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."

Comments

Will This be Linux's first killer app?

[peripatetic_bum]

Just wondering, if Linux already runs on 64bit, which I think it does, and I have not heard of microsoft having anything ready for this market, does this mean that just as gamer's buying games pushed the video card (and in my opinion, the os) market, will we see linux be increasing adopted since it will run 64bit and MS does not?
Just a question.
Thanks for the replies

Over 10 years after DEC introduced Alpha ....

[Bio]

I'm amazed to read the discussion, wether or not 64 bit will succeed over 32 bit processors.

This is 10 years after DEC has introduced the Alpha Architecture (in spring 1992).

The Alpha was fun to work with, not only because of it's 64 bit architecture, but because of the clean orthogonal instruction set and it's outstanding performance.

Rest in peace ...

Re:Over 10 years after DEC introduced Alpha ....

[Door-opening Fascist]

One thing to remember is that the Alpha was not the first 64-bit processor. Before it were HP's PA-RISC in 1986, U. of Tokyo's TRON design in 1987, and DEC's MIPS R4000 in 1991. Sun/Fujitsu moved the SPARC to 64 bits in late 1992, and IBM was late when it moved the POWER in 1995. So 64-bit processors were neither unheard-of nor new in 1992.

re: Skip to the last page for the most interesting

[bogie]

No this is the interesting stuff

"eWEEK: What does it mean to you personally, though, when a Gateway or an IBM not just stop, but announce that they'll no longer be offering AMD as an option?

Ruiz: I think it's terrible, obviously. It's terrible. I think if you were to talk with Ted Waitt at Gateway, and ask him, "Why'd you do that?" and if he would really tell you why, it's a question of he's being bribed to do it. Now, he's got to look out for his own hide and the company that's probably in great difficulty has got to listen to the huge amounts of money that can help him do that.

But you know what I find amazing, think about the power, is that despite all that, which obviously we really get emotional about the fact that somebody like Gateway gets bribed into doing that, is that despite that, according to Dataquest last week, we're still holding a 19 percent share of the market. That to me tells me we're in the throes of breaking this open"

Hey Intel, see you in court! Of course now that Intel is along with Microsoft backing a group to outlaw opensource in the government, I think its time for the opensource community to boycott Intel. Why should our money go to a company which is now attempting to hurt Linux and opensource? I know because these recent actions, I will NEVER buy Intel ever again!

Re:What desktop users want to know..

[Dave_bsr]

Dave_bsr's Law: Governing "when computers will be fast enough":

Computers will be fast enough, when, for every conceivable operation, system delay between user requests and proper system response is less than the human ability to resolve, eg, instantaneous.

Not instantaneous, as in .05 seconds (button click speed now now), no, I mean _instantaneous_, like when I push on my door and I see movement. When I write on paper and _instantly_ there is writing. Then, computers will be fast enough. And I don't just mean speed for mozilla, i mean processing real-time 3d bump-mapped, whooseyourdaddy environments. Yeah.

There is no "desktop" market for 64 bit CPUs

[ppetrakis]

I don't have to read the article. I've been working with Alphas all my life. There is nothing for 99.9% of the applications you use everyday that could benefit from running itself in a 64 bit address space. Unless you get a signifigant performace boost from the move (like Alpha in it's heyday) it isn't worth the effort.

If you find you need that sort of mega addressing the chances are the app you need already runs on 64 bit Solaris. After that point it's up to the vendor (Think Avanti Corp /Apollo) Wheither it's worth their while. Remember, You need their application. Unless your app is home grown or you have some signifigant pull with a vendor the port isn't going to happen.

The desktop is an afterthought. This chip was designed to be sold in quanties of 8 and higher in single large servers. Once they cut into that market the economies of scale just happen to make it cheap enough for the desktop market to pick it up. They have a much better chance at getting it down with their builtin backwards compatibility and keeping costs down. Alpha never hit that "sweet spot" for the volume to really bring down the price..

Now, Don't think Intel is going to sit on its hands while AMD eats their lunch. They're more likely to drop an Itanium instruction decoder into an Alpha EV7 core and push that than follow with an x86-64 processor line. Itanium is just to big and costs too much to at this stage of development to make inroads fast enough stop AMD in gaining marketshare but more importantly, mindshare. Intel would never take up x86-64, Doing so admits defeat to the industry i.e. You're not the leader anymore.

So to sum it up, Intel will either:

1. release Itanium and we all find out it isn't as slow as everyone claims it is or as expensive
2. See Alpha/Itanium hybrid core above
3. They bring back Alpha (maybe not by name) and put it under a modern process. Expect atleast x1.5 current clock speeds and Alpha's can milk rambus for all it's worth

2 and 3 are much more likely than one, You know which one I'd rather see happen :).

Either way it'll be a boon for the OS community and certainly make our (The Alpha community) lives easier. The way I see it, even if hammer is moderatly successfull. You guys will 'clean' most of the popular soucecode out there to be 64 bit clean, reducing our matainence work by like 80%. The only thing we'll have to worry about is firmware, toolchain, libc, Xwindows, and kernel. So please buy a *hammer and learn the joys of porting to 64 bits. If it proves too painfull, please see the ld manpage for the "-taso" flag :).

Peter