More Details Emerge on AMD's Hammer

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.

Comments

AMD's Future

[Renraku]

Why is AMD making these things so sensitive to heat? I'll bet they're also sensitive to vibration, electricity, and about anything that its competitors handle every day. Most hammers can resist hundreds of degrees before they melt/disentigrate.

Re:Backwards compatability big advantage

[jmauro]

Itanium can run un-modified x86 and in certain cases PA-RISC binaries unmodified. Look at the specs, there was no clean break. Intel learned with the i960 and the 8080 that clean breaks are not liked by those designing the systems at all. The x86 stayed around and will continue to stay around for as long as Intel stays around. Intel will have nothing else.

Re:Wise Intel

[mmontour]

Don't you think that we've hauled along the old 8086/XT baggage long enough? Do we really need a 64-bit 2GHz processor that can still run an MS-DOS 1.0 executable file, or that needs a multi-stage boot loader to crawl its way up the evolutionary ladder from 16-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit "mode", accompanied by a BIOS that has 6 different ways to map a 400G hard-drive into a 1024x16x63 parameter space?

I feel that at some point the best thing to do is walk away from the old architecture and make a fresh start with a new one. Commodore did this when they went from the C-64 to the Amiga. Users grumbled for a while, but I think that in hindsight it turned out to be the right choice - once people began to exploit the capabilities of the new platform, compatibility with the old one became irrelevant. And there's always software emulation for those cases when you really do need to preserve the old stuff.

Note that I don't actually know how much "legacy" x86 code is in the Hammer, but even the article's little picture of the register structure makes be think the answer is "too much". Anyway, when did a lack of factual knowledge ever stop someone from ranting on Slashdot? :-)

Itanium, etc.

[ackthpt]

While the thought of Itanium duking it out with Hammer may encourage visions of one company stomping another, plus heated discussions, flame wars, and so on, my interest has always of having a 64bit desktop. Intel some time back indicated that the Itanium was targetted exclusively at the server market, is likely rethinking that point. Perhaps McKinley (the joint project with HP) is Intel's idea of the post P4 desktop processor, as I've seen elsewhere that Itanium's x86 emulation makes a PIII look attractive.

The ability to build a desktop workstation with the ability to run all my old x86 crap, fast, and move into 64bit software, also fast, is highly attractive. Athlon or P4 will undoubtably be the choices for the next year, but when AMD gets the Hammer out into the mainstream with a mainstream price, Intel watch out.

Lastly, Microsoft, last I read, didn't indicate any interest in doing a version of XP for the Hammer. Perhaps that hasn't changed. If not, there's a potential hole through which someone may exploit Microsoft's disinterest. Linux, sure, AOL, Hmmm, you know that's a mean fight going on between Reston, VA and Redmond, WA, if the Hammer is attractive to home users, don't be surprise if AOL chooses to support it. It's entertaining to think about, anyway, however you feel about the combatants.

Re:Itanium, etc.

[csbruce]

maybe AOL should be looking into buying up XBoxes, loading them up with Linux and Mozilla, and selling them as set-top surfer boxes.

Actually, they could just distribute millions of CDs that do that.

Re:Itanium, etc.

[maraist]

I thought McKinley was just the .13 micron version of Itanium, perhaps with more cache. Does it have an enhanced ability to do IA32?

McKinley is a whole mess of add-ons.. Not least of which is the idea that it can issue more EPIC instruction / clock than the Itanium. The original idea was that Itanium would chapion the instruction set, but would be an unwieldy beast with all it's new features.. But it would be enough to transition the market place (too bad it's practical performance sucked). McKinley would then be the knock-out punch that fully utilized it's potential (though at greater cost due to increased numbers of components). From this Itanium would be a low end that allowed "entry-level servers". Then they'd have time to go redesign new features for their next [incremental] generation... Their EPIC instruction set has templates so that adding whole new classes of functionality "should" be trivial.

Course I don't think they expected having to relegate Itanium as a "pilot" CPU with embarrasingly low frequency ratings (but MHZ is all that matters, right Intel?). Doesn't sound like the P4 guys are under the same marketing department as the Itanium guys (GM in the making?)

-Michael

FUDpacker...

[SaDan]

Buy a heatsink, you cheap bastard, and install it.