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More Drooling Over The Opteron
bradv writes "I havent heard much about the new 64bit chips from AMD lately and was excited to find this article to satisfy my appetite for a little while longer. Probably more info than most people will ever care about. "
Doesn't perform..and I mean really perform...I'm not sure if AMD will be with us much longer, which would be a shame.
I think this is accurate because of the architecutural choice AMD made--instead of going with an all-new architecture, ala Itanium, they instead blew out the x86 system to 64 bits. That level of division in the CPU market at this time feels like it will have a very significant effect on the balance of power.
No one besides servers can use 64 bit chips right now
This is exactly what makes the Opteron an attractive processor. Rather then being simply a 64 bit proc like the Itanium, it has the ability to run legacy 32-bit instructions. This is a Good Thing. Now I can have a 64-bit proc that can still run all my old apps, but still can take advantage of the benefits of 64-bit architechure.
In fact, as I see it, the only people that won't benefit from 64-bit are Windows users. Until MS makes a 64-bit version of Windows the standard, the only people that will benefit from the Opteron will be the people that run OSes that they compiled themselves.
do you even know what an Opteron is? It's architecture doesn't limit it to just servers, because it supports existing x86 instruction sets. Sorta like how Windows 95 could still run Windows 3.1 apps, the Opteron will still be able to run x86 apps. I can see one of these in my workstation a lot sooner than I'll see an Itanium.
I didn't think that was a very good article. There seemed to be a lot of guesses in there, none of which appeared to be particularly informed - or at least, they were not explained - and some of it sounded downright childish. Like:
:-)
I don't know what Reserved might mean. One of the reviewers says that maybe in this case the processor turns into DSP. It's a mad idea, but if AMD realized it, this processor would be second to none in some kinds of operations.
or
AMD realizes it, and at present they develop several independent versions of the compiler together with famous software development companies. I won't unveil their names - AMD will do it if necessary. You just should know that at launch the processor will have the required support of the compiler allowing using its architectural advantages.
sorry?
No, i'd rather read C'T, at least they already have one of them chips on the test bench
Do we honestly need to keep breathing new life into x86? Whenever I see an article about intel posted, all I see is "x86 sux" posts (and I agree). However, when its Itanium vs. Opteron, its always "Go Opteron Go". Itanium actually uses a new instruction set, while Opteron keeps hacking x86 to work for yet another generation.
errrr wrong.
More and more people are doing the home-movie dance. Trust me, 4GB of memory will be the deafult on any home PC within 5 years. By then we'd be stuck if not for 64bit computing.
I have 3 compuyers at home : 1 PowerMac with 1GB of memory, one PC with 2GB of memory (parsing 3 or more crosslinked SGML files > 512MB is a pain with less than 2GB) and my tiny game machine with 'only' 512MB. Just by examining the curve of purchased machines, I'll hit the need for 4GB within 2 years. And I'm not even doing video !
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
If AMD can deliver this on a desktop level, then Moore's Law can once again be considered applicable...
Think about it - the main problem in terms of pushing computing power these days is electron migration, caused by extremely high clock rates.
By doubling the word length to 64-bits, you can reduce the clock rate of the chip, and will still be able to perform more instructions per second than your top-of-the-range Athlon/Pentiums.
This was always the case with graphics cards; the GeForce 256 was a big step up from the Riva chipset, due to doubling the word length.
Supercomputers, such as the SGI Origin series, have been using 64-bit processing for quite some time now (MIPS processors), and while the Itanium series has its flaws (like a lack of backward compatibility), surely it's time to move on from the same old x86 architecture?
We don't all have to wait for Microsoft to make their WinXP 64-bit version mainstream; there's no point in them pushing this until the 64-bit architecture breaks into the home market.
Because the Opteron has this backward compatibility, then the 64-bit architecture will reach the home users, and they can upgrade to the 64-bit version as soon as it is deemed economically viable by Microsoft to release it.
I wonder what kind of performance increase you'd get from a program such as SETI@home or Distributed.net by upgrading to a 64-bit platform...
I married Miss Right. I just didn't know her first name was 'Always.'
The article has some fairly interesting material, but what really amused me was how the reviewer didn't really seem to understand most of what he was writing about. He seems to have alternated between copying stuff directly from some marketing glossy and what he could get from a comp arch textbook...ususally following up with something like "I'm sure this is good for something or someone somewhere, beats me though!". You can almost see him scratching his head. It all starts when he is confused by the 'Resevered' entry in a table of register settings.
Of course the 80386 (they didn't use the 'i' crap back then) was revolutionary. You know that Finn, what's his name, the one with the thing for penguins? He wrote that whole Unix-like operating system because he finally got his hands on an affordable 32-bit CPU for personal use. It's not Intel's fault that the real benefits of the 32-bit design were unavailable with the most common operating system of the time (MS-DOS and Windows 3.0).
Seriously, compare the 80386 to its predecessor, the 80286, and tell me it wasn't revolutionary. Now look at the Pentium (or PII or PIII or P4). A faster 80386, with built-in 80387 and cache memory, and some spiffy additional 'multimedia' instructions. Yes, I'm oversimplifying, but all the improvements I'm leaving out are evolutionary in nature. There's very little code that will run on a Pentium4 that won't on a 80386 - other than the aforementioned MMX/SSE stuff.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Windows has already been ported to several 64-bit architectures: DEC Alpha, IA64, and AMD64. (Although DEC/Compaq abandoned the Alpha, Microsoft still uses them internally to verify the 64-bit port of NT.)
I worked in the NT division for several years, and I had an Itanium prototype workstation to do my 64-bit work. It worked fine -- the entire OS works fine, and has instruction-level emulation for 32-bit x86 code. (Microsoft had this a long time ago, in their Alpha 32-bit release. This was released as early as NT 3.51.)
So, you won't see Microsoft lagging behind the 64-bit processors. They are all over 64-bit. As soon as the hardware market is ready, they'll be selling 64-bit OSes.