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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..."
Ya, it bothers me too. But if Intel hadn't messed it all up by designing a "clock speed only" processor, then we wouldn't be in this situation. I definately agree that the Performance Ratings are a very poor way to describe a processor...
AMD's new stuff has been pretty impressive, but it really bothers me when they pull this type of stuff: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4GHz 1MB Q2 '04 AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.4GHz 512KB Q2 '04
,or how much you're gaining by going with the bigger (performance benchmark inflation not withstanding).
What's the problem. They're saying that having the smaller cache gives you less performance. Are you upset that they happen to have the same clock speed? I assume you'd prefer nomenclature more on the order of "AMD Athlon 64 2.4/512 and 2.4/1024"? In many ways they way they are currently doing it is more descriptive to the average buyer. No guessing as to how much performance you're giving up by going with the smaller cache
Intel has said sometime in the past that their plans for the P4 core will last them until ~11 Ghz.
- Dan
What the article does not cover, is when we will be able to purchase non-Opteron Dual processors. Since they are inherently capable, it would be nice to know when we'll be able to build a performance (non-ECC) dual desktop.
On the other hand, your question about having the memory processor directly on the processor. It is the best idea ever, and you may not understand this, being a desktop user, but being in IT when I was young, and now in the money end of IS, I understand the value of the system amd is implementing, for instance sometimes I would purchase a quad Xeon system but it irritated me to do so, because I knew that because of the bottleneck to the memmory, my fourth processor was almost worthless. But with the memory controller on the proc, you amazingly reduce latency, and every time you add another processor you add more memory bandwidth, as apposed to each processor having to share a limited amount of memmory bandwidth on the board.
That argument makes sense for Opteron, but not Athlon 64/FX. OK, you want your cores as similar as possible to reduce costs, so you can argue that point... and I did acknowledge the performance increase; but does it make sense for the mainstream product line at this point, especially if it's not reducing the costs of mainboards?
By the look of the figures the Athlon 64 is margionally faster than the G5 clock for clock... (the 2.2 Ghz beating the 2 Ghz G5 convinvingly and the 2Ghz ones locked in a tight battle). It looks a lot like AMD are gonna have to ramp up faster though, because IBM are gonna have 3Ghz G5s by Q3 this year, and AMD are only saying 2.6Ghz by Q4. Bob
Except that programmers like myself write for the slowest currently marketted PC. We take advantage of the excess speed by increasing search capabilities, performing more intricate analysis, using higher quality fonts, sounds, graphics, etc.
Yes, MOST of what people really need to do can be done on a 500 MHz machine. Shit, most of what people do -- search for information, write email, word process -- can be done on a goddamn Commodore.
It is a fact of life that computers are going to get slowly faster, and people are going to expect these faster computers to have better software. Even if it's mostly superficial, we try to deliver that. Most of the time, though, a faster processor is a boon even to Joe Q. Homeuser. Consider a 3 megapixel camera, delivering photographs in excess of 1.5 megabytes. Time was we'd never THINK of doing graphical operations on that much information. Nowadays, it's so trivial that many photoalbums are processing 10 or more such pictures per second!
Anyway, for easy operations like file serving, running a firewall, serving 100,000 or fewer web pages per day, etc...your best bet is a processor with a fast bus and a slow clockspeed. It'll be cooler and more reliable than some 64 bit god (honestly, who needs 64 bits to send packets?)
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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.
Right on... Also, most developers need all the juice we can get. Faster compiles, better testing environment (more VMware sessions), etc, etc.
All these people that say "nobody need anything more than X" are idiots. If a 700 Mhz proc works for you then fine (*). For the rest of us there is never enough computing power.
Even if all you do is Office applications and web browsing, faster processors make the system more responive. Faster boot times, faster archive extracing, faster application start times. If you don't care about that stuff then fine, but I suggest you're not really using your computer anyway if you don't care.
* By the way, just try a 3 Ghz processor for a while (maybe a week or two). Then go back your 700 Mhz system. You'll see the light.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Don't like to respond to a troll but:
The cpu speed is not on par with the ram speed. This fact cause that from time to time the cpu has nothing to do because the new datas from the RAM are not already there. A cpu doing nothing has a worst PR than a cpu doing something. Adding the support for the dual-channel double the speed to the ram and thus the cpu have more work to do and less idle time then a better rating.
But the PowerPC line has superior signal processing capabilities these days, is much easier for compilers to cater to, and runs cooler and more efficient than the X86 offerings.
AFAIK, x86 units since the i686 have all used a RISC-like core that runs x86 ops by breaking them down into micro-ops and reconstituting them. It -works- but whay do that when the real thing is available?
I think PowerPC would have a real future if MS lost full dominance of the PC market, it's a very short leap from Linux/OS X/BSD/whatever on x86 to the same on PPC. And now that IBM is making them tere seems t be a much more serious commitment to the architecture as a whole.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
And since Microsoft is once again behind the curve, the various freeware Unix platforms could benefit a great deal by trumpeting their inherent advantage over Windows in these key areas.
...-.-
This whole AMD is hotter than Intel thing was true when Intel's flagship processor was the cool (relatively) PIII.
The P4 generates more heat than the Athlon (any variant) for the same performance.
It is such an old, and incorrect joke it isn't even funny anymore.
Socket 7?!?! Good &deity no! Talk about a TERRIBLE design!
If we kept socket 7 we would: a.) still be stuck at ~1GHz processors because the socket did not provide enough power or grounding pins for todays faster processors. b.) would have TERRIBLE memory throughput, the real-world performance of this socket was terrible even if when the theoretical numbers were ok.
Perhaps most importantly though, it wouldn't help anything. You would STILL need to buy new motherboards to support new chips. In fact, it would probably be a LOT worse because you wouldn't know just what processor your particular version of socket 7 board supported! So instead of having 4 sockets to worry about you would have THOUSANDS of different motherboards, all with a lists of dozens of processors that they do and do not support.
There's MUCH more to making a chip compatible with a motherboard than just the socket. In fact, the physical socket is a rather trivial part of it.
Do you think a 10000 pin chip can really be trimmed to a 4000 pin chip without making huge compromises?
Yes.
Like you said some pins are used for memory bus bandwidth and power. Build a generic configuration that supports enough power and bus pins for all your average 256-bit wide buses. So each generic socket would have like 1000 pins. Enough to have direct CPU-CPU, CPU-Memory, and CPU-IO buses and power.
I don't design hardware, but if I did I wouldn't waste so much time redesigning it every year.