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..."

Comments

It would almost have to follow AMD's conventions

[Phosphor3k]

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 would...

[TWX]

"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.

The tide is turning for AMD

[dankdirk77]

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.

IInntteerreessttiinng

[Eponymous Cowboy]

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..

Re:IInntteerreessttiinng

[Waffle Iron]

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.

Re:IInntteerreessttiinng

[Waffle Iron]

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.)

Wow! Not.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I've never bought Intel

[RichiP]

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).

Finally caught on?

[freidog]

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)

FUD!

[Tremblay99]

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.

Is Prescott 64-bit?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I've Heard This Before

[MBCook]

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.

Re:I've Heard This Before

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

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.

Isn't this what Intel wants?

[Kevinv]

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?

Re:FUD

[javiercero]

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.

No, it isn't

[Groo Wanderer]

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

Re:Performance doesn't come directly from 64 bits

[scheme]

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.