Slashdot Mirror
AMD's Next Generation Processor Technology
Esekla writes "AMD has released info about their upcoming processor technology. The press release claims that they're producing circuits that run 30% faster than any other published benchmarks using "Fully Depleted" Silicon-on-Insulator and AMD's metal gating technology and actually has a good bit of technical detail for a press release."
I'm not a process guy, so could someone explain why they're claiming metal gates are better? I was under the impresson that metal gates were more compatable with high-k gate oxides, but I didn't see any mention of non-SiO2 dielectrics. And on that note, does anyone know if AMD is trying out any low-k dielectrics for the interconnect?
I also noticed that one of the lines in the slide said something to the effect of, "Mesa isolation was used to keep things simple". Does this mean that they just did that for the one test wafer to keep things easy, but it'll be no problem once we get the process into production? Or are we talking about something that's still many years in the future?
Yay!
"Emerging research shows that SOI and Strained-Silicon can be integrated within the same fabrication process to achieve additive benefits."
So, 30-35% faster + 20-25% faster.
Mmmm...
this benchmark improvement thing rings a bell.
XD
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
Compile times for programs, and render times for graphics are steadily getting better, which means they finish projects faster, and have more developed social lives.
Which brings me to an interesting question. Is this true:
Faster CPU's = More free time for 'Working' Nerds?
it seems to work in my circle of friends, but is it a 'universal' truth?
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
It's been my experience that people expect you to be able to do more. Work twice as fast? They want twice the output.
I work in the 3D department of a television production studio, and the better the equipment we get, the more demanding the clients are. Often enough it's even worse - we might show a new feature we couldn't do before because the rendering times would be too long, but instead of taking 3 or 4 times the amount it would have, the new hardware brings it to 1.5 or 2 - it still takes longer, it's just that now we can do it.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
...nowadays I think that the last component of a PC which needs speeding up is the CPU. Many other components act as a brake on the real-world efficiency of systems; one particularly close to my heart is the cache size. Most computational problems which I come across are too large to fit in less than 2 Mb; therefore, on processors which have a much lower clock speed than x86 offerings, but a much larger cache, I get much better results. The Sparc III series is a good example; the clock speed is around 500Mhz (maybe higher on more recent versions), but the 4 Mb instruction cache & 4 Mb data cache (IIRC) mean that the sort of numerical problems I solve can fly. Of course, it could be argued that this is due to the superiority of the SPARC architecture over x86, but you get my point.
I'd be interested to try out one of the new Pentium M processors (as found on Centrino platforms); I understand they have 1 Mb caches, and this may give them quite a performance boost for numerically-intenstive stuff.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I've got a Computer Shopper in front of me from 1993. On the cover is a reasonably high-end system, for 1500 bucks. Today, one can buy a reasonably high-end system for 1500 bucks.
At the time, it took a couple of minutes for windows to boot, on a 486-33. Today, it takes a couple of minutes for Windows to boot, on say a 1.6 GHz P4. Yes, it's doing a lot more, but it's taking just as long as it did a decade ago.
I probably need to crack my physics books for this, but I thought the work function of a metal was the amount of energy needed to free and electron from the metal (a la, the photo-electric effect). So I don't see how that could possibly have an affect on the transistor action. Any physics students out there?
But getting away from the made-up benchmark, everybody in the computer industry is targeting those two groups right now: big servers and gamers. Those are the only two places where the industry actually makes any money. Gamers are the idiots who will pay $500 to get 10fps more in Quake, and businesses can afford to spend $50k (or more) on a single computer.
This shouldn't surprise anyone, though, because it's the way technology usually works. One or two interested groups spend obscene amounts of money on something that nobody else cares about. They make incredible advances, which go largely unnoticed, and then five years later people start seeing ways to apply the "useless" technology to all sorts of different things. The space program would be a good example of this. All sorts of objects we use every day owe their existence to the space program, which people continue to criticize as a waste of money. Sure, maybe the space shuttle doesn't do me any direct good, but the technology we came up with in building it sure does. The processor race works in a similar way. As CPUs get faster, software can add more and more useful features without impacting the performance of existing ones. Of course, some of those features are an annoying waste, but we still get a few good ones out of it.
And do some video editing (esp. compressing it to MPEG-2 or DivX)
You'll change your tune.
With some of the more advanced video compression algorithms (DivX for example - Yes it has legit uses, great for distributing home videos to relatives.), a 10% increase in CPU speed can mean an hour or two off of your compression time.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Well, they are slightly evil... I think the Rambus Saga a while back showed that pretty well.
They force expensive, unwanted, patented tech. on the public, that isn't any better than DDR, and through their lecinsing programs, they prevent any 3rd parties from doing so.
I don't think Intel needs to be "defeated" per-se, but they could sure use some stronger competition, so they can't pull crap like that again, and screw over consumer.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's nice to see AMD, IBM, and Apple working together to defeat Intel.
Yes, lets all pray that Intel is defeated so that we have a different company that has a monopoly on mainstream microprocessors. Therefore, the existing competition that has driven down the cost of microprocessors, will disappear.
Rip on them all you want, but overall, Intel has been good for the mainstream computer industry. They generally participate in standards groups and for the most part, have an open architecture. Otherwise AMD wouldn't have a compatible chip. Yes, I realize that Intel fought this and would love to have a monopoly on x86 chips. But with the way the chips have fallen (no pun intended), they don't have this monopoly.
Intel has also generally given Linux more support than AMD has. Remember the AGP cache coherence bug on the Athlon? AMD reported the problem to Microsoft nearly immediately with a fix that appeared in Win2k SP1. However they didn't even take the time to send an e-mail to the Linux kernel mailing list and the problem wasn't discovered nor fixed for another year and a half. Anyone remember weird crashes when playing TuxRacer and an AGP card with an Athlon T-bird? I do.
And lets not forget that Jerry Sanders, the CEO (or former CEO) of AMD, supported Microsoft in the anti-trust case.
Like it or not, they are both businesses. However AMD is no more "friendly" than Intel is.
People have been saying we don't need more processing power for years. I used to say the same thing until someone asked me a simple question. Can your computer run quake2 and encode video at the same time? This was a few years ago =). Well tell me can your 800Mhz processor do complex interactive graphics and something else intensive at the same time. No it can't even with the best video card in existance. So we need more processing power. There is always going to be a need for more processing power. Even if your only going to be surfing the web your computer is going to need more processing power because we have no idea what technologies are going to be imbedded into your web browser in ten years.
As of today a 2.4Ghz is not fast enough for some of the work I do. Often times I have to start some work and leave my computer alone since I can't even use a simple text editor like 'vi' because my system doesn't have the resources.
If you've worked with vortex tubes before (I have) you'll know that they are NOISY. That's because you have to pump air in at certain velocity/psi to get the desired cooling effect. It's useful to use as air cooling of processors (We use it in our labs), but water cooling is much better because water absorbs heat faster, and is quieter. Of course, you have problems with leak-testing, etc. All part of the usual engineering tradeoffs.