obviously, FSF or whoever did not really use Vista before making bland assertions like this. Vista may have lots of GUI improvements, but a lot of knowledge about XP's GUI can still be applied here. It took me about 5 minutes to get used to Vista, and I'm sure a lot of users won't take much longer than that. And there are Linux professionals and experts who only know a fraction of the operating system; the learning curve is Mt. Everest steep.

There are a whole lot more than can be made fun of, but it just comes to show that organizations such as these give themselves a bad name by doing things like these. Bad mouth Vista all you want, but at least be factual about it...

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoo m/0,,51_104_543~114948,00.html

45nm with a decisive design edge hrm

And cheaper to manufacture!

can't wait.

BTW, it seems that AMD Pacifica technology, being probably the most interesting to the enterprise customers (at las cheap hardware virtualisation!), is subjected to a serious marketing screwup inside AMD.

Go to their main page, search for "pacifica", and try to visit the first page you get in the results (AMD's Virtualization Solutions - Optimizing Enterprise Services).

I get a 404 error. It's been like this at least since march 2006. Is their marketing department/webmaster on a nine month vacation or what?

BTW, I've tried notifying them about that through an online form. I've only received an automated response of course and never heard from anybody alive at AMD.

If anybody at AMD is reading this, please ask your marketing guys how did they manage to screw things up this way for so long?

We just started switching from Intel to AMD hardware in our servers (HP DL385). Not that we pay per Kw/h, but I figure less power consumption means less heat and less fried hardware.

AMD has a website on the topic: Real Efficiency in the Data Center

The AMD processor pricing page seems to indicate that these chips have a total of 512kb cache (2x256kb?), whereas the 90nm Athlon X2's have 1024Mb (2x512kb) cache. Is this true?

I suppose such a move would make sense for reducing power and cost.

Sunnyvale (CA) - A spokesperson for AMD confirmed to TG Daily that customers should expect AMD to announce a substantial price drop in its highest performance desktop processors, including Athlon 64 X2. The price drop should be announced at or about the time that Intel announces the release of its next-generation Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors - an announcement which is now expected before the end of the month.

Well the good news is that the 65nm processors will not cost more than their siblings. For example, the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ in both 90nm and 65nm will sell for $301 in quantities of 1000.

Sweet. Now my new video card can power my house instead of just heating my office.

I think there's already been more than one headline on Slashdot previously and on digg that says almost exactly the same thing... IBM is the real winner. But it's not like it's a big story... if it is, then who's the loser? Intel? AMD? Do they really care that they aren't in the consoles? Not as far as I've heard. They're more worried about chasing the living room PC. (Even though I think they'd get into more living rooms with consoles, but I guess it's more work to design a new console processor than it is to make up a silly meaningless standard for "media" PCs... let the marketing staff do the work, instead of paying engineers to make a product.)

AMD has a utility called AMD Dual-Core Optimizer for syncing the cores http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResou rces/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html.

If the MacBook Pro is the top of the line Macintosh Laptop - why not use the top of the line mobile GPU from ATI ?

It's nice to have the faster CPU - but many serious MacBook users are all about Graphics/Photography/Video Production, they expect continual upgrades in graphics performance.

From the specifications listed on the AMD (formerly ATI) website, the X1800 XT has double the memory bandwidth, increased speed, four more pixel shaders, three more vertex shaders, and other updates.

ATI X1600 Specifications
ATI X1800 XT Specifications

I would think a stronger GPU would show a visible boost in performance, nicely complementing the Core 2 Duo CPU.

If the MacBook Pro is the top of the line Macintosh Laptop - why not use the top of the line mobile GPU from ATI ?

It's nice to have the faster CPU - but many serious MacBook users are all about Graphics/Photography/Video Production, they expect continual upgrades in graphics performance.

From the specifications listed on the AMD (formerly ATI) website, the X1800 XT has double the memory bandwidth, increased speed, four more pixel shaders, three more vertex shaders, and other updates.

ATI X1600 Specifications
ATI X1800 XT Specifications

I would think a stronger GPU would show a visible boost in performance, nicely complementing the Core 2 Duo CPU.

1)the amount of register space literally doubles. Optimized properly, that can go a long ways.

2)simpler memory model: 52 physical bits for physical RAM (don't believe me, look at http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/DevelopWithAMD /0,,30_2252_869_875%5E7044,00.html) and 64 bits of virtual addressing space. No segments, just a flat memory model.

3) removal of the old priveledge system and intro of a new user/kernel page allocation scheme to simplify the memory model.

4)Direct addressing of a very large amount of ram directly accessible.

Those are just some of the advantages. if you want to look them up in detail, go look at the link that I have given in this post to the AMD64 manuals.

Here's the AMD page on fab locations - it looks like the last one came online in 2005, I didn't see much about what new ones might be in the works.

If you're hitting 35C ambient temperature, your internal temps shouldn't be much over 55C unless you have inadequate air circulation. Get some SMART monitors on the hard drives to watch their temperature sensors and use an application like Motherboard Monitor to alert you when you approach your CPU's critical temperature. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Speaking only from my own experience, quality hard drives have operating temperatures up to 60 Celsius. A Dual-Core Opteron can operate anywhere from 65C to 83C depending on what chip you have (PDF). A word of advice: larger fans at lower RPMs tend to push more air and are quieter. If noise isn't a concern, then go with larger fans at higher RPMs. Also, if you can maintain a higher total pressure inside the server case it will help prevent dust from settling and limit how often you need to pop the top and clean it out, but it also puts more stress on the intake fans which may lead to more rapid failures. I've never collected statistics on this sort of thing so the increase in failure rate may be negligible.

This is where I think AMD gets themselves a big win. Intel's FSB, even clocked at 1333MHz (actually it's 333MHz QDR, but we'll not quibble) pushes only 10.6GB/s. And that's not accounting for the off-die memory controller. Even with dual buses (like the 5000 series chipsets tout) they only just barely have enough aggregate throughput to handle memory transfers.

Of course, four FSBs (plus a snoop filter) is still not as efficient as AMD's Direct Connect Architecture, but Intel's current dual-processor server architecture seems to have no problem competing against AMD's current 2P Opteron.

A powered-on CPU is never stopped... HLT just tells it there's no work to do for this cycle, and so it uses slightly less power.

AMD's Athlon(TM) 64 Processor Power and Thermal Data Sheet would seem to disagree with you. See the table starting at page 30, where the Halt/Stop Grant power usage is less than 10% of TDP even at Pmin. (It seems that dual-core CPUs don't support Halt/Stop Grant, so that's admittedly not relevant to my case.) The HLT instruction description in the instruction reference also explicitly says that

Entering the HALT state puts the processor in low-power mode. Execution resumes when an unmasked hardware interrupt (INTR), non-maskable interrupt (NMI), system management interrupt (SMI), RESET, or INIT occurs.

which seems pretty clear to me that it's not just "idling for a cycle"--it's stopped completely. (Again, I don't know how relevant this is to dual-core CPUs, but in my case, idle power usage with everything back in the system--including a 3.5" HD I forgot was still in there--is around 68W. Not a trivial change from 75W, certainly, but not the kind of massive drop your comments had suggested to me, especially given that Windows eats 140W on the same machine.)

They're getting a bit behind the times, but looking through the CPUs on this site will give you a better understanding of my point: http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm

Interesting, I hadn't been aware of that site. Thanks for the pointer. It does seem that AMD's own documentation may be a little out of date, as it doesn't list the dual-core Socket AM2 processors, only the Socket 939 89/110W versions.

And in any case, the OP's point about VIA chips still holds, even if his numbers are somewhat skewed.

I'm not entirely convinced that the numbers still come out against VIA, but it certainly would be interesting to run a comparison with a CPU that does support a low-power halt state. (It would also be nice to see some mini-ITX motherboards for such; I've grown quite fond of my 26x21x6cm box.)

A powered-on CPU is never stopped... HLT just tells it there's no work to do for this cycle, and so it uses slightly less power.

AMD's Athlon(TM) 64 Processor Power and Thermal Data Sheet would seem to disagree with you. See the table starting at page 30, where the Halt/Stop Grant power usage is less than 10% of TDP even at Pmin. (It seems that dual-core CPUs don't support Halt/Stop Grant, so that's admittedly not relevant to my case.) The HLT instruction description in the instruction reference also explicitly says that

Entering the HALT state puts the processor in low-power mode. Execution resumes when an unmasked hardware interrupt (INTR), non-maskable interrupt (NMI), system management interrupt (SMI), RESET, or INIT occurs.

which seems pretty clear to me that it's not just "idling for a cycle"--it's stopped completely. (Again, I don't know how relevant this is to dual-core CPUs, but in my case, idle power usage with everything back in the system--including a 3.5" HD I forgot was still in there--is around 68W. Not a trivial change from 75W, certainly, but not the kind of massive drop your comments had suggested to me, especially given that Windows eats 140W on the same machine.)

They're getting a bit behind the times, but looking through the CPUs on this site will give you a better understanding of my point: http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm

Interesting, I hadn't been aware of that site. Thanks for the pointer. It does seem that AMD's own documentation may be a little out of date, as it doesn't list the dual-core Socket AM2 processors, only the Socket 939 89/110W versions.

And in any case, the OP's point about VIA chips still holds, even if his numbers are somewhat skewed.

I'm not entirely convinced that the numbers still come out against VIA, but it certainly would be interesting to run a comparison with a CPU that does support a low-power halt state. (It would also be nice to see some mini-ITX motherboards for such; I've grown quite fond of my 26x21x6cm box.)

This link (http://download.intel.com/design/mobile/datashts/ 30922105.pdf) points to the Core Duo data sheet. Where does it say it is 64 bit capable ? I can't see it.

I have been researching notebooks in the last few hours and the only ones I can definitly say are 64 bit capable are the AMD AM2 Turion's. Also, if you look at this link: AMD benchmark PDF, it's hard to imagine that the intel offering is at all interesting.

I need a fast AMD64/EMT64 capable notebook, I don't mind if it's Intel or AMD. I can't see a better offering from a value for money or even just outright value perspective than the AMD TL-60 based notebooks (if you look at CPU that is.)

If you can kindly point out how the Intel offerings are dramatically superior, I'm listening.

PDF on AMD IOMMU

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/34434.pdf#search=%22IOMMU%22