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More Details Emerge on AMD's Hammer

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yet-more-data dept.

Diabolus writes "Anandtech have more information on AMD's upcoming Hammer processors. " Talking with several engineers who are in the know about it, the Hammer looks pretty frickin' amazing. Itanium will have a run for its money, I suspect.

2 of 396 comments (clear)

  1. Where there's smoke... by The+Slashdolt · · Score: 0, Redundant

    There is probably an AMD processor with a burnt out fan or a heatsink that slid over. Be careful with these things.

    --
    mp3's are only for those with bad memories
  2. Backwards compatability big advantage by Zergwyn · · Score: 2, Redundant
    It looks like the future of CPUs is definitely 64bit+. The Itanium, Hammer, and G5 are all 64bit processors. However, it will be a long time before a lot of applications are rewritten to take advantage of 64bit architectures. In addition, some applications won't actually benefit at all, and are therefore unlikely to be recoded for quite a while. Therefore, how each of these processors runs legacy code is important.


    From the look of it, both the Hammer and the G5 can run old, 32bit code natively. This means that today's apps will continue to be able to run at top speed on the new chips, because the instructions still exist in hardware. This is definitely good for people with lots of older apps(ie, almost all of us.) However, a lot of the reports on the Itanium seem to indicate that, in making a completely clean break, it is forced to emulate older 32bit instructions, resulting in an actual -slowdown- for many programs. Eventually, Intel's clean break might give it some advantage, and that advantage might come quickly for the big metal server market. However, it seems that AMD will be able to win out on the desktop. Of course, here we are comparing rumors on a rumored chip to a different unreleased chip, only Bob knows exactly what will happen between now and release time...