Posted by
michael
on from the double-the-pleasure-double-the-fun dept.
msolnik writes: "Over at RealWorldTech they've published an article on the future of 64-bit performance. This article covers the different technology from Sparc to Hammer. Its a great read if you are looking for information on up-and-coming products from Intel, AMD, Sun, and Compaq."
AMDs going for a slightly different track, AMD
is the only one trying to put 64-bit on the
desktop. Now for us linux freaks SUSE Linux
and NetBSB will be fine for a 64-bit desktop,
but if AMD want to lock up some of the market
into x86-64, they really need a mainstream OS.
Unfortainately that means Windows, and "if
we build it they will come" doesn't necessary
work if they is no competition. Still in the
mean time, Crawhammer will be a damn fine 32-bit
chip as well, and Sledgehammer will bring
high-end servers right down to mid range prices.
Using AMD CPUs and IDE drives on a server is good both financially and for performance.
AMD CPUs outperform every Intel CPU (don't fall into the MHz trap!), are cheaper and are no less reliable. You're a fool if you buy more expensive Intel CPUs these days.
SCSI isn't magic technology anymore either. In fact, the latest IDE protocols surpass all the existing SCSI technology in speed. Furthermore, the actual drive mechanics are the same for both SCSI and IDE versions of a drive so the reliability isn't any lower for IDE drives anymore. Yeah, you can chain more drives in a single SCSI bus than you can on IDE, but IDE controller cards are cheap. There are inexpensive IDE RAID controllers too. And, of course, the price for IDE drives is significantly lower. You can get two huge IDE drives at the price of a single 18 GB "high performance" SCSI drive.
The more I listen to Intel and SCSI people the more I believe that the so called advantages of both technologies are nothing but hype to keep up the ridiculous pricing.
Re:AMD's gonna win
by
UnknownSoldier
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> Northwood P4 comes out January 6th, 10% faster per clock.
And I bet it will cost more then 10%. AMD will still have the better ratio of performance/price.
Re:So why do I need 64bits?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
I believe the power lies in the fact that with 64 bits you can do two 32-bit operations at a time.. Speeeeeed.
Intel learning from their mistakes
by
jazzyjez
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Much as I hate to say it, the Intel McKinley looks like a very well designed piece of kit, and it appears Intel have learned from their mistakes with the P4 by including a big, fast 3-level cache on the McKinley. It's also good to see them reducing their pipeline size, which means it may finally be able to compete with the G4 in terms of efficiency. However, this is of course going to kick them in the teeth in terms of competing on processor speed, which they have been pushing so hard recently in their marketing.
The same can't be said of AMD's offering, although in fairness the Hammer is not directed at the server market unlike the McKinley. The pipeline is longer than both their previous design and the McKinley, which is going to give them a performance hit. We can only hope that their cache is as good as Intel's.
What amazes me is that they can still keep adding instruction extensions without too much of a performance hit. Anyone looked at the latest instruction set documentation for these processors? Eugh! The pain of backwards compatibility...
Re:Why is gcc produced code so slow?
by
jazzyjez
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is because the P4 is a very peculiar beast that needs many optimisations for the code to run fast. Indeed, when Intel first shipped it they had to ship a specially optimised MPEG decoder for it to appear any faster than the PIII on benchmarks. For more info, check this out:
Compilers are notoriously slow at catching up with the latest processor design, and you can probably expect gcc to catch up with the P4 around the time it's superseded by the 64-bit babies.
This is not to slur gcc - M$'s Visual Studio compiler suite hasn't yet been optimised for the P4 as far as I know (although I expect the.NET version will be) despite the vastly greater resources they have to throw at it...
Re:Is it really a benefit 32 vs 64?
by
Chatz
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
No, as some other replies have indicated, the only reason for 64-bit applications is to access 64-bit addresses. If you don't need to address that amount of memory, then your applications might as well be 32-bit. Any good processor will still give you 64-bit registers etc to work with.
-- There is folly and foolishness on the one side, and daring and calculation on the other.
- Admiral Pellew, Hornblower
AMD is deceiving you
by
hatchet
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
First of all I'd like to say, I am not biased in either way.. after all I'm going to get me a new AthlonXP next week.
IA64 is very different from x86-64. AMD's 64bit solution is nothing more than extension to current 32bit instruction set. Of course there are some tweaks, but nothing very radical. You will still be able to run old 16 and 8bit code efficiently.
Intel's IA64 is a huge step in the future... architecture wise is far superior to x86-64. Why?
Why do we need 64bit processors? Addressing? Nah, current processors can address enough space.. with 386 processors FAR addressing was introduced, which expanded allocatable address space drastically. (those silly DS, SS,.. registers) And newest processors can deal with them with same ease as with non-far addressing.
AMD's 64bit solution currently has no real value.. except for huge data storage (could work faster with 64bit data blocks) and probably some heavy encryption. x86-64 compiled Quake3 would make minimum use of 64bit registers.. and would probably be just a margin faster than IA32 compiled version.
Is IA64 better? Yes it is. IA64 has 128 usable 64bit registers, predicates... But that is not all.. in single 64bit register you can store 4 16bit values(common integer). (or 8 8bit or 2 32bit)And manipulate with them almost as much as you like. And if you have 4 integers in other register.. you can make 4 arithmetical operations with SINGLE instruction. You can do similar things with floating point operations... and with ILP you could do 3 instructions per cycle. This means that Quake2's VectorAdd/Subtract could be done in SINGLE cycle.
Clawhammer will be better for a year or so.. but soon it will hit the ceiling. Intel will be able to get better performance from 1/2 clocked IA64.
And please don't respond with lame comments if you haven't read at least whitepapers from Intel and AMD.
Re:AMD is deceiving you
by
SurfsUp
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
You don't have a clue. Let me just pick out a couple of the grossly wrong items...
Why do we need 64bit processors? Addressing? Nah, current processors can address enough space.. with 386 processors FAR addressing was introduced, which expanded allocatable address space drastically. (those silly DS, SS,.. registers) And newest processors can deal with them with same ease as with non-far addressing.
Sheesh, where are you coming from? You can address 64 Gig of physical memory with an x86 now, but you can only address 4 Gig (at most!) of it linearly. 32 bit address registers, get it? Gosh, and far addressing was introduced with 386's was it? Give me a break, try 8086's.
AMD's 64bit solution currently has no real value.. except for huge data storage (could work faster with 64bit data blocks) and probably some heavy encryption. x86-64 compiled Quake3 would make minimum use of 64bit registers.. and would probably be just a margin faster than IA32 compiled version.
Right, and I'm supposed to believe you on this, given your performance above. Um, you seem to have ignored the value of being able to crunch 8 byte integers, or pixels 8 bytes at a time, nicely matching the width of the MMX registers. For starters. Repeat this to yourself: "sledge hammer". "sledge hammer". Good, that's more like it.
Is IA64 better? Yes it is. IA64 has 128 usable 64bit registers, predicates... But that is not all.. in single 64bit register you can store 4 16bit values(common integer). (or 8 8bit or 2 32bit)
Um, and guess how many 16 bit values you can store in a 64 bit sledgehammer register? Ah, and guess how many fp/mms instructions sledge can retire per cycle?
Clawhammer will be better for a year or so.. but soon it will hit the ceiling. Intel will be able to get better performance from 1/2 clocked IA64.
You don't have any idea why it's called itanic, do you. Moderaters, take a look above. Remember, that's what 'random' looks like. Yes, I've got mod points right now. No, I won't waste them on you.
-- Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Re:64-bit is more than speed
by
BCoates
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Huh? you could do 32 bit addressing long before you could buy 4GB drives, but nobody thought memory mapping your hard drive into your address space was a good idea then... What would be the point?
--
Benjamin Coates
Re:So why do I need 64bits?
by
thogard
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Since that was marked troll, I'll blow more karma...
With most operations, 64 bits isn't 2x as fast its 1x as fast unless you deal with the stack in which case it could be even slower.
Addressing has little to do with word size. The 8088 shows that.
Suns running in 64 bit mode are offten slower than running in 32 bit mode.
Nintendo 64 games are all 32 bit code with just a few 64 bit operations. The good emulator proved that.
As far as going two 32 bit ops at once, I still don't need a 64 bit data path to do that, I just need several 32 bit data paths. What I don't need is to dump a bunch of unused 64 bit number on the stack everytime an exception happens (which one of my computers has done about 1047563950 times in the last 51 days)
AMD will win
by
Manic+Miner
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Firstly, it would appear that you have at least read some white papers on the web, but have you used a real Itanium?
I have, and let me say that the reason AMD will win is compatibility and making sure that the things don't sound like a jumbo jet taking off. These may seem like minor points but they are what will count.
The major point of the AMD solution is backward compatibility... Intel knows this, why do you think that all their previous chips have been sucessfull? Because they were the "best" solution for the job? NO, not by a long shot. They were, however, able to run the old software faster, and provide a route for new software to run even faster still.
AMD provides this solution, new software can take advantage of the 64 bit addressing and processing several integers in just one register. But at the same time old software can run on the system faster than it would on the same clock speed 32 bit processor.
Look at it from an IT purchasing point of view, you can pick machine A which will theoretically be faster in the future but to get anything even aproaching decent performance you need to buy a whole load of new software. Or you can pick machine B which will run all your current software faster than your current machines, and run future software even faster still. Which would you choose, people like a sure thing, not the promise of something good in the future.
AMD can then concentrate on moving towards a pure 64 bit machine once most of the applications have moved to 64 bit, this makes the most sense long term. You buy your 64 bit machine, run 32 and 64 bit mixed software quickly. Then once you are running mostly 64 bit you can move seamlessly to a 64 bit proven and tested environment.
Current Itaniums are slow large and noisy, this makes a huge difference if you only have a small server room, or have to run a server under your desk - some people really have to do this in smaller comanies. You won't see them on the desktop market anytime soon, they are too slow, 32 bit performance is not great.
The Itanium might have a good archtecture, but I think that it's lack of speed and compatibility with 32 bit applications, coupled with noise and heat will cause it to lose the battle
-- If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
FAR addressing.
by
leuk_he
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Why do we need 64bit processors? Addressing? Nah, current processors can address enough space.. with 386 processors FAR addressing was introduced, which expanded allocatable address space drastically.
Far adressing can handle 4GB. but 4GB is not much by today standards(it is not little either). You want flat adress space, and ram is cheap this days. 32 bits get you to 4GB, if you want more you have to resort to tricks. (those silly DS.DD etc)
With the first 64 bit alpha's they used this as an argument: it is useful for fast memory scans when using big databases.
Slashdot Mirror
AMD is the future. Glad to see an underdog win.
I believe the power lies in the fact that with 64 bits you can do two 32-bit operations at a time.. Speeeeeed.
Much as I hate to say it, the Intel McKinley looks like a very well designed piece of kit, and it appears Intel have learned from their mistakes with the P4 by including a big, fast 3-level cache on the McKinley. It's also good to see them reducing their pipeline size, which means it may finally be able to compete with the G4 in terms of efficiency. However, this is of course going to kick them in the teeth in terms of competing on processor speed, which they have been pushing so hard recently in their marketing.
The same can't be said of AMD's offering, although in fairness the Hammer is not directed at the server market unlike the McKinley. The pipeline is longer than both their previous design and the McKinley, which is going to give them a performance hit. We can only hope that their cache is as good as Intel's.
What amazes me is that they can still keep adding instruction extensions without too much of a performance hit. Anyone looked at the latest instruction set documentation for these processors? Eugh! The pain of backwards compatibility...
This is because the P4 is a very peculiar beast that needs many optimisations for the code to run fast. Indeed, when Intel first shipped it they had to ship a specially optimised MPEG decoder for it to appear any faster than the PIII on benchmarks. For more info, check this out:
.NET version will be) despite the vastly greater resources they have to throw at it...
Compilers are notoriously slow at catching up with the latest processor design, and you can probably expect gcc to catch up with the P4 around the time it's superseded by the 64-bit babies.
This is not to slur gcc - M$'s Visual Studio compiler suite hasn't yet been optimised for the P4 as far as I know (although I expect the
No, as some other replies have indicated, the only reason for 64-bit applications is to access 64-bit addresses. If you don't need to address that amount of memory, then your applications might as well be 32-bit. Any good processor will still give you 64-bit registers etc to work with.
There is folly and foolishness on the one side, and daring and calculation on the other. - Admiral Pellew, Hornblower
First of all I'd like to say, I am not biased in either way.. after all I'm going to get me a new AthlonXP next week. .. registers) And newest processors can deal with them with same ease as with non-far addressing.
IA64 is very different from x86-64. AMD's 64bit solution is nothing more than extension to current 32bit instruction set. Of course there are some tweaks, but nothing very radical. You will still be able to run old 16 and 8bit code efficiently.
Intel's IA64 is a huge step in the future... architecture wise is far superior to x86-64. Why?
Why do we need 64bit processors? Addressing? Nah, current processors can address enough space.. with 386 processors FAR addressing was introduced, which expanded allocatable address space drastically. (those silly DS, SS,
AMD's 64bit solution currently has no real value.. except for huge data storage (could work faster with 64bit data blocks) and probably some heavy encryption. x86-64 compiled Quake3 would make minimum use of 64bit registers.. and would probably be just a margin faster than IA32 compiled version.
Is IA64 better? Yes it is. IA64 has 128 usable 64bit registers, predicates... But that is not all.. in single 64bit register you can store 4 16bit values(common integer). (or 8 8bit or 2 32bit)And manipulate with them almost as much as you like. And if you have 4 integers in other register.. you can make 4 arithmetical operations with SINGLE instruction. You can do similar things with floating point operations... and with ILP you could do 3 instructions per cycle. This means that Quake2's VectorAdd/Subtract could be done in SINGLE cycle.
Clawhammer will be better for a year or so.. but soon it will hit the ceiling. Intel will be able to get better performance from 1/2 clocked IA64.
And please don't respond with lame comments if you haven't read at least whitepapers from Intel and AMD.
Huh? you could do 32 bit addressing long before you could buy 4GB drives, but nobody thought memory mapping your hard drive into your address space was a good idea then... What would be the point?
--
Benjamin Coates
Since that was marked troll, I'll blow more karma...
With most operations, 64 bits isn't 2x as fast its 1x as fast unless you deal with the stack in which case it could be even slower.
Addressing has little to do with word size. The 8088 shows that.
Suns running in 64 bit mode are offten slower than running in 32 bit mode.
Nintendo 64 games are all 32 bit code with just a few 64 bit operations. The good emulator proved that.
As far as going two 32 bit ops at once, I still don't need a 64 bit data path to do that, I just need several 32 bit data paths. What I don't need is to dump a bunch of unused 64 bit number on the stack everytime an exception happens (which one of my computers has done about 1047563950 times in the last 51 days)
Firstly, it would appear that you have at least read some white papers on the web, but have you used a real Itanium?
I have, and let me say that the reason AMD will win is compatibility and making sure that the things don't sound like a jumbo jet taking off. These may seem like minor points but they are what will count.
The major point of the AMD solution is backward compatibility... Intel knows this, why do you think that all their previous chips have been sucessfull? Because they were the "best" solution for the job? NO, not by a long shot. They were, however, able to run the old software faster, and provide a route for new software to run even faster still.
AMD provides this solution, new software can take advantage of the 64 bit addressing and processing several integers in just one register. But at the same time old software can run on the system faster than it would on the same clock speed 32 bit processor.
Look at it from an IT purchasing point of view, you can pick machine A which will theoretically be faster in the future but to get anything even aproaching decent performance you need to buy a whole load of new software. Or you can pick machine B which will run all your current software faster than your current machines, and run future software even faster still. Which would you choose, people like a sure thing, not the promise of something good in the future.
AMD can then concentrate on moving towards a pure 64 bit machine once most of the applications have moved to 64 bit, this makes the most sense long term. You buy your 64 bit machine, run 32 and 64 bit mixed software quickly. Then once you are running mostly 64 bit you can move seamlessly to a 64 bit proven and tested environment.
Current Itaniums are slow large and noisy, this makes a huge difference if you only have a small server room, or have to run a server under your desk - some people really have to do this in smaller comanies. You won't see them on the desktop market anytime soon, they are too slow, 32 bit performance is not great.
The Itanium might have a good archtecture, but I think that it's lack of speed and compatibility with 32 bit applications, coupled with noise and heat will cause it to lose the battle
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
Why do we need 64bit processors? Addressing? Nah, current processors can address enough space.. with 386 processors FAR addressing was introduced, which expanded allocatable address space drastically.
Far adressing can handle 4GB. but 4GB is not much by today standards(it is not little either). You want flat adress space, and ram is cheap this days. 32 bits get you to 4GB, if you want more you have to resort to tricks. (those silly DS.DD etc)
With the first 64 bit alpha's they used this as an argument: it is useful for fast memory scans when using big databases.
--640 Kb will be enough....