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AMD Opteron Due In April
updog writes "Here's an article from Infoworld claiming that the new 64-bit AMD Opteron is ready to launch on April 22. Some of the notable features of the new chip are an address space capable of addressing up to 1 Terabyte of memory, the ability to link up to 8 processors without any external chips, and backwards compatibility with existing 32-bit applications ..." PapaFSmurf, meanwhile, links to a disclaimer-heavy article posted at amdboard.com which says that 64-bit Athlons may arrive in June rather than September as previously expected.
Barton isn't enough to keep AMD going against Intel until Sept. Simply not gonna happen, and I think they have seen that coming and are trying to head it off by launching the Athlon64 closer to its originally planned release.
Once the Athlon64 is available and people are building systems using it, AMD just stole back the "King of PC processors" title and in a BIG way.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Affordable x86 64-bit servers for the masses, this is going to revitalize AMD and really put it on the map as a serious challenger to Intel. I hope Chipzilla wakes up and sees that its incredibly expensive and backwards-incompatible Itanic 2 chips are the result of engineers developing for themselves instead of developing for the needs of their customers. Finally, AMD will be able to court the high profit business market, though I fear that they might alienate their hardcore enthusiast consumers in the process...
Actually, more people than you'd think. Most modern processors are limited to a 4 GB address space and one has to "hack" around this limitation to achieve larger spaces. The reason why I say more people than you'd think is that the 1 TB space would allow one to map any location on the largest hard drives available today to a virtual memory location. There would be a *tremendous* performance boost in doing this as opposed to other contemporary file management schemes.
The big question is whether or not Palladium will be built into this chip. Anyone know?
The width of the machine is not the number of threads it's able to run at a given time (SMT like P4), but the number of instructions you can execute in a cycle (in a parallel fashion, of course). The difference between x86 and Itanium is that on Itanium the instructions are "explicitly parallel", i.e. the compiler bundles instructions together and the processor knows it can execute them in parallel, while on x86 the processor is smarter and determines itself which
micro-ops (actually it's rops for AMD) it can execute in parallel.
You're very likely going to see speedups on 32 bit code, simply because Opteron is twice as wide as P4 (and this has nothing to do with the size of the operands, which probably is not going to matter as much).
As far as the 64 apps are concerned - Linux already runs on it.
The Raven
I compiled everything from source for my Alpha, not one problem with 64-bit cleanliness. That was a problem in the early 90s. There are enough 64-bit chips around now, that every serious application has been compiled on one at some time.
GCC is already ready for the Hammer chips. If compiling for x86-64 you get code generated that can make use of mmx, mmxext, 3dnow, 3dnowext, sse, and sse2. It actually prefers those instructions over the old x87 functions by default.
I've heard that the Hammer is 2.5 times faster per clock than the lastest Athlons in 32-bit mode, and faster still in 64.
I WILL be building a machine around 2 of these chips as soon as the first Tyan board ships with PCI-X slots.
Opteron is AMD's first real entry into the server market. AthlonMP was never truly meant for anything other than workstations or very low level entry servers. Itanium is Intel's offering for very strong, high performance servers. Their Xeon chip is the high-end workstation to mid-range server chip. All indications are that AMD will be targetting low to mid range servers with the Opteron.
Intel's point is that they don't believe anything other than high-end servers will use 64-bit chips effectively. AMD's point is that anyone can use whatever they like. A dual Opteron with 2MB L2 will most likely be targetted against dual Xeon machines. AMD will try to offer a better price point and the ability to run 64-bit applications to potential customers in their attempt to win partners. The launch of the Opteron had best go off MUCH better than the launch of the AthlonMP if AMD hopes to make it in the server business. Already weary of new products, big businesses will be looking for any excuse not to go with an Opteron. Even Intel has trouble convincing long-time customers to invest in new products, as evidenced by their dismal Itanium 1 launch. If the chipset and board problems we saw in the Tyan AthlonMPs creep up in any of the Opteron boards, AMD's cash cow will be seen in the business community as little more than the 'roo meat at McD's. That, potentially, could end up being the nail in AMD's coffin.
They have a lot riding on this launch, so let's all hope it goes off without a hitch. If it does, I think Xeon processors will be collecting dust within a year's time while Opterons slowly replace what's currently in the workplace. In very, very few circumstances will a company look at Opterons as an alternative for Itaniums. In terms of performance? Who knows; we haven't see benchmarks on production Opterons yet. If it's everything we're told it is, it may very well outperform the Itanium 2s vis-a-vis.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."