AMD Predicts End of 32-bit Processors

DDumitru writes "Infoworld reports that AMD predicts it will stop producing 32-bit processors by the end of 2005. By depending on price cuts for Athlon-64 and Opteron, AMD is predicting that it's sales of 32-bit CPUs will fall off and obsolete 32-bit systems in less than 3 years. This is either a push forward, or a tactic to try to capture the 64/32 bit standard leaving Intel in the rear. Or it could just be hype." I'm not in a hurry to ditch any of my 32-bit machines, so long as I get them replaced by 2038.

Comments

You know.....

[inteller]

.....forgive me for being captain obvious, but my old A7M266 board runs just fine with XP 2000+....they can continue dropping the price on these suckers so that eventually I can max it out with 2600+s and also plop two MP 2600+s in my A7M266-D.....I don't even use half the capacity now...I'll be blown away when I plop those in for $50 each in a year or so.....keep predicting the demise AMD, it's all fine with me.

Re:You know.....

[addaon]

You have to realize there's a certain minimum cost to retail processors, the same way there is to, say, video cards. You can't sell an AGP video card for $30 MSRP. The cost of packaging, shelf space, support, etc. outweighs the cost of hardware by so much at that level that, even if the hardware were essentially free, the product price would be around $30 or so. Ditto for processors; once a processor goes below about $40, it seems like it's no longer worth producing; the cost of packaging and so on outweighs any possible further reduction in price. On the other end, at $5 or so they become worth producing again (see PICs and such) because, at that point, no packaging or support is expected... but don't expect to ever find a nice $40 CPU to put in your motherboard.

Massive gains in cooling tech?

[PierceLabs]

Unless AMD or someone else has a massive gain with respect to being able to cool these monster CPUs along with shrinking the die so that they are suitable in general consumer electronics, I don't think anyone is going to stop producing smaller/cooler CPUs. While the 64 bit chips are great and all, I just can't imagine seeing one in a phone (for example) or even a PDA in the timeframe that they suggest.

Maybe they meant to include that they won't go into these markets which limits their desire to produce low footprint, low heat chips.

adaptability

[DenOfEarth]

As a user of open source, I think this shouldn't really be a problem at all, should it? I mean, once gcc can compile 64-bit code, than we should simply be able to recompile all of our current apps for these new processors, shouldn't we? I'd be happy if someone out there could point me out as not being in the know...

Re:32 bits alive and well.

[njdj]

Hell 16 bit processors are alive and well!

most industrial PC104 form factor PC's are running 386 processors.

The 386 is a 32-bit processor.
(There was a later variant called the 386SX that used a 16-bit bus, but it wasn't popular, and anyway the CPU was still 32-bit).

Re:Ohh yea?

[Loki_1929]

"I was sure that Intel had announced plans to integrate it's 64bit "Yamhill" extensions into the Prescott chip which should be launched early next year."

They haven't, and they wont, unless the Athlon64s begin to eat away at too much of Intel's market share. Intel's problem is that if it releases 64-bit extensions in Prescott, it will be forced to do so for the Xeon line as well. The problem with this is that it would send 10 years of research and development, along with countless Billions of dollars down the drain. Itanium relies on one thing and one thing only: a need for 64-bit processing. The few Itaniums that are selling will be the only ones sold if Intel's customers can get 64-bits on a Xeon.

Unless Intel is forced to, it's simply not going to do "64-bits on the cheap". Intel has nothing to gain by announcing or implementing 64-bit extensions now; we don't even know if the Athlon64s are going to sell. On the other hand, they have everything to lose if they do open up Prescott to 64-bit quickly. What Intel is probably doing now is scrambling to come up with ways to sell Itaniums to its customers once 64-bit Xeons are available. Itanium's miserable sales to date show that it has enough trouble just selling it as-is. Take away the one advantage it does have, and they may as well take it off the table now.

Aside from that, we have absolutely no idea how well Prescott's 64-bit extensions perform. We have no idea if they've been perfected, nor what kind of problems Intel has with them. We have no idea if bugs exist in the instructions, nor what sort of benefit we'd see from them. They could very well be based off of AMD's own 64-bit extensions (Intel has licensed the technology), which would make it rather embarassing to release them to the public. It would also constitute a huge and embarassing shift in position on the topic of 64-bits for home; something Intel has publicly stated is not something the market currently needs.

I'm not saying Intel wouldn't possibly announce 64-bit instructions in the near future - it could be tommorrow for all I know. All I'm saying is that everything points to Intel keeping the 64-bit extensions under wraps for as long as absolutely possible. As of right now, the only 64-bit instruction sets we know of (when it comes to Intel/AMD), are EPIC for Itanium and the ones from AMD. It's doubtful that Intel has secretly developed a whole brand new instruction set just for the P4, and it's even more doubtful that they somehow rigged the P4 to use Itanium's 64-bit instruction set. Thus, we're left with Intel banking on limited adoption of AMD's 64-bit CPUs, which does not appear to be the case thus far.

P.S. All signs point to Intel releasing the first handfull of Precotts around Feb of 2004, with volume closer to early Q2. Solving voltage leaks that push your operating temp to extremes isn't something you throw a bandaid on; it's something you design around. I just hope, for Intel's sake, that they aren't rushing Prescott out the door as they have on other chips (P3 1.13GHz).

Re:Amazing

[Loki_1929]

"This may have been true but the average user just wants it to look good on paper."

(Bob) "Hey, Bill. I just got a new computer!"

(Bill) "I was thinking about getting a new one myself. Did you get one of those new Pentium 5 ones?"

(Bob) "Nope, one of the tech guys at work was telling me how those are only 32 bits, so I got one of these Athlon ones. They're 64 bits."

In the battle of bigger vs better, AMD has 64, Intel has 32. AMD introduced the model numbers for precisely the reason you raised - the average user has no idea what actually influences performance. The new AMD CPUs are set to ramp up in clock frequency very quickly, which will cause the model numbers to shoot up fast as well. What you'll end up with is Average Joe Consumer looking at Athlon64 4400+ & Pentium(?) 4Ghz. AMD is likely to pump up the "Their's is 32, our's is 64!" marketing, and regardless of whether the consumer has any clue whatsoever what that means, it makes AMD look better on paper.