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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."
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?
For almost anyone out there, it's the only factor when buying a CPU: speed!
Nope. These days it's price. You can barely, oh so barely, tell the difference between 866MHz and 2.4GHZ, and only then when running certain high-end games or 3D modelling packages. Now go over to Dell's site and price a 2.4GHz system. You can easily get something with 256MB and no monitor for US$800. Now upgrade to a 3.06GHz P4. How much does that does that 27% increase in clockspeed cost you? Just over US$1000. And what does it get you? Remembering that clockspeed does not translate directly to more CPU performance, maybe you're getting a 20% across the board improvement, but _man_ are you paying for it, both in cost and power consumption. And was it worth it, for 27% faster than "more speed than I know what to do with?" Probably not (though I realize that all hardware site weenies will absolutely insist that they can feel the difference when browsing the web on such a machine).
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.
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.
You can barely, oh so barely, tell the difference between 866MHz and 2.4GHZ, and only then when running certain high-end games or 3D modelling packages.
Sorry. Wrong. I went from a 1Ghz Athlon to an 1850Mhz AthlonXP. I use Windows XP. Programs opened faster. And when you're talking about Mozilla, or Office, or Photoshop, or Dreamweaver, or anything more complicated than notepad, really, you DO notice this. Especially when you're opening and closing programs all day long.
When I come across a webpage designed with complex tables and CSS elements, the speed improvement is noticeable (e.g. my banking website, which I frequent, is complex and now renders much faster).
You can never have enough speed. You will always notice a difference, eventually, because the more power that becomes available, the more complex things become that we use frequently.
And believe it or not, but many people like to play new games. Not just "gamers." Regular people, too. My dad can barely turn around in Quake, but he loves wandering around in god mode and shooting things. He wants to play Doom3 when it comes out. He will need new hardware.
I'm just sick of this lame argument that people aren't interested in new processors because they can't tell the difference between 800Mhz and 2Ghz. Bullshit. They might be able to LIVE with the difference in speed, especially if money is tight, but you can never have "too much" speed.
"And like that
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.