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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. "
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.
SPEC results linked from The Inquirer ... here
"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.
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.
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 --
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
"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
Nice try. Microsoft has already publically announced 64-bit Windows support for x86-64.
Relevant quote:
AMD's newly named Opteron server processor will get its own 64-bit version of Windows, and the 64-bit desktop Athlons will not be forgotten either
Linux is ready as well.
Now, if we can just get MacOS X.... =)
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).
Why, thank you Mr. Cringely...
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
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.
Well, x86 continues to live because of the absolutely enormous amount of software written for it. Could you even begin to fathom starting at zero again? Itanium failed for this very reason. Sure, one of the holy grails as programmers we are supposed to chase after is full portability, but technical and time constraints often make that a dream. It is unfortunate, but the only way I can forsee a momentous move to a completely new architecture is if Microsoft really monopolizes the entire software industry, and then gets in bed w/ CPU makers and agrees to port all of the apps to this new architecture, and then everyone will make a ton of money selling new hardware and software that is legacy free. I will place my bet that in 10-15 years we will still be having this discussion.
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.'
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.
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
In Soviet Russia, your memory error-corrects you!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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 has lots of cool new features that compilers could be using and people could be taking advantage of
Yes, and Intel would really appreciate it if someone would develop a compiler that takes full advantage of the Itanium. Really. Please. Because their own compiler is still struggling with the problems inherent in VLIW... yes, it's much, much, much better than it was a couple years ago, but it's still nowhere near where it needs to be.
And it costs a fortune. But, hey, if you can afford a $9000 chip, you should be able to afford the compiler too.
I like and respect Intel... I've grown beyond the newbie EE stance of "it sucks because it does", and recognize that they have some of the best minds working there, and that their fab processes are second to none. But Itanium has been a massive disaster for them, and they're now caught between a rock and a hard place. They can continue developing future revisions of IA64 and hope that someday their engineers figure out how to make it work well, work cheaply, and work fast with legacy code, or they can commit corporate hari kari and adopt x86-64 from AMD. Or they could do something similar, but different, to x86-64 on their own and just piss off everyone. Bad choices all around.
The only chance Itanium has is if AMD flubs the Athlon64/Opteron launch. AMD will probably pull out of the market shortly after and Intel can gradually increase profit margins to the point where throwing cash at a losing proposition (IA64) remains viable. And eventually force everyone to transition, like it or not (which, admittedly, would probably be a good thing in the long run, but the short term would suck).
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!
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