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Athlon 64 Pushed Back to September
Orion writes "AMD confirmed today that their new Athlon 64 will indeed be pushed back to September. Originally planned to be released in April or May, AMD has decided to put all of its brainpower into the launch of the 64-bit Opteron, which is still scheduled to be released on April 22. This article explains that AMD is still going to try to get a few more Athlon XP processors out before the Athlon 64 hits stores. The 3000+ has a planned February 10 release date, and the 3200+ should be out by the middle of the year according to the article."
Don't bother wasting your time with release dates, okay? Because quite frankly, I and many others don't believe a word you say any more. Not a word. So you go ahead and do whatever you do to make that cpu, and pass me an announcement when they're in a shop for me to buy, okay? And if it's worth buying then i'll do so.
all you afghani web-surfers will be stuck with your Commodore 64s for the forseeable future...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
they Opteron to delay-IT-orn...
At least this will give me more time to save more money...
(must have new CPU.... drool =P~)
cheers
will work for Karma
Just another delay in the release of the next cpu. The only news of item is that M$ is late with there 64bit OS for AMD. Also that AMD will not release until M$ is ready. The should release for Linux, but want to keep us hanging on as Intel's grip on the market tightens.
The server market needs the 64bit cpus before consumers do anyway. I am looking forward to the barton cores with their better cache performance. It's still impressive to see what their doing with a look less cycles than Intel. I hope they get a good share in the server market with the Opteron as it will build confidence in AMD across the board.
Yes, every open source app I've ever used has been rock solid stable, with no bugs, and ready for general use by millions in the general population.
If CPU's were like open source apps, they'd be cutting new silicon and ripping out the fabs every couple of weeks.
I'm not knocking open source, I love it, but to generally say that it's not released until it works, and then compare it to a piece of hardware that MUST work on first release or ruin the company, is not realistic.
You bet AMD will be trying to create a 1Kg heat pipe and a 30cm 10000rpm fan to get rid of the 400W this 64-bits thing will trhow away.
It seems to me that AMD always has one issue or another, hopefully they've put that problem with manufacturing capacity behind them :)
Man i can't wait to play Duke Nukem Forever on my new Opteron system. I'm saving a penny a day and by the time i have enough money, i should be able to buy all i need.
WOOT!@#
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
AMD's decision to delay it's Athlon64 CPU series release date until September (possibly timed to the release of a 64bit version of Windows) is pretty smart, actually. By delaying, AMD loses in the highend desktop arena, but is now able to spend those resources on the potentially far more lucrative Opteron systems. Why release a fast, inexpensive processor for the desktop market when you can release a slightly slower one, for a different market, for much, much more? By concentrating on the big iron of Opteron, AMD might be able to halt their financial bloodletting, and get back in the black in time for Athlon64...
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
And overclock it! $50 1700+'s clock up to 2400+ speeds and beyond. It's like magic! Oh, and get an nForce2 based motherboard. It's a great chipset.
Too bad AMD r0x0rs intel's world and intel sux cuz they have crappy validation engineers
Peace!
A story in the inquirer
says AMD is "waiting for the introduction of a suitable 64-bit operating
system. This, The INQUIRER believes, is the Windows 64 bit version specifically
for the Athlon64."
How many companies have died while waiting for Microsoft
to do something? (Note to AMD: Microsoft is *not* your friend.)
To your .sig: OS X is built on top of BSD, not Linux
The press release *seemed* to indicate that only the Athlon64 (single-processer desktop version) would be delayed, and perhaps not the Opteron (multi-CPU server version). However, it wasn't entirely clear.
I guess that all I can do is assume that they'll all be delayed unless I hear otherwise. As much as I've been a supporter of AMD (and been waiting quite anxiously for the Hammers!), I think that they've not only dropped the ball, the ball has broken their foot on the way down.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
You're supposed to use a dildo right in you ass, so you can easily experiment with more hertz to understand what it means.
I hate to be the one that points this out, but AMD is not "Open Source". Other hardware manufacturers don't have as many problems as AMD does with meeting deadlines- why is this good for AMD again?
And don't even try to run anything written in Java. (You'll recognize these apps because they have terrible UIs)
And for that matter, how old is it?
The current MS desktop is XP, the current AMD desktop ship series is the XP. The next big MS release keeps getting put back. The next big AMD release just got put back. There is, however, no link between these facts and you'd be a fool and a communist to think so ;)
The XP lines "model number" indicates the equivalent Intel P4 processor speed (because, as well know, the Athlon, like the P3, achiees more per cycle than the P4 does. A 3Ghz P3 would absolutely stomp a 3Ghz P4), so if they effectively upped the speed by adding more cache, then it's entirely the right thing to do given the philosophy of the model number.
One thing I really respect AMD for is how conservative they actually are with their "model numbers" : The XP 2800 actually trounces the P4 2.8 on most benchmarks, and slaps the 3.0Ghz around on several. If they took the Cyrix tact they would have called in the XP 8200+.
Other than for encryption, there are not many common desktop application that needs a 64 bit processor. Why this rush for 64 bit processor?
You mean his username is wrong too?
Heh.. talk about a major troll! But I'll bite.
You don't need more hertz (or in this case, GHz). If all you do on a system is play solitaire and MS word, you'll be ok with a 333MHz, providing you have sufficiently fast memory and disk space.
However a good deal of us actually *use* our computers. Ever try to compile XFree86 on a 333MHz CPU? I doubt it. When people use their systems for games, development, or much more than posting trolls, they can use as many GHz as AMD and Intel can crank out.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
The XP lines "model number" indicates the equivalent Intel P4 processor speed (because, as well know, the Athlon, like the P3, achiees more per cycle than the P4 does. A 3Ghz P3 would absolutely stomp a 3Ghz P4), so if they effectively upped the speed by adding more cache, then it's entirely the right thing to do given the philosophy of the model number.
a tant-dupes is bad enough, but these technical issues are just astoundingly amateur for what is one of the larger websites out there.
One thing I really respect AMD for is how conservative they actually are with their "model numbers" : The XP 2800 actually trounces the P4 2.8 on most benchmarks, and slaps the 3.0Ghz around on several. If they took the Cyrix tact they would have called in the XP 8200+.
SLASHDOT NOTE: This is a repost because Slashdot lost track of my last comment. What the hell is going on with Slashdot? Not only has it slowed to an absolute crawl, but every couple of days some other poorly thought out alteration to the UI appears and then disappears, comments are being lost after they are posted, etc. The whole editors-not-reading-their-own-site-and-posting-bl
Take a look at PhysicsGenius's bio, he has perfected trolling to an art form.
Not being very in tune with hardware, I am curious as to the advantages of a 64 bit processor, and why I as a consumer, would want them... Could anyone please post a bit of information about them or a link to further reading?
How is this any different from when AMD adopted the "performance rating" vs the clock speed to begin with? If the increase in performance makes it perform like a 3ghz P4, then thats how it should be marked. After all, isn't that what the name represents? Intel still uses the raw ghz number, and for them to change now wouldn't make any sense (that and the fact that it's hard to pin down "performance" increases with HT esp if you're using most of the common benchmarks which are not MT).
Which brings up an interesting marketing difference, by sticking with just ghz #'s, it's harder for Intel to easily communicate/quantify architecture gains (vs simple clock increases) vs the "relative performance" rating that AMD uses. People blasted AMD at first for confusing matters, but they may be reaping at least some the benefits of divorcing raw clock rate from performance.
SiS and VIA have already shopped around engineering sample motherboards for all the manufacturers, so this indicates the Athlon64 delay is a complete disaster.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Should be out just in time for World Of Warcraft. This must be why Blizzard is dragging their feet, they're gonna wow us with a 64 bit MMORPG!
If all you do on a system is play solitaire and MS word, you'll be ok with a 333MHz, providing you have sufficiently fast memory and disk space.
:-(
This should, by the way, be considered to be a very sad fact.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Amd said that the clawhammers would be released in q3 2003 some time ago. Last time I checked September was Q3...
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
I've compiled XFree86 on my K6-2/300 a couple of years ago. Man, it took forever. Those were the days, but I wouldn't want to go back. *pats his Athlon 2200+*
It means I won't be upgrading my PC for longer, hence saving money!
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Whats the difference? Both have the 64(bits) in the name. I just dont understand. Somebody care to explain?
HT can increase performance a lot more than more cache
I disagree with this, because page faults are are pretty expensive relative to a trip-up in a CPU pipeline. HT is a gimmick that truly benefits few applications. A larger cache is not a gimmick and would benefit nearly all applications. Remember, Intel sells marketing buzzwords more than anything else.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Soon, you'll start seeing "Built for ICQ2003" logos on the processors themselves.
Hey.. I like the AMD processors. They're cheap and fast. Why would I want to spend $100 more for an intel and $500 more for a Mac when Linux is going to either work around or ignore the palladium and drm? Do you think AMD and Intel are going to be stupid enough to put out processors that refuse to boot if windows is not the OS? There'll be a bigger backlash than the F00F or FDIV bugs.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
> Ever try to compile XFree86 on a 333MHz CPU? I doubt it.
Good Lord! It's not like computers were invented 5 years ago. I've compiled XFree on a 75 MHz pentium. And you should see how snappy the linux kernel compiles on a 386/25. 20 years I was on a computer that couldn't compile 10000 lines of C in an _hour_.
*pats his Athlon 2200+*
:-)
I hope that was the system and not the CPU itself!
Otherwise, you just burned your hand and static-fried the chip!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Yes- I'm well aware of how the XP numbering system is supposed to work. I haven't seen any benchmarks yet- maybe the Barton core does help that much, but those numbers look pretty optimistic IMO.
BTW- I guess you haven't looked at many benchmarks. Here are some for your reference. The XP 2800 is pretty close to the P4 2.8 Ghz with a slight edge to the P4, but the 3.06 P4 beats the Athlon pretty soundly.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Good point read the article Intel hoist by Centrino megahurts petard stating how the new mobile processor Banias is running up to 1Ghz slower for same performance as the P4. Now how are they going to "Market" that thingy?
Quote from Article:
Given Intel's extreme assault on AMD's model number system, it'll be quite interesting to see how the company positions its new "Centrino" (Banias) line of processors. These CPUs will be released at a much lower set of frequencies then the current P4 crop of notebooks, even as much as a GHz lower. All of a sudden, Intel is in a bit of a tough spot -- will consumers want to adopt a notebook running so much slower than what appear to be competitive P4-M notebooks running even faster?
Help fight continental drift.
Next-generation secure computing Qaeda
First of all it's much more than just a 64 bit processor. The design of the new processors, originally named sledgehammer and clawhammer, will release a whole new era for multiple cpu systems. In current Xeon systems you recieve little bang for the buck, of adding processors, after the second processor and you go to third, the processors start doing redundant processes because of memory cache issues. But with the new AMDs, each processor will have it's memory contorller built right into it. This means that as you add processors you actually add memory bandwidth, look into this and it will brighten the sky and put a smile on your face.
...If they took the Cyrix tact they would have called in the XP 8200+.
Hey, I have one of those, stop making fun of me!
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
I don't know how many benefits they can be reaping considering they lost 7% market share in Q4 2002.
Nope, never on a 333Mhz. Done it on a DX2/66 back in the days of Xfree86 V3, and no wouldn't do it again.
I have Gentoo on a K6/233 and it compiles fine. Within 36 hours. Once you add KDE, it becomes a very long weekend, but after it is compiled once, you can keep using X, even if you need to recompile it, so no big lose.
On the other hand, that machine is only good as file server, and Web browsing box. Everything else is a patience taxing experience, and I would love to have a shiny new 3Ghz machine. Heck I'd love to have a dull old 1 GHz machine.
You dumbass. Try to correct somebody and you fuck it up worse. Million, not billion, before you open your mouth correcting other people know what your talking about. This is from
whatis.techtarget.com
It says:
megahertz
A megahertz (MHz or sometimes Mhz) is a million cycles of electromagnetic currency alternation per second and is used as a unit of measure for the "clock speed" of computer microprocessor. In designing computer bus architectures, the microprocessor speed is considered together with the potential speed or amount of data that can come into the computer from I/O devices in order to optimize overall computer performance.
The hertz as a unit of measure is named after Heinrich Hertz, German physicist.
Dumbass.
I've done it on a 300MHz PII. Takes about an hour and a half. Now, have you ever tried compiling KDE on a 2GHz proc? Takes about 6 hours...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Opteron's got a 128-bit path to RAM, the Athlon's just 64-bits to RAM. There'll probably some cache size differences too.
So, when's lunch?
Is that how many hertz it has? I still have a 333 and it works just fine. Can somebody tell me why I'd need a higher numbers of hertz?
... the chips are generally a little faster than the number would indicate. The actual chip probably runs at 2.5 GHz or so (my 2400+ MPs run at 2.0 GHz).
3000+ means its integer and floating point calculations are roughly on par with a 3000 MHz Intel P4. AMD has actually been quite good in being conservative with these numbers
As to why you would want a faster machine, well, that depends. If all you do is surf the net, read email, run gnucash to balance your checkbook, and do a little word processing then you're probably fine with what you have. If you have the misfortune of running Microsoft, you are quite possibly better off not upgrading, given those tasks.
If, on the other hand, you like to render animations using blender, povray, or what have you, or like to capture and convert video footage (cinelerra, kino, dvgrab, and transcode), or enjoy running an optimized, source based distribution such as Source Mage or Gentoo, then being able to compile your entire system, complete with open office, kde, mozilla, and so in in a few hours, rather than a few days, is kinda nice.
All that having been said, my firewall remains a Gentoo box on a k6, so older, slower hardware is by no means worthless with GNU/Linux around, even if the newer, sexier, faster hardware really shines under FreeBSD and Linux.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
2 words: The War
We don't how long this will last, or what the reprocursions will be. Until then you do you don't do much new.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Why pull the rug out from under the Barton Athlons when they are still making money and relatively competitive with Intel's cpu? Technology releas dates have as much to do with marketing as engineering...
love is just extroverted narcissism
"It has 3,000 MegaHertz, which means three billion cycles per second." Are you really this stupid? Mega means million Giga means billion There is no bigger tool than a belligerant dumbass.
Actually, AMD's "offical" line about their "model number" (performance rating) is that it is a comparison of their current processor to their previous offerings, not a comparison to equivalent P4's. Granted, we all know they're really comparing to a P4. I'm just stating their "offical" line.
KhyronHummmmmmm pad're, seems to me the PC revolution wuz built one-home-Lusr at a time. Singles got WAY ahead of any business curve, and that rush(?) worked for tons of obscure, tangled up reasons. Now, AMD figures they don't need it. I figure AMD will go broke.
AMD has been in business for years. They are doing something okay because they haven't been trampled by Intel. I prefer Intel processors, but I respect AMD for holding their position for so many years.
:)
Basically what I am trying to say is that AMD must have an inkling of what they are doing to make it this far. If they see a reason to hold back on the Athalon64 I believe there would be excellent reason for doing so. After all, you and I certainly are running a company worth $1.865 billion
I used to be a MS fan but then I was brainwashed. Now I see the Light. Mac OS X pwns u.
The Opteron's debut is set for April 22nd .
If the increase in performance makes it perform like a 3ghz P4, then thats how it should be marked
you are ignorant of CPU architechture. There in no direct conversion between relative speeds of different CPUs, saying "my 2 GHz CPU is as fast as your 3.2 GHz CPU" is meaningless because both CPUs perform differently at different tasks.
Every CPU I bought from my 386-40 to my Athlon 1400 was an AMD, my current CPU is my first intel in over 10 years. I would happily buy a 2 GHz AthlonXP. I will not buy a 3000+.
They say it'll be out in a month... my guess is you'll be able to by the first one off the production line when you get your Opteron and Duke Nukem Forever all on the same day.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Who is buying AMD server chips anyways ? AMD's market is the desktop world. I've never seen a serious shop that put high-end servers on AMD chips. They should concentrate on ensuring downward compatability for the general user and let the front side bus changes in the Opteron really show the perf boost without any software upgrade...
Actaully they said 1H 2003 after they said 4Q 2002 after they said 2001, etc...
Good lord, next thing you know nVidia is going to award a contract to BitBoys to make the next GeForce...ughh.
Just bomb Iraq already, I just don't care anymore...
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
I've had a Commodore 64 since 1984. And AMD is STILL not there?
When we need that extra little processing kick, we just turn it up to 64.
Why don't you just get a faster 32 bit processor?
Uhh...but ours goes to 64.
Hey wait, doesn't /. run on UNIX........
I used to be a MS fan but then I was brainwashed. Now I see the Light. Mac OS X pwns u.
A Japanese site has the new roadmap. It has all the information about what quarter the different chips will come out.
I once saw a bird fly upside down. I think the Devil did it. He probably forced AMD to push the release date back.
Yeah, the model numbers refer to previous AMD Athlons. It was originally the 1.4 GHz model, but they had to readjust the numbers when the Athlon XP came out (they added full SSE support) and then again when the revision B Athlon XP came out (lowered latencies, core redesign). The Bartons number have been readjusted again because it has slightly better IPC than previous gens.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Actually, 3000 MegaHertz is 3GigaHertz... or 3 Billion Cycles per second. If he'd said 3000 Billion Cycles per second, then your statement would be true. But in this case, you're the one who's not reading what he wrote correctly. And calling someone stupid and a dumbass is rather childish and immature, don't you think?
You know I would prefer them to wait and release a product when it works right as apposed to when Intel released the first P4s and they were slower than the P3s on the market. Plus these processors originally named sledgehammer and clawhammer will be a great addition to the multiple cpu community because they contain there own memory processors, so the woes of redundant work in multiple CPU systems will be reduced by not having to recache the memory constantly, like modern Xeon servers do. Plus don't you like the idea of your memory bandwidth actually increasing with each processor you install
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
2) I still support the underdog.
3) I want SSE2.
4) I want 64bit even though Mr. Ruinz doesn't seem to think people want such things.
5) No need to wait for MS, I've been planning to switch if I could ever get a good $^&(# 'puter.
Dual Opterons at 2GHz with AGP8x and I'm there. BTW that better NOT be 2000+
As for Athlon64, It better be 90nm and have dual core by September.
Dammit.
"Your 333 MHz box may be fine for simple Web browsing and email, but for the latest.....Instant Messaging clients, you should upgrade."
Wow. How fast do you type ?
Maybe it was the rumor-mongering of TheInquirer.net and The Register and all those other sites that had our hopes up, but this just seems like more bad news from a company that is losing further ground to Intel.
The way I see it, AMD has been the weasel ever since adopting the XP rating format. Suddenly a 2800+ is a 2083 MHz part instead of a 2250 MHz part?..because of 256K more L2? Where is that 2800+ anyway? I tried to get one at NewEgg and they didn't have any...
Now Athlon 64 gets delayed...and they still think they can compete with Intel, who has a huge headstart in the 64-bit race. AMD's put all their eggs in one basket and it's looking more and more like IA-64 will win by a TKO.
Hopefully AMD will miraculously survive. I hope good things come with IBM's desktop POWER4 derivative as well.
HyperThreading (as implemented by Intel...remember they didn't invent this idea) shares a single cache line among two virtual processors. This means if an application is cache hungry or doesn't play nice with HT, then it can monopolize the cache and starve the other threads. The P4 architecture revolves around a central idea: get as much data into the core as possible. That is why the cache size and bus speed changes with the P4 makes such a dramatic speed increase (as opposed to the Athlon). This is also why when there are HT problems, the speed drop can be terrible.
IBM passed on CMT (basically hyperthreading) due to these issues and decided on multicore/process level multiprocessing as more efficient.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Actually, the 3000+ means that the performance would be equal to an Original Athlon running at 3000Mhz. It has nothing to do with Intel's chips.
You're absoluytely correct, but then so is the original poster. 3000Mhz is the same as 3Ghz, and 3Ghz, let say it all together now, is 3 billion cycles per second!
I'm currently compiling OpenOffice on a 466 MHz Celeron. Takes about 30 hours...
I said some time ago and not a long time ago. A long time ago would have referred to the h1 03 announcement. If I said a really long time ago it would refer to the delay before that. Follow this pattern all the way back to the original product announcement on the design of the k8.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
parent is quite insightful!!! mod it up!!
This will be a marketing disaster for various sectors of the Desktop PC component business.
Namely, heat sink and cooling fan vendors are bound to see a substantial revenue drop.
Blue LED vendors and tricked-out-case-part vendors will likewise see a slump in the market.
Let's hope they can make it through to the Fall on continued sales of 'Yay! It's overcloxored!' stickers and decals. Word on the street is that the sticky adhesive on the present install base of stickers doesn't hold up to the humidity in a 'dank mom's-basement' environment so second and third sales will probably continue to roll in.
If you wait much longer, intel will wipe the floor with you...
Go full 64bit now & at least stand a chance!
Oh, and quit it with those rating numbers... Admin to having a 2.3Ghz processor instead of an XP3000+, ok?
Has anybody stopped to think about their memory controller here? The current design of the desktop version of their 64 bit chip, whatever it's being called these days, has a built in memory controller on the chip itself, eliminating the need for one in a north bridge. Great idea right? Wrong. Intel will soon be moving to a 800 mhz FSB, while AMD's brand spanking new chip will be stuck at 333. Not so good. So, my money says that they are holding off the chip until they can come out with a 400 or even 533 FSB/memory controller on chip. Until they can do that, Intel will kick their butts all over the place on the desktop.
AMD confirmed today that their new Athlon 64 will indeed be pushed back to September. Originally planned to be released in April or May, AMD has decided to include new technology to succeed their acclaimed 3DNOW! Instruction Set which at this time is being termed only as "NUKE'EMNOW!". Dirk Meyer, senior vice president of computational products at AMD stated that "upon consulting with 3DRealms we feel this move will ensure that the next generation of AMD processors will be able to run Duke Nukem Forever with far superior performance to any other product currently on the drawing boards". A spokesman for the Acme Toothpick company commented "Gee.... that's too bad"
I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
Hey, physics_genius isn't a troll, he/she's an idiot who attempts to troll poorly. Remember the parent you replied to was posted by someone who needs all the cpu he/she can get
Up against PowerPC 970...
I got tired of waiting, but didn't do anything for Intel, as their 64bit offering is $,$$$, not $$$. I plopped the bucks for an XP 2600+/333 and it's holding the page for now.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Is that how many hertz it has? I still have a 333 and it works just fine. Can somebody tell me why I'd need a higher numbers of hertz?
You're kidding, right? I mean, can anyone actually possess skills so lacking in both english and computer hardware?
Dear, Strong Bad!
Here is some little questions:
1. Has you some time play football?
2. How did you seen out when you was a baby?
3. How did you think you came's to seen out when you are wery old?
Viklas
Sweden
Good memory. Who is this?
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/amd-hammer-fam ily/
about opteron and athlon64
Does anyone have a link to any good articles relating to performance comparisons between 64-bit CPUs and 32-bit CPUs?
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
btw, what the heck's wrong with compilers these days? iirc good ol' tp used to do 10000s of lines of pascal in a minute on a 286.
does optimization really take that much or are they just coded with less performance in mind?
Quote (hometheaterhifi.com)
It takes both standard 24 fps IMAX features as well as 48 fps IMAX-HD® features (which run at a wicked speed of 673.2 feet per minute).
When the 286 was released, there were no protected mode operating systems for it. (Xenix came out a bit later, after the release).
When the 386 came out, there were no 32 bit operating systems. OS/2 was 286 protected mode (actually wasn't even out yet, just developing). Xenix was 16 bit.
Athlon64 has better support NOW than either of those did then. Waiting for MS to make them a custom operating system is just stuped. If they have a better reason, like internal timing or resources, fine. But don't let MS or XP-64 drive your product release. Let the customers use XP-32 or Linux-X8664.
Are you Autistic? Tell me about it.
I, too, have noticed wierd UI aspects disappearing and reappearing;
For example, I got moderator access, and saw such options on one of my own posts as what is appended below, with [edit] being buttons I could press. I decided not to touch it, not really understanding it.
Starting Score: 1 pt
Moderation +2
100% Inciteful
Extra 'Inciteful' Modifier 0 [Edit]
Karma-Bonus Modifier +1 [Edit]
Total Score: 4
Alien Bonus Round: 17
Alien Percentage: 34%
Total Bonus Score: 3400
Adjusted Gross Income from Line 2 14000
Automatic Deduction 3500
Net Gross Income [sub prev. 2 ] 10500
Dividends, Interest, and Savings 2200
Net Adjusted Gross Income 12700
What the heck is all this stuff anyhow? Is anyone supposed to be able to keep track of a worksheet this long? I mean -- there were about 8 different operations there. Or are they just trying to make me mess up, so that they can take all my hard-earned points, and lock me up in a little cell?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Actually, compiling XFree86, KDE, or the entire FreeBSD OS doesn't take all that long on a 333MHz box. It all comes down to time management: set it to do everything overnight (or overday) while you sleep. :)
Where having more CPU power comes into play is with real-time anything, image/audio/video editing, server apps, and games playing. Everything else runs fine on a P-166 MHz box.
It will be out in the fall as well. Plus IBM is using it as a Linux platform as well (in addition to the new line of Apple computers).
Mark my words (or not), the IBM PPC 970 will take over the market in the next 3-5 years (or not).
The king is dead, long live the king.
Can somebody tell me why I'd need a higher numbers of hertz?
:)
Well with the AMD 2000XP you get the added benefit that your computer can heat up your entire room.
You think I'm kidding?
to come up with a better name than "Opteron".
The World's Worst Webcomic!
If, on the other hand, you like to render animations using blender, povray, or what have you, or like to capture and convert video footage (cinelerra, kino, dvgrab, and transcode), or enjoy running an optimized, source based distribution such as Source Mage or Gentoo, then being able to compile your entire system, complete with open office, kde, mozilla, and so in in a few hours, rather than a few days, is kinda nice.
Let's say a "few" translates to "two," so you're talking about "two hours" vs. "two days." That's 2 hours vs. 48 hours, or a performance increase of 24x. Even if you last bought a PC in 1998 and you upgrade to an Athlon 64 you aren't going to see numbers anywhere near that.
My personal experience is that compile time roughly doubled after upgrading from an 866MHz P3 to a 2.4GHz P4. Upgrading beyond that is mostly noise, at least for the moment. If you could get a CPU that was easily 4-10x as fast as a P4 out of the box, then that would be something, but we're not seeing amazing jumps like that.
They had an Athlon64 machine running RedHat and an Athlon64 optimized version of UT2k3 running on it at the AMD Reality Check show in Dallas- they made a very big deal out of it, in fact. This fact was verified by Ryan Gordon (icculus), one of Epic's contractors doing the Linux specific work. They're not waiting for MS because the workstation market that the Athlon64 is intended to go into can run MS' offerings rather well (better than an XP machine...) and Linux already runs on it- the two most likely workstation OSes already run on it anyway.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
you are ignorant of CPU architechture
No, I'm using language that is appropriate for the context of the subject of which I'm speaking. AMD uses their "rating" as a measure for performance (they state vs previous generations of their own chip, "common knowledge" puts it vs the P4), I made no claims/comments about the _correctness_ of this use.
As for your claim, you are of course right and wrong. The chips are not SOOO different as to not be able to make some comparisions. E.G. a 2Ghz XP will kick a 1Ghz PIII in pretty much any type of metric you could come up with. Add to that the fact that they are designed to run the same (or nearly the same fp differences not withstanding) binaries, makes a comparison much more meaningful. Not 100% meaningful, but much more so than trying to compare say a 1.5ghz G4 vs a 2.5ghz P4.
I have NEVER bought an Intel based computer (well, as long as you don't count the iPSC and MindSet), and I WOULD buy a 3000+. If that cpu was at the price/performance point that I was looking for, why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't you? OR, was what you were really trying to say was that you would not pay a premium for a 3000+ vs say a 2800+, knowing that the improvements made to get it to that 3000+ level probably wouldn't translate into any meaningful performance gains in the real world?
I am not a computer engineer. I know however that there are in fact 256 bit processors. Why are computers moving to 64? Do we not have the ability to go straight to 128, or for that matter 1024 bit? Is there some serious technological holdup? Would it make compilers too complicated? What am I missing?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
hey man, that's some nice shit, if I could mod, I'd mod you up.
This space for rent, inquire within.
Who FUCKING cares? AMD is crap anyway. They support Palladium and all that DRM shit. Buy a (UNIX BASED haha) Mac and forget the goddamn Wintel architecture.
This opens up reason for other architectures. Hewlet Packard is selling Alpha hardware, yet at excessive and non-competitive prices. Sun Microsystems is selling UltraSparc hardware. IBM and Apple are selling PowerPC hardware. SGI is selling MIPS hardware. So many to choose from, and all of them support Linux and that means all applications running on Linux will run on all architectures!
I chose the Alpha platform. A 4-year-old Alpha, operating at a mere 500MHz, out-performs a Pentium3!! I suggest going to ebay.com and seach the TITLE AND DESCRIPTIONS for either "Alpha PWS", "21164", "21264", or "Compaq Alpha". Lots of good results. The "Miata" workstations are verry popular and verry fast. Alpha is limited to certain graphics hardware; Radeon 9000 is best you can get and some Alpha motherboards don't run well with the latest graphics hardware and you may be limited to those of only PCI-adapters.
*shrug* Guess I'll buy a faster XP to hold me over.
In Soviet Russia, CPUs delay YOU!
Yeah ok I'm lame for that, bite me, I'm bored.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Check into battle.net.
They can't maintane their servers. Battle.net, their "world-renowned" gaming arena, is always crashing.
Blizzard has better chances of making a profit, and releasing awesome technology, as a hotdog vendor in a strap-on sex-toys shop.
Anyone who uses the name of a processor as a statement of its performance obviously doesn't care for mundane scientific issues like comparative benchmarks.
Yeah - check out these moderations:
Moderation -1
40% Flamebait
20% Informative
20% Overrated
Looks like we have some new slashdot math: 40% + 20% + 20% = 100%! Woowoot!!!!
Whoever writes slash sux0rs...
Intel will soon be moving to a 800 mhz FSB, while AMD's brand spanking new chip will be stuck at 333.
I'm not buying that argument. I think you're forgetting that the FSB on current PCs needs to be higher than the memory bandwidth specifically because it will be transporting all memory accesses (DMA excluded). While a P4 FSB is effectively 533, it takes dual-channel RDRAM to completely fill that pipe. And the FSB must be shared among ALL things the CPU is accessing, including memory, PCI devices, and AGP.
The Athlon-64 and Opteron use a completely different FSB technology called HyperTransport. The bandwidth is smokin' (I forgot the exact figures atm, but I believe its in the 800-1.2G range), and it doesn't have to carry memory accesses, since that's built in. But, as previously mentioned, since each processor comes with its own crossbar memory controller, you're scaling memory bandwidth each time you scale processing power. On a 2-way system, if processor A needs to access memory B, it sends an HT request directly to B's memory controller and A keeps on chewing on whatever thread its on.
Oh, yeah. Not only that, but with the memory controller hanging off of the FSB (ala P4 & Athlon XP), all memory access has additional latency as the request traverses the external FSB. By integrating the memory controller, that bus is all on-chip and lightning fast.
The promise of really low-cost 64bit systems is what makes AMD interesting. Server chips traditionally have a poor cost/performance ratios; they are for premium priced systems that only cover a small fraction of the true server market. If Opteron systems end up being not much cheaper than Itanium systems, they aren't interesting at all as far as I'm concerned.
The XP model numbers do *not* indicate the equivalent Intel P4 processor speed.
The XP model numbers are a benchmark of how fast previous AMD non-XP processors would have to be clocked to provide the same performance.
..and it is because MS preloads a lot of the stuff (ie the office startup thing). Even if the office startup isn't loaded, you'll notice that Office apps start much quicker after you've opened them once, shut them down, and then opened them again. It believe it happens because MS simply kills the window, but keeps much of the code in memory so that future start-ups happen much more quickly. Conversely, this can adversely affect other apps that need to start up, since more mem is hogged by the office apps that aren't completely shut down.
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
[snip: about the limitations of the built in memory controller holdning the Athlon64 back]
AFAIK the Athlon64 memory controller can easely be bypassed by chipset manufactures. So Athlon64 and Opteron motherboards with RDRAM or 400MHz DDR are possible (though unlikely). Besides that 333MHz DDR memory is standard, the SIS 755 chipset support 800MHz FSB speeds. The "Athens" version of the Opteron will include onboard 400MHz DDR II support.
The biggest problem with the Athlon64 cpu is, that I can't buy one until september.
In the meantime I will drool over the system from www.newisys.com : dual Opteron, onboard PPC cpu running Linux; http, ssh, ssl for management, dual channel u320 scsi w/mirroring (LSI logic with ARM cpu?) hotswap drives, all packed in a 2U casing.
I heard from a guy on the inside that the numbering scheme was actually developed to compare with older model Athlons. The Pentium 4 comparison seemed to work out anyway, at least for older p4s.
Vote for Pedro
Well, for the most part, I agreed with you. Until about 3 months ago. I got my new company laptop upgrade (to a P4M 1.8.. damn thing is like a lap heater).
I am finding that several things I thought would run on my desktop 500Mhz box are way too slow... like the 640x480 Matrix Superbowl trailer, and lots of internal apps, too.
As you mention, compiles are a bitch, too... but I do this is all under windows... with, in my opinion, poorly coded apps (Visual C++ is a dog).
So why do we need a new PC these days? Because of crufty code. Poorly optimized POS software. The faster your rig, the more cruft it can handle while you do a similar amount of work.
I think Gates' Correllary to Moore's Law is soo right on the money: "Every 18 months, the speed of software halves"
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Please, mod parent to "Score:2, Troll"
This is indeed true! But the same goes for my older Athlon 1100 in the other corner of the server room I'm in now. The building's heating system failed a few weeks ago while temperatures were around 0 degrees outside. The whole building was extremely cold for a day, but not this small room. It contains 4 athlon-based servers and a workstation for admin tasks. I spent the whole day there basking in the heat these babies dissipated.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
i have been waiting for hammer for what seems to be an eternity. its getting old, hype it up, push it back, repeat.
how fast is this thing going to be? 3200+, wow, in september huh, thats great, i bet it stack up to a 3.6+Ghz P4 nicely...........
moores law saw computer processing speed/power doubles every 18 months. so i have to ask myself:
self, what speed were the chips that came out in april of 2002? and i say:
well self, i think they are 1800+ and 2Ghz (amd/intel)right? something like that.
so.. in september wouldnt you need a 3600+/4Ghz ? and if so, isnt intel going to be a bit closer to that than amd?
i am a current/former/something amd fanatic, i use their chips and i suggest their chips to my customers, but this may come to an end soon as the price/performance ratio is evenning out, and AMD can't seem to put out a chip this decade.
"Just bomb Iraq already, I just don't care anymore..."
Why not Israel too? They're just'as'much nuisance in the 'hood. Yet, I care, and I want peace.
wow, i just realized this, and not to rag on how "far behind the technology curve you are" (i have a 550 mhz powerbook, not much faster), but your processor is actually an order of magnitude slower than the fastest intel chip out there. i'd probably still be using my celeron 400 if i hadn't ESD'd my moboard, it still worked great for 99% of what i did. i feel old. nice troll.
moox. for a new generation.
AMD 2000XP? hell, we heated our 600 sq ft apartment with an AMD K6-2 300 and sony 17" monitor (TV/seti@home/fileserver box) this past winter. 18-36 degrees F for two weeks, kept the apartment at 68-75* (when the a/c came on). i'm not kidding.
moox. for a new generation.
Don't want to be off topic or anything like that, but does anyone have a clue how much these things will cost? I am currently drooling over the specs of these proccessors. And are these going to replace the Athlon MP?
OK, everyone is saying this but it makes absolutely no sense. Who in a purchasing decision right now is thinking "Gee, I'd like a processor but I'd really like to know how a classic Athlon 1.8Ghz would fare...". Absolutely ridiculous, and I'd say that anyone who bought into that line it snared hook line and sinker. The XP model number scheme came about specifically to counter Intel's insistence on using extremely high clockspeed processors, which could fool the public into thinking that was a real metric of overall performance. Hence we have AMD Athlons with a real clockspeed that many of us simply don't know, and a fairly good comparison when price shopping (i.e. the Athlon XP 2800+ and the P4 2.8Ghz).
The athlon xp 1800+ is a 1.53ghz part, not a 1.2.
And its much faster than a 1.8 p4 for my games. Office benchmarks are competive with a p4 2.4
To have the 64bit sweetness :p
How the hell does AMD expect to sell the Opterons without releasing Athlon 64? People would never have bought into Xeon without intel's name behind it. AMD's name is much better than it used to be these days, but you would (or possibly would not) be surprised at how many people are still pissed off at AMD over the K6. For those rare /. readers who got into computing in the post-K6 era, or for those who are just blissfully clueless, the big problem with the K6 (and K6/2) is that it only had 24 bits of floating point compared to intel's 32. A lot of software which depending on the register size was quite unhappy with this problem, which was fixed (IIRC) in the K6/3. By the time drivers and OS patches came out to properly support the K6/2, it was too late and everyone hated AMD.
So, enter athlon, a clear price:performance winner over P3; Athlon XP does the same thing to P4. AMD built up its good name again (Anyone remember the Am586? Fantastic chip. Their 386 and 386 likewise) and Athlons sold like proverbial hotcakes.
Now we have the 64 bit chip but AMD cannot sell things as easily as intel, that's just a fact. There is too much resistance to them. intel has become in a way a mini-IBM; The saying "No one ever got fired for buying ___" typically has "IBM" in the blank. Intel is the same way; It's expensive but they have the top name in PC processors/chipsets (their chipsets really are top-notch) so if you buy them you know at the worst you have an excuse. "But it's intel!"
AMD managed to slip a number of Athlon XP chips into the server market (and its slower little brother without SMP deliberately disabled, Athlon MP) but how is it going to do that with x86-64 if they don't have it on the desktop? My prediction is, Sledgehammer sales will be hurt by this -- though we'll unfortunately never know the truth. I don't think Sledgehammer will do well without Clawhammer paving the way for it on the desktop.
Meanwhile, I am absolutely not paying a premium for a server-class CPU (I was not willing to do Athlon MP for this reason; It's not like you can't hack XPs and use them multiprocessor, which means that AMD is being lame) so I bought a used 1.4 GHz thunderbird instead. Since my long-ago purchase of a K6/2 166 (I OC'd it to 180) I have only bought one new AMD processor in its time, an athlon 700. I refuse to buy anything new from them until they release Clawhammer, and I think a lot of people have the same opinion. It's not worth the insane price increase from thunderbird to... whatever Athlon XP is, I always forget -- just to get SSE/SSE2 and more cache. I got a whole 1.4 GHz tbird barebones system (case, mb, cpu) for the price of an Athlon XP cpu (only) at the same clock rate, since I got it used.
Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that there's enough geeks like me who refuse to upgrade to make a difference to AMD, which would mean that AMD doesn't have to give a shit about us. They have shown beyond any shadow of a doubt that they don't. Unfortunately, the only other choice is intel and I have sworn up and down that I will never buy another intel CPU for personal use. Maybe someday they will be the underdog and they'll be forced to pretend they care about their customers in the way that AMD used to pretend.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've compiled XFree86 on my K6-2/300 a couple of years ago
Ive tried it a few days ago. IT was nothing compared to open ofice which took at least a week. Too bad there are almost no binarries for FreeBSD.
The new Pentium 4 will have 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth and the Athlon 64 will have 2.7GB/s; looks like a pretty big difference.
"I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States of America "
...Would you like to know more?
Remember, service guarantees citizenship!
I have yet to see a firm definition of how the PR rating is defined currently (or ever). They've had two auditors at least doing it, Arthur Andersen first then PriceWaterhouseCoopers (I guess, no matter how much they like the integrity of the original auditor, when they go out of business you need to find the next best thing).
But for the life of me, I can't find a clear equation listed anywhere indicating what the input benchmarks are and how the final PR number is calculated. (Please reply with links if you can find it).
If I were a cynical fellow, I'd say that the PR rating is not (if it ever was) a real calculated measure of SOMETHING and not just a way for AMD marketing to say where they'd LIKE to position a cpu in the market against the other guys....
> > HT can increase performance a lot more than more cache
> I disagree with this, because page faults are are pretty expensive relative to a trip-up in a CPU pipeline.
Though if you have an HT system, the application you're using will only be taking up one half of the cache. Meanwhile, the system is sitting there, keeping hold of the other half (unless you have an actual other thread using it). (That's how the pentium HT works, btw -- the cache is split in half, one for each virtual processor). When you go to do a system task, such as switching windows, you might save a page fault due to the window manager, if all the info needed is sitting in the system's cache.
True, HT won't benefit most individual user applications, but it may make it quicker to switch between them.
I have not seen whether this is true in practice, however.
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
> HyperThreading (as implemented by Intel...remember they didn't invent this idea) shares a single cache line among two virtual processors.
Nope, the cache is actually split in half. Each virtual processor can access only its half.
> This is also why when there are HT problems, the speed drop can be terrible.
The main speed drop would be due to the smaller available cache size (per thread).
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
My birthday is February 10th!! Maybe they should give me a processor for waiting so stinking long for Athlon 64
Can you post a link to this? Granted they are primarily guesses at benchmarks but I believe IBM's strategy is to refresh the market with an IBM branded Linux SW/Hardware combination (probably running RedHat distro). It's kind of good for IBM and Apple.
Ain't compound interest cool?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Now loading 128MB of DLL's you probably will only need 2% of.
In fact, it should be "Now loading 11MB of DLL's, in which 5MB will be constantly used; however, it will take 10 seconds for your UDMA66 hard disk to load these things, because although unused parts of the DLLs aren't loaded into memory, they have to be seeked over anyway."
Even though I don't really need 64 bit, and don't plan on buying one any time soon, I can't wait for it to come out. When it does, it'll push the prices of the still really useful 32 bit machines into the absolute cellar. Imagine putting together a good 1.5GHz 32 bit machine for under $100. Fantastic!
It looks like MS couldn't get their 64Bit Windows going in April, they had to push it back to September and so does AMD...
Looks too fishy
Where ever you go, There you are
Incorrect! Hammer does not have traditional FSB, it has HyperTransport-link. That link is equivalent to 800MHz FSB. Where on earth did you get the idea that Hammer has 333MHz FSB??? Athlon XP has 333MHz FSB, but Hammer is NOT Athlon XP!
Or are you talking about speed of the RAM? In that case: Intel is not moving to 800MHz RAM, they are thinking about using 200MHz DDR-RAM, something that can also be used in the Hammer (according to AMD)
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Few things to remember:
1. CPU might be designed in such way that it does not need massive amounts of mem-bandwidth. Good example of this is Athlon XP and P4. P4 NEEDS LOTS of mem-bandwidth. Athlon XP does not need it as badly
2. Athlon 64 will have significantly lower latency and better utilization of the mem-bus since it goes straight in to the CPU, instead of through northbridge
3. Athlon 64 can use DDR400, giving it 3.2 gigs of bandwidth.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
A spokesman for the Acme Toothpick company commented "Gee.... that's too bad"
Damn, I've been trying to remember the name of the game that quote is from, but no luck. Pretty sure it began with a G...
Both Alan Cox and Linus Torvalds are uncircumcised due to socialized medicine's cost controls. That is why they should relinquish control to Stallman, who is properly cut, and therefore able to concentrate on the Linux kernel do to having a clean penis.
Typical Zionist propaganda. What a surprise that a son of the "Poor us, we wandered around the desert for a few years once and got killed by Zyklon this other time" race is at the forefront of the software-stealing fanatic community, a man universally recognized in the software community as self-centered and unpossessing of the most rudimentary ethics of intellectual property. Anyone who has walked within sixteen cubits of Mr. Stallberg could tell you that there simply isn't a chance, de-foreskinned or not, that his penis could be clean.
Yet fine Norseman Linus Torvalds and robust Briton Alan Cox, with cock uncut and nose unhooked, intimidate you.
Why do you think that is?
Circumcision should be recommended in every country, look how simple it is in this video. Hopefully everyone will choose this procedure, and maybe we can have a charity drive to raise money for Linus' and Alan's circumcision.
A full set of sex organs certainly doesn't seem to impair Linus or Alan from their kernel duties or personal lives; the Linux kernel is stable and strong, Linus is happily married with children, and although Cox doesn't talk about his personal life online, it is an open secret in the software community that he is a practicing homosexual. RMS, conversely, has no sexual prospects and has the GNU Hurd project to lay claim to (along with its record of 15 straight years in development without producing a working kernel).
I think your personal stake in Jewry has clouded your judgement.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
Apparently, I'm thinking of the ram it's compatible with. From everything I've read, it will only work with DDR 333 when it launches, putting it far behind the P4 already. Granted, it may be dual channel DDR (if we're lucky), but I don't think the current design works with dual channel DDR yet, but who knows what they have cooking in the labs. I realize Hypertransport is being utilized in the new hammer line, and I do also realize we're not talking about the XP here.
Athlon 64 has 64bit memory-bus, Opteron has 128bit memory-bus. In fact, if you have multiple CPU's (for example two), the memory-bandwidth increases accordingly (in case of two CPU's it has 256bit memory-bus), thanks to NUMA (Each CPU has it's own 128bit bus to it's memory, but it can also use the other CPU's memory).
Officially Athlon64 (and Opteron) only supports DDR333, but according to AMD it's not difficult to use DDR400 instead. They just don't officially support it. It's the same thing as in overclocking. Intel and AMD use certain FSB-speeds, but it's not difficult to increase the FSB-speed-
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Let's say a "few" translates to "two," so you're talking about "two hours" vs. "two days."
"Few" in general parlence refers to greater than two, with an ambiguous upper bound. While few could, according to Merriem-Webster, refer to 'two' items (according to other dictionaries it does not), it is virtually never used in the written or spoken language to refer to less than three.
Furthermore, the assumption you make appears grossly intended to exaggerate what was a truthful statement in order to imply it was not.
On my Dual Athlon 2400+ MP it takes between 8 and 10 hours to compile my usual installation. On a Pentium machine I have the same copilation took approximately 5 days, on a PII/333 it took a good 3 and a half days.
Obviously CPU speed isn't the only factor. The Pentiums has a scant 64-128 MB of memory while the Dual Athlon has 1 GB of memory, the Pentiums are single processor machines, while the Athlon is dual processor, and so on. However, the real world use of the machines does in fact support a performance increase of 5-12x, which is significant.
OTOH my dual Athlons vs. my dual PIII 1GHz boxes, both with 1 GB of memory, shows the 2400+ machines compiling code in aboout 8 hours which takes the dual PIII boxes about a day and a half. So even there, I'm seeing a speed increase of 3-4x in real world (non-benchmarked) usage, at least with respect to initial system compilation and installation.
All of this is done with Gentoo 1.4-rc2, using gcc 3.2.x
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse,
what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
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