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Is Prescott 64-bit?
unassimilatible writes "According to The Inquirer, Intel's new Prescott has 64 bit instructions lurking inside. Could really rain on the parade of those who thought the new Athlon 64's would be supreme - especially when you look at Intel's price roadmap. Don't run out and buy an Athlon 64 just yet..."
I haven't even run out and bought a 32bit. Contiki and c64 1mhz 8bit power keep me warm at night.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Several - including one in my laptop. Too bad about your luck, I haven't had any problems.
I've had much better experiences with AMD to Intel. Longer lasting, better performance, etc
Intel, those typical insensitve clods, are spreading FUD around to kill AMD.
Or there will be virtuly no software for it when it comes out and for months to come. AMD has had books on the x86-64 instruction set for years now. Not to mention emulators have been available for almost as long.
"I'll stick with Intel, thanks. Any of you guys actually have a *good* AMD processor?"
My 450MHz AMD K6-2 worked fine, at 4.5x100MHz, my 1.2GHz Athlon Thunderbird worked fine, and my Athlon XP2400+ (2.055 GHz after some interesting bus overclocking) works just fine.
I've never had a problem with them. Do you know what you're doing? Setting the voltage levels is required on the older boards, and that actually means reading the provided motherboard manual.
I'm looking forward to a dual-AMD 64 bit configuration for home at some point, it looks pretty sweet.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
My Athlon has run for two years now without fail for me. It's a desktop computer not a laptop so I can't relate on that respect. There were stability issues until I stopped using Win 2K and switched to Slackware. I'm not quite an AMD fanboy but they've never given me reason to purchase anything else...yet.
This is a disaster for Intel, and if you follow along, HP, which is trying to sell Itanium solutions to counter IBM. I love big blue and AMD, so I can't say I'll shed a tear.
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I'll be able to afford it, and then run a thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition, on a sixty-four bit processor! :) Can't wait! 178$ - wow! :) ;)
Uhm... Maybe I'll buy it and install linux on it, all the big good games are coming to linux now it seems
Doubt that I will totally be rid of windows in the next few years though. You know. Work and such
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
uhm, I do, troll. Two of them in fact.
The "Prescott" has 2 32 bit cores, but the "secondary" core is missing an AGU, among other things, and this is pointing to the fact that most Prescotts have some sort of 64 bit functionality in them, but their keeping their lips shut about it?
So it seems to me that possibly Intel are waiting to see how AMD's 64 bit chip goes, and if its going better as a 32/64 bit chip then Intel's Itanium, release their Prescott with "fully" added 64 bit functionality?
Am i correct in my logic? I can't really follow why they're keeping tight about it.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
I dont know about you, but 640K is good enough for me.
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
"I'll stick with Intel, thanks. Any of you guys actually have a *good* AMD processor?"
Yes. Both my machine at work and at home are dual Athlons. Not only do they work great, but they also were very good price wise. On top of that, Lightwave (3d Rendering App) competes very nicely with the P4s, though LW is heavily optimized for Intel.
I'm not an AMD zealot, but I guarantee you that if I had the problems you did, my AMD'd be in the trashcan in a heartbeat. I can't afford aborted renderings.
"Derp de derp."
II aamm rruunniinngg aann eevvaalluuaattiioonn PPrreessccootttt rriigghhtt nnooww,, aanndd II aamm nnoott ppoossiittiivvee,, bbuutt II tthhiinnkk tthhee eexxttrraa bbiittss mmaayy nnoott bbee iinnddiivviidduuaallyy aaddrreessaabbllee,, bbuutt aarree jjuusstt uusseedd ffoorr rreedduunnddaannccyy..
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
Hey! There's a rumour that Intel might have not bothered marketing their new developments properly. You should ignore what is on the market and working just in case you can tweak a future chip to get something a bit like it. You heard it here first!!!
Idiot.
The allegedly informative statement is couched in so many conditionals that they of course can once again squirm their way out of any uncomfortable spot they might get stuck in.
Plus, I don't see Microsoft supporting not one but TWO Intel-specific 64-bit platforms.
Hold on to your Athlon64 pre-orders, boys and girls.
Since 1997, all my machines have been AMD's. The K6-2 is still alive, actually. One of them (a Duron 600) has been running 24x7 for the last 3 years. My gaming rig's a dual Athlon MP2000+. My current workstation's an Athlon XP2400+. I've NEVER had any problems with them, either hardward or software (Linux).
... I know. I've administered Intel-based servers).
My biggest problem is what to do with the old mobos and processors that I put aside due to upgrading.
No, I've never had a reason to spend more for so little (it's even arguable whether you get more for spending more
Chip Architect was speculating on this way back when intel's 64 bit extensions were still called Yamhill. They make some interesting observations that lead them to belive the second 32 bit ALU was to allow for 64 bit integer operations in a 2x32 bit format. And not to assist with eliminating resource shortages in HT as some others had suggested.
And even if that does pan out it's highly unlikley to appear in desktop Prescott core chips anytime soon. Seems much more like something you'd find in Xeon MPs and later DPs to eliminate the need for that hack they call PAE.
Though i hardly see how 'somebody told us a seinor exec said' makes Slashdot.' (I understand that's what the Inquirier bases most of their news on, i thought we had slightly higher standards of reliability)
For one thing, I wonder what its physical external address bus looks like. Can it address more than 4GB of physical memory without paging? The Athlon64 and Opteron can. In addition, they are discounting the benefits of an on-board memory controller. This feature alone is a huge performance boost. To top it off, AMD gear comes with HyperTransport and a host of other goodies associated with AMD, like nForce chipsets with the best on-board sound of any integrated solution (and I don't suspect this will be different with nForce3 chipsets). In short, it seems like Intel is starting a concerted marketing blitz against AMD but with little avail. With the Prescott and this new extreme edition P4 with 2.5MB cache (I shudder at the yield hit that much cache has per wafer for them), we have a lot of sudden refocus towards Intel just prior to the launch. Product quality counts, but so does marketing.
You're reasoning is faulty. In fact, it is the presence of competition and the inability of Intel to completely shape the PC platform that is holding back technology.
Look at the Apple Macintosh. The platform is completely proprietary, and controlled by Apple. Apple successfully switched architectures in the mid-90s, from the CISC 68000 to the PowerPC. These architectures were completely incompatible at the machine code level. But since no one was selling souped-up knockoff 68000 Mac clones in competition, the PowerPC was the only way forward and all users eventually upgraded. Apple is going to do the same thing again, this time to the 64-bit platform, and no one is dragging their feet this time either.
This happens all the time when hardware is proprietary. Sun, HP, and SGI all used to sell workstations based on the 68000 architecture, and were able to transition to RISC architectures due to the proprietary platform. But look at the PC architecture...the same outdated CISC architecture that was used in 1981 is still there in today's PC's. If Intel had complete control, we'd all have switched to the i960 or Itanium by now. But no, there is competition, so we're stuck in the past.
The whole reason this is interesting is because most people originally thought 64 bit functionality was where the 2 main chipmakers would differ. AMD were offering a hybrid, whereas intel seemed to be going straight to full 64 bit. Now it seems like they're possibly offering a hybrid as well. Its not about pure competition, its about which way 64 chips are going to go.
Wow! Prescott two jabs, two jags and now 64 bit. Vote Labour powered by a 64 bit Deputy prime minister. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/0,,-4254.htm l
(sorry UK specific)
Karma: Bad. Calmer, good.
Itanium is a full fix to the problem. The horrendous x86 ISA is completely replaced by an explicitly-parallel (EPIC) instruction set that has all the nice properties of a RISC machine (easier to compile for, less stress on the memory system as you get 128 registers, easier for the machine to decode the instructions as they're fix format and don't require RISC conversion, etc.). The problems with it are:
1. You need a compiler that "knows" how to bundle instructions effectively (a VLIW-compiler). GCC clearly isn't there yet (it's not uncommon for the intel compiler to beat gcc by 30->50% when running computationally-intensive stuff)
2. Being completely different than x86, it can't be very efficient at emulating x86 programs.
AMD partially fixes the problem by extending the x86 ISA to 64 bits, *and* adding 8 general purpose registers. Because they just extended the ISA, running old code is just as fast. Furthermore, new code can benefit from from the extra 8 registers, and run even faster.
For the short term the Opteron is a pretty impressive chip, but I really don't see how AMD is going to stay on Moore's curve with such a shitty instruction set architecture.
P.S. Clearly 32 bits can only address 4GB of RAM, and for *some* servers more addressing space buys you something. But I'd say they are a very small minority.
The Raven
I don't know why you need 64,000 of something. I have only one abacus.
You know, some of us actually like to use a processor that multitasks. You should have said that a 386 is all you need, so you can (kinda) run vi and emacs on linux and properly participate in the editor wars.
...when your 100w processor comes with heat sink and a complementary jiffy pop.
Fear, uncertainty, doubt ... not just the tool of Microsoft!
Let's see ... the Athlon 64 is out, officially, in a few days ... Intel's 64 bit part, the Itanium, is having trouble shaking its nickname, Itanic ... lots of developers are excited 'bout having a chip running 64 and 32 bit software.
Solution? Don't make a better chip ... just float a rumour that you'll be producing something better with some 64 bit instructions... Real Soon Now! With luck, you'll tank the sales of your competitor's chip, without doing any real work!
Blah blah blah.
No. It's just a really bad rounding error in the FPU.
There'll be virtually no software for the Athlon64 either, when it comes out. The 64-bit version of XP isn't even due until next year, so you'll have to run it in 32-bit mode if you want a Windows desktop.
to see the games and media software optomized for 64bit before I upgrade. Right now (to the best of my knowledge) getting a 64bit proccessor wouldn't do anyting for me unless I was using it on a server with certain specialized applications. Otherwise it's just more money.
-Tim Louden
Intel is strong on the prices this time. That was their strength when it was 8088, 8086, 8085 Intel vs. Motorola 6800. btw - back then AMD made chips for Intel...
:)
It will be interesting to see how the different CPU's make use of their wider data paths. My guess is that the VLIW (read Transmeta) approach will be very efficient. That alone is may not be enough. Never underestimate price point and marketing to determine a winner.
Why don't ZILOG come out with a 64 bit? The Z640?
~8^]
If Athlon 64 doesn't take off, Intel could keep things bottled up untill needed, or even nerver turn it on, letting consumers get 64 bit computing in a future chip that they've had time to improve the instruction set on or something.
It really is an interesting idea, and quite a consipracy theory. Is it true? Who knows! But with all the hub-bub around the Opteron and the upcomming Athlon 64, I wouldn't be suprised if Intel were to drop a bomb like this soon. Just think. Intel first steals AMD's thunder by anouncing the P4EE. Not only is it announced first, but it trounces the competition in benchmarks (this is speculation, I haven't seen any numbers). If the P4EE is fast enough in benchmarks and the price is competitive with the Athlon 64, AMD could be in some trouble. Now if in a few months, Intel announces something like this, AMD's savior that they seem to be betting the farm on could be in BIG TROUBLE. If this happens, AMD's best hope is that Intel DOES use their instruction set, because if they don't things could get very ugly.
So will any of this happen? Who knows! But that can't stop me from speculating! There is one last thing I'll comment on. If Intel does release a 64 bit processor soon, and doesn't use AMD's instruction set, there is a small possiblity that THEY (Intel) could be in trouble if the Athlon 64 (and friends) make a big enough splash. They might come too late to the party to make big decisions (like which instruction set rules).
These things seem a bit more likely, given that Intel seems to be in trouble right now (IMHO). While they are ratcheting up the P4 fast, the fact is that they weren't planning on 64 bits any time soon, AMD has forced the issue on them. If AMD is right, that will put them in trouble. And anyone who follows this kind of stuff knows that Intel has some major heat issues. Current opterons put out what, 70 watts? And some of Intel's upcomming chips are looking at 120 watts during usage (maybe as high as 150 under full load). Between heat, stagnation, and pathetic sales of the Itanic, Intel seems to be in Trouble.
The last thing that I'll say is a message to Intel: when you move to 64 bits (or even if you are just going to stick with 32 for a long time more)... DROP THE NAME PENTIUM. I'm tired of it. There have been FOUR of them (not counting all the different core revisions of each one). I know you have marketed that name for years, but it's time to move on. When will it stop? The Pentium 5, which you might call the Pentium Pentium, or Pentium Squared? Will I have to wait untill the Pentium 17 before you get a new name? Come one guys. Time for a name change.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
uh... most laptops don't work well in the lap. I can't use my p3 in my lap. Hell, people even say you can't use Macs in the lap. Computers get hot, it's a fact of life. for a cool laptop you're probobly gonna need a transmeta.
I don't know if this "dual 32-bit" thing is very plausible. Being able to do 64-bit operations is perhaps the most useless feature of the upcoming 64-bit processors. The big things about AMD64 is the larger compiler-visible register file and the ability to address > 4GB of memory.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
As far as I know, the UltraSPARC made its debut in 1995, while the first 64-bit Alpha from DEC was announced in 1992. 64-bit MIPS and PA-RISC chips were probably sometime between those two dates. See here.
Ubi dubium, ibi libertas.
the normal athlons were really hot but the new Opteron chips even when they are overclocked are still colder than anything by intel
Sure. Aside from the first PClonish computer I ever had (a NexGen, and since AMD bought them and used the technology in the K6 and Athlon, even that is arguable in a way)--and a Cyrix long ago, come to think of it--all the PClones I've bought have been AMD-based. Counting hand-me-downs, that would be half a dozen, four of which are sitting within a yard and a half of me as I type, churning merrily away.
Athlon chipsets sucked rocks for a long time, and were really unstable. But VIA finally got their act together, I think with the KT133A.
AFAIK, other than stomping on occasional driver bugs, Athlon chips have been pretty excellent ever since. I have an Athlon 1900+ on an ASUS A7V333 that's rock solid, and a new Athlon 2500+ on an Nforce2 board that's not quite as solid, but which is still pretty good.
I'd like to see some improvements on the NForce2 chip stability. It's not all the way there yet, in my opinion. But the VIA chipsets are extremely solid.
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Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Float a rumor that their next chip wil have some 64 bit instructions, so don't upgrade to that competitor that is true 64-bit?
It seems to me that they would probably go with an instruction set that is semantically isomorphic to AMD's, but uses slightly different opcodes. This way you could get a compiler to target the new architecture just with only modifications to the assembler, leveraging the existing effort to port software to the AMD 64-bit architecture, and AMD could easily release a new generation of chips supporting both opcode formats, making the "Intel" x86-64 architecture a standard. And AMD would probably do this if the Intel processors are successful, because they could become marginalized otherwise (even if their's was first!).
I have a Centrino-based Acer and it rarely gets even noticeably warm. Intel may have screwed some things up but they got the Pentium-M right.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
The article doesn't mention "64-bit" anywhere. Where did this sensationalist
"reporter" pull his news from?
... someone with points mod the PARENT up. Although if you'd like to share with me, that's cool too.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Why is this marked troll?
I haven't had any problems with my AMD processor computers, and those are the only ones I've bought since 1998 [6 of them]. A lot of AMD complaints I hear are about AMD's noise, which is quite silly considering that the processor itself doesn't make any noise, for some reason people just seem to buy noisy fans for their Athlons. My AMD box at home [1.4ghz duron] has a 26dB fan and has run smoothly for ages.
Two AMD based servers I bought last year have been running without any problems from the day they were installed on their racks and powered on, over 400 days of uptime on them.
I'm not really an 'AMD fan', but I've just noticed that buying AMD gives me more performance for less money, so I see no reason to buy anything else, especially when I have had zero problems with the processors so far.
"Intel's new Prescott has 64 bit instructions lurking inside. Could really rain on the parade of those who thought the new Athlon 64's would be supreme - especially when you look at Intel's price roadmap. Don't run out and buy an Athlon 64 just yet..."
This is the Prescott with the 103W Thermal Dissipation? Will we still hear people complaining that their 68W AthlonXP turns their room into a sauna?
Do you not think AMD will match or better those prices?
WHy would it rain on their parade? It would simply mean that software would be ported much more quickly if Intel announced that they were implementing AMD's x86-64 architecture. There is no way they could start a different architecture, Intel-x86-64 would be a flop.
Is that the same KT133A that couldnt post if you had a SCSI card and a PS2 mouse installed at the same time?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
You do realize that there has been no such thing as a "CISC processor" since the Pentium Pro came out. Underneath the X86 bytecode VM, Pentium IVs, Athlons, etc. are highly advanced RISC cores with multiple concurrent execution units.
The main reason that the huge expensive power sucking Itanium scrapes out a small lead in benchmarks over X86 CPUs is because of its expensive huge power sucking cache.
I have over 7 athlon pcs myself and have sold/assemble numerous others.
They all work without any problems. Can't say the same with my friend's P4. It runs hot and the 865PE motherboard is unstable.
-joe
Actually, while my P4-M 1.6GHz laptop does get hot under load, most of the heat on the bottom comes from the DDR memory and mini-PCI 802.11b. All the CPU heat goes out through the back of the laptop.
speaking of laptops in the lap, when I purchased my PCI 802.11b card for my desktop it had a warning on it to keep the antenna 15cm away from your body. Not only are my laptop's antennae less than 2cm to my body when the laptop is in my lap, they are rather close to some parts of my body that I don't want irradiated. Should there be a warning on laptops: "do not use in lap if 802.11b is in use"?
The UltraSPARC III isn't exactly the fastest CPU around; it gets thoroughly trounced by the P4, Athlon XP, MP, and POWER4, among others. We'll have to wait and see until the dual-core Ultras come out early next year.
Still no instruction reordering...
AMD should kick it Old School.
What would happen if they succeded in causing AMD to go out of business? Then the only other option for consumers are VIA C3's and Transmeta which will never match Intel's. So then once again at the top of their game and after buying auctioned assets off AMD's corpse they ratchet prices back up and we lose out on innovation.
Can you say "astroturfing to ruin the release of Athlon64 coming up next week"?
I knew you could!
In other news, SCO sues Intel for the use of their na... SLLLLLLLAAAAAAPPP!!!
Ouch, that hurt!
getSexySig();
Underneath the X86 bytecode VM, Pentium IVs, Athlons, etc. are highly advanced RISC cores with multiple concurrent execution units
But the instruction set still hobbles the design in many ways. The logic to convert x86 instructions to micro-ops takes up space on the die and uses extra power. And any way you look at it, you have to read from memory a lot more often with 8 "general purpose" registers than 32 real GPRs, which is what most sane CPUs have. Itanium doesn't have to do this, PowerPC doesn't have to do this, no modern ISA requires this nonsense. Sure they may have figured out how to get it to run fast anyway, but this is wasted time: Intel should have been able to transition desktop PCs to the i960 in the early nineties, and we would probably be making a trivial upgrade to a 64-bit extension of it just about now. The processor would have all the fancy performance-enhancing features of a modern P4, but would not be held back by the need to emulate a 286.
The main reason that the huge expensive power sucking Itanium scrapes out a small lead in benchmarks over X86 CPUs is because of its expensive huge power sucking cache.
It doesn't just "scrape out a lead" in floating-point benchmarks, it absolutely destroys the x86 competition. And oh yeah, its running at what, half the clockspeed of the P4? If Itanium had the same economies of scale behind it at this point, there would be no competition.
Because slashdot believes in free speech unlike stupid hitlers like yourself. Chump.
Is the submitter an employee of Intel? Isn't this classic FUD tactics? "Wait, don't buy that guy's product, we're coming up with something even more super duper in just a few months...".
I smell a rat.
There may be nothing malicious to this, but the specific exhortation not to buy a competitor's product just because of the possible future abilities of some other company's products just turns me off. Of course they're all going to have something better in six months, a year, a decade, etc.
The only way to make sense of it all is to compare apples to apples: the Althon64 & PowerPC G5 are both on the market now, or about to be, so comparisons there are valid. Comparisons to what Intel might possibly be making later are just... well, they seem very questionable to me.
(And since I've been pointing fingers willy nilly, I have no vested interest in whether Intel or AMD does better in the market. I mostly use Macs and am indifferent to who has their brand name on any x86 hardware I might use to run Linux...)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
MS has been long rumored to tell Intel what they can and can not do, and their record in confrontations like this are not one to bet against. Rumor has it that the vole has said that they will only support a single 64-bit extension to IA32, but then months ago they said they would be supporting 5 64-bit architectures in windows.
does this mean the chip will be tailored for the MS OS?
will it be totally worthless if you buy a system and load a different OS?
64 bit... who really cares RIGHT NOW? The Athlon 64 appears to be posting up a very nice showing with today's apps and games, so the processor you buy tomorrow morning ought to be the one that will run your programs the best today and next week. Next month and next year... Bah. You can drive yourself crazy trying to lead-turn the chip industry. Get a cpu with "hidden 64 bit inside" and by the time any software is written to take advantage of it (meaning it actually runs faster than before), there will be another cheaper cpu already available that once again runs "today's" programs faster. If you need bleeding edge performance at any cost, go ahead and buy the latest cpu every 3 months and be happy. If not, buy the best bang/buck AT THE TIME OF PURCHASE and just accept that you may want to upgrade 6 months from now. 40-50% of the price will buy you 80-90% of the performance of the top cpu out there, so that makes it a lot easier to afford an upgrade that will leapfrog past what used to be the top cpu at the time of your original purchase.
Buying a cpu for applications more than 3ish months away is a foolish decision. The price and product cycles makes buying those capabilities ahead of time a bad idea. You only have to look back at the early pentium adopters to realize what a little patience can do for you. Back then, a fast 486 would hands-down beat a pentium in any application except for a couple of image editing apps, and things stayed that way for months. Things stayed that way for nearly a year until Intel nearly doubled the speed of the pentium, finally putting the 486 out of the picture. A 64 bit processor better be damn fast today or it shouldn't be purchased. By the time the extra performance seen from 64 bit apps and operating systems is realized, you'll be able to buy an even faster/newer cpu for less money. Save your pennies and get what works the best today.
For what it's worth, TODAY the fastest cpu seems to be an Athlon64 or Opteron. Hidden 64 bit instructions won't change that a bit. Show me the application benchmarks and I'll believe. Until then, I'm saving my coin for the next upgrade cycle.
As the author of the article, I had to REALLY make things vague. The people involved would be hurt badly by Intel if their names got out. Some of the situations that were told to me make it quite apparent who was leaking. That was as specific as I could make it :(.
-Charlie
gotta compete. Intel had to come with something better(cost effective) than Athalon64. If there was no competition, we would be still using 8088/6
LOL, Intel is actually their largest competitor. Every time they release a new chip guess who they are primarily up against? People who are running other Intel chips.
Without AMD though, I'm sure Intel would keep their new chips at higher price points for a bit longer and milk the power user crowd for a little more money.
They are fools to rush a release like this. Intel should have just done it right. Every product has it's time. When a product isn't ready for the marketplace it isn't ready. Don't rush it Intel.
There is a second article on Chip-Architect that goes into the 64-bitness in greater detail. I also linked to a few other sources. People keep talking about the exec bit that I had to make vague so the person who told me wouldn't get nailed. Take it as you will, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind.
-Charlie
I'll stick with Intel, thanks. Any of you guys actually have a *good* AMD processor?
Well, I've got the old K5PR133 sitting on a shelf now that did years of sterling service, first as my main desktop CPU, then moving back to the firewall CPU, until it got replaced by the K6 II 350 (which is still in the firewall machine, and has been there, running solidly, day in, day out since about 1999, and was my desktop CPU before that,replacing the K5).
Replaced the K6 II with an Athlon 700 (original slot A). That ran fine, until the board fritzed, due to the old capacitor problem that ran rampant in late 99, early 2000.. The board lasted until 2002. The only reason it's not in the firewall box now is that I can't get another board for less than it'd cost to put a faster athlon in a cheap board..
The 2002 set I bought was a nice Athlon 1700 in an Abit board. Ran stably and never a problem.. That's now in the girlfriend's machine (built one for her from the last generation of hardware I had lurking), and now I'm using an NForce2 board with an Athlon 2500 (Barton core).
No problems with any of them.
If the college computer broke, are you sure it's the CPU? Not memory, motherboard, power supply or any of a myriad of other issues?
For the laptop, is it a problem with the manufacturers not putting good cooling and airflow in the laptop (or, heaven forbid, a desktop CPU in a laptop case to save money/add a little extra speed)?
By all means, stick with Intel if it keeps you happy, but I've had a long history of using AMD chips, and I like 'em. If I saw a reason to use Intel's chips, I would.. I just never have to date...
Mod the parent up. He wasn't very articulate, but he was right on the money.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
From the Timothy is working for Intel department..
Biased as hell, seems this news post.
The guy who started The Register (Mike Magee) left and started The Inquirer. So, it's not really a wanna-be...
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
A really good example of what you are talking about is the G5. It simply extends an efficient architecture to 64 bits. Other than upping the memory limit, it does precious little to performance. The chip in 32 bit more is about as fast as 64 bit, and only starts to show a difference when memory useage gets large.
As for AMD, you can see the effect by running a program in 32 bit mode, then running a 32 bit program recompiled to take advantage of the registers in 'compatibility' mode. There is quite a difference.
-Charlie
People just assume that G5 consumes this enormous amount of power because of all the fans in the G5 desktop. This isn't true. Even the 2G takes only about 40 watts or so. One P4 3G takes in the range of 80 watts of power. All of the extra G5 fans are to make the cooling quieter.
I'm glad to see someone finally point this out. The exact wattage number is 46.7 watts for the 2 GHz PowerPC 970 "G5" running at full speed (2GHz CPU and a 2:1 multipler for a 1 GHz FSB).
A 2.4 GHz P4 (400 MHz FSB) uses 62 watts, newer P4s use even more. Prescott is expected to use 100 - 105 watts. (And this is totally ignoring the even further power needs of the "extreme" edition with its added transistors for on-die L3 cache)
Apple has always seemed to overengineer the heatsinks and fans in their desktop model, for about as long as I can remember. Oddly, many of the PowerBooks use a much different "transfer the heat from the CPU, Chipset, and GPU right to the bottom of the case" cooling method.
Don't run out and buy an Athlon 64 just yet...
To anyone that 64 bits might make a difference for, they're steering clear of Intel, who has stated they're not going to focus on that desktop market for another 5 years. So all this article amounts to is Prescott FUD to support Intel's (misguided) roadmap.
Disclaimer: I own some AMD stock and I do my Unix development on Mac OS X.
However, the compact legacy CISC instruction set does conserve on instruction cache space. This offsets much of the cost of the conversion logic. Moreover, it allows custom optimizations for the exact architecture du jour without affecting binary compatibility.
And any way you look at it, you have to read from memory a lot more often with 8 "general purpose" registers than 32 real GPRs, which is what most sane CPUs have.
Many modern X86 CPUs have more than 32 real GPRs which are utilized by register renaming. Like quantum mechanics, the processor state for any given instruction is smeared out over time and space, and the CPU is operating on many instructions simultaneously. The number of visible registers just doesn't matter as much as it would seem on the surface.
Itanium doesn't have to do this, PowerPC doesn't have to do this, no modern ISA requires this nonsense.
They will when somebody figures out the next architecture trick that doesn't match the assumption of the designers of their ISAs. Take a look at history; remember when MIPS stood for "Microprocessor Without Interlocked Pipeline Stages"? What did the R4000 introduce? Could it be - interlocked pipeline stages? Exposing CPU implementation details to the software is not something that wears well over time.
It doesn't just "scrape out a lead" in floating-point benchmarks, it absolutely destroys the x86 competition.
That's because the FPU has not been very important in the X86 market up to this point. Business and multimedia apps just don't need it. If AMD or Intel put their efforts into an X86 with ultimate FPU performance, it could match or beat the Itanium.
I suspect that Intel took advantage of the huge schedule delays in the Itanium to throw in more FPU horsepower because it had to beat the consumer-grade chips on something.
And oh yeah, its running at what, half the clockspeed of the P4? If Itanium had the same economies of scale behind it at this point, there would be no competition.
As I said, the cache and memory architecture is the primary factor in the performance of CPUs today. Clockspeed, instruction set, registers ... who cares? Everything that's not cache is only a small fraction of the die size.
All of that hardware architecture stuff is a red herring. Worrying about those non-issues has caused the Itanium schedule to slip nearly a decade while they desperately tried to write a C compiler that could statically wring out performance from their brittle concurrent execution model without the benefits of the run-time statistics information available to the X86 code translators.
I didn't consider timing when I wrote the story, or any of it's predecessors. Silly as I am going to the A64 launch tuesday. Anyway, I have been chasing this story since the chip-architect articles. The timing was unfortunate, but it wasn't an Intel plant, that much I can assure you.
For about 3 months, I have known there was 64 bit functionality there, but I didn't have enough to prove it to my own satisfaction. I chased leads, interviewed people, and got that info.
The fact that IDF brought me into close proximity with a ton of sources was the thing that got me so much info so quickly. There was only one thing from Intel directly, the rest were from third parties supporting the chip. If IDF had happened last January, I probably would have gotten the info then.
-Charlie
You can order amd64 systems from places like appro and Penguin Computing right now, with decent sized collections of 64-bit applications provided by popular distributions such as SuSE. Let's not forget that the amd64 CPU's can run ia32 binaries at speeds faster than many ia32 CPU's and on a system with an amd64 kernel allow for more aggregate address space consumption across processes and the ability to install tremendous amounts of physical memory for buffers and cache even if individual processes can only take advantage of a few gigabytes.
With other groups like the Debian project well underway in their amd64 porting efforts, you can expect thousands of popular applications built for the amd64 platform. There's tons of software available for amd64 already, and you can bet by the time that AMD releases their "Athlon64" or whatever they're targeting the low-end market with, there will be even more.
I'm sure Intel would love to have an incompatible instruction set. However the real question is if Microsoft will let them get away with it now that MS is already supporting both AMD64 and IA64. Fact is that Windows availability is make-or-break for any mainstream CPU.
feh
Intel has access to the AMD64 ISA from AMD as part of their cross-licensing deal years ago. The big thing is that if Intel comes out with ANOTHER 64 bit ISA, then all of their Itanium customers (and co-developer HP) who have invested billions in the Itanium will be very angry.
My bet is that Intel won't go anywhere near 64bit on the desktop for a very long time (like never). We will see dual (or more) cores before that ever happens (which is slated for '05).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
As I said, the cache and memory architecture is the primary factor in the performance of CPUs today. Clockspeed, instruction set, registers ... who cares? Everything that's not cache is only a small fraction of the die size.
Then surely it would be fair to compare the Itanium 2 to P4 and Athlon chips running at the same clock speed, since it doesn't matter. In that case the x86 chips are clobbered in ALL areas. For that matter even the IBM PPC 970 (which has less cache and a much smaller die) wins in that competition. Clock speed is the ONLY thing keeping current x86 CPUs in competition. If there was an Itanium 2 or Power4 CPU running at the same clockspeed as a P4, with the same amount of cache, the x86 chip would not be able to compete.
All of that hardware architecture stuff is a red herring. Worrying about those non-issues has caused the Itanium schedule to slip nearly a decade while they desperately tried to write a C compiler that could statically wring out performance from their brittle concurrent execution model without the benefits of the run-time statistics information available to the X86 code translators.
And now it has allowed Intel to build, beyond dispute, the fastest general-purpose CPU on the market today. And if it weren't for the paralysis of the mainstream PC market, it might be possible for a consumer version to be rolled out in an orderly manner in the next decade to the benefit of everyone.
I posted a bit about this above, but no, it is not their doing. They are going to be very very cross with me for this. I am expecting Magee to get a nasty letter from Intel PR about me. Luckily, he is in Taiwan this week, and will probably lose it in the shuffle :).
-Charlie
Dude, KT133A sucked.
Well said.
I suspect that AMD systems had more problems proportionally than Intel boxes, but the reason was that since AMD chips (and Cyrix for that matter) were cheaper, they tended to get bundled with other cheaper components. Flakey motherboards, undersized power supplies, off-brand hard drives, generic ram all provide plenty of opportunity for unstable systems. Unfortunately, it was AMD that would always get the blame.
Hopefully that negative image will go away soon - maybe having a few of the fastest super computers on the planet running AMD Opertons will smooth over the image problem.
I'm afraid this line of reasoning just doesn't cut it.
Intel does not want a 64bit x86 on the market. They want to lead everyone to Itanium where they don't have those pesky AMD guys competing with them.
It's for this precise reason that everyone SHOULD run out and buy an Athlon64. If nobody buys them, Intel will have no reason to jump into the 64bit x86 market at all.
I for one can't wait for Athlon 64 to hit the market... I need a viable 64bit Linux workstation solution and I need it yesterday.
-cjs
The beauty of this solution is that all Microsoft would have to do to recompile for the "new" Intel x86-64 architecture is change the op codes in their current AMD x86-64 assembler. The architecture wouldn't really be different, it would just be changed slightly to break exactly compatibility.
I'd like to inform you that any modern processor in a laptop will run hot. If you don't believe that to be the case, I invite you to run a p3 or p4 laptop on your lap for several hours.
Tell me, Amsterdam Vallon, what broke on your AMD college computer? Unless it was a defect with the construction of an AMD processor, your point will prove irrelevant. I'm using an AMD processor right now, and my Windows 2000 machine got a virus thanks to IE and broke. That's not AMDs fault. My old motherboard needed a flash upgrade to use an XP 1800+. That's not AMDs fault. My hard drive was an old 1Gb and after years of service, died. That's not AMDs fault. Furthermore, if you managed to crush your core, or if you installed inadequate cooling or did a substandard installation initially in any way, you cannot blame AMD. They make processors. Installing a P4 with some sub-par Aladin chipset motherboard by PC-CHIPS, a 100 watt power supply, an IBM DeathStar hard drive, cheap ram made in some communist country and a Socket 7 heatsink will result in your machine breaking as well.
For the record, I'm on my fourth Athlon. I've used the chips without problems, upgraded without a hitch, and run the new chip without problems until I decided to upgrade again. My next machine is undoubtedly going to be an Athlon 64 as a result of the quality I've witnessed.
It's been a long time.
Yes, that sounds sweet. But honestly I must admit that this Amiga 1200 on my desk looks sweet and it runs lunix just fine. I guess those 8bit days are over. Future IS now.
From the inquirer: "So the burning question is, will Intel officially tell the world about the 64-bit extensions, and gut the chances of Itanium taking off, or will they sit on it? "
Yes of course - the Itanic is and will always be a highend server workstation chip. It wasn't designed as consumer chip. So there is no conflict in interest with intel releasing a 64 bit Prescott. In fact, the product offering from intel and AMD line up quite nicely: Opteron vs. Itanic and Prescott vs. Athlon64.
Instead of touting a 64 bit capability with out a software platform to harness the power of the 64 bit processor it's not really a compelling product feature. Intel will wait or announce very close to when MS ships 64 bit XP. Intel will be able to point to their processor, and a mass market OS that the consumer will clearly identify as benefiting from the extra power. That way - they don't waste money by producing or marketing a product that doesn't have a clear advantage/use over the current modus operedi.
And why isn't there an Itanium 2 or Power4 running at the same clockspeed as the P4? It's because they can't. To do more work per clock, they use more logic, and that takes more time. Don't you think that Intel would have a 3.2 GHz Itanium on the market now if it were technically feasible?
All of these CPUs use similar fabrication technology. This technology is capable of a certain number of fundamental logic operations per second per square millimeter. The P4 uses high clockspeeds only because it is marketed to users who think that MHz==performance. If marketing requirements were different, the P4 would have been designed to get the same performance out of 1/10th the clock speed with the same die size and the same manufacturing cost.
The AMD vs Intel war has been going on since the 386 days. When you bought a 386 or 486, you probably had an equal chance of getting AMD or Intel, and you didn't even know it. AMD won the war in the 486 market, remember the DX4120 or DX4133? Those were AMD chips. Intel just has a better marketing machine. Intel Inside(r) came around in the late 486 and Pentium days. AMD nor Intel will win or lose in this battle. The only people that will come out ahead will be the consumer. I just can't wait till the price cuts come around.
To be more accurate, Intel didn't do it first, but rather the NexGen 5x86 did it first. AMD bought NexGen, in part b/c their K5 sucked ass. and it was the NexGen engineers (in part at least) who made the K6 as well.
So, it wasn't just 6th gen processors that had RISC emulating CISC.
--
tabris
Don't run out and buy an Athlon 64 just yet...
Yes. Be sure to give first right of refusal on all CPU purchases to the Pentium.
And don't even think about the G5...
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I also agree with you about RSE being a mess - but stackable registers (similar to register windows in Solaris) is a very effective mechanism for reducing memory accesses. It does make out-of-order execution a living hell, but in the end it all comes down to stressing the memory less, as RAM doesn't follow Moore's curve ...
The Raven
Maybe they just took a PowerPC II chip and installed AIX 4.3.3 on it and turned on the 64bit kernel extensions...
x86 machines have had 48-bit address spaces for years. Some of them even bring out a few more pins, so you can address more than 4GB of memory. It's even supported by both Linux and Windows. You can't have more than 4GB per process space, but you can have more than 4GB in the machine. Works fine.
This is the oldest trick in the book. I bet that the Intel execs are dancing in the moonlight right now. Headline on slashdot: dont buy an A-64, Intel may give you a better deal if You wait...
I usually like reading The Inquirer(esp the ranting about HP) and I sure hope this will turn out to be a true story (not that I care about Intel).
Just how Intel saying "We're also a little bit 64bit" change the equation? Last I checked, the greatest benefits to 64 bits were twofold 1) possibility to interlayer multiple instructions 2) Faster memory throughput Now Intel, with hyperthreading, has been saying until Prescott "Hyperthreading gives you the multiple instructions goodness of RISC, without the cost" With Prescott around: "Now with the multiple intruction goodness of RISC" Intellectual honesty is dead, marketing is dancing on it's grace As for 2) Intel won't give you that(and a sizeable cache to do something useful with it) unless you buy a "server" chip, for several hundreds of dollars more. It's called good business practice... (Charge what people are willing to pay...) And guess what, people who buy servers are willing to pay more for high-throughput, because they need it to make money... Apologies for the oversimplifications, and for anyone who might posted similar ideas earlier... Intel's been saying they were better than everyone else, until they lose enough money to have to lay off their entire PR department/outsourcer, they'll never really try to prove it...
It's probably wrong to call them general purpose registers (although that's what Intel does), but the compiler can make use of them for integer operations.
The Raven
A super-precision 32-bit carry/overflow.
To the right of the article! She's beautiful! :-)
http://www.theinquirer.net/images/ads/Inquirer/ali _lass.jpg
Alternate Text: "Stranded INQ hack Paul Hales snapped this employee of ALI at the Intel Developer Forum"
Uh?
It's why they don't call them laptops anymore. Look on any major computer manufacturer webpage, you'd be hardpressed to find the word "laptop"
Dell - Notebook
HPAQ - Notebook
Alienware - mobile gaming
VoodooPC- mobile
They don't call em laptops anymore because, as you've noticed, they often don't work well in your lap
Yeah, here's another me too.
;))
AMD K6-2/333 mHz was my first AMD chip. Lil sucker still runs flawlessly in my server. Been running 24/7 for several years now. No issues whatsoever.
Athlon 600 (One of the originals - the slot types) was next. Damned fine performance, kicked the living shit out of any Intel offering at the time.
Retired that for an Athlon XP 1800+. Runs brilliantly, and quite frankly, I doubt I'll need to upgrade for another two years, unless the 64-bit world really takes off.
I've also got a 1 GHz Duron in my laptop. Runs hot? Sure. But my lap hasn't been burnt. Can't say the same for friends who have bought Intel-based laptops. (Though, in all fairness, I'd rather have a Powerbook.. Too pricey, though.
Microsoft != Linus Torvolds. There's a whole bunch of testing, marketing, and distribution overhead they'd have to maintain for a new arch. Not that they couldn't afford it.
Jeez man. I am at a loss for words! You work on the tech section of the wsj and you are so tech illiterate?
Which websites do you frequent? nerve.com, disgruntledhousewife.com ? cosmpolitan?
Maybe you should frequent some hardcore tech sites before you troll.
AMD is more value for money and a better perfomer than the Intel processor.
"My current AMD is way too hot and my laptop burns my lap". Unless you have a ultra low voltage Pentium 3 even the normal Pentium 4 and Pentium 4 mobile will leave you sterile.
On hindsight, maybe that's a good idea.
"Oh, and my college computer was an AMD too, and broke several times."
Ok, even more proof that you are fscking clueless about technology. God only knows hows you got employment in the tech section of the wsj.
If the AMD processor was the problem, you would only have to replace the processor ONCE.
I've dealt with about 15 AMD processors in the pas 3 years and once the processor went bad( a friend's). Got a free replacement due to the 3 year warranty and everything was rolling again.
If your computer breaks repeatedly, the problem is fscking somehwhere ELSE!
Why blame the processor?
You might have used a el cheapo heatsink, maybe the ram was bad, the motherboard....
The best reason I can think of is maybe YOU messed up something.
Maybe I should use my subscription and let the editors at wsj know what a tech illiterate person they've employed.
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
What the fuck is Britain?
Game... blouses.
I never had a problem with mine.
Christ. If you look at power usage, and speed, and the cache it requires to operate at that speed, and the overinflated cost... well, I mean, it makes me want to go buy a G5 and hope no one notices.
Maybe I paint it pink n purple. ^_^
I, for one, welcome our new 64-bit x86-compatible overlords.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Are you a mendicant?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
It is important to note that actually, there was NO competition for x86 processors until after the Pentium came out. There were, of course, x86 processors made by other manufacturers. But until the Pentium/586 era, these were all made using licensed Intel designs. Intel, at the urging of IBM, had licensed the 8088 and some subsequent designs to other manufacturers because IBM wanted to ensure a stable supply. These licenses continued until the 486 era. Some manufacturers did make alterations but they were all essentially based on Intel's designs.
Yeah, because Tony Blair isn't on Bush's leash. Good luck with your delusions, let me know how it turns out, would you?
I am agnostic on platforms - a Mac-to-Intel convert. But those Athlon 64's are like $700 aren't they?
I can't afford a G5 either, unfortunately.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The 286 processor was designed with multiprocessing in mind. There were proprietary '286 boxes out there that DID multitasking and took advantage of the 286 extensions. Protected mode is NOT a 386 innovation, it's a '286 thing. The thing that the 286 lacks that the 386 has is 'virtual 86 mode' which translates 'more better old 8086 so you can run multiple instances of the same old 8086 code.'
Microsoft didn't do a lot with the 286, and the clone marketers just called it 'a better, faster 8088 with a wider address bus' and everybody continued to run DOS on their 286's. That's not Intel's fault.
A Good Intro to NetBS
typo in above. 'the 286 was designed with multitasking in mind'
A Good Intro to NetBS
I think you should double check before you do anything TOO drastic. I'm not convinced this guys credentials are to be taken to seriously.
:)
First, He's an Assistant Editor. Now, combine the fact that he's talking allegedly about an Athlon here(for his college computer). Assuming this, it's not hard to say that it's only been 5 years or so since he's been in school tops, assuming he bought this computer in his final year. Since Athlons don't grow on trees(Except in Ontario, but that's just pollution), it's safe to say he started college with an athlon, rather than buying it later while trying to pay off his student loans. Here's the tricky part: Since it's obvious he doesn't have the slightest bit of technical training, he almost certainly didn't take vocational training in college(which would mean, since he works at the wsj, he most likely took either a writing or arts program. That's four years right there). I'd wager he more than likely is only a year or two out of college. The fact that he felt the need to mention his job in the post(I know there are quite a few slashdot readers who are actual staff writers at places that would impress tech guys a hell of a lot more than wsj) says to me that he's fresh out of college as well, and that he's only been at his current job for a very short time. It might even be one of his first jobs too. Most people aren't too keen to announce their job as an assistant editor to a room of strangers unless they haven't really had any good jobs before or something of the sort.
This information, paired with the fact that his e-mail address listed is a yahoo account, rather than either a wsj account(Which a person who was serious about his sig would undoubtedly use) or even an ISP mail account, lead me to believe this guy is an intern(perhaps under some other name, but an intern is an intern).
My advice, if I am correct about his status, is not to bother talking to the wsj. Speaking from experience, most places tend to ignore critisism about new interns.
It's been a long time.
I am all for AMD processors, but I have yet to see an AMD laptop that doesn't freeze up randomly.
Why not make a profiling Just in time compiler, after a few runs you should have almost optimal machine code.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Then why, precisely, are you here chatting about Intel and AMD 64 bit chips when GNU/Linux has been running on 64bit DEC Alphas for over 5 years, And YellowDog Linux runs very nicely on the G5?
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
But I also don't believe that politeness - or common sense - permits one to say things that will get your arse kicked in if you said it to another's face.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Thing is, if I wanted an expensive non-x86 64 bit platform that outperforms x86 platforms, why not IBM Power4 stuff? Why not some other existing tried and tested 64 bit platform? They've been out for years already. There are TONS of alternatives, and in those areas performance is often not that dependent on CPU either, nor the main thing.
Itanium is a late-comer to the nonx86 64 bit club (PowerPC, Power, SPARC, SPARC compats (PRIMEPOWER), MIPS, Alpha).
I can see why one would pick Opteron over the others even if it doesn't perform quite as well. Just for the 32 bit x86 compatibility and performance.
If you go back in time it's like asking someone back then to switch from Intel 386/486 to Intel 88000. Why not Alpha, Motorola 680x0, SPARC etc then? If you're going to do that sort of thing then I sure hope Intel is making it extremely worth it.
Yes, and I was also on that grassy knoll in Dallas, 1963.
If my friends heard that I, former Mac evangelist, was accused of being an Intel employee, they'd laugh their asses off!
I wish I worked for a Dow 30 company!
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
An incredibly popular urban legend. Anyone know why this has been popular for so long?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Jeez, I know this shouldn't matter, but in the UK calling a chip 'Prescott' is going to make your corporate sysadm cringe at the thought of having to service a 'Prescott inside' labelled box.
John Prescott is the rather 'colourful' deputy leader of the labour party. A union man with a merchant navy background, John Prescott is known for his rather casual acquaintance with English and an style of electionaring which includes physically assaulting the voters. Probably best summed up by one political comic strip which has him as a somewhat overweight and confused rottweiller.
What next - the Lewinsky chip?
Intel must be really worried. But they have a very efficient weapon, called FUD. You have certainly heard of it, it has bee used extensively by Microsoft, to undermine already existing products with rumors of an upcoming OS that will blow everybody's hat off. Remember Windows NT 5.0? That was supposed to come out in 1997 (Allchin has announced it many times - shifting the release date a few months in the future, every time).
So, here we have Itanium that isn't doing well on the market, porting to it's 64 bit ISA is hary and which performs legacy code horribly. No, really horribly.
And then here we have Athlon 64, which is cheaper than Itanium, requires very little porting to 64 bit code and which performs legacy code fantasticly - in fact, it's so good that you might consider and Athlon 64 just to run your legacy x86 code, 'coz it's so fast.
So what does Intel do? Float a flaming horseshit of FUD about Prescott being somewhat 64 bit - but hey, Intel didn't say it, the source was, uh, the Inquirer, for cryin' out loud!
Well, until someone doesn't put the Prescott under an electronic microscope and makes their conclusions based on hard facts, and concludes that, indeed, The Inquirer is right, I say FUD and double FUD from a company that is known to engage in it!
Sigged!
That's the thing. Those solutions (including the Itanium) aren't x86 compatible in a practical way.
It's not such a big deal with open source software, but check out the price/performance of x86 desktop hardware and peripherals some time.
Stuck in the past? Holding back technology?
:)
Check out the price/performance of x86 some time. Also in many cases they don't even run much hotter or consume that much more power if you compare processors of similar performance.
The larva has evolved, grown wings and it flies. It's still an ugly bug, but it flies. And to the disgust of many chip architecture academics in their ivory towers, it flies faster than many supposedly elegantly designed RISC/postRISC bugs.
Heck, I hope the x86-64 becomes popular just to see the look on their faces.
BTW, have you actually looked at the PC architecture recently? Have you actually looked at the memory bandwidth? Have you noticed that Sun and Apple have PCI slots and aren't talking much about s-bus and nubus anymore?
Stuck in the past? Maybe you are, and you still long for the good old days when a vendor held you by your balls and said "Jump!".
If you really need a lot of fast SPARCs you have to buy Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER.
You run Solaris on those just like you run Suns. The difference? Not sure about the price but you get hardware level instruction retry, and a modern CPU design with the expected performance that comes with it.
Don't worry, they can handle it. They shipped NT4 for x86, Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC on a single CD. If Intel wants it enough, it will be done, and as proposed the port will be as easy as possible (with the compilation port a trivial change, with no new code required, and the core logic drivers done by Intel as they are for Intel chipsets now).
Further, if it is successful AMD picks up the new opcodes they will be able to drop the AMD-specific version eventually.
With HyperThreading, I believe all of Intel's Northwood P4 cores had HyperThreading stuff inside them, just disabled. This was meant to simplify their manufacturing, so that when they started releasing real HT processors they didn't have to make any major changes to their design.
Perhaps they are doing the same thing here... put in rudimentary 64-bit support that might not be efficient or even work properly, so that later on if they do decide to activate it, they don't have to completely redesign their core.
I am running one still in a server machine, and the point is that as long as you run integer arithmetics on it, it performs *REALLY* well. The FPU sucked, yes, but server software rarely does need the FPU a lot.
Ahhh. So there's another variable... you need x86 compatibility. that's a different animal than simply needing a 64bit Linux workstation as you initially stated. I will warn you: much open source software is written with x86 in mind and had things hard-wired to that platform. Even when things compile on a 64bit system, they tend to fail in interesting and unpredictable ways. I've found that ignorance and lazyness seem to prevail in the open source movement when it comes to truely portable software.
I don't know exactly what you mean by your last comment. I don't really know of any x86 specific hardware or peripherals except for the MBs and CPUs. Just about every other peripheral or piece of hardware will plug in to many Alphas and any recent Mac (drivers and firmware aside).
I've used many video and network cards off-the-shelf as well as standard RAM in my Alpha and use standard "PC" memory, drives and peripherals on my 5 year old Mac.
I have checked out x86 price/performance. It's not been enough to get me to purchase any of it. I get more real work done on my Mac per dollar than on x86 (no virus downtime, few system updates, etc), and my Alphas put out more heat per dollar than any x86 could in it's wet dreams.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
My 600MHz Duron @ 880MHz on a via chipset worked perfectly for two years 24/7. Now I have a AthlonXP 1700+ t-bred @ 2400MHz running perfectly 24/7.
Most of my friends who have upgraded in the last 3-4 years have AMD systems, with no major problems.
Is Prescott 64-bit?
Is Prescott 64 yet?
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
...of what I think is a 1U dual Xeon Prescott box: The heatsinks - priceless
That's an urban legend.
"I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time." - Bill Gates
Itanium is good at FPU code because of the VLIW/EPIC design. x86 will never reach Itanium FPU performance in the same generation.
wtf?
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Solaris? I think you mean Sparc.
;)
Cuz Solaris runs on x86 which most definitely does not have register windows
It's a cool architecture, but huge l1/l2 caches have dramatically reduced the justification for register windows. Not to mention that l1/l2 caches are infinitely more useful as general purpose.
Register windows might have made sense back in FPM memory days when your typical L2 cache was 64k. But we're now pushing past 1m L2 caches... and QDR is just round the corner...
Or you might want to wait a bit more after the Prescott release, because I heard both AMD and Intel are planning to release more chips that are even more powerful!! And quantum stuff too is years closer now than 1990... ;)
First of all, Opteron has quite a big lead. There are Opteron-based distributions, compilers, and other tools.
Also, merely having "64 bit instructions" isn't enough. What matters is whether the processor has 64 bit addressing, the ability to address lots of memory, etc. It may, but how well it works remains to be seen.
Intel has a history of cheating benchmarks and outright manipulation of "industry" benchmarks like Babco to make their products look good.
Most of the lead of their products in benchmarks these days come from either a) memory bandwidth (Athlon 64 has even more bandwidth than P4) or b) SSE2 (Athlon 64 also has SSE2).
Even if Prescott has x86-64 instructions, there is no reason to believe it will outperform an Athlon 64. In fact, current benchmarks indicate that Athlon 64 wipes the floor with everything Intel has to offer.
It is true that the Athlon 64 is expensive. The Pentium 4 is also very expensive. AMD is trying to make some money here, before again descending into price wars with Intel. As soon as Intel slashes prices, so will AMD.
I suggest reading the Inquirer regularly to read about Intel's Babco cheating details (the Pentium M Babco results make this very clear). I will not support cheats and sore losers like Intel with my money.
Everyone already knows that AMD costs less and runs faster than anything WinIntel has or will ever field!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
This is the thing I've never understood. They're a much smaller company than Intel. For most quarters they lose money. Yet, they're able to compete with Intel and throw in some good punches every now and then. How can they do this year after year? I'm always worried that one day AMD would just topple over but, thank whatever you want, it hasn't. This Athlon64 probably won't destroy Intel or anything but I hope it will give AMD some more breathing room to keep competing.
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I suspect that the original poster talked about paging, he meant techniques for swaping memory (like Intel's PAE) in and out from the pure 4GB flat address space that a 32-bit cpu can address directly to a larger external pool. It's the reason why many IA32 servers ship with 8 or 16GB of RAM, when on paper, the cpu cannot address the space beyond 4GB.
As you said (and it WAS an imformative post) "32-bit chips can be designed to access any amount of physical ram" -I think he meant something like PAE when I said 'paging'.
Less of that toilet mouth. Prescott is British
It's why they don't call them laptops anymore. Look on any major computer manufacturer webpage, you'd be hardpressed to find the word "laptop"
Dell - Notebook
HPAQ - Notebook
Alienware - mobile gaming
VoodooPC- mobile
Not to be obnoxious, but I was curious about your claims and performed a search on google of each site to measure the number of pages containing the word "laptop".
Dell - 20,800
HPAQ - 6320
Alienware - 39 ("notebook" only had 25)
VoodooPC - 142 ("notebook" only had 62)
Granted the number of "notebook" terms on Dell and HPAQ was significantly higher than the term "laptop", but it's not like the term was suddenly erased by marketing or something...
My Powerbook G4 17" works just fine on my lap, as did my old iBook.
Cheers,
Justin
I've found that ignorance and lazyness seem to prevail in the open source movement when it comes to truely portable software.
I've found that ignorance and laziness seem to prevail in almost all programmers when it comes to truly portable software.
I've also found that you are an idiot.
While most of your points are valid, there are sound reasons why x86 FPU performance sucks, as there are fundamental flaws in its stack-based architecture (or so I hear, I couldn't tell you myself). That's why they came up with SSE2, which is apparently quite competitive. Of course, Intel didn't really do a very good job with the Pentium 4 FPU, but AMD usually includes a fairly decent unit.
It's also a bit disingenuous to say that FPU performance isn't important on consumer hardware, since high performance hardware is generally thrown at games, which share many similarities with other high performance software like renderers and simulators (hmm, wonder why). A fast FPU has been important to gamers since Quake and the Pentium Pro.
Yes, several actually. I should probably preface this with the fact that I was never into the Intel=PC mentality that everyone else at the time was in. Actually, my first PC used an NEC V20.
:) Actually, I've got one running with a chipset fan with a bad bearing (Abit board) that runs 24x7 with no problems.
I have used AMD as my primary processor vendor since my 486DX40 which ran perfect in a VLB system and was later upgraded to a DX2-80. Over the years, I have used the K5, K6, and Athlon processors and will be chosing AMD as my 64bit solution when I decide to go that route.
Problems that I have encountered were:
K5 - poor FP performance.
K6 - certain programs crashing due to program errors.
Athlon - none.
The only other problem that I can mention is AMD stupid naming on their XP line. That's hardly a problem.
I assume you're joking, but on the off chance that you're being serious, what exactly do you miss? The air conditioning bill? You know, running a few 60-100W light bulbs will burn up more power and spew more heat than any computer.
I never have to date, either... in fact, I never get to date.
Oh, wait. You meant, "have (to date)."
Bleh, now I just feel pathetic and lonely.
SNK trumped the 16 bit competition by releasing their 24 bit NeoGeo powerhouse.
NEC releases it's 16 bit system to compete with the 16 bit Sega Genesis.
Sega's last stand, the Dreamcast is a 128 bit super system that will change the world.
No thanks people. I'll just stick to my PC which includes the powerful 80 bit 8087.
You must confuse that with KT333. KT133A was really not that good, at least not the southbridge that came with it, for instance non-existant pci performance, problems with the ide interface (eventually bios updates fixed the data corruption issues at the cost of even worse pci performance).
Without AMD though, I'm sure Intel would keep their new chips at higher price points for a bit longer and milk the power user crowd for a little more money.
Not only that, but the increase in processing power would be matched to the complexity of the software. For all the MS-bashing, it would make good business sense for Intel not to release "fast" processors, but instead coerce people into buying as many generations of their processors as possible. Each time you'd want to upgrade your software, you'd want to upgrade your hardware.
In fact, you see some of the same kind of "pacing" in the market now as well, but now mostly as a "fastest processor vs paper release" trade-off, since AMD and Intel will jump at eachother to claim the title, but without being accused of releasing vaporware. Still, that is far superior to the situation if Intel was completely alone in the market.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It was hard to tell from the article, but it seemed to imply that AMD's new instructions were included. Can you verify what those 64-bit instructions actually are?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
god you people need to relax. its a joke, deal with it.
Yes, there's Windows for the platform, but what vendor sells a new IA-64 machine to end users for under $1,000? A workstation platform is generally not a "desktop" platform until it is common in homes, and it won't be in many homes until it gets below that psychological price point.
Will I retire or break 10K?
bias. That's easy to tell for several reasons:
Athlon 64 is existing technology and it's kin, the Opteron, was released back in April. So let's talk Intel x86-64 derivatives when they're on the books. It's certainly not why you shouldn't buy an Athlon 64. Go home FUDSTER. Come back when you got something with at least a launch date. Granted I read the Inquirer every day, but your article could have been more balanced.
AMD has always provided a better value at a given performance level and will continue to do so. You can't tell me that if an Intel part has 64 bit and comparable performance that it will be less expensive. So what if a 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 will be $178. You'll probably have
an Athlon 64 3200+ for $150 or less at that point.
Sounds like you're an Intel fanboy as much as I'm an AMD fanboy. If they had cards, I'd be a card carrying fanboy.
The Mac went through almost the same growing pains in the early 7.0 era. IIRC, Mac OS 7.0 and 7.1 could run in 24-bit mode or 32-bit mode, but some apps required a bit of reengineering by their authors before they could work with 32-bit mode, and in fact, some 68020-based and early 68030-based Mac models had "dirty" ROM code that didn't work with 32-bit addressing. Apple finally dropped support for "dirty" models in Mac OS 7.6, the first to require a 68030 processor and a "clean" ROM.
Will I retire or break 10K?
To REALLY drive my point home, what is the icon for this article?? It's Intel, NOT AMD. So even in their own story, AMD finds itself in Intel's shadow, even when they are about to break into major new territory for a chip meant to be a mainstream desktop. Sure there's Opteron, G5, Alpha, UltraSparc, etc that might be used for desktop, but this will be a whole new ball game for windows. Plus this will be the first really cheap 64 bit high performance Linux machines (within 6 months when prices drop). Even now Opteron has topped the TCP price/performance benchmarks with a MULTI-processor machine beating out a dell single processor. You know multi-processor machines are generally more expensive per processor, so this is remarkable.
I saw an application server benchmark where a dual 1.6 Ghz Opteron did almost twice as good as a dual 2.8 Ghz Xeon, which is at a little more than half the Mhz! Talk about impressive.
IBM chose to build the PC around the x86 architecture, which pretty much dried up the market for other 16 bit processors.
Other 16-bit processor architectures lived on in game consoles. The Sega Genesis and Atari Jaguar had a 68000 processor, and the WDC 65c816 found its way into the Super NES. Why couldn't Zilog manage to market its CPUs for use in 16-bit consoles?
Will I retire or break 10K?
PowerPC with Altivec does in fact find its way into scientific computing (big PPC clusters) and image editing (Macintosh computers).
On the Windows desktop, on the other hand, these applications aren't important enough for a switch to processors with a new instruction set but which can't run the old apps in parallel on the same machine. When Apple first introduced Power Macintosh computers to replace 68K computers, Apple solved this problem by emulating legacy apps and making half the OS run in emulation until the rest could be ported. AMD's new processor will introduce hardware support for such emulation ("virtual i386" mode), making it even easier for Microsoft to port only half the OS, just as Intel did when its V86-capable 386 processor led to Windows 3.x, the first Windows version that multitasked DOS apps well.
Will I retire or break 10K?
...on the FPU. The Pentium FPU can not only load and store 64-bit values directly--over a 64-bit bus--but can load and store 80-bit values. In fact, all internal FPU operations are 80-bit.
What about emulating a Nintendo 64?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I've found that ignorance and lazyness seem to prevail in the open source movement when it comes to truely portable software.
"Ignorance and laziness"? How about finance? Most free software developers own x86 machines and don't have $3,000 to waste on a new specimen of any 64-bit workstation platform. Can you provide me with programs that emulate most popular 64-bit architectures on x86 so that I can run test suites on some other platform?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Oh, I get it! I get jokes! HAHAHAHAHA...
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I was ready to moderate, but decided to reply instead --
Virtual 86 mode is missing from the '286 but it isn't the most important thing...
The '286 is a 16 bit machine. This makes porting Unix software (which generally assumes a 32 bit 'int' type) a bit difficult.
Also, the '286 does not support paging. Only segmentation. It is very difficult to get a "steady state" swapping working with variable length segments. Also, there were only 8K user and 8K system segments. Which rendered the idea of a separate segment for each data item moot.
Also, the '286 was limited to 16MB of real memory. Which is lightweight for a GUI (fine for console based applications, though).
Microsoft DID do a "lot" with the 286, but the user base of the time didn't see the need to play along. OS/2 1.x was actually quite choice, and exploited the '286 well.
However, it was expensive (compared to DOS), used too much memory (not many computers had more than 640K, 2MB was considered a lot) and there weren't many compelling applications for the new protected mode. Also, OS/2 was late. VERY late.
Doom and gloom for the 286.
No, it wasn't "Intel's fault". But Intel just made the chips. The '286 was sampling in 1982. Personally, I like it that way. Give us the chips, and we will decide what can fly on the market and what must die...
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I'm afraid this line of reasoning just doesn't cut it.
It also sounds as if Slashdot just got astroturfed with a top-tier article. Kinda sad, IMO.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
There's no need to emulate anything. One of the most frequent errors is assuming the size of data structures instead of querying the system for the sizes of these structures. You can do that without ever seeing a 64 bit system.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
During the main phase of processing, the GIMP and Photoshop probably wouldn't see a major increase in performance from a two-bundle Itanium over a two-system cluster
Does even the expensive full version of Adobe Photoshop support running filters on a cluster?
and definately a dual-processor Athlon or Pentium 4.
Sure, it would be easy to have different CPUs do a filter on different parts of an image, but the problem here is getting an affordable WinAPI-compatible operating system to recognize the extra CPUs when Microsoft likes to price its operating systems per CPU. Windows Home Edition (1 CPU license) costs less than Windows Professional (2 CPU license), which costs less than Windows Server (4 CPU license IIRC), which costs less than Windows Advanced Server, etc. Thus, the price of Windows is one factor in the drive to put as much processing power in one core as possible.
Will I retire or break 10K?