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AMD Opteron "Hammer" Preview

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the looking-under-the-hood dept.

Melvin Tong writes "Hardware Extreme has posted a preview of AMD's 8th-generation processor that AMD is currently developing with a few exclusive pics of the mechanical sample. AMD Athlon processors based on Hammer technology are expected to ship in the forth quater of 2002. The preview is located over at HW Extreme."

22 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. dup dup * . by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 4, Funny
    expected to ship in the forth quater of 2002.
    Is the Opteron a stack machine????
  2. Re:AMD Marketeers Rock! by nadador · · Score: 3, Funny

    Too... many... buzzwords... head... hurts...

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  3. not much there.. by kesuki · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A picture of a pure copper CPU mock-up, and then a picture of an evaluation opteron. And about 4 pages of months old regurgitated AMD press releases. I wouldn't really consider this news, since AMD's been showing off the evaluation chip for a few months now.

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  4. Benchmarks on OpenSSL by glassware · · Score: 3, Informative
    This article has nearly all the technical specs, except benchmarks. Sightings for Opteron/Hammer chips have been sparsely available for a while. When actual results show up in SPEC CPU2000 listings, that's when the chip will be finally ready for market.

    As a side bonus, you can find SPEC benchmarks for Itanium and Itanium IIs on that chart (search for the word Itanium - Dell and HP have both submitted results).

    1. Re:Benchmarks on OpenSSL by Zathrus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      First off, those are stellar benchs for the Itanium2. And I agree that this was a total fluff piece for Opteron -- as others have pointed out, it's nothing but rehashed info from other sites and AMD press releases.

      I'm not a POWER4 advocate either -- the chip may be cleaner than x86 (wow, that's not hard), but proprietary is proprietary.

      Back to Hammer vs Itanium though. I am much, much more excited about the pending Hammer/Opteron release than I am about Itanium2 or McKinley or whatever. Why? Because Hammer is made for consumer systems. Itanium (w/ or w/o the "2") is still priced somewhere in the stratosphere and it's performance on desktop systems is abysmal. Sure, the SPEC numbers are pretty, but there's no software out there, the compilers continue to suck, and I don't expect either situation to improve anytime soon. When Hammer comes out there will be a plethora of software that will already run (and probably run faster, even in 32-bit mode) and compiling 64-bit apps will be relatively straight forward. VLIW is a nifty idea, but we're nowhere close to optimizing code perfectly now. Adding on the additional layer of VLIW makes the problem even worse.

      High end computing has always been a totally different realm from desktop computing anyway. I don't really expect the Hammer/Opteron to compete in that realm -- it's too limited by the load of crap that comes with x86. But it's a far better future desktop computing solution than anything Intel has to offer thus far, and that's why you see so many people excited about it.

  5. Nice cap! by (H)elix1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was very happy to see the nickel cap on their new CPU. After crushing a couple of AMD chips, I became very weary of removing the heat sink after a successful mounting. More so than I probably should be, but after chipping the edge off of some $100+ CPU's, I was very nervous about picking up any of the cutting edge processors.

    I look forward to lapping the cap to a shinny mirror finish!

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    1. Re:Nice cap! by Artifex · · Score: 5, Interesting

      After crushing a couple of AMD chips, I became very weary of removing the heat sink after a successful mounting.

      No doubt. Actually, that worked to my advantage, when I was trying to get Fry's to take back an Athlon XP that had gone bad... when they told me they had to test it, I was worried, because their idea of a testbed is another customer's board hooked up to crappy "PC Doctor" software, and has rarely caught transient errors in the past.

      Wouldn't you know it, though, they cracked it during mounting, so of course it became "oops, let's get you credit for that chip" instead of "we can't find a problem in 30 minutes of running crappy test software so it must not be bad."

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  6. AMD by kwishot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hardware Extreme has posted a preview of AMD's 8th-generation processor that AMD is currently developing...

    As opposed to the 8th-generation AMD processor that Intel is developing....

    (/sarcasm)

  7. Preview??? by Spackler · · Score: 3, Funny

    How is this a preview? This is just a preview of the marketing docs! A poorly spelt one at that.

    -Spackler

    PS: spelt was a joke

  8. Clearly a reprint of AMD Marketing material by sconeu · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the "summary" page:
    AMD's 64-bit processors extend our long, rich history of semiconductor solutions based on customer-centric innovations.
    (Emphasis mine)

    Clearly a blatant rip-off.
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    1. Re:Clearly a reprint of AMD Marketing material by akb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Agreed. Article is weak on tech, heavy on copy and paste from the marketing material.

      Shoddy journalism.

  9. Don't bother reading this article by jjn1056 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I won't bother to elaborate on what several others have already mentioned, that this is a poorly edited stored pasted together from AMD press releases. The total kicker on this is the very last 'next' link takes you to a pages to buy some AMD Athlon chips!

    The boundry between news and advertisement gets more porous each year...

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  10. Longevity of CPU w/ integrated memory controller by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have to wonder about the lifespan of a CPU that has an integrated memory controller of any type - not just DDR, but RDRAM, or FOORAM, or NARFRAM. What happens to the family when a new RAM interface comes along?

    Now, for high-integration CPUs designed for embedded style apps I can see it, but for a main-line CPU it seems to me that tying the memory controller to the CPU limits the lifespan of the design.

    I realize that should POITRAM become the new speed king that the RAM controller block of the CPU can be redesigned, and I understand that putting the RAM controller in the chip can increase the memory bandwidth to the CPU.

    But it does cause me to think....

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  11. AMD Hammer FAQ by antdude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    AMDZone wrote a FAQ which was a good read.

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  12. AMD releases the 2400+ and 2600+ Athlons tommorrow by spiro_killglance · · Score: 5, Informative

    The NDA isn't quite up until 2400 USA (eastern? pacific?, don't ask me i don't know) time, but look at, Here

    Expect reviews from the usual suspects.

    AMD have modified there ratings a little so as
    to keep the model numbers fair compared with
    the newer faster Northwood pentium 4s. So while
    the old rating system would have had 2400+ as a 1933MHz Athlon, and 2600+ as a 2066Mhz Athlon, in
    fact the 2400+ is the first 2GHz Athlon while the
    2600+ clocks in a 2133MHz.

    We can expected newer Athlons to be released later
    with 333MHz Front Side buses, and later 512MB of cache. Even when Hammer comes out, AMD will still to selling Athlons for around a year afterwoods, the Athlon will move done the low end to replace the Duron, and thats going give the celeron a real kicking. In fact Intel seems to have blown
    there wad completely, with nothing to compete with
    the Hammer until there Prescott strink of the
    P4 in Q4 2003.

  13. Re:Intel by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually if you remember back a year or twop ago you'd realize they already have a cross-licensing deal with AMD which would entitle them to use x86-64 if desired without further hassle... Of course Intel may prefer you forget that til they need to use it...

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  14. Re:Longevity of CPU w/ integrated memory controlle by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    That may be, but if you want to take a look at some of the serious articles on ememory & clock latency (from the CPU's perspective) you'd realize why they are adding the memory controller where they are. A 'normal' SDRAM memory controller on a VIA or AMD motherboard for instance can easily take 70+ cpu cycles before returnign the required data... So unless the cpu has other data to process (which fits into the cache) then it just sits there til it has the data requested... With a cpu built-in memory controlelr of this sort (especially if they allow tolerences for faster rated memory within the existing class) could lower the latency down to say 6 cycles...

    This is great for memory intensive & system intensive tasks (from gaming to high demand servers)...

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  15. I hope... by ParisTG · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope they dont ship them like this! (Note the bent pins on the left corner :))

  16. Re:Longevity of CPU w/ integrated memory controlle by karlm · · Score: 4, Informative
    They can swap in another memory controller when DDR gets old, or they can add an interface for an external memory controller. The benefits of an integrated memory controller are just huge.

    CPU designs are pretty modular. It shouldn't be hard at all to swap in a new controller when the time comes. If the internal hardware interfaces weren't very clean, design would take a lot longer.

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  17. Doesn't really matter by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How often do you upgrade the motherboard and the RAM but keep the CPU...?

    As new (faster) memory becomes available, they'll simply update the memory controller on the (new) CPUs (just as they updated the FSB from 100 to 133 to 166 to 200 to 266 and soon to 333 or 400).

    RMN
    ~~~

  18. Re:Longevity of CPU w/ integrated memory controlle by geekoid · · Score: 3, Funny

    "but for a main-line CPU it seems to me that tying the memory controller to the CPU limits the lifespan of the design."
    and BINGGO was his name-o

    gee, then you would have to buy something even more often. Boy I bet they will cry all the way to the bank.

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  19. Benchmarks by decefett · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The machine was running Mandrake Linux, kernel 2.4.18-24mdk, and identified itself as running at 797.7 MHz with 256k of cache.
    ...
    And here's a comparison, openssl 0.9.6b (as shipped with Redhat 7.3) running on a 400 MHz


    What was that about lies, damned lies and...

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