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Is Prescott 64-bit?

Posted by timothy on from the bits-o-plenty dept.

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..."

37 of 487 comments (clear)

  1. Hrmm by acehole · · Score: 4, Funny

    I haven't even run out and bought a 32bit. Contiki and c64 1mhz 8bit power keep me warm at night.

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    1. Re:Hrmm by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful
      According to El Reg, Prescott really will keep you warm at night. 100W power dissipation... mmmmms :)

      (To put that into perspective, the twin G5s in Apple's PowerMac together put out 90W total.)

      --
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    2. Re:Hrmm by stilwebm · · Score: 4, Funny

      According to El Reg, Prescott really will keep you warm at night. 100W power dissipation... mmmmms :)

      An Easy Bake Oven uses a 100W incadescent light bulb as the heating element. So with a heatsink and a fan, does that make a case with Prescott Inside an Easy Bake Convection Oven?

  2. FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Intel, those typical insensitve clods, are spreading FUD around to kill AMD.

    1. Re:FUD by javiercero · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This is no flame bait, it is Intel's business practice. They have done it over and over and over, if any of you were alive during the 80's you'd know about intel's 32bit move with the 386 which took forever to come out, meanwhile... other people released 32bit solutions, mostly NS and Motorola. Intel's FUD machine went into high gear and told customers to hold on since the 386 was going to be out any day then and was going to be the best processor ever. So better processors that were years ahead of the 386 got killed that way.

      In the 90s Intel did the same with the Pentium and the R4000s that were going to be the basis for the ARC platform. Intel said that the Pentium was going to be out any day then and it was going to run circles around the RISC machines. The pentium was at least 4 years late and was well behind RISC offerings in performance. But Intel managed to kill the ARC consortium.

      This is the latest in Intels FUD campaign, maybe it is time to break the circle... buy intel and have 64bits TODAY... screw them, with their "ooooh we may have a surprise for you" and all that nonsense.

  3. It would almost have to follow AMD's conventions by Phosphor3k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. I would... by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

    --
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  5. The tide is turning for AMD by dankdirk77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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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  6. Great!! by Daath · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!
    Uhm... Maybe I'll buy it and install linux on it, all the big good games are coming to linux now it seems :) Can't wait! 178$ - wow! :)
    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.
  7. Let me see if i can understand this by Disevidence · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Let me see if i can understand this by xswl0931 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Assuming it's true that Prescott has 64-bit capabilities built in but not enabled, the reason to keep it secret is to not have a cheap Intel 64-bit capable processor cannibalize their expensive Itanium sales. If a dual or quad proc Prescott 64-bit system costs the same as a single proc Itanium system, which would you buy?

  8. IInntteerreessttiinng by Eponymous+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:IInntteerreessttiinng by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Informative

      You're guess is basically on the right track. I don't want to violate any NDAs, but let me just say that the AAA and AAS opcodes will now support Unicode.

    2. Re:IInntteerreessttiinng by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ok, ok, people. +5 informative... Thanks, but it was supposed to be a stinkin' joke. I guess nobody remembers what the AAA and AAS opcodes do. (They were introduced around the 8080-era and not much used since. Hint: A is for ASCII.)

  9. Wow! Not. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  10. This is pure speculation by dzym · · Score: 4, Insightful
    From The Inquirer, the The Register wanna-be no less.

    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.

  11. I've never bought Intel by RichiP · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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).

    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 ... I know. I've administered Intel-based servers).

  12. Finally caught on? by freidog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)

  13. There's more to it than 64-bit instructions by StandardCell · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  14. Performance doesn't come directly from 64 bits by vlad_petric · · Score: 4, Informative
    MMX and SSE can already do integer operations on 64 bits ... What people don't realize is that the performance improvement comes from a significant change in the instruction set architecture (ISA). While x86 is the most commercially-successful ISA, it is ugly as hell, difficult to compile for and stressing the memory system unnecessarily, as it has very few registers ("difficult to explain and impossible to love" once said an Intel designer).

    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

    1. Re:Performance doesn't come directly from 64 bits by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative
      AMD did add more registers. In fact, they quadrupled the number of registers. Vlad asserts that x86 has eight GPRs, and that x86-64 just adds eight more, but he is wrong on both counts. x86 has four GPRs, [E]AX through [E]DX (The "E" means 32 bit) and it has four index registers - actually two index registers, and two index offset registers - which can be used with some instructions. Many x86 instructions specify that your result must be stored in a specific register or pair of registers (for 64 bit results of multiply operations for example) and none of those results go into the address index registers. Furthermore, many instructions require that you use the index registers for - gasp - addressing, and they look at those registers to determine where to get information, and/or where to store it. Hence, you have FOUR general purpose registers in x86. If you want to be really strict about it, you have zero general purpose registers on the x86, because each of the four so-called GPRs has a purpose to many instructions. CX, for example, must be used for your counter by many instructions, so when writing assembler you are forever having to take into account where each instruction is going to want to look for data. Modern x86-compatible processors actually have a whole shitload of temporary registers and do register renaming so that when you think you're moving data from register to register to avoid this problem, the CPU is actually leaving it in place and just renaming the registers. This is true of the processors from both Intel and AMD, and presumably even the VIA processors, though I have no information there.

      Now, I admit I haven't spent a lot of time looking through my x86-64 manuals, because it's been vaporware until fairly recently, and furthermore they lied to us about how many HT buses would be on each flavor of processor right up until the very end, so I won't be buying anything until either they bring out an Athlon 64 MP which has the missing hypertransport bus re-added, or until the Athlon 64 brings down the price of Opteron processors. My Athlon XP is holding me for the time being, and besides, there's no 64 bit windows yet. Even after there IS a 64 bit windows, I expect to have to wait a little while for some of my drivers. So it hasn't really been a serious consideration for me. But I suspect that in many cases they have provided us with new instructions to replace the old instructions which require that the result go into specific registers.

      So, x86-64 has 16 GPRs, plus 16 "XMM" registers for SSE/SSE2, not to mention it implements the SSE2 functions from the P4. I think it pretty effectively does all the things it needs to do. Meanwhile it still has hardware solutions for emulating all the deficiencies of the x86 so that it can maintain backwards compatibility without sloowowwwwwing dooowowwwnnnn like itanic. It's the perfect solution for those persons who are not ready to give up their backwards compatibility, and it does not have the flaws that you and vlad assert. If you don't believe me, go root around AMD's site for the PDFs. Hell, I even got them to send me the paper documentation for free, which I intended to read in the bathroom. Unfortunately, even my wholly irrelevant nintendo summer 2003 catalog has been water damaged in there, so I'm definitely not going to venture into the latrine with my AMD technical docs.

      --
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    2. Re:Performance doesn't come directly from 64 bits by scheme · · Score: 5, Informative
      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.

      The Itanium ISA is elegant an and clean in some places but in others is an ungodly mess of complicated things. Take the register save engine (RSE) for example. It's supposed to handle spilling registers to the stack and loading them to the stack. This includes handling page faults, exceptions, interrupts, and memory errors. Oh yeah, this is supposed to be automatic and handled invisibly by hardware without software intervention. Hasn't happened yet.

      Also the EPIC ISA that the Itanium uses isn't easy to compile for. This is one of the biggest problems with the Itanium. It requires compilers to pull out a lot of parallelism in the code and present that to the hardware for execution. Intel sort of glossed over this when introducing the Itanium about 10 years ago and the compiler technology hasn't been able to really do this. So although the Intel compiler is better than gcc, it still isn't all that great.

      Incidentally, the Itanium does a better job at emulating the x86 ISA in software than in hardware. It was a big deal a few months ago when Intel introduced a software x86 emulator that offered a dramatic improvement over using the built in hardware emulation.

      --
      "When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
  15. FUD! by Tremblay99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:FUD! by JayBlalock · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Someone with points mod this up. If Intel ACTUALLY had a 64-bitter coming out soon, they'd be trumpeting it like it was the Second Coming. With AMD's new chip about to hit, it would be the only sensible thing to do, even if it's months off. There's no reason they would sit on it (and let just-above-tabloid tech sites "break" the story) *unless* they didn't actually have a competing product envisioned anytime soon.

      --
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  16. Is Prescott 64-bit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No. It's just a really bad rounding error in the FPU.

  17. I've Heard This Before by MBCook · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I've heard this one before, and I've got to say it's an interesting idea. The way I heard the speculation was that Intel would launch Presscot as planned and that while it would contain the 64bit stuff, it would be turned off. Then if AMD hit it off with the Athlon 64, then Intel would tell mobo makers the secret code or whatever that would allow them to turn on the 64 bit part with a simple BIOS upgrade. All of a sudden, Intel would have an instant installed base of 64 bit chips. This means that if Intel doesn't use AMD's instruction set (I doubt this, as the article says it would be eating crow, they'd never do it), they'd have a good chance of instantly having a huge install base on desktop PCs, and since they are Intel, they could get software companies to follow. In one fell swoop they could win the 64 bit war.

    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.

    --
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    1. Re:I've Heard This Before by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Then if AMD hit it off with the Athlon 64, then Intel would tell mobo makers the secret code or whatever that would allow them to turn on the 64 bit part with a simple BIOS upgrade. All of a sudden, Intel would have an instant installed base of 64 bit chips. This means that if Intel doesn't use AMD's instruction set (I doubt this, as the article says it would be eating crow, they'd never do it), they'd have a good chance of instantly having a huge install base on desktop PCs, and since they are Intel, they could get software companies to follow. In one fell swoop they could win the 64 bit war.

      You've got to be kidding. It takes years to develop a compiler for a new instruction set. If Intel suddenly announced that a lot of their chips were 64-bit capable, it would be completely useless, because there would be no software at all that could take advantage of it.

      Keep in mind that running 64-bit programs requires that the Operating System supports the instruction set completely (otherwise the registers wouldn't be saved properly, at a minimum), so they'd basically have to have Microsoft on board, in addition to probably a Linux port in order for it to be useful.

      And in the meantime, all of those extra instruction decoders and extra registers would be there on the chip, wasting valuable silicon that could be used for a larger cache. No way - Intel wouldn't sacrifice potential speed now for the chance to surprise everyone with a 64-bit processor later.

      Face it: Intel gambled with the Itanium, and so far their gamble hasn't been paying off. It's far too early to see who will win in the long term, but it's clear that the Itanium hasn't been an overwhelming success, while the Opteron is definitely equally popular already, if not already more popular.

  18. 64-bit by be-fan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
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  19. Re:I wouldn't buy the Athlon anyway by Malor · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  20. Isn't this what Intel wants? by Kevinv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  21. In honor of my first computer... by TimeForGuinness · · Score: 4, Funny
    I think AMD should change its chip's name from Athlon 64 to the Commodore 64 .

    AMD should kick it Old School.

  22. Has anyone Considered? by Bruha · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  23. PreSCOtt by KoolDude · · Score: 4, Funny


    In other news, SCO sues Intel for the use of their na... SLLLLLLLAAAAAAPPP!!!

    Ouch, that hurt!

    --
    getSexySig(); /* returns sexy signature */
  24. No, it isn't by Groo+Wanderer · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  25. Good point, one little problem. by Groo+Wanderer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  26. amd64 CPU's available _now_ by Brian+Ristuccia · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  27. "Don't run out and buy an Athlon 64 just yet..." by colins · · Score: 4, Insightful


    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