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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. "
I wish people would be nicer to each other.
Not only is the chip 64 bits, it also runs at 64 degrees Celsius!!!
How can I not love a 64 bit processor that for some reason makes me think of the Transformers...
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
makes me feel prickily all over
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
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.
The processor really doesn't turn in great results and seems to get beaten by a 12 month old P4.
SPEC results linked from The Inquirer ... here
My thorax is aching because of my cold right now, but I must say this: No one besides servers can use 64 bit chips right now, so there's no point in buying them for about 3 or 4 years, until the developers catch up with the hardware.
Does it support TCPA? If so, I'll pass, thanks.
"Probably more info than most people will ever care about."
Yeah... And yet that is surely why you posted it on Slashdot - "News for Nerds".
more info than most people will ever care about
That's a great reason to put it on the front page.
fuck the opteron, you prissy little assholes! speaking of assholes, there's no finer feeling than slipping your rock-hard cock into a 12-yr old girl's nice tight asshole. i can cum buckets when i do that - and she loves it too! she begs to lick my cock clean and she just loves to feel the cum dripping out.
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.
Verify the maximum amount of drool the chip can sustain before you start to droll over it.
my giant bee
by rubbing cheese into his knees
bee
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.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Mod the post, not the poster.
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SweetAndSourJesus
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
so, va lairy wants folks to overpay him to: "guard" their kode, &/or "manage" their net...working?
meanwhile, he can't even keep a vacant decaying blog "on the air", despite having collected billyuns, in advertising billybuks, & 100's of millions more of J.'s hardearned, with which to accomplish same.
reminds US of another failed dictatorship/stock markup FraUD. 40 does it for us.
They tested with Slackware 1.2? They might want to try a version released within the past 5 years though. Perhaps version 8.1.
I control the time!
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Of course, the majority of us still won't read the article.
opteron drools over YOU
How fast Windoze XT will crash with a Beowulf Cluster of These! ;)
Maybe its just me but there is no author and no references. The opening sounds like a technical presentation but from whome? A AMD Press release?? should it not say???
At least that's what the article reads like.
"Fast processor, you will like, hmm?"
What's next? Yoda reviews graphics cards?
"A gamer feels the GeForce FLOWING through him!"
All data are ECC protected.
"Data" is a plural word, finally someone noticed.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
for me to poop on! (or in soviet russia, cringely drools on you :)
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.
..is that the processor is based on x86 architecture.
Intel still is a POS, Amd is a bad coppy of a POS hardware and craftsmanship. It's done nothing to encourage me it's horrible implemented convoluted and quite possible the single most hideous piece of electrons to look at.
Isn't this puppy the first chip to have Palladium built in? Oh, enhanced security thanks to TCPA with a bullet proof MS OS on top. Can't wait...
:(
Seriously though, the chip looks cool but Palladium just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. AMD is such a MS whore
1. Profit ?? ..
2.
3. Profit ??
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.'
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.
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.
Is this the first time the guy has looked at processor specs or seen a pinout diagram or bitfield description? He seemed to get awfully excited about the word "reserved" and imagined some sort of super-computer hidden inside a magic bit. It means "reserved for future use" i.e. "it doesn't do anything yet so don't twaddle it or you will break something years from now when we find a use for it."
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
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.
Just before it explains the processor core, the article lists tested operating systems. My question is, where the hell did they find copies of slackware 1.2 and 2.0? And why version so old?
Okay, AMD have worked hard on its new baby...
But is it actually any good compared with other 64bit CPS's like the MIPS or UltraSPARC's???
And (important bit this), have AMD finally fitted a thermal cut-out device?!?!??!?! Does this chip catch fire if the CPU fan dies???? It's not nice seeing your computer burning!!!
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.
You may be interested to read about the HyperTransport capabilities of the chip at http://www.hypertransport.org
One thing I found particularly interesting was the SMP abilities of the AMD, through the use of Hypertransport. It allows multiple chips to be used on the same board without all the glue logic normally associated with SMP setups, so you can have arrangements like the Power4 and suchlike, without enormous amounts of additional circuitry.
Funky stuff
They should go with a 1-bit processor, much like parallel to serial ATA, and the 1-bit DAC. This seems to be the fad these days. Just keep the registers 64 bit for 64-bit addressing.
i was going to say something else that was equally ignorant but I forgot what it was.
The Operton drools over YOU!
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.
cringley claims p4 is somehow worse because it achieves less instructions per clock. obviously real performance comes from I/clock * clock. so increasing i/c OR c is a valid approach. the alpha basically smoked everyone else back in the day by focusing on clock over hyper-deep pipelines like the other designers. the p4 is taking the same approach.
never mind his woefully inaccurate summaray of yamhill...
It looks like Athlon64 performance is going to be quite good. But even if it weren't, I hope AMD wouldn't hold up the release of the Athlon64 over concerns with benchmarks. If the price is reasonable, we'd buy them right now even if they ran at half the speed of a top-of-the-line Pentium4. The ability to address greater than 4 Gbytes of memory directly just outweighs even fairly significant differences in raw CPU performance. In different words, even a slow pointer dereference is still a lot faster than read/seek/write.
Flopped products may or may not *faze* AMD, but they probably will *phase* AMD - into a new phase of not making CPUs.
From dictionary.com:
Faze: To disrupt the composure of; disconcert
Phase: A distinct stage of development
Data hasn't become a "mass-noun" now, e.g. cereal, water, snow, etc? It's to the point now that "data are precious" sounds just as bizzare as "snow are precious."
To back up my point, see the following entry here, specifically the "Usage Note" section.
Language changes. We aren't speaking latin anymore. Deal with it.
According to yahoo finance, both Intel and Motorola had 26.6 billion dollars in sales in the trailing twelve months.
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Zilog made it and it even had a second source (a Japanese company). The problem was, it came out about two years too late to have an effect on the mainstream computer market. I made hardware based on the Z800 and wrote a program for it. Zilog flubbed the chance to maintain their lead in microcomputers many times by failing to rapidly develop the appropriate new products.
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By doubling the word length to 64-bits.....'That is absolutely not true'
Well yes and no, the CPU speed isn't the bigest bottle-kneck in my PC, it's the memory and bus speeds/bandwidth. so doubling the word size, on the bus will improve performance.
A 32bit processor with a 64bit bus (and properly aligned data) should be faster than a 32bit processor with a 32bit bus.
There are lots of other tricks that can be done to improve cash performance and increase paralisation, but I don't think they've made it out of the super-computer market yet.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
If you want to see a company that could survive losing a major product, look at Motorola or IBM. Now those are truly HUGE companies.
I don't follow the Mac crowd anymore so I don't know what kind of slant he's putting on it (whatever it is, I'm sure it was his idea all along), but the fact is that Apple is an insignificant speck of Motorola's business -- and WAY WAY more trouble than they're worth -- while IBM didn't even bother to laugh politely when Apple made overtures several months ago, it was more of a spit-spraying HAW HAW HAW HAW kind of deal.
You have just now defined a monopoly. You should have realized this about 75% completiong of your comment. Playing Devil's Advocate: Should Microsoft port its applications to IA64 or let it die? This is also not a well-thought post and wreaks of legacy apeal, of which AMD's Opteron benefits from. Itanium has never failed. The Linux kernel and all the supporting software to feature a stable and near-fully-featured operating system has been completed nearly 6 months ago! Itanium-based computers were available from HP, IBM, and Dell. Intel is releasing an Itanium2. Binary compatibility for X86 is non-existant in the Itanium and Itanium2 because it is a completly New Architecture. Support for Microsoft Windows and old DOS programs does not constitute binary compatibility of an architecture; that is the operating systems job to define. Yes, lack of Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) on IA64 will not alure retail Microsoft-brand customers to Intel...Linux will lure customers to Intel that need a somewhat Unix-compliant environment that once again (Alpha platform) features 64bit precision. What is the difference between a standards-compliant C program compiled in Linux/x86 versus Linux/IA64? The end-product's binary interaction with the architecture is what is different; protocol compliancy is retained. GPL software is just a quick compile away for IA64 by independant programmers and users. The real issue is in the non-opensource or non-interested programmers to port their software to the new protocol-compliant OS/platform. Looking at it another way, you didn't define a monopoly by Microsoft(R). As long as GNU and Linux are around, there is no monopoly from Microsoft(R) to speak of. Yes, Microsoft *tries to force companies out of business by doing certain things, but every company retains their freedom(TM) to contract with others...Linux is the monopoly of IA-64 in this respect, or whoever the fuck someone says should be accountable for another company's product; which IMHO is why I think political opinions/statments and the commercial(contract) world is evil and everyone is better off to be recognized by the goodness of their work, mind, and soul.
:%) (please be gentle)
IA64 and Opteron both have their markets; Linux bridges them together with *protocol* compatibility: which Microsoft chooses to *not* dream about. Microsoft is rumored(announcment without supporting evidence) to be porting Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) to IA64; just nothing yet. Linux-based software has already been operating on first generation Itantium; look on eBay and notice how expensive Itanium realy is for par-Pentium4 performance with a thoroughly-engineered architecture.
On the user-end, all IA-64 and Opteron systems are expected to perform in a stable manner. Question: Do end-users blame Microsoft or Intel/AMD/IBM/VIA for their computer crashes? Nice to clear things up on your perception of absence of Microsoft support for IA-64. I hope I didn't appear to be rude or yelling in any way...or maybe I'm too late and you are off in the jungle swinging towards my adobe with a machete. I can make guacamole and I have tortilla chips fresh from the oven...
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
They try to put Palladium into the hardware...impossible to be removed. Programs will be built to interact with some ASIC(s) and without those they will be rendered non-compatible? Wrong...all the software you will be using to work-around Palladium-endabled software will just be (vile grin) virus-like. The anticipated approach for customers that will not buy Palladium-enabled hardware is to implement Palladium in the software. More risky, but still effective. With all matters in consideration, Palladium will fail because 2 million world-wide crackers have more skill in manipulating software than you think...the vocal ones have a penguin or bsd_daemon sticker on their shirt.
Think big happy thoughts for the future of Microsoft, because we all will remember the happy thoughts that give people more functionality with their Computer(TM) whether open or closed source.
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
I think you have it backwards. If MS wins out and becomes a monopoly, then there will be no improvements, because improvements force them to spend money. While if they had a true monopoly they could get away selling software without doing anything. That is plain economics.
Look at a different picture where Microsoft has lost its monopoly but Linux is not a big force. Then the leading OS vendors have to follow whatever is the dominant chip. Ofcourse in this case there can be a monopoly in the chip market like the intel monopoly. The OS vendors will build only for intel, and we will have less improvements. But if we have a non monopoly situation we will have OS vendors supporting more than one chips, and there will be choice.
Next take a look at what happens when Linux and other Free Operating Systems constitute a monopoly, ie proprietory OSs have been relegated to niches. In this case all kinds of chips are supported. A hardware vendor is not at the mercy of the OS vendor, but can produce his own distribution and provide it along with the hardware. This is possibly the best of all worlds in my opinion.
Well you can look around you and see that current situation is precisely because there is a MS monopoly. AMD provides a processor but only because it is a clone of intel. No independent processor design can exist, in this monopolised environment. If Linux was the monopoly OS, Alpha wouldn't have died.
I got tired of listening to the recording on the phone at the movie
theater. So I bought the album. I got kicked out of a theater the
other day for bringing my own food in. I argued that the concession
stand prices were outrageous. Besides, I hadn't had a barbecue in a
long time. I went to the theater and the sign said adults $5 children
$2.50. I told them I wanted 2 boys and a girl. I once took a cab to
a drive-in movie. The movie cost me $95.
-- Steven Wright
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