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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. "
That would really hurt AMD but I don't think they would be gone. Other devices that use processors maybe what keeps them a float like pda's, pvr's.
The whole cpu market is going to slow down more so then now. We are at the point where you can get a nice pc for $700 and a 6 month old one for $400 which is only 4% slower then the $700 one.
What can you not do with 2.0ghz p4 or AMD 2200+?
I can burn a cd while listening to mp3's chatting in msn/icq with 4 or 5 browser windows open. The processor (p4 2ghz) is only at 50% if that.
Point is, once every one that wants a pc has it why would they need anything else? Is 4ghz going to much more then what you have now?
The server industry will help keep both chip makers running but as far as desktop/laptops go it will slow down.
"I have gone to look for myself, If I return before I get back keep me here"
It is a common assumption that 64-bit is for servers only. I am working on a quite widely used medical imaging & physics application that is suffering from the 2 GB (and even 4 GB) barrier at the client side. The CT/PET/MR image data with symbolic images, triangle meshes, dosimetric data, etc. are just too much for the 32-bit memory space. Our db servers are fine with 32-bit memory space, but the clients must be upgraded pretty soon now.
-- Imperial units must die --
"Now, this is cool tech, so it's a fun read. But is anyone really holding there breath for this thing? This thing is doomed without support from Microsoft, and they are going to be in bed with Intel as usual. AMD should stick to what it does best, emulating Intel's CPUs, until it can amass enough market share and forge enough partnerships with OS makers to strike out on their own."
Actually, Microsoft has endorsed AMD's 64 bit platform. They are also pressuring Intel to adopt a x86 approach as well. Why? Easier to code for.
The Itanium has been nothing but a disaster so far.
The Opteron could be a real turning point, with Intel for once forced to clone AMD designs...
Corporatism != Free Market
Of course, the Opterons haven't been shown at full speed yet. By all means keep posting flamebait and disinformation, though. Estimated SPEC scores have been available for a while. Here is the relevant snippet:
A single Opteron core running at an actual clock speed of 2.0-GHz with registered PC2700 memory yielded a SPECint2000 score of 1202, and a SPECfp2000 score of 1170, Weber said. He did not formally disclose whether the chip was a "Clawhammer" or "Sledgehammer" chip.
The scores for a Dell 3.06 P4 are 1084 SPECint, 1092 SPECfp. Not bad for 2/3 the clock speed...and much faster on integer performance than Itanic. :-)
Do you really think AMD's new .13 micron chip will top out at 2.0 GHz. in the near term?
The other beauty of Opteron is the ease of building multiway systems up to eight-way...as opposed to HYPErthreading. Personally, I prefer multiple real processors if I'm going to pay additional license fees...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
A photoshop plugin that will address more than 4 gb would sell many thousands of these units in very little time.
love is just extroverted narcissism
The Opteron could be a real turning point, with Intel for once forced to clone AMD designs
And, just in case anyone's wondering, Intel does have rights to use x86-64 if they wish -- dates back to cross-licensing agreements between AMD and Intel, as well as various lawsuits.
There were rumors of an Intel chip in the pipeline that would implement x86-64, but those rumors were squashed repeatedly about 9 months ago. Intel keeps hoping that IA64 will pan out someday, despite repeated indications otherwise (well, ok... it seems to be doing ok for them as a company, since the profit margins are huge... but it's doing nada for the average consumer).
I'm sure that there are people here other than myself that were thrilled with all the "extra" power that the 486dx had over the 386 (no internal math coproc.) Sooner or later, software abilities and user demands will eat up the available hardware performance.
...
More to the point, though, 32 bit vs. 64bit architecture is about more than clock speeds. In fact, typically I've seen 64bit cpus debut at lower clock speeds than contemporary 32 bit cpus.
[Author hereby warns reader of his intent to use an analogy. The analogy is not designed to be airtight, or absolute proof of anything. It is intended to convey a point of view. Any attempt to stretch/abuse/extend said analogy beyond its intended limits will likely result in confusion.]
Comparing a 32-bit cpu with a 64-bit cpu with half the mhz rating is roughly like comparing a 10k rpm, 4-cylinder motorcycle engine to a 5k rpm v-8.
The bike will take one person (maybe two) and a small amount of cargo, and carry them at outrageous speeds. To carry more people or cargo, an SUV with the v-8 would do a better job.
[Author briefly has a vision of a motorcycle tooling down the highway with an SUV v-8 crammed into it, penguin bumper stickers adhered all over it.]
MHZ = speed, but speed does not necessarily equal power, and powerful does not necessarily equal useful.
Or something like that
-- Windows is not simply installed on a computer; it is inflicted.
Itanium has lots of cool new features that compilers could be using and people could be taking advantage of, but it doesn't have good backwards compatibility, and therein lies the problem.
Not only MS, but also LBT endorses using x86-64 instead of IA-64. I'm in the "Kill x86 and bring back Alpha!" boat myself, and am only waiting for the day when open-source has taken over the world and hardware companies can actually design some senseful new ISA's instead of just building more and more kluges on top of x86. Ah well. Wishful thinking.
Lots of data-intensive applications desperately need more than 2Gbytes of RAM. If Opteron can deliver that for only a modest premium over regular Athlon-bsaed PCs, it will be a huge success. And if it can run existing binaries in 32bit mode and work with existing drivers, that's icing on the cake. There is just nothing else like it out there.
As soon as they come out, assuming Linux does run reasonably well on them and there are no unexpected show-stoppers, we are going to buy half a dozen of them. We want a Beowulf cluster of these.
Key features of instructions addressing, memory segmentation, x86 instructions themselves didn't change since the i386 - that was the last revolutionary processor.
I stopped reading it after that. He knows very little about CPU design, if he thinks that the i386 was revolutionary.
<>>
:)
Are you a troll or just really this ignorant?
<<Think about it - the main problem in terms of pushing computing power these days is electron migration, caused by extremely high clock rates. >>
Electron migration is one of many problems faced by computer architects. Clock rate does not cause electron migration.
<<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. >>
By doubling the word length, you allow the CPU to work with a 64 bit virtual address space, and comfortably handle 64 bit integer maths. 64 bits is necessarily slower that 32 bits because fewer pointers will fit into cache, and pointers require more memory bandwidth. Aside from this, moving to 64 bits *does nothing* to improve perfromance. It certainly isn't a measure of Intructions Per Clock!
<<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. >>
Right, the only difference between a GeForce and a Riva 128 is the word size?! Huh? Are you even listening to yourself? Reasons for the improvement in performance include clock speed, available number of transistors, feature size, several extra years of experience for the design team, and the fact that the two chip are *completely* different chips!
<<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? >>
Yes, because supercomputers need to address more than 4 gigs of memory. This is all that moving to 64 bits gets you. Many SGI workstations have 64 bit chips in them which are run in 32 bit mode because it is *faster,* and the machines can't take enough RAM for it to matter. A good example of such a system would be an R4400 Indigo or Indy system. These workstations had 64 bit chips, but you can't get them to run in 64 bit mode! This is because, if you don't need a 64 bit address space, there is no reason to use a 64 bit system!
As for Itanium, the biggest flaws aren't related to lack of backward compatibility. IA32 is a *subset* of the IA64 architecture. Every IA64 system will be able to run IA32 code. IMHO, the biggest problems with itanium have to do with the horrible heat dissipation, price, performance, and power consumption. Also, the ugliness of programming the beast. And, the fact that it is a strictly in-order system. I could go on and on.
<<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. >>
Buy an Alpha, there was actually a 64 bit port of Win2k.
<<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. >>
Indeed. A big selling point of the Opteron is the ability to run 32 bit OS's. (While IA64 can run IA32 code, it lacks the ability to boot a stock copy of Win95.)
<<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... >>
None. You could try looking for some benchmarks...
As to people saying that AMD is dead if x86-64 doesn't work, I agree. They are basically betting the farm on the x86-64 chips. If they don't payoff, they'll most likely leave the desktop/server/whatever CPU market. They'll still be alive in microcontrollers and millions of other things, but they won't be competing with Intel for the CPU of your PC. If this happens, I'll be worried, becase we all know that we need a second big name in CPUs to keep prices in the "ludicrous and below" area.
BUT... if they don't take off on the PC side, the chip is still superior to the little 1.x GHz PPCs that Apple is using. If they could be the new chip for Apple, then they could stay in the CPU market, and Apple could get a major contender again (CPU wise). I'd love this to happen. OS X is already proted (according to rumors, and we know that the kernel already runs on x86s, so it would be fast ported to the -64s, especially by AMD). Software would be easy to port from PCs to Macs (no endianess mess). Even as just a failed market expirament, this could mean alot to Apple, AMD, and Intel.
All speculations, my opinions, and such. If you doubt me, send $200 to me and I'll consider your point of view better. The address is below....
(address cut due to excessive donations)
(WOOT!)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Back in the early days of the 8086 there was a processor from Zilog called the Z800 (not the z8000 - which was a different chip). It was a super chip; it ran far more software than the 8086 - it was faster and easier to program - being directly compatible with the existing core of CP/M software. There was every reason to believe that the Z800 would wipe the 8086 from the computer market.
The problem was that Zilog never actually got around to building the Z800; it was a classic example of vaporware.
The real question for AMD is: can they build the Opteron? Sadly, the longer the Opteron is delayed the more likely it is to turn from silicon to vapor phase.
I suspect that the real reason that the Intel X86-64 processor got canceled is that Intel decided that the Opteron was likely going into vapor phase. The fact that AMD has little to say on the subject sadly confirms this. The z800 was never officially dropped, it just faded away quietly - which is how vapor phase works.
And yes, I have a manual from Zilog featuring the Z800 - so the documentation AMD has recently produced really doesn't matter much.
Itanium a $9000 chip ? That may be what you want your readers to believe, but it somehow conflicts with facts since you can buy an Itanium II workstation for less than $6000 (here).
Oh and HP compilers work quite well, thank you. Let's compare Opteron to "Madison" (Itanium's next processor), I guess they'll become really available around the same time.
The K5/K6 were Pentium/Pentium II clones, but the K7 was basically AMD's coming out in the Microprocessor realm, and has been extremely successful!
Nope.
Around 1995, AMD was really struggling to build a Pentium class processor. In 1994, the first company to ever reverse engineer an intel processor and create a functional equivalent was NexGen and their Nx586. This processor utilized a RISC core and a translation unit to get 386 instructions into RISC form. I actually owned two of these, a Nx586 66 and a Nx586 100. They were pretty funky. FPU's were optional, but most of the Nx586 100's had FPUs on board. There was always talk of putting a FPU socket a la 487 on the boards, but it never happened.
Neadless to say, AMD purchased NexGen in late 1995 and released the K5, a clone of the Nx586. The K6 was the first processor released by AMD which was faster than the current Intel processor, a oft forgotten fact. For about 3 months before the Pentium II was released, the K6 233 was 5% or so faster than the Pentium Pro 233.
The K6 and Athlon lines of AMD all utilized the same internal RISC core with a translation unit.
So, you are wrong, no one ever cloned the Pentium or Pentium II. A lot of nasty history between Intel and AMD in the 386 days made sure that would never happen ever again. I wish I could find some fun links on the Nx586 for you, but even on google it seems to have been forgotten.
I don't read or respond to AC posts