Slashdot Mirror
AMD's 64-bit Plot
ceebABC writes "In a long interview with eWEEK, AMD's CEO Hector de Ruiz talks about struggling to compete with Intel, but more importantly about their upcoming 64-bit processors. He says that AMD's 64-bit chips will be comparatively priced to the 32-bit ones, and backwards compatible. He also thinks there will be a market for desktop 64-bit systems. Skip to the last page for the most interesting stuff."
will it be faster than 32 bit offerings? For almost anyone out there, it's the only factor when buying a CPU: speed! Adressing >4Gb of memory is not that worries me first :)
have you been defaced today?
Both Intel and AMD have been betting big on 64 bit computing and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Itanium 1 was a flop. Itanium 2 has respectable performance, but is not IA-32 backward compatible, where AMD x86-64 is backward compatible.
I will bet that backward compatibility will tilt the balance to Opteron and that Intel will scramble to introduce a new chip Yamhill(?) designed to provide the backward compatibility that IA64 lacks.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
At first they will be expensive, then they will be in the $599 desktops. Why wouldn't you use them?
If you have a 64-bit 2 GHz processor and a 32-bit 2 GHz processor, the 64-bit processor is going to be much faster. This speeds up the whole system, not just the rate at which you make giblets fly.
Ehrmm. no, if it were that easy we would all be using 64bit by now. 64bit has historically been faster because they belong to a better group of architectures called RISC, the new AMD 64-bit will be faster not because they have more bits but because AMD has upgraded the architecture and added more registers.
The number of bits is a meaningless as counting the number of seats in a car, twice as many seats doesnt make a faster car. In fact it makes the car harder to design to be fast, so does 64bit processors.
It's not about what consumer needs 64 bit for today's applications... it's tomorrow's applications. First there must be a base of users out there.
Do you remember the opportunity brought about by the 386? Who needed that when all the modern applications ran fine with the 286? The 386 even broke some of the old 286 code. But it was still very useful to programmers who could spend focusing on quality (and bloat?) rather than worrying about how to confine data to 64 K blocks. Almost 20 years later we are still benefitting from the whole flat memory model that finally came to x86 (flat up to 4 GB, that is).
If you have to ask the question of who needs it, then it's not you... yet. Sure the first adopters are the Corporate people who know they need it as well as the "look what I have" crowd. But I'm pretty sure that there will be consumer applications that will make 64 bits necessary after there is enough consumers that have them.
640 TB should be enough for anybody.
"Grandma and grampa checking their email won't need something that fast and even the normal computer user will never experience such CPU intensive work to need a larger word size."
That's a bit of a narrow minded view, don'tcha think? Consider this: We don't know what we'll be doing with computers 2-3 years from now. If it turns out that PVRs are a killer App, for example, then suddenly 64-bit processors are interesting.
The "who really needs it for the most basic stuff?" argument is extremely tired. Lots of people buy their machines based on their potential, not what they can do with them today. Don't believe me? Then look at all the people who bought an XBOX solely because of it's chipset and hard drive. They were (and are today) expecting to eventually buy games that blow them away.
If computers were strictly used for their most basic features (internet browsing, email, etc...) then 'internet appliances' would have been some sort of hit as opposed to the flop that they are. So please, put this 'how do I get my grandma to buy one?' argument to rest. The answer is she won't. But there is still a large market of people who do want/need 64-bit processing. You don't need for grandma to want one in order for the product to be a success.
2^32 addressing is obsolete already -- it cannot keep up. Most enthusiasts have a gig of RAM (or more) in their DESKTOP PCs. In 2005, most of them will have hit the 4gb limit. In 2009, most consumer PCs will have hit the same limit. Servers have already hit this limit. That's why there are special instructions (a return to segmented memory access) on P3 and P4 processors, allowing up to 64gb of RAM in 4gb segments to be addressed. If you remember doing DOS programming (I do), you know why this 64-bits is good, while 32-bit segmented access isn't.
:)
2^32 addressing limits addressable HD space to 2 terabytes. "2 terabytes? But that's way larger than even enthusiasts use in their PCs, despite their larger than average needs." This ignores the fact that many companies have storage arrays that are at 2 terabytes. Some work went into the 2.5 Linux kernel to increase the number of blocks that could be addressed by moving internally to 64-bits. Storage needs are always increasing. If we're hitting 2tb today, isn't it a good thing that we're moving to a better amount of bits?
2^64 addressing is not the only benefit of the change. FPUs see additional benefit when they have more bits. More bits means more precission; this is very important and desirable, especially when working with numbers that have fractional components. For proper 3D rendering, physics models, and anything else that involves computing numbers that have fractional parts, more is better. When the FPU can handle a double in one clock cycle because it works natively on 64-bit IEEE floating point numbers, you will notice a performance boost in addition to the increased accuracy.
64-bit word operations means that databuses can be slower, since each clock-tick sends more data. 64-bits means you can do more, more flexibly, with your computer.
There will always people who resist change, even when there is no reason to resist change. The same people are posting comments on Slashdot about how 32-bits is enough, and how happy they are with 32-bit applications. These are the same people who had to be carried, kicking and screaming, from their 286s to the new 386 and 486 machines which had 32-bit addressing and data operations. Don't let these people hold back your exploration of new technology!
For those of you who are saying, "what about 64 bits? Will 64 bits be enough?" 2^64 is 32 orders of magnitude bigger than 2^32. 2^32 is roughly 4.5 billion (unsigned). 2^64 unsigned is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, or roughly 2220 * 8309 trillion. 4.5 billion goes into that number 4.5 billion times. 2^64 is certainly enough for at least a hundred years
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Perhaps, what I'm asking is, can anybody compare and contrast the two architectures; is there a certain advantage to one or the other?
Yah - AMD will offer it to the consumer combined with motherboards from tier-1 manufacturers like Asus, Abit, IWill, Tyan, and so forth, all at an attractive price (read: the same price as the Athalon XP CPUs).
Intel, on the other hand, will keep their 64 bit CPUs out of the consumer hands by pricing them above what most consumers are willing to pay, thus reaping a premium on them by selling them in servers through Dell and IBM (making even more money on cases and motherboards). There will be limited support for the CPU outside Intel's own motherboard offerings, and if you run with a hard-drive, video card, CD-Rom that has not been explicitly approved by Intel, then forget support (we've had this problem with Intel on some of their server motherboards).
Intel is taking the Cathedral approach, and AMD a Bazaar approach.
That's not exactly accurate. A 64 bit processor has a large data pathway, and is more comparable to a roadway than a car. The cars are the data, and a 64-bit roadway has twice the space for cars (data) on it, which is where the extra speed is. But I do agree with you otherwise.