Intel 64-bit Announcements at IDF

cribb writes "Some fascinating stuff is going on over at the IDF. Ever since the first sneak previews of the Opteron, there has been lots of uncertainty around its future, and that of AMD. AMD have bet everything on the success of their new 64-bit CPU, and with Microsoft severely delaying the release of a 64-bit Windows, and Intel complaining that 64-bit processing has no place in the desktop market, things were starting to look dim for AMD. However, after rumours around the 64-bit extensions of the Pentium 4 EE, it became clear that Intel is not willing to lag behind AMD in the 'innovation' department. Now comes the shocker: Intel boss Craig Barrett today anounced that Xeon-class 64-bit server CPUs codenamed Nocona will be coming out the second half of 2004. It isn't clear whether they will support AMD's Opteron AMD64 extensions. Barrett is quoted saying, 'There will be one operating system that will support all (64-bit) extended systems.' Maybe 64-bit computing is right around the corner after all, and we may even see compatible instruction sets from Intel and AMD! And does this mean that Intel will be dumping Itanium, which never caught on as expected in the server market, and forget the billions spent on developing it?" See some other articles at EE Times, and EWeek.

Comments

Windows 64-bit preview available

[x-caiver]

If you have one of AMD's 64 bit processors you can get a prerelease version of the operating system to try out. Info & a signup link are available here.

Intel's new 64-bit CPU's

[dellis78741]

Actually, it was made clear during the Q&A at IDF that the instruction set would be compatible with the AMD64 instruction set that AMD pioneered and which Microsoft has already built a 64-bit version of Windows around. Intel will undoubtedly have some 'additional' instructions included, making theirs a superset of AMD64 but the main point is that you will be able to buy one version of 64-bit Windows and install it on either an AMD or Intel-based machine. Now its' just a matter of timing. I would not expect MS to do the full release of their 64-bit Windows until Intel has the matching hardware in the pipeline, curtailing AMD's current lead in that market segment.

Inquirer.net

[Krieger]

The The Inquirer has some pretty decent (if biased) coverage of this.

Essentially there will be a single OS for the two (Intel and AMD). Unspoken is that Intel's implementation is AMD64 ISA, but a different technical architecture. If it's compatible, who cares. Secondary confirmation via Ars Technica

More info

[Dwindlehop]

News.com article
Intel's 64 bit extensions are compatible with AMD's. You will be able to run the same 64 bit OSes on them. Intel's 64-bit capable Xeons are Noconas, which are Prescotts in a Xeon package.

I work for Intel, but I do not speak for Intel. My opinions are not necessarily the opinions of Intel Corporation.

Missing step

[rqqrtnb]

At last Intel saw the light and introduced the missing link in their offerings. They made the same mistake as DEC: a radical switch to the Alpha RISC chip from its heavy VAX CISC processors.

Intel's shortcommings in the IA32 to IA64 switch were the following:

1. It took them too long to provide a decently performing implemenation of their highly advertised IA64. Itanium 2 became a contender only in the last 2 years. Prices are still too high.

2. They didn't provide a smooth upgrade path. All x86 apps would need to be recompiled in order to take advantage of the radically different features (EPIC) of the Itanium. Raw x86 code runs very slow on Itanium, compared to p4 and xeon.

3. Their compilers are still not so mature to allow code to fully utilize the Itania.

4. it turns out that the Itanium 2 is good for compute intensive mono-threaded code. That is a good match for supercomputing types of apps usually running in batch mode. A server however, needs to handle 1000s of interrupts and context switches / sec. Itanium loses all the nice EPIC/pipelining benefits when confronted with server types of multi-tasking/multi-threaded workloads.

5. Although the current Itanium 2 is good for multiprocessor types of apps, Intel never came up with a decent high-speed interconnect, nor it designed/proposed any efficient cache coherence protocol for larger SMPs.

In the meantime, AMD took the evolutionary path and provided the 64-bit capability from desktops, to middle tier servers and higher end machines. They implemented an architecture that directly executes the IA32 but that was extended to the much needed now 64-bits. The performance / price ratio are much better than that of Itanium's and compilers were much easier to come about since the x86 ISA is a well known one.

There is no surprise that AMD made the right strategic move to provide the needed missing link in the evolution of the popular (but crappy) x86 ISA to the 64-bit arena. There is no surprise either that heavy weights such as IBM, Dell, SUN and even HP -- who pretty much designed Itanium -- put some of their eggs in their AMD busket.

And there is no surprise that Intel realized after the fact that it should had provided the missing step and it is now playing catch up.

Isn't unbridled competion good? The pervasiveness of Intel forced the AMD and the RISC designers to do their best to improve their own designs which now in turn are forcing Intel to improve its own?

The same story with UNIX/Linux and MS windows.

People need decent alternatives to chose from. Forced monolithic single-vendor solutions are bad for everyone.

AMD Low Power

[Rufus211]

The other big news today was AMD's announcement of the HE and EE (wtf they mean is anyone's guess) of low-power Opterons. With these lines you get a full-scale Opteron that only puts out 35 or 50 watts! True they're expensive as heck, but they seem perfect for blades and other large-scale installations where power and AC requirements cost more than the CPUs themselves.

More information: AMD, Intel at xbit
Discussion: AMD, Intel at Ace's

Link to Intel 64 Bit Extensions

[LuxuryYacht]

64 Bit Extensions

From the Intel FAQ Site:

Q9: Is it possible to write software that will run on Intel's
processors with 64-bit extension technology, and AMD's 64-bit capable
processors?

A9: With both companies designing entirely different architectures, the
question is whether the operating system and software ported to each
processor will run on the other processor, and the answer is yes in
most cases. However, Intel processors support additional features, like
the SSE3 instructions and Hyper-Threading Technology, which are not
supported on non-Intel platforms. As such, we believe developers will
achieve maximum performance and stability by designing specifically for
Intel architectures and by taking advantage of Intel's breadth of
software tools and enabling services.

128-bit computing?

[mr_majestyk]

I don't see "128-bit computing" becoming mainstream anytime soon.

Well, the designers of IBM's venerable AS/400 might disagree with you. Its architecture has been enabled for 128-bit computing since the early 1970's.