Will Intel Ship an x86-64bit Chip This Year?

Solid Paradox writes "According to The Register, American Technology Research predicts an x86-64-bit processor will 'soon' arrive from Intel and in another story, they also predict that Sun and IBM will be the major players in the future 64-bit boom. Meanwhile the Inquirer has a somewhat related article entitled Senior Intel PR man talks 64-bit extension talk, which follows their Pentium V will launch with 64-bit Windows Elements article that says that the chip is to be sampled internally this month."

Comments

Pentium V

[GameGod0]

Quoted from the article:
"The Pentium V is likely to fly along at between 5GHz to 7GHz, have 2MB plus of level two cache, be built on a 90 nanometer process, and have a stackable design." So, you'll have a 64-bit module sitting on top of your 32-bit CPU?
Sounds like Sega's 32X to me... except it'll play Doom 1 faster.

Re:Pentium V

[JanneM]

Turbos? Yes, they're around, and quite common too. Difference is, they're not pushed as some kind of macho add-on anymore; instead, the technology is mainly used to improve efficiency (by, among other things, improving accelleration so you can use a smaller, more efficient engine and retain the performance you want). And among small diesels (common in Europe), I'd say turbo diesels are a lot more common than the non-turbocharged variety.

Re:Pentium V

[swordboy]

So, you'll have a 64-bit module sitting on top of your 32-bit CPU?

I've been speculating (here and elsewhere) that this stackable thing is not going to be Intel's next big thing. I believe that the stacked module will simply contain NVRAM and not a 64-bit coprocessor. Why NVRAM? Well, it opens up some interesting possibilities. For example, if you had enough NVRAM on-chip (or reasonably close in terms of latentcy and bandwidth), you could simply shut down portions of the processor on-the-fly to save power. You could also stick the entire operating system on the stuff. The possibilities are amazing. If you haven't looked already, see my journal for much information on the subject as it relates to Intel.

Of recent interest are some presentations by Intel on NVRAM. Of interest is that they've announced that they've found that OUM will take them beyond transistors in one presentation while another presentation actually shows a transistorless cell that is quite simple (two electrodes and a programming material sandwiched in between).

A transistorless storage device could be the piece that stacks onto the P5.

Re:Pentium V

[bmajik]

uh.. you might want to stick to talking about computers. because im not sure you know wtf you're talking about when it comes to cars.

let me give you some basics:

an engine is an air pump. the more air you send through it in unit time, the more power it makes.

a great way to get more air into an engine is with forced induction. turbocharging is one route to acheive forced induction.

where are the turbo cars indeed ?
- subaru WRX
- lancer evo 8
- Audi RS6
- Dodge SRT-4
- Porsche 996TT

these are some of the fastest cars you can buy, each in their own respective price bracket.

there were some early reliability concerns with turbocharging because people forgot that americans are stupid and do things like not change their oil or keep running the car even though its obviously over heating. this would often lead to oil coking in the turbine and eventual bearing failure, causing turbos to wear out.

incidentally, replacing a turbine is a pretty common modification, and an easy way to extract more power from an engine (when part of a well thought out systems engineering approach that has the appropriate modifiactinos in inductino and exhaust to support the new turbine and keep it in its ideal efficiency range for the cfm/boost desired)

so, turbo charging is alive and well, some of the worlds most exciting cars are benefitting from it.

but some of the worlds most mundane, reliable cars are as well. turbo deisel engines are incredibly common and reliable in the fleet industry. ford has some 7+ liters turbo deisel truck motors that go hundreds of thousands of miles with only regular maintenance. and turbo diesel cars are huge in europe where diesel is cheaper and more energy efficient (and cleaner) then it is here... VW is introducing more TDI engined models this year infact. many of them make twice as much peak torque as naturally aspirated motors with similar displacement.

high RPM engines are also wildly successful in racing. They DO give the best performance. It's easy to see why:

SAE horsepower = (Torque (ft/lbs) * RPM) / 5252

in other words, the more revs you make, the more horsepower you'll produce. As long as your rpms are climbing faster than the non-constant torque curve is decreasing, you want to continue to rev higher.

This is why the BMW-Williams P82 Formula 1 motor redlines at slightly north if 19,000 RPM. It's a 3 liter V10 naturally aspirated motor making in excess of 900 horsepower. It isn't making as much torque but doesn't need to - only about 280ft/lbs or so.. because the car its installed in weighs bout 1000lbs. High-RPM high horsepower cars are the most performant in typical tarmac racing because you can take advantage of aggressive, torque multiplying gear ratios.

Incidentally, thats still more torque than most of the motors driving 3000+ lb street cars are producing.

But...

[NeoThermic]

Can it do hardware 32bit as well? Currently the Intel Itanium 64 bit chip has to emulate 32bit for applications that are not 64bit compliant, and therefore the AMD64 which can do hardware 64 and 32 bit sweeps the floor.

Plus, who is ready to receive 64 bit chips? Windows isn't quite yet there with their 64 bit OS, and many linux distros only have beta quality 64 bit OS'es.

NeoThermic

Re:But...

[TeknoHog]

many linux distros only have beta quality 64 bit OS'es.

Just to nitpick, Linux has supported other 64-bit architectures (at least Alpha) from its early years, so it definitely has the 64-bitness sorted out already. X86-64 is a relatively new thing, but not quite the first one with 64 bits.

Windows XP 64-bit

[Zog The Undeniable]

But will MS write their 64-bit XP to work on Athlon 64 and the new Intel chip, or will we have three different versions (Itanium, Athlon 64 and Intel x86-64)? At this rate Windows will become as fragmented as Linux ;-)

Re:Windows XP 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

The rumour is that Microsoft said a firm no to Intel requesting support for an entirely new 64-bit variation, but they worked out a deal where Microsoft would delay their x86-64 version of Windows until Intel was able to develop a compatible processor. The Intel x86-64 processor might even contain a few extra instructions that AMD doesn't have, just to ensure incompatibility.

These kinds of rumours may not not have anything to do with reality, but at least they can explain why Microsoft has not released the x86-64 Windows for sale even though there have been fully functional betas available for almost a year now.

Re:Itanium

[urmensch]

No, It is a new arch (Intel Architexture, IA64) - That's one of the big deals about the AMD 64 bit chip, it is x86 compatible.

Dumb question

[pubjames]

Ok, flame me if you wish, here's my dumb question:

If I got a computer with a 64 bit processor, what difference would I notice compared to a non-64 bit resaonbly high-end PC? I mean, would it just be a bit faster? Or a hell of a lot faster? Or just faster at certain things? Or would it not make much difference at all for normal everyday office tasks and playing games etc.?

Re:Dumb question

[argent]

In theory, 64bit should be better than 32bit (that goes without saying).

Not actually true. The larger the word size, the more bits you have to move on every operation. Going to a larger word size is normally driven by application requirements: if an application doesn't need a larger address space or a wider ALU a larger word can actualy make it slower.

What can you do with a 64-bit processor?

Well, one thing you can do is directly address every byte on the largest disk drives we can get today. With an operating system that was designed for direct access, like Multics, you would never have to "read" any files: when you opened one, it would look just as if it had already been read in... all your physical memory would effectively be a big disk cache.

For another, you can give each computer on the network part of the address space, so the same thing would be true for any file on your local LAN. Or any program on your LAN... no more messing around with protocols and remote file servers and databases... if you had the access rights, it would be as if they were local files.

You could do the same thing for each instance of a program, so you wouldn't need complex mapping code when passing messages from one program to another... in fact you could just pass the address of a message and let the memory management system move it over when you actually need it. That would get rid of a LOT of redundant copying, since you probably don't need all parts of every message.

The problem is, you'd need a whole new OS (or a whole old one... Multics is older than UNIX) to really take advantage of this kind of thing.

Re:Dumb question

[Grishnakh]

Don't be ridiculous. The main advantages of 64-bit architecture is memory addressability and large-number computation. There are many applications for this; just because Granny doesn't want to do anything besides send email is irrelevant to the rest of us that do have uses for this power.

Some examples, some of which have already been pointed out:

1) video editing. Digital video takes up tons of space, and 2GB of memory addressability just doesn't cut it when you're trying to edit something that takes tens of gigs or more.

2) large-number computation. Scientific simulations, video rendering, etc. do tons of computation, and doing it 64 bits at a time will improve performance greatly.

3) games. The way games operate isn't too different than the rendering that Hollywood studios do in massive quantities, and games need to do it in real-time.

4) computation using large data sets. Simulators of all kinds (used for designing semiconductors, aircraft, automobiles, etc.) work with massive amounts of data. 2GB of memory addressability isn't enough.

Whether you think "most people" need 64 bits or not is irrelevant. I really don't care about the masses of AOL users who just read their email; in my line of work, 64 bit systems will soon probide a very noticable benefit as the simulators we're currently using are pushing the limits of 32-bit memory addressability and will soon need more. Given that there's thousands of engineers here in my company alone, and untold hundreds of thousands more involved in other types of simulation, is alone enough of a market opportunity for these CPU manufacturers to be pushing this technology. As for the home users, I'm sure the game writers will come up with ways to use that power too.

Other things up their sleeve

[swordboy]

I think that Intel have some other tricks up their sleeve. See my journal for some screwy wishful thinking. What is cool about loads of on-chip NVRAM is that it opens up the possibility for Intel to ship an embedded operating system. The Wintel duopoly will reach new heights with DRM and Trusted Computing.

Sample Results..

[MosesJones]

After Sampling the new Chip Internally the general view was :

"Tastes like Chicken"

Further Internal Samplings are being conducted using Tabasco and BBQ sauces.

Re:Dumb question - deserves a straight answer

[Crypto Gnome]

The best answer to your question is : not necessarily faster. Variables in this equation include but are not limited to:

• good motherboard support
• good OS support
• advanced multi-bit path to ALL hardware interfaces (eg them newsystem buses which are mostly not yet vailable)
• good fast RAM
• software recompiled to the 64-bit CPU
• actual use of 'benefits' of 64-bit computing (eg consumes unearthly amounts of RAM)

For you and I, JimBob and JoeBlow, a good fast 32-bit system will kick much 64-bit arse. At least until

• full OS (and driver) support for 64-bit mode
• apps recompiled for 64-bit
• fast mother with fancy-schmancy ultra-wide ultra-fast system bus
• new cards (*especially* video) on said new bus

x86-64???

[Glock27]

x86-64-bit processor will 'soon' arrive from Intel

Do you mean AMD64? Will the Intel chips really be fully compatible with an AMD-designed instruction set?

If this happens, it will only reinforce the fact that Intel has lost it's leadership position in the x86 compatible market. It will also severely impact any eventual large scale adoption of Itanium.

AMD just needs to bite the bullet and actually do some marketing. It has clearly superior products at this point. The Athlon 64 3000+ looks like a great buy, and a nice way to check out 64 bit computing at a low price point. If you have the money laying around, though, you really can't beat the PowerMac G5s. :-)

BTW, it's also too bad that Microsoft has delayed 64-bit Windows. It shows all too clearly that the "Wintel" partnership is alive, well, and smelly. On the other hand, it does provide a nice platform for Linux to tout it's superiority - "What's taking so long Microsoft, we've had an AMD64 version of Linux for months already!". So much for the "advantages" of Microsoft's software development practices... :-P

Re:x86-64???

[Glock27]

Leadership is determined by who's got more out there, not by who's following whose standard. By your definition, AMD could never ever achieve leadership position because it's usinng Intel's instructions.

No, leadership is determined by who introduces the technology that everyone will be using in the future.

You're talking about "marketshare" which is a different concept. ;-)

The fact that Intel has such a commanding lead in marketshare at the moment is mainly a glowing endorsement of effective marketing practices. The P4 has been a stunning failure as a technology - all it has really achieved is lower performance at 1/3 higher clockspeed (P4 3.2 GHz. vs. Athlon FX 2.2 GHz.). The only place that P4 excels is the SIMD instruction set, where latency doesn't matter - and those instructions don't help much at all with general purpose computing.

Intel Inside - Just Say No. :-)

Re:x86-64???

[ajagci]

Leadership is determined by who's got more out there, not by who's following whose standard.

No, the term "leadership" by itself is commonly understood to refer to "technical leadership", i.e., who sets the standard, not who moves more product. If there is any ambiguity, just be clear about it. In this case, from context, it should be clear that the term was used to talk about technical leadership.

By your definition, AMD could never ever achieve leadership position because it's usinng Intel's instructions.

The instructions Intel defined ten years ago don't help us determine who leads the industry now technically. What matters is recent changes, who made them, and who copied them.

AMD may be a threat, but it has not ousted Intel, not by a long shot.

And AMD may never "oust" Intel. But they can still be in a technical leadership position.

Linus' opinion on 64 bit desktops

[anti-NAT]

Linus Torvalds on 64bit desktops

Linus Torvalds on 64bit desktops

just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

Great just what we need. another patch on a 20+ year old design. its not Apple who needs to switch platform's its us the whole x86 platform should be dropped. Apple has been able to pull off a proccessor change from the m68k to the PPC and they were able to mantain compatibly with legacy apps in emulation.

Re:Itanium

[arvindn]

Elaborating slightly on this, the Itanium is a "VLIW" chip, which is a wholly different way of doing computation compared to the more usual "superscalar" paradigm. That's why it wasn't compatible with the x86, that's why they targeted it at servers doing heavy computation etc. The AMD chip, on the other hand, can support x86 relatively easily by including a "morphing layer" (I think that's the name) which maps x86 instructions to the native instructions of the chip. So they're able to target desktops.

Did I Miss Something?

[los furtive]

...they also predict that Sun and IBM will be the major players in the future 64-bit boom

Isn't IBM already a major player?

Re:NO

[Crypto Gnome]

Itaniums for 6bit processing

I always thought Intel was a few slices short of a loaf, but that's just ridiculous.

Too Much Work

[InvaderXimian]

I don't think MS could port Windows to all those different architectures (they can't get one right) so perhaps they'll either need more people, make it open source within a select few MS Devs or something or just make it really crappy.

Think about it, optimizing an operating system for 4+ archs is no easy task and I doubt MS could do it in a reasonable amount of time.

Maybe they'll hire the Duke Nukem: Forever developers on that one.

Very Likely

[turgid]

Intel will very likely release a 64-bit x86 processor, or kludge unit for Pentium V, this year (just like the math coprocessor was prior to the 486).

However consider this:

AMD has been shipping Opteron for nearly a year already, and ports of the main OSs (including Windows and Linux) have been done, with others already working in the lab. It also runs old 32-bit OSs with no change. It will run legacy x86 code at full speed along side new 64-bit code. It is more efficient in terms of useful work done per clock cycle compared to Pentium 4 and Xeon. It scales better in multi-way systems (very important in workstations and serves) : the logic is built in. Xeon does not have this (and plain P4 is limited to single-way). It has a built in memory controller. It has twice as many registers. It's very inexpensive. Go and look up your favourite component retailer right now and compare an Opteron to a Xeon (and even the "high-end" Pentium 4).

The only place AMD may have trouble selling is to the ignorant masses who buy on MHz (or GHz) from highstreet stores, and pay too much.

The corporate world is more clued-up, and so are the enthusiasts and power-users.

Even if AMD does not knock intel off of it's perch, there is a huge potential market for Opteron. Several major corporations are behind Opteron. They've committed to it. It's going to be big business. 2004 will see a radical change in the hardware business. I predict that in the second half of this year, people will laugh a 32-bit PeeCees. They will be obsolete and bargain-basement by then.

Re:Very Likely

[The One KEA]

It took 11 years for 32bit operating systems to finally displace 16bit operating systems. Your prediction of 32bit PCs being laughed at by December 2004 is probably a little too radical.

However, your other comments about AMD and the Opteron are spot on, IMO - the enterprise world is NOT going to buy a competing, slightly incompatible 64bit platform when it has already invested in another 64bit platform that is ALREADY AVAILABLE and is KNOWN to be just as fast/faster than a 32bit commodity platform or an older 64bit platform like a PPC box from IBM. It's hard enough these days for IT departments to support the current heterogenous mix of 32bit commodity desktops and servers and the old/new 64bit platforms from AMD and IBM. Throwing in a third which could cost even more and add more headaches would be pretty hard to sell, IMHO.

You were also right about marketing; AMD abolsutely MUST find a way to conclusively show that GHz != Speed. They need a new aggressive marketing campaign ASAP - unless the rumours about Prescott being a bit of a dud are true.....

Either way, AMD knows that they're sitting on a goldmine; they just need to exploit it as much as they can.

Re:Dumb question - deserves a straight answer

[Webmonger]

For you and I, JimBob and JoeBlow, a good fast 32-bit system will kick much 64-bit arse.

This isn't valid. x86-64 systems can run 32-bit apps at full speed, so they'd be kicking their own arse.

Also note that x86-64 corrects some of the weaknesses of the x86 architecture, so x86-64 apps are automatically faster. Counter-strike was 30% faster, clock-for-clock.

Re:How fast are things really getting?

[argent]

That's because a lot of these clock speed improvements are "marketing MIPS".

To speed a computer up, the best way is to look for what's slowing it down the most, and speed that up.

To sell more computers, the best way is to look for what's easiest to speed up, and advertise that as the big advantage.

It's actually possible for a clock speed improvement to be accompanied by other changes that slow down some programs. Intel hit that when the first generation XScale was used in the Pocket PC... the big bottleneck for video on the ARM chips used in the Pocket PC was memory bandwidth... they had 206 MHz processors and 100 MHz memory and people were trying to play videos from memory cards that were far slower than that. They sped up the ARM instruction set on the XScale by breaking the instructions up with a longer pipeline. What happened? Well, that longer pipeline actually increased the impact of the slower memory by increasing the impact of a "bubble in the pipeline" when it had to go to main memory instead of cache to load instructions or when a mispredicted branch forced it to discard partially completed instructions, and on some benchmarks the 400 MHz XScale was actually slower than the 206 MHz StrongARM... and some vendors actually ran the XScale at 200 or 300 MHz!

The second generation XScale's 200 MHz bus largely solved that... at the cost of having to use faster and more power-hungry RAM. Everything's a tradeoff.

So, if you have a computer with a 266 MHz memory bus... how much difference do you think you'll see going from a 700 MHz processor to a 1.4 GHz processor or even a 2.1 GHz one? Well, that depends on what you're processing! If your program and its data is small enough to mostly fit in the cache, you'll get a big boost. If you're playing a videogame with megabytes of graphics being shoved down the AGP port to the video card, probably not a whole lot... save your money and upgrade the graphics card instead.

And that's why memory chips keep changing, they keep coming up with faster and faster memory... but that's falling further and further behind the marketing MIPS because there's a lot fewer tricks left to pull to market those numbers up.

Re:Itanium

[oldmanmtn]

The AMD chip, on the other hand, can support x86 relatively easily by including a "morphing layer" (I think that's the name) which maps x86 instructions to the native instructions of the chip

This is only correct if you consider microcode to be the "native instructions" on AMD. Itanic introduced a whole new ISA, which I guess requires some kind of 'morphing to support x86. Opteron uses the existing x86 ISA with a small number of 64-bit extensions. So, x86 is the "native instruction" set for the AMD CPUs, which allows for much better performance of current 32-bit applications.

Furthermore...

[emil]

...the only two major computer system manufacturers who have elected to rely upon the Itanium are HP and SGI.

HP is manufacturing a number of different Itanium systems and winning performance awards with them. The largest is the "Superdome" which I believe will hold 64 CPUs. The Superdome is interesting in that it can accept either the old (soon to be discontinued) PA-RISC processors or the newer Itanium chips (hopefully Sun will do something similar with Sparc and Opteron in a revision of the e10k line).

SGI also makes a Linux Itanium NUMA supercomputer called "Altix" that is far more scalable than Superdome.

Both of these companies are going to be royally shafted if Intel produces a chip using the Opteron/Athlon64 instruction set. Intel has been incredibly unwise in not dropping the cost of the Itanium below the Opteron. Itanium has flaws, but it does have some incredible floating point performance.

HP is probably of the greatest concern. They ported their enterprise UNIX (HP-UX) to Itanium some time ago, and they are nearing a stable port of the OpenVMS operating system to Itanium. These operating systems have large, dedicated followings and they are technically quite advanced (far more so than Linux in many respects).

If the Itanium fails, it will be a bloodbath for HP enterprise systems.

Intel, AMD, etc

[sjd]

All of the posts I've read only talk CPUs. Hasn't anyone noticed that MS now (quietly) has a multi-platform software virtual machine? .NET strives from cross-platform compatibility, just as Java did years, and years ago. MS realised this IA-32/IA-64 was going to happen, and .NET quietly solves the problem. MS is pushing people to migrate their IA-32/Win32 apps to it. As a current .NET software engineer, the specific Windows platform becomes irrelevant. You could easily argue that MS is delaying the 64-bit world to give developers more time to migrate to .NET. Sean

Re:Why would you buy an AMD64?

[bucky0]

Let's just review a few facts:

Lets.

Many dual-cpu boards tie all the memory to one cpu, slowing down the other one.

There are a few boards like that, but certainly not a majority. The difference is very small however, considering that there is just one extra hop across a HT link to the processor with memory. (The memory controllers are directly connected to HT links which minimises latency)

Various versions of the AMD64 architecture are unreasonably expensive.

True, some versions are expensive, but your talking about a technology that's been released for approximately 3 months now. Give it time and prices on the high end stuff will go down. That said, you can get a single proc A64 system for fairly cheap.

I've heard rumors of Linux incompatibility with various boards and bioses.

Rumors...you're giving people advice on whether or not people should purchase a particular architechture on rumors? What's the severity of the problems?

AMD is also in the act of outsourcing it's IT staff to India. While Intel undoubtedly does the same, AMD's action is more recent and this sort of thing shouldn't be rewarded.

I agree

AMD's planning with Microsoft Win64 release was also obviously lackluster if Intel was able to delay it.

That's a whole ton of speculation. There's any number of reasons that release was delayed. MS could be having trouble porting the legacy code over, Intel could have negociated(sp?) hard(keep in mind who has the much larger market share), MS could have wanted to wait for marketing reasons...who knows? It's silly to blame AMD for it though.

My 2 cents.