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AMD's Secrets Revealed
Techman writes "Three days ago AnandTech brought you a glimpse of Intel's plans for 2001. Now they're following up the coverage with AMD's roadmap for the next year and on into 2002. Does AMD have what it takes to continue their incredible winning streak, or will AMD return to the state they were in before their recent success?"
AMD have an impressive roadmap on paper. But then anyone can make anything look good on paper (Especially .coms!), so i'm not going to simply say "Good oh, good old AMD thrashing Intel! Yay!"
AMD have always had poor luck with their own processor designs, and seem to stuck following in the footsteps of Intel when it comes to inovation. They've created some compitition in the short term with their cheaper CPU's, sure, but thats only been in the last year or so.
The future is a little more murky. Their x86-64 architecture isn't compatible with Intels IA-64 architecture. Aside from the fact that the x86 instruction set is crap anyway, Microsoft have no plans to support x86-64, instead choosing their long standing partnership with Intel and focusing on the IA-64.
Now, i know that there are people working on Linux, *BSD ports to x86-64 etc. but that is not going to carry AMD into the next decade by any margin. Without industry standards and support for their architecture, they are going to die, pure and simple. We all know how poor Microsoft are at supporting anything other than Intel as well, so don't hold your breath for them (And others) to support two diferent systems.
At the moment, it's AMD 1, Intel 0. But thats going to change pretty quickly, and thats a fact.
T. Lee
Could be issue latency to account for the frequency domain changes. They may have to throw in an extra clock every N clocks to keep the PLLs happy.
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https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Chipsets have been capable of doing that for years.
For example: 100 x 4.5 = 450MHz
It's not like there isn't a lack of non-x86 processors out there. If a non-x86 processor was going to kill x86, why wasn't it the Alpha/PowerPC/MIPS?
This is why I think Intel has just sunk billions into what will become Just Another Chip, the non-x86 Itanium. It will join the Alpha, MIPS, Power, Sparc, and others in a crowded server-chip market.
AMD, on the other hand, is going to make a fortune on the x86-64 platform, dominating the NT-or-Linux server market running a mix of x86-32 and x86-64 software. Intel will desperately adapt the Pentium V to handle AMD's 64-bit extensions, and probably run afoul of a judiciously-placed AMD patent. AMD will wind up getting royalties on every Pentium V, and eventually overthrow Intel as the #1 chipmaker.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
Intel keeps constantly betting on extra SIMD instructions like SSE, but must've realized already that only a small niche of developers is actually going to support them if not directly payed to optimize their software.
I ask myself: why bother? Don't they see that playing their cards on such proprietary instructions is a very bad thing?
I remember that not a lot of people complained when Intel decided to introduce Slot1, and I still don't know why. It looked perfectly clear that Slot1 wasn't necessary at that time and Intel was doing it to screw AMD and Cyrix over. (Only Intel's processors would be Slot1, and you wouldn't be able to use both on the same motherboard).
It didn't work quite like they expected, even with their quite large market share. At this moment the situation's even worse, and I can't see a very good future to the ones who decide to fragment the market like this.
Not only this is bad for Intel, it's bad for us (developers AND consumers) as well. AMD also occasionally releases new instructions, even less successful than Intel's.
I, as a developer, wouldn't want to write my software 3 different times to make them compatible with (a) old MMX-only machines; (b) AMD's processors and (c) Intel's processors.
People in general, as consumers, wouldn't get software that's optimized for anything because developers aren't _willing_ to optimize their stuff.
The bottomline: everyone loses.
Note that I don't blame Intel for this practice. The new instructions are good for marketing and they NEED to get out because they are intelligent solutions to coding problems. AMD thinks the same way. The problem is we need compatibility.
Flavio
Kryotech.com
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
The AMD K7 whomps the PIII and in some instances, the P4, while being cheaper.
The K7 to my knowledge doesn't have a serial number on it that other people can happily query for.
Whereas it's possible for the P4 to be faster at new software compiled and built with new extensions, etc. The Athlon is faster at what's running now and appears to be a better PIII than the PIII.
SMP + Slightly upped MHZ = sweet right now.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
It all depends on how soon Intel will release a DDR chipset, and whether it resembles the stability of the 440BX or the follies of the 820. If Intel can make a nice clean DDR chipset compliant with the DDR standards (as they have promised to do), then Intel could have the fastest desktop x86 setup out there. Of course, they already do, but cost is prohibitive and the demon Rambus has not yet been dispatched to the pits of hell. A price drop and a DDR chipset for the P4 could very well be the tolling bell for the Athlon.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
AMD's site, as well as Anand has been saying that AMD re-released the new Athlons (1, 1.1, and 1.2 ghz) with the new 266Mhz front side bus. My question is, where are they? I'd like to pick one up, but I have no clue where to get a hold of one...not even Pricewatch has any info.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Maybe the future will be different but so far AMD has failed to create its own designs.
AMD has a good plan, take other companies great designs and use them as their own. It works well if you have designs to buy, but its hard creating a company when you dont have the ability to innovate. They got the Athlon design from some small company that they purchased, the name escapes me.
The p4 will come out in newer revs with faster clockspeeds, DDR support, .13u technology, and copper interconnects and when it does it will kick ass, the NetBurst technology will really help when it gets up to 2Ghz speeds. On the lowpower market we have the low power p3 and on the server market we have the Itanium that will become widely accepted. AMD looks like its in a good position now, but it should go down dramatically in the future years.
jbischof
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The article mentions that AMD Duron isn't selling that well in North America, whereas in Europe the sales are "incredible". Why is that?
What difference would it make if AMD or Intel introduced a totally new processor (non-x86 compatable) or if you just had a look around at what other options are already available today?
The PowerPC is very nice processor. IIRC, IBM has released open "PC like" MB designs based on the PowerPC - with an invitation for anyone to manufacture them. Any takers so far?
Unfortunately, giving up on x86 binary compatability is still considered to big a risk for PC/MB producers. Even us open source OS users recognize that there will be that occasional binary driver or commercial software that we need to run and it's only available for x86.
Ever see NetBSD on a G4 cube? I did at Comdex/LBE and it's nice, reportedly much faster than equivalent Pentiums but expensive...
Better stuff is already out there, but it's the old cliche of BetaMax vs. VHS - the product with mass market appeal will continue to reign.
--Aaron Greenberg
If only they tested the damn second serial port on the new 2130's...
I had to use one of those motherboard serial cables that waste a slot (quite valuable in a 2U). I found one in a box 'o' cables and it worked. Then we told VA (we asked for two serials in the first place) and they sent us a box of them, all different. None of them worked. I can get the winmodem in my notebook working, but not a simple external USR 28800?
Tested, huh?
Maybe I'm angry because my thumb is still a little scarred from removing a hard drive from one a couple of weeks ago. Ouch.
When will VA Linux start selling AMD based systems???
What if you don't play Quake? You neglect the fact that media apps in consumer space are becoming more and more popular. Low-end 3D renders, video editors, web-media apps will all become popular soon due to the content revolution. Guess what a GeForce2 will do for Premiere? Nothing! For all of the apps mentioned, a fast CPU is absolutely critical. Also, you forget that CPUs have to keep up with the bloat of the OSs. If it weren't for the KDEs, Xs, GNOMEs, Win2Ks, and Office 2000s in the world, much fewer people would need faster CPUs. Win95 killed my 486, and Win2K and Linux killed my PII300. It is impossible for people to resist buying faster CPUs given the fact that the entire software industry is against them.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
From the fortune program that came with my Linux distro (red-hat).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Maybe Motorola and AMD need to get together and share some technology. Let's hope that means that Athlons will be cooler and PowerPCs will move beyond 500 Mhz. But see how the universe loves a perverse outcome and how people are ussualy more hard headed about keeping their bad decissions we will probably get an Athlon that cant get beyond 500 Mhz and a PowerPC chip that can cook the thanksgiving turkey in ten minutes flat.
However the question I have is... is either company looking into and/or developing something not based on x86 architecture?
Isn't there going to be some point where the developers have to sit back and realize that they've done all they can with it?
I realize that this will potentially cause huge problems both in hardware and software but I think both companies would be doing themselves a favor to start planning for that day now.
What I think's impressive is that they're actually meeting their demand. That was always AMD's biggest problem (besides the fact that every product was a direct Intel knockoff ;) - they could never turn out enough chips. Seems like they finally turned that around with the Athlon.
However, the article did raise at least one important point - for a "low end" processor, the duron's just not cheap enough! I'm assembling my own computer right now, and I chose to go with a celeron because the Duron chips and compatible motherboards were just more, and I preferred to put the extra money into some things that really enhance performance for me, like a SCSI card and more RAM.
Of course, as soon as DDR is budget priced, I see myself putting together a different system altogether...
Naturally, this applies somewhat differently to the /. kind of crowd. It is possible for someone to build their own box that has an Athlon chip in it that is still a quality machine. I just built my own machine and it has an Athlon 800 chip in it and a real 3Com NIC and a video card with it's own RAM. This however isn't the usual case when you buy a preassembled AMD machine. These are often the budget models that have a winmodem, shared video RAM and all manner of other shortcuts. This reflects badly on AMD and when combined with their lack of support for dual processors rules them out in the high end mass market.
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
I think that's what they have done to a certian extent. When they launched the Athlon they wisely decided not to refer to it as K7. Not only did they change the name associated with their CPU but it was also the fastest chip on the market when launched. Now a little over a year later they've managed to look less like a Geo ("It'll get you there and back, but don't expect too much.") into more of a Chevorlet ("Quality, full featured automobile at a fair price."). Now with their recent development of dual processor capable motherboards they may be approaching something on the lines of a Pontiac ("Good performance, quality machine, low cost."). While Intel is starting to look more and more like an Oldsmobile ("A nice comfortable car for fuddy-duddies.")
My apologies to those of you who aren't from the US. I realize that these auto brands aren't exported very often and you might not be all that familiar with them. Also, I apologize for the slogans, it should be quite clear why I am in computer programming rather than advertising.
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
GaAs is much harder to work with then silicon. The cost would be greatly increase by using GaAs. I don't believe anything but very high end systems will ever use GaAs.
The only thing that really counts, in the end, is what is your overall performance, and what do you have to pay to get that performance.
Reviews on anandtech, tom's hardware, and hardocp all indicate that the 1.5 GHZ P4 is essentially equivalent to a 1.0-1.2 GHZ Athlon. A 1GHZ Athlon can be had for under $300 : a 1.5 GHZ P4 is running at a touch over $1000.
The socket 423 that the P4 fits in is going out by early next year: OTOH, there don't appear to be any plans to phase out socket A any time soon. This leads me to think that the Athlon will be more upgradeable.
At the very least, you can start with a Duron now and get an Athlon later- the same cannot be said for the celeron/p4 scenario.
RDRAM is more expensive than SDRAM and has marginal performance benefit. DDR-SDRAM will reduce this benefit to nothing in real world tasks.
For those of you that buy on brand, buy Intel: if you buy based on real numbers, buy AMD.
~mindlace
Second is the 64 bit stuff. x86-64 is one of the lamest ideas to come out of a high tech company since boo.com, and everyone who so much as looks at the name knows it. The only way it could go anywhere is if the competition was, what, several years late, having difficulty ramping to high clock speeds, requiring major new compiler technology, and probably many more things as well. Since they've met the first few requirements, I'll hold off on judgement.
They are counting on Intel to screw up. From the past, this may work. It's not really a good thing to count on. Innovation often fails too, but I hope they don't just go into a holding pattern with the Athlon. That was a big win for them; to do well they have to follow it up with others now.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
The truth is, Intel was one of VA's original financial backers, and Intel is still DEEP into VA's pockets. They have an "Intel Deal" and that's about all there is to it.
VA will tell you, "there's more to it than that, you have to realize that we make sure EVERY componant on a motherboard and system is FULLY functional in Linux before we aprove it for use. We have done a lot of software engineering for Intel systems, and it will take a lot of time to do it for AMD systems." But, that's bullshit. With all of VA's staff and resources, and the whole open source community porting to every bit of hardware under the sun, VA can't do an AMD system... Yea, ok... whatever...
Quake? What about 3D Studio, Premier, CoolEdit, Photoshop, etc? Just because all you do is email and Quake, doesn't mean that other people don't find a real use for all this power. Your 'leet Sun systems still cost an arm and a leg. Small time workstation users love the fact that they can get workstation power in a $4000PC. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the pro workstation market is going to go through a serious shrink af consumer hardware catches up. All ready, the GeForce2 Ultra is faster (in workstation apps, not games) than everything except the WildCat 42XX series cards. Even SGI is using NVIDIA chips (their "VPro" is a modded Quadro) in their low range workstations. Non-PC workstation (low-midrange) manufactuers are either going to have to innovate, or get the hell out of the way.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
They were working when I checked them out before. And suck failure rates are really not unusual for high end chips (which is why they much more expensive than lowew end chips even though the performance in difference in not that great) Phil Garnier