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AMD's Roadmap revealed
NoPants writes "It looks like the aces at Anandtech were able to get their hands on some of AMD's internal roadmaps. Anand has some interesting information including the new upcoming Socket 939 CPU standard as well as AMD's predicted release dates for Athlon 64 4000+ processors. Hopefully this will shed some light on what AMD is trying to do with all the different socket types..."
Unless you are a gamer or looking to compute Pi to the last digit
Or are wanting to do things like rip MP3s (trivial) or burn DVDs (non-trivial; technically it's the MPEG2 mastering, not the burning, that takes the CPU time). Developers, graphics artists, and most engineering can also use as much CPU as is available. For just a plain old file server you do very well by using the cheapest (in terms of purchase and run cost) that you can get. A webserver probably needs more juice. A database server definitely does. Trivial home use excluded of course. I'm not talking about trivial usages -- they can always be solved easily.
Wake me when a cheap "build your own system" RISC alternative hits the market.
When you realize that the core ISA of all x86 chips is RISC let me know. Not to mention that most of the classic "RISC" designs have deviated far from the "reduced" portion of that moniker. Looked at the Power or PowerPC ISA recently? RISC was created not because a reduced instruction set is inherently better, but because it allowed for a number of technologies such as pipelining, branch prediction, caching, and so forth to be implemented. Every single one of those is in x86 architecture now. Sure, the ISA is still a mess, but it's a better price/performance than anything else out there. All the naysayers have been disproven, time and time again. And yes, when I was a little college student I was horrified at the design of x86. Then I grew up.
Running at full CPU load, an Athlon 64 3200+ uses less power than an Intel P4 3.2GHz. Furthermore, with AMD's Cool and Quiet power management enabled the Athlon 64 CPU slows down to 800MHz and drops to 1.275v when you don't need much CPU performence, ie, while I'm typing this message. ASUS has a nifty little program that displays the current CPU speed and core voltage on my desktop.
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AMD CPU power requirements are expected to drop substantially when they switch to 90nm in the second half of this year. OTOH, Intel's prototype 90nm Tejas CPU burns up 150 watts
AMD chips haven't used more electricity than Intel chips for years. Pay attention.
BTW, Athlon 64 notebooks are out. $1,550 for a widescreen 64-bit notebook! I'm going to stick with my Athlon 64 desktop, at least until I come up with an excuse to buy a portable. Really, I am...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was told the PR xxxx+ was in comparison of what a Athlon Thunderbird clock speed would be.
The marketing of the Athlon64 FX has become a bit confusing. It kind of made sense for the initial launch to combat a precieved weakness of the design compared to Intel's P4 though. With the P4 you get up to 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the first Athlon64 would only have 3.2GB/s of memory bandwidth. Now, it turns out that the extra bandwidth doesn't actually buy you much on most applications, but this was seen as a weakness, hence the Athlon64 FX. With Intel bringing out the P4EE to compete with the FX, now AMD might need to keep the chip, even if it isn't a worthwhile product (The P4EE isn't a worthwhile product either).
*Is it really a good idea to have the memory controller on the CPU?
Yes, yes it is a good idea. A VERY good idea in fact. Memory latency has only improved by about one order of magnitude in the past 15 years. Meanwhile everything else in the system has gone up by at least two orders of magnitude. Virtually everything that is being done in CPU design these days is to hide memory latency (larger caches, out-of-order executation, branch prediction, even SMT).Integrating the memory controller reduces latency by 20-30%. At 2.0GHz this makes a BIG difference (this is the main reason why a 2.0GHz Athlon64 is faster than a 2.2GHz AthlonXP), at 4 or 5GHz the difference will be huge.
but it hasn't lowered mainboard costs
You can buy new Athlon64 motherboards for only $100, only 3 months after the chips release. It took ages for Athlon or P4 motherboards to reach that price point. What's perhaps even more impressive is the dual-processor boards that are only $200. In short, it HAS reduced motherboard costs, whether you've noticed or not. It also means that ALL Athlon64's support ECC, chipkill and a few other nifty reliability features, regardless of how badly VIA screws up their chipset design.
*Why in the world introduce an AthlonFX based on Socket 940, especially at the outrageous price, when you're moving to socket 939 imminently?
The Athlon64 FX was a bit of a last minute decision I believe. They found a marketing weakness and wanted the quickest and easiest solution they could find. The answer? Sell your server chip as an "enthusiast" chip. Intel did exactly the same thing for the same reason with the P4EE.
Also, it's actually VERY normal to switch sockets soon after releasing a new processor. Intel's upcoming Prescott will use Socket 478 for only about 6 months before switching to socket 775. The original P4 used Socket 423 for a very short time before switching to socket 478. The original Athlon used Slot A for a year or so before switching to Socket A. The PIII came out in Slot 1 form but then switched to Socket 370 about a year later. The Celeron followed the same path a couple years before.
I think it would have been more of a slam-dunk as a platform and a "brand" to release Athlon64 as all dual-channel, all Socket 939 (or some standard), and left Opteron as the high-end platform. Any other takers?
In retrospec that might seem like a good idea, hindsight is 20-20 after all. However the original split of ALL Athlon64 chips being socket 754 and ALL Opteron's being socket 940 seemed to make the most sense when AMD was desigining them. It wasn't until market conditions changed and a new perceived weakness was discovered that AMD felt they need a consumer chip with a 128-bit wide memory bus. By that time the chip was already late to market and designing a new socket would have added more delay to the equation.
There's also the question of budget chips. AMD hopes to move their entire product line to the Athlon64/Opteron platform by the end of 2004. That means they need a budget chip, and socket 939 with it's 128-bit wide memory bus is problematic for that. Hence the continued existance of Socket 754 and the AthlonXP for that platform.