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AMD64 Preview
Araxen writes "Over at Anandtech.com they have an interesting preview of AMD's 64 bit processor on a Nforce3 mobo. The results are very impressive with the Anthlon64 beating out Intel's P4 best processor soundly in their gaming benchmarks. This was only in 32-bit mode no less! I can't wait for 64-bit benchmarks come out!"
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I wonder what Intel has on the way to counter this?
~S
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Here's to a long and bloody war, hopefully leaving plenty of innocent Israelis dead.
I just wonder if it can compete with the Intel x86-64 line of processors.
Huh? As far as is publically known, there is no such line of processors.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Intel's IA-64 emulates 32-bit unlike AMD's 64-bit chips which have 32-bit hardware. So we can expect AMD to beat Intel easily in 32-bit stuff.
64-bit would be Intels own turf and we can expect Intel to be quite competitive against AMD there. I think the benchmark results would be quite close.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I hope this means AMD will be able to compete on the high-end again. If I had a choice I won't buy intel.
The benchmarks are from a 2ghz Opteron, not an Athlon 64. It is intended to give an example of the performance from the new chip. Unfortunately, upon introduction, only the Athlon FX, running on ECC memory will be capable of using dual-channel memory. And from what I've heard, this cpu will cost in the vicinity of $600+. The first non-ECC dual-channel platform will be introduced in 2004.
Anandtech is only comparing single processor Opteron performance against everything else, no infact, Athlon64 performance. The primary difference is that the Opteron has a dual channel memory subsystem, whereas the Athlon64 has a single channel system. This difference will have an affect on performance.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I thought they were finally dropping that Performance Rating garbage...
Anyway, beware the AMD64 line. They have announced physical packaging changes scheduled about every 4 months until 2005. Read: buy a new motherboard to upgrade because there is no upgrade for the chips you'll be buying soon.
AMD is really screwing over the customer by not intoducing the chips in the packaging they know they will be using 2 packages from now.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
That's what happens when you combine Weapons of Mass Destruction with electronics.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
When are some of these newer processors going to implement the executable permissions bit in the MMU so that the STACK can be NON-EXECUTABLE (ok I know some trampoline stuff needs executable stacks, well they can ask for it where needed by setting the executable bit for a small region)
And when are some of these new processors going to be fully virtualizable? I'm talking about PUSHF and POPF generating exceptions like directly setting the interrupt flag does.
Think how easy plex86 would be to run on a processor that did this properly?
Code-morphing Transmeta (come one!), AMD (maybe?) Intel (no chance?)
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Intel doesn't have an x86-64 line of processors. They have an IA64 line of processors.
The two apparently aren't interchangable. There's a coming battle in which software companies have to choose between the two, or support both, which would be tough on both them and consumers.
Apparently, AMD's x86-64 set is easier to deal with, and more of a natural progression from where the processors are now. (It also apparently runs 32-bit code at rates comparable to 32-bit chips at the same clock speed.) Intel's IA-64 is a total reworking, and a bitch to work with, from what I've read.
In the end, it seems like the smart choice would be for everybody to toss their hat in with x86-64 (which means Intel would have to, as well, and essentially concede defeat and lose face); it probably won't happen, though, because Intel is Intel.
Check out this article at the Inquirer, which I've basically just paraphrased, but it does go into some interesting Windows 64 dealings.
Before anybody starts talking about how little 64bit cpu's actually increase performance, let me tell everyone what 64 bit mode will actually bring to the table over the Opteron/Athlon64 32 bit modes:
1) more registers. This will get us fair performance increase from the start, as compilers will have more registers to work with when doing calculations on multiple pieces of data.
2) support for larger system memory sizes. This won't help you in video games, but it will help you doing high end photoshop, and other applications (provided you spend the money to get more memory put into your system)
3) native operations on 64 bit data. Typically, when someone wants to do operations on a 64 bit integer in a 32 bit CPU, you have to split up the work in software. Now with 64 bit registers, you will be able to do operations on 64 bit integers in the same time as it takes to do the same operation on a 32 bit integer.
4) when using native 64 bit mode, certain legacy instructions of x86-32 are depreciated. This is a cleanup for the x86 ISA, which in the past has contained literaly EVERYTHING that the previous generation of CPU supported. AMD's x86-64 ISA eliminates these legacy features and moves them into firmware emulation (don't worry, it won't degrade any modern 32 bit code, just terribly outdated stuff from the 386 days, which doesn't need 2GHz of power in the first place)
On top of these performance enhancements that 64 bit mode brings you, you get all of this just because you are using AMD's Opteron/Athlon64 CPU:
1) Dual channel DDR Memory interface, with memory controller on the die of the CPU. This reduces latency and improves memory bandwidth so dramatically that even Intel's off die memory controller can't keep up (this is why video games are so much faster on the amd64 platform than on athlon-32 platform)
2) HyperTransport bus to the south bridge, which will give high bandwidth access to the PCI bus, PCI-X, and other IO intensive controllers. Eventually AGP slots will be phased out for PCI-X slots which will be universal for both video, and other devices.
3) when using multiple CPU's in the same system, the new AMD-64 platform gives you dedicated memory bandwidth to each CPU installed. On the intel and athlon-32 platforms, all the CPU's in the system shared the same memory controller which runs either single or dual channel DDR anywhere from 266MHz - 400MHz.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Prescott with PNI new instructions, 1Mb L2 cache clocking up to 4GHz and beyond, 800MHz front side bus and increased software support for Hyperthreading. (eg. 2.6.x Linux kernels know how to do HT scheduling much more efficiently)
Watch the Xmas benchmarks, that's when it matters...
This was only in 32-bit mode no less! I can't wait for 64-bit benchmarks come out!
The above seems to imply that game benchmark results will be better at 64-bit. Now, if those games needed access to many gigabytes of game data, that would be an entirely correct assumption.
Apart from the utter pointlessness of 64-bit gaming for the coming years because of the comparatively humble data requirements of current games, a benchmark of 64-bit gaming performance (say, its 3D calculation or its AI plotting performance) would be mostly a waste of time, as you would see very likely only see an equalling performance at best.
JeR
or so says Ars Technica. In addition most of the initial shipments will go to motherboard manufacturers for bundling with their boards. I really don't like the idea of that becoming common practice as that much purchasing power will mean tight pricing controlls. Read more Here.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
There is good opportunity right now for some site to stand apart from the crowd by doing a real review on a 64-bit version of linux. Does anyone know of any out there?
The lack of a bit-banging AMD compiler has kept me away from AMD CPUs all the time.
BOO! TERRO
Duncan3 is another Intel troller. AMD has not announced any of these speculated pin griddings so far. They're just pulling this stuff out of the hat to discredit a system that isn't even out yet.
Let's just leave the speculation and stick to the facts when the CPU comes out.
Just to set some things straight:
- Itanium, Intel's 64-bit chip, uses a totally different architecture (EPIC) from the current Pentium x86 line of chips. This architecture is NOT compatible with x86, so that effectively you need a recompile for existing software work on Itanium. There is an EMULATION mode for x86 in Itanium, which is absolutely unusable according to various sources on the Net. You will DEFINITELY not want to run a game on it. Finally, prices for a low-end 1.0Ghz Itanium chip start at approx $800.
- AMD's Opteron/Athlon64 chips are compatible with everything you are running right now at 32 bits. You can install a complete 32-bit operating system in it, and everything will run just as today, albeit a little bit faster. There is no need for an "emulator". And, of course, you can already use Linux at full-64 bits, available from SuSe, RedHat and Mandrake. Also, Microsoft will release a 64-bit version of XP at the end of the year.
Marcos
While true, isn't the whole point of this "preview" to demonstrate the true Athlon64 performance without breaking the NDA by actually publishing Athlon64 benchmarks?
I'm guessing they have access to Athlon64 hardware, and simply "tweaked" the Opteron until ut produced similar enough results to be published as a "preview" -- Since those can be published. It's almost a little like what AMD did with their PR rating, which is officially based on the Thunderbird line, but everyone compare it to the P4 core freq. instead.
But yes, we have no idea of knowing how accurate these results reflect the final Athlon64 3200+ or whatever model they're previewing (am I the only person who got several pages without content in the preview?)
(everything above is pure conjecture)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Of course, you can buy a dual-Opteron or even a quad-Opteron TODAY if you want, or you can wait until late this year to buy a Prescott system, which is not 64-bits nor multi-processing.
By the way, did you know Prescott, along with its mobile version Dothan, was delayed because it was dissipating almost 103 watts? For the record, Opteron is dissipating about 60 watts.
Marcos
Another preview? We've been seeing bloody previews for the last two freaking years. Wake me up when it hits the shelves in volume and has broad based software support for 64 bit mode.
All I get for the benchmarks results are a bunch of grey boxes. I guess it doesn't matter to most of you hypocritical linux zealots who actually use windows.
All that, and in time for yule?! That's almost too good to be true.
Oh, wait.. it is too good to be true.
PS. "PNI new instructions" is redundant. Go play with your "CD compact discs"
This was Athlon64 vs Pentium4... A Pentium 4 doesn't emulate 32 bit mode either.
Really? Link me to a quad-Opteron mobo...
BOO! TERRO
GamePC is running a first look of Windows XP 64bit edition for the AMD64 (x86-64) architecture.
Appro 4U Quad Opteron Server. That ought to contain one, don't you think?
http://www.newisys.com/products/4300.html
/A Coward
Might be a start...
Well here's a Quad-Opteron System from Polywell, its not a mobo, but the parent mentioned being able to buy a system not a mobo.
http://www.tempestcomputers.com/amd/jetstream-q4uo -rs/product-details.htmm /quad-opteron-server.htm/ hn08290202.html
http://www.opteronics.co
http://www.amdboard.com
Or will the Opteron not affect Intel prices?
What an annoying page..
I turn off Flash to squelch their highly annoying
animated ads and none of their graphs show up.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
when using native 64 bit mode, certain legacy instructions of x86-32 are depreciated.
Interesting. What method of depreciation will be used? I've searched on the net for opcode depreciation, and I can't see any straight-line depreciation methods or even accelerated cost recovery systems that would apply here.
Yet, none of these were mobos and as far as I could see the amdboard.com ad was not even a finalized product.
BOO! TERRO
I'm looking forward to see vis-a-vis comparison on programs that is optimized on either platform. For example: A program that is optimized on Itanium and Opteron and see how they fare.
"Programs" such as FreeBSD, Linux, or Windows 2003?
AGP will be phased out for the advent of PCI Express, which isn't the same as PCI-X.
The parent of your original post talked about getting a quad-opteron system today in compairason to getting a prescott system which will not be available for a while. You attempt to shift the argument to the availablity of quad mobos is an attempt to change the subject to the availability of a niche product (most people buy quad systems not build them), i might as well ask you to prove that 8-way Xeons are available for purchase yet only accept proof in the form of a readily purchaseable 8-way Xeon mobo while disregarding any purchaseable OEM systems.
"The sad thing is I understood everything you just said.
My God, I *am* a geek."
No! The sad thing is you will not be able to pass that on.
If I wasn't redundant and just said, what fraction of /. do you think knows what PNI is?
I never bothered re-installing shockwave, because all it ever does is make advertising more obnoxious.
Is there a good reason why the benchmark graphics are in flash format?
So even for programs that don't need to use 64 bit math, moving them to the x86-64 platform can speed them up. It won't improve your typing speed in Word, but it can probably speed up most if not all your games if they are simply recompiled.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Basically, you're saying that this is an important incremental improvement over previous x86 processors. Which describes every new x86 processor right back to the 8088. So you have to ask: why did Intel abandon the incremental approach with the Itanium? It's locked them in as the dominant CPU maker since forever.
...when did they come out with Anthlon64's? I want one.
Now the relationship between AMD and Intel may be reversed. Of course, Intel doesn't have a second-source contract for the Athlon64. But what they do have is a non-backward-compatible 64-bit chip that cost a bundle to develop -- and that nobody seems to want.
Probably the corporate politics. Intel has sunk a lot of money and time into the Itanium architecture, almost a decade's worth.
I'm sure they have plan B's along the lines of AMD's approach, they just don't want to undercut the official stance of "everyone recompile for EPIC".
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Their site hasn't been /.ed yet! These new processors must really work!
Perhaps somebody was bored with the whole Pentium architecture.
10-15 years ago, everyone else in the industry thought x86 was a dead end. Massive amounts of investement poured into RISC alternatives like Alpha and PPC.
Perhaps Intel believed the conventional wisdom and felt they had to eventually drop x86.
S'troll.
We have sold a Quad Opteron system. So they do exist and work quite well. You can only buy them with chassis like this. The one we sold went for about $20k US and only had one HDD
Normal people worry me!
PNI="multiple penis instruction set" ?
Most of the slashdotters already pointed out the other important stuff...
But I'd like to point out that the Itanium will not be competition for the Opteron in most cases. Itaniums are super expensive chips that run on servers and are totaly incompatible with x86 (32 bits or 64 bits) software unless it's in emulation mode in which it runs very slowly. If you were to run Itanium on x86 software then more then likely the opterons would easily win anyway.
Hmmm... Pie...
Good point. Too bad you posted as an AC, so nobody'll see it.
you can get a p4 with ht for around $160-180, look for a 2.6ghz with 800mhz fsb.
causing hit counters to go up artificially just to see 'next page' drives me nuts!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
While you're waiting for those 64-bit benchmarks, why don't you take some evening classes in ENGLISH?
So? Sounds like a good reason to delay a product.
SuSE demonstrated Quake III on its SLE8 for AMD64 over a year ago. http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/server/sl es/index.html
And conventional wisdom was correct. They just underestimated the power of the entrenched software library. Intel processors since the Pentium Pro have basically been RISC cores with a x86->RISC translator in front. This allows them to ramp up the speed of the core, even change core architectures while still running all the old code. It costs at the fairly small cost of the gates needed for the translation frontend. It has another advantage in that CISC operations take up less room in cache so you get much better utilization out of your expensive cache resources. Intel started the Itanium project for two reasons, HP needed a new flagship chip and they are a large enough customer to sway Intel, and two they were tired of Cyrix and AMD copying their designs so they were going to make a tightly controlled architecture where EVERYTHING was covered by patents and copyright, that way they thought they could have the whole pie to themselves. What they didn't realize is that while they are a big player the only reason people keep using their chips is that they have maintained that backwards compatability path, throw that away and Intel is just another chip maker and others like IBM, Motorolla, etc may look better.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Quoting the AMD64 Architecture Programmer's Manual Volume 2: System Programming:
"The NX bit in the page-translation tables specifies whether instructions can be executed from the page."
So non-executable pages are already present in AMD64.
I for one would welcome our AMD overlords.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
/* cc -g -o prog prog.c */
;
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
unsigned long long barf = 0;
unsigned long long foob;
for(;;)
{
foob = barf;
barf++;
if((barf-foob)!=1)
{
fprintf(stderr,"barf=%llX,foob=%llX\n",barf,foob)
exit(-1);
}
}
}
If the AMD64 version of Windows XP 64-Bit is as stripped down as the current Intel version... then don't bother considering what performance would be like there anyway... check here for a list of things *NOT* included in XP 64-bit:
l t. asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prka_ fea_tfiu.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/defau
But I guess we can do without features like Media Player, POSIX Compliance, Power Management, Windows Installer, and more... I guess..... just to have a 64-bit OS...
-- If it ain't broke - overclock it more.
it looks like intel is the only one left playing the GHz game, both AMD and Apple/IBM are getting better performance at lower clock rates !
This is very interesting seeing that intel always says you need a higher clock rater for better performance, nice to see that every one is proving them wrong !
- MOSKIE
not only then. the x86 architecture was a laughing stock from day 1. compliments to intel for eventually turning it into something almost useful. but intel finally came to realize that the only reason the architecture survived so long is the backward compatibility required because of binary release only software. with open source the architecture would be long where it belongs: in the dustbins of history
so far i had only one brief look at the opteron architecture, but my impression was that is is basically two CPUs on one chip (a pentium and the 64 bit processor) which from the register architecture are only remotely similar (i didn't check the instruction set). this is something that intel at least in theory should be able to do with the itanic as well (though afaik the itanic has a very high transistor count that might make it difficult)
Massive amounts of investement poured into RISC alternatives like Alpha and PPC.
the power pc development started almost 20 years ago (iirc, the RS6000 was released around 1990). sparc and mips preceeded it. motorola had the 88000 some time in the late 80s. and with similar clock speeds they tended to beat x86 machines easily in speed.
In Windows, you only get 2 GB of address space for your process (WinXP & expensive Win2K Server versions can give 3 GB, which helps). Into this address space is loaded your executable code (including all system DLLs) and your stack (by default 1 MB of address space is reserved for every thread), and these tend to be scattered around a bit, which breaks up the available address range considerably.
Now if your app needs to allocate large (200+ MB) areas of memory, how many of those do you think you can get from a 2 GB RAM machine? Not enough :-) In fact you may find that as little as 50-60% of your available RAM can be allocated into large chunks, and all the rest is only available as countless smaller fragments. The larger the contiguous RAM blocks you want, the less of them you can allocate.
With a 64 bit CPU, there's no more problem. The MMU can map scattered pages of your available physical RAM to any contiguous section of the massive 64 bit address range, and you can utilise all the RAM you have in any size chunk you wish :-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
You really are a shit-for-brains aren't you?
./.
If there are no quad-opteron motherboards, what do you think are inside those systems? Quad Xenon motherboards? Two dual-opterons with a cable between the motherboards connecting up their respective hyptertransport buses?
Go home and practice that self-fellatio in private, because we sure don't need to see it here on
By the way, did you know Prescott, along with its mobile version Dothan, was delayed because it was dissipating almost 103 watts? For the record, Opteron is dissipating about 60 watts.
I think this is where Intel went wrong with the PIV. Sure, the processor may scale to high frequencies, but the power usage increases exponentially (~n^2) with it. AMD is doing more with less, and they simply can't keep pushing up the watts, it's bad for power bill but most of all because of all the noisy cooling. If they don't want to start water-cooling their high-end stuff,they need to keep that down. The problem is, the only two ways that really work is either smaller process or processor redesign. Neither is easy...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> As to the MC 68000, it was very new at the time of the first PC, and only available from a single vendor.
The important part that you neglected to mention is that the second source for 808x CPUs was IBM itself, as they got the rights to manufacture them in exchange for the rights for their bubble memory.
Wow! It's like a G5 that can run Windows! In your face, Apple!
Anyway, those running other existing 64-bit CPUs should be able to give some advice.
You can compile your own kernel yourself, should you do desire, and if you have the proper hardware :-)
Actually, you can probably crosscompile it, you don't need the hardware, you need the hardware to run it, that should be all.
New things are always on the horizon
When A64 or Opteron gets above this level in a sigificant manner, I'll look at upgrading. Since it's faster than the best A 64 theres no reason to at the moment.
Maybe they didn't have any serious competition in the consumer market. So they figured they could do what they wanted, consumers would have to follow and they would have a credible server chip.
Now x86 is credible for low end servers and AMD is a very credible competitor. As time goes on x86 is (at least in the short to middle run) proving the nay sayers to be wrong and continuing to improve. AMD starting their techknowledgy more recently saw this. And said hay, if intel is not releasing high end x86 chips we can give it a whirl and snatch up some market.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The differences make sense if you realize that they are for the Intium, which is a server processor and not designed for desktop users. If you buy Intiums, you probably aren't using DOS and OS/2 programs. You probably won't be playing DVDs on your $20k server. And since it is a server, how often will you want to put it into "sleep" mode? You won't, so you don't need power management. It all makes sense.
I think you just didn't realize what you found. Don't worry, the version of Windows XP for the Hammer/Opteron/Athlon64/x86-64 will be just like the version that you'd be running on your x86 now.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Yeah, RISC development started longer than 10 years ago. However, it wasn't until the early 90s that Alpha and PPC were positioned in the "PC" market -- complete with ports of Windows, MacOS, OS/2, etc. That was done because DEC and IBM thought Intel was almost out of gas.
Now that makes sense. And it would be especially convincing to Intel people who were tired of iterating the Pentium.
My understanding was that the Itanium was originally HP's idea. They knew they didn't have the resources to make it a viable platform, so they sold it to Intel and had them do most of the heavy lifting. I'd like to see some articles on the origin of the Itanium, it sounded like an interesting story.
I didn't even use the word "Apple".