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AMD focuses efforts on Palomino core
eviljolly writes: "ZDnet's Gamespot reports about the new AMD Palomino core which will be released at 1.5ghz. They also mention something about AMD's first 64bit processor called the ClawHammer which will come out in early 2002 at 2ghz"
You mean there's a PONY in there? Cool!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It forwards to my real e-mail address for free. I only use startrekmail.com on the internet. Sort of the same thing as using the name "King Africa" even though you're a 9 year old girl.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Backwards compatibility is why x86 is the leading architecture. Backwards compatibility is why DOS & Windows are still the leading platforms for developers. Backwards compatibiltiy is how the PowerPC got it's foothold into the market, and is what Transmeta's trying to do to get their processors accepted by the market place (though in both cases, backwards compatibitliy was achieved through the use of software rather than actual silicon).
Who wants to "upgrade" their system only to find their applications and more importantly, their documents inaccessible? Yes, you could use linux and open source products so that you wouldn't have any disruption, but 95% of the world (at least) don't have that luxury.
The problem with that is that Microsoft and other closed-source companies will just tack on a new file format, make it the default in the next gen, and then people will claim the open-source product is crap because it can't read the new format.
What is really needed is proper Word97 support, or some other older but still usable format. The new formats don't support anything that 99.8% of people will ever use, they're just there to keep other applications from being compatible.
And this isn't a open-source whine. The closed-source companies are trying to proprietize to stop any competitors. WordPerfect support MS formats, so MS invents new ones. WordPerfect developers (back before it was owner by Corel) admitted to such, and they said they knew that Microsoft was doing the same for the same reason. In fact, things like the Halloween document prove it.
You are correct.
The number one goal is to run 32-bit x86 applications fast. On top of that AMD adds a 64-bit mode that cleans up the instruction set somewhat, adds another 8 general purpose registers and of course 64-bit instructions and addressing, all designed to be fairly easy to target since it's just a variant of the x86 instruction set. The 64-bit mode is there for high-end servers or any OS that wants to use it --- the extra registers and IP-relative addressing should make it faster than regular x86 mode if you can recompile your code. But since the 64-bit and 32-bit code runs on the same core, it doesn't matter too much if people don't use the 64-bit stuff initially.
If AMD ships the Hammer processors according to schedule then Intel is going to be in a very bad position. IA64 performance simply *sucks* and it always will; static scheduling just does not work, and the smartest compilers in the world can't get around that. Intel gambled and lost on that one. Consequently IA64 will keep slipping and probably never ship in volume. There's just no market for a very expensive, very slow, incompatible CPU.
However, because of the investement and credibility, Intel can't just abandon the IA64. It'll be dragging them down for years. Meanwhile the best they can do is to keep revving the P4, which is already slower than the Athlon, and marketing it as hard as they can. That'll keep them going for a while but customers who want actual performance or a 64-bit architecture, not to mention value for money, will increasingly go to AMD.
The only bright spot for Intel is the rumoured SMT capabilities of the future P4 rev, Foster. That could give them a boost; we'll have to wait and see.
This is the machine Intel probably should have made, rather than the Inanium.
Actually, Intel's plan makes perfect sense. They're trying to market their chip first to the kinds of users who are willing to rewrite/recompile their software to take advantage of the new instruction set. Those people are the ones running Open Source code like Linux and Apache or homebuilt applications for special purpose applications. Note, for instance, that RedHat is already working on an Itanium version of their distro. That market will then give vendors like Microsoft a reason to develop versions of their software for the Itanium. You can be that if Linux + Apache + Perl on Itanium turns out to be a successful web serving environment that MS is going to want to produce a Windows + IIS + ASP competitor. Once the hard part of porting Windows is done, MS is going to want to move their other apps to the new architecture, too, and the whole market will move over. Intel is looking at it taking 5 years or so to move completely from x86 to IA64, but they've actually figured out a way of breaking backward compatibility and not dying for it. Of course they're also keeping an alternative around by keeping their x86 development, so if things blow up on them they'll still have chips to sell.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
http://www.amd.com/news/virtualpress/roadmap.html
Further down the road for AMD's desktop plans come Thoroughbred and ClawHammer. Both are on the same early 2002 schedule AMD announced last fall.
CmdrTaco should do a "make sense" check before he posts stories. It's well past early 2001.
The guy is snotty, but he has a proper point in his reply. AMD releasing an 64-bit CPU with NO commercial operating system compatibility it totally fucking braindead. And as for Open Source OSes, if that's all you got, wtf hang onto the i386 ISA?
The best AMD can hope with their 64-bit consumer CPU is some optimized Windows video drivers to improve people's Quake scores. Not quite the same market as Sparc or Itaninum, so it's pointless to compare AMD-64 to any real server/workstation chip.
Just like how the i386 brought 10 years of "extenders" instead of real 32-bit OSes, I bet a good number of these 64-bit chips WILL be nicely chunking 80-fucking-86 real mode code in some consumer's Windows ME machine. Yes - this sort of backward compatibility rules, if you like the idea that 20 year old asm code is necessary to run your computer. All Fanboys rally around in support!
Not to mention that your post is incorrect at many points: IA64 does have (slow) IA32 compatibility, and besides it's primarily aimed for a market which is currently buying Sun Sparcs and the like and doesn't give a shit about IA32 compatibility. Furthermore, there's nothing about NT's DOS emulation which makes the OS unstable or slow - it's all in userspace.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
To the end user in the market, this is the same as not working
The "end user" is some spare tire-wearing system administrator. The only IA64 applicaiton Microsoft plans to ship on launch is SQL Server. Somehow I think that some 150K DBA can figure out that the IA32 compatibility is for legacy object code, or maybe some little utilities (like WinZip, etc).
I doubt this. Intel is not aiming for Sun's market.
This incorrect statement just shows that you haven't been paying any attention to Intel's IA64 marketing.
x86 simply does not match the benefits of using Sun hardware.
And that's why IA64 is not based on x86, DUH.
Was Intel targetting Sun when they released the first 32-bit PC space processors? No.
Incorrect. Sun was running on Moto 68K at the time. The i386 series was very clearly an attempt to catch up to Motorola. Unfortunatly for Intel, IBM and Microsoft fucked up the OS support.
NT's old compatibility code is a serious cause of slow-downs an instabilities
What old compatibility code? Neither WOW or NTVDM even run unless you launch a 16-bit app. Try reading up on NT sometime. My guess is that your super reliable source doesn't even know the difference between Windows NT and Windows 9x/ME, and neither do you.
BTW, I'm actually hoping that I'm getting trolled here and that you are not as blockhead stupid as you seem to be.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I am so very wrong.
The Intel P4s are something like $600 to the Athlon's $300. You acknowledge that yourself. But I think you misinterpret my words:
"get the fastest processor at the highest price"
I never meant for a buyer to spend the most money possible; that's silly and stupid. Rather take the most the can afford, say $170, and find all the CPUs at that price, and take the highest clocked CPU. This is perfectly valid for x86 CPUs because so much is weighted by clockspeeds, but across the various flavors of AMDs and Intels.
Using SharkyExtreme, $170 gives us an Athlon 950MHz, An Athlon T-bird 1.1GHz, and a P3 850MHz. Guess what? The T-bird wins.
I can see why you can interpret my statement to mean "Buy the most expensive CPU on the market", but with that kind of reasoning, one would buy, san, an SGI P3 Xeon or something!
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