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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.
...and does this mean that Intel will be dumping Itanium, which never caught on as expected in the server market[?]...
I'm sure it was an interesting intellectual exercise, and that they learnt a lot.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
There will be one operating system that will support all (64-bit) extended systems.
He's right. It's called Linux.
This is a good thing, whenever someone plays catch up, they alwasy seem to develop a better product than if they were at the top. Take for example how IE6 has slowed improvements while other browsers continue to create. A little competition is a good thing.
Because it will sink the Itanic
Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
As for one operating system, who? They in cahoots with Microsoft, after Microsoft dragged it's feet on AMD? Sounds like collusion, anti-competitiveness, and all that.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Intel had to play 'catch-up" by incorporating MMX into the Pentium when NexGen was plotting on incorporating their own SIMD system (which became 3DNow!) but this time, they really got screwed over. They had planned on Itanium taking the 64-bit market over, and did not figure on AMD's x86-64 at all. What really did Intel in this time around was that AMD was doing what Intel had traditionally done, continue the backwards compatibility long past any logical point and not only making it work, but making it attractive. This is the mis-step that brought Motorola down from it's "king of the desktop CPU" position, when they released the 88k as the "next-generation" CPU rather than focus on delivering better 68k's. The division of resources back then is a step Motorola never really recovered from. I wonder how Intel will do on it.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I think it is a pity, that the alpha processor (that was once the best processor) had to die, just because HP and Intel wanted to succeed with their Itanium processor (and are now failing).
Felix
/dev/earth not found. Reboot?
So after the Apple 'first 64 bit desktop' campaign we get to see an AMD 'first 64 bit desktop' _and_ an Intel 'first 64 bit desktop' campaign?
In the mean time my 1998 vintage Mesh/Alpha desktop system (no, it's not a server, it was sold via consumer magazines in the UK) is still running happily with 64 bit Linux... and that was hardly the first either, an honour that probably belongs to someone like Sun.
Beep beep.
I had a similar issue when they were just delving into RISC and producing good ole x86 chips at the same time. They decided to scale back the RISC and dive into x86 and it worked out for them, they recognize the need to research both and look forward and move, although some money is lost, lessons from the Itaniums will go on even if they do die, which I doubt. Intel will do what it needs to survive and most likely stay king of the desktop market.
Cheers for AMD and their success wit x86-64.
Completion is best for everyone in this game.
It'll be one hell of a backtrack if they do drop Itanium. Yet it will be hard to keep Itanium viable with another 64bit chip that is (presumably) much better at handling x86 code.
What this really signals is that Opteron, and AMD64 are really quite impressive indeed. It's billions that Intel will be dropping so they can compete with it, and you don't make that sort of move unless you're really very very worried.
As to whether they will be compatible with AMDs extensions: I suspect Intel won't be ale to bring themselves to that. The "One operating system will support all 64bit extensions" sounds more like a deal has been cut with Microsoft to make the 64bit version of windows work with Intel's 64bit extensions as well of those AMD. In practice I suspect that means Intel will be very close to AMDs extensions, with a few quirks, and the intention of trying to grab the market and drag things away with their own extra extensions with newer chips.
Could this be behind the slowness of 64bit windows for Opterons?
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
It's actually a 32-bit chip with some horrendous rounding errors.
Maybe they're saying that home users have no need for that "extra memory at a time". To some extent, they are right. THe avergae user will probably look at a 64-Bit computer and go "ooooh, 64-Bit" and see it as a selling point. However, the average user will probably never need the extra memory or power of the 64-Bit.
EE Times is also reporting that Intel may be pushing a new kind of RAM interface to compete with existing DDR and RDRAM. At 2 Gbit/sec per wire, this is about twice the speed of current RDRAM and four times the speed of DDR SDRAM. But, more interestingly, this is a point-to-point architecture - unlike the traditional bus architecture, when you add more memory modules you can get more bandwidth. Also notable is that simultaneous bi-directional communications happens over a single wire. Infineon and Samsung have made test chips, and results are to be released at the International Solid State Circuits Conference today.
I wonder how this figures into their processor/chipset roadmap...
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
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.
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.
======= ~\_/~\_O Burmese
Posting anon due to affiliations.
Anyone that didn't think Intel had 64-bit Workstation and Desktop chips "in the pipeline", as it were, must be sitting in a cave humming with their fingers in their ears.
The production pipeline on these sorts of products. take years, so this was not a knee jerk reaction. If you look very carefully at what Intel has actually officially said the whole time, you'll see that they simply said they would provide a solution when the appropriate OS support and perceived need becomes available, and that is EXACTLY what has happened here. What do you know, Steve Balmer announces Windows XP 64 now has support for these "Xeon" extensions. These things don't happen over night.
It is still a fact that most people DO NOT need 64-bit computing in any way shape or form, but one mistake that Intel did make is the fickleness of the vocal minority and AMD fanbois.
Also, if you think that the existing Prescotts don't already have these extensions (just disabled at the moment), you are also kidding yourself.
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
AMD is the only X86 chipset manufacturer offering 64bit notebook chips. They're clearly seeing the light and hitting a market that Intel's been struggling in for close to 4 years. Intel's claims of no need for 64-bit personal computing is just a smokescreen for their 64-bit failures. As technology advances we will have 64-bit personal computing... and a few years or decades later we'll 128-bit personal computing. Intel just doesn't want to lose face to AMD since AMD is first to market and posting profits.
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.
Jonathan Pearce jonathan@pearce.name
3EAAFB2A http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/
In other news, Intel has bought all rights to the Nintendo 64 ;)
got sig?
Well, many calculations in academia are done on "desktop" computers. Some of the calculations done in the lab I work in can easily gobble up more 4GB of RAM. A couple of weeks ago we were looking into our options to address this problem at a reasonable price. Speed would also be nice when you have to cruch that many numbers, but if you don't have the RAM you can't even wait longer to get the results.
Intel won't say if it has licensed AMD's x86-64 extensions. But Barrett seemed to hint that Intel's technology will be somewhat less than completely compatible with AMD's instruction set.
"For the most part, (software) will run on both systems," he said. "Intel has some (things) unique to Intel, which we will make sure people write, port and tune to."
--
Sigs are for geeks
Don't you get nervous saying "64" and "never need" in the same sentence?
Intel's shortcommings in the IA32 to IA64 switch were the following:
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.
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
I've always thought it unlikely that Intel would be caught off guard by AMD's Opteron. I think Intel could have announced this earlier, but wanted AMD to become overconfident with its Opteron and spend oodles of cash etc. on developing public awareness of 64-bit computing, explaining what it is, convincing people that it's worth the upgrade, etc. Then, after AMD (who is already cash-strapped) puts all its eggs into the 64-bit basket, Intel finally comes out and says "Thank you for raising public awareness about 64-bit computing for the desktop for the past year, AMD. Now that you have no more money, we will now announce our 64-bit chip and compete with yours." Here's a list-form of Intel's strategy:
1. AMD comes out with Opteron.
2. Intel waits.
3. AMD spends all its money and resources on promoting 64-bit computing, thinking this will make Intel look obsolete and make themselves the chip-maker of the future.
4. Intel waits.
5. Intel releases own 64-bit computing and takes over the market that AMD spent all its money developing.
6. (AMD pulls out empty pockets and holds them like wings and wonders what happened:) ?????
7. Profit for Intel!
8. I cry.
The Register compares Itanic to the i432: "Bob Colwell, chief architecture honcho for the chip that saved Intel in the mid-1990s, the P6 (Pentium Pro), described the i432 as 'a wonderful research project masquerading as a bad product'."
Let's just say that the rest of us might get the opportunity to stock up on 32 bit chips at bargain basement prices for a while, so there's some value to be had from it all.
KFG
Wrong. 64-bit computing is ten years old with the Alpha, including PCs running GNU/Linux. Not to mention the later UltraSPARC, PA-RISC 2 and MIPS workstations.
And today we already have the PowerPC G5.
This all proves Wintel is the biggest drag in Informatics.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Sure, 32 bit is fine NOW but in the future there will be more intensive software that will require more RAM.
This is just a guess but I wouldn't be suprised in "Longhorn" will be native 64 bit. Maybe Microsoft is waiting for the hardware to catchup so their inefficient code can take advantage of more memory. (I know, it's a cheap shot at Microsoft)
I'm doing many simulations, and so are my fellow students. Modern CAD packages for doing MEMS, nano-tech work with high resolution scream for more RAM. 2GB is barely sufficient, and anything I can feed it is a worthwhile sacrifice. None of our labs can afford Itanics. But we sure can and do need more than 4GB (3GB if windows). I've been advising people to get Opterons whenever they are about to upgrade their systems in order to have an upgrade path in mind.
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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.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
...any more than IBM would ditch Power4/5 architecture, just because they have a commodity market x86 chip with 64-bit address extensions (Opteron).
In the 'big iron' enterprise market against RISC where Itanium is beating everything handily (check out the latest TPC-C list Top 10 where Itanium holds spots 1,3,4,7,10 (5 out of the Top 10 are Itanium systems running a mix of Linux, HP-UX and Windows on HP and NEC systems), Itanium is gradually out-selling all of the big RISC opponents like Power4. Note that IBM is certainly not spending the money to put up an Opteron cluster for the TPC-C test(no 32-way or 64-way scaled solutions for it on the horizon) even if they got good enough results (which they wouldn't) if they can't beat Itanium 2 right now with the high-margin Power 4. No doubt they'll have a run at Itanium again this year with Power 5.
But there's no way that Opteron OR a 64-bit Xeon plays in the big high thoughput space, so people that assume Intel would get rid of Itanium simply don't know what they're talking about.
As for Itanium not selling, That's funny. Itanium sold over 100,000 cpus last year which is a big number for the enterprise server market (That's more than some other major RISC processors sold in 2003 (like Power 4)). If you don't believe me Google "Itanium" "100,000" and "Otellini" and you'll see lots of links to Intel pres Paul Otellini's announcement back in Nov that Intel would ship over 100,000 Itanium processors in 2003.
It's hard to picture why there will ever be a need for 128-bit computing.
2^64 is 18446744073709551616. This is BIG. 17179869184 gigabytes. 16777216 terabytes of addressable memory. 16384 petabytes. This is basically the maximum amount of physical memory and the maximum size of one individual process's virtual memory mapping on a 64 bit architecture (yes, I know many current 64 bit implementations, including AMD64 are limited to 2^48 in practice; but the architectures can fundamentally handle both 2^64 physical and virtual addressing).
This is enough addressing that you can have 2.5GB of memory in a process for each man, woman, and child on the face of the planet.
And as to doing integer math larger than 2^64-- why? 2^32 is already overkill for most things.
Nope, I don't see "128-bit computing" becoming mainstream anytime soon. And it's far from clear 64 bit on the desktop is all that close, given the fact that A) the added code size contributes cache misses and saps performance, and B) there is not much done on the desktop now that requires more than 2^32 bytes of memory in a process, and C) not much stuff does math on quantities greater than 2^32 (4294967296). Keep in mind bank switching allows you to have more RAM than 4GB on all recent ia32 processors (2^36/2^40).
If we change architectures, it will be less about addressing limitations and more about the piss-poor quantity of registers available on ia32. More registers means more obtainable instruction-level parallelism.. this equals more work done on modern architectures.
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.
While AMD have alway talking about new developpment and invits others to share, Intel keep all secret and try to act like no others exists (including there customers sometimes).
l ogy/64bitextensi ons/30083401.pdfn ology/64bitextensi ons/30083501.pdf
o ntent_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/24592.pdfo m/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/24593.pdfo m/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/24594.pdfo m/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/26568.pdfo m/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/26569.pdf
Sorry Intel. There is no AMD words in your doc, but now all the worlds known that your IA32-e is no more than the AMD X86-64. For me you just act like a child!
Intel IA32-e documentation:
http://developer.intel.com/techno
http://developer.intel.com/tech
AMD x86-64 documentation:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/c
http://www.amd.c
http://www.amd.c
http://www.amd.c
http://www.amd.c
How long Intel while wait before it make the same kind "new extention" compatible with HyperTransport ?
Eh? The example you quote is exactly correct, 64-bit integer units can indeed "churn through doubly large chunks of data than current 32-bit" processors' integer units. Nowhere in that sentence can I see "twice as fast".
How the hell did the parent get modded up?
It was supposed to replace X86. Itanic will go same route. Repositioned and slowly fade into the sunset.
Help fight continental drift.
Wrong list.
432 and Itannic had full management support. The 432 failed becuase the market rejected it. Itannic appears destined for the same fate. The 960 wasn't rejected by the market, it was rejected by Intel management.
And SPARC, Alpha, and PowerPC are all more powerful than the current Opteron chips, and cheaper by several orders of magnitude (specifically PowerPC).
Huh? Looked at some benchmarks lately? (And not the ones produced by Apple that compare really obscure synthetic benchmarks of Opterons underclocked and running with half the same RAM as a PPC)?
SPARCs and Alphas are cheaper than Opterons by several orders of magnitude? Are they still making Alphas? If they are, and they're cheaper, and "more powerful", I can't see why there aren't a whole bunch of Linux gamers using them.
Who modded this guy insightful?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
First, your statements above are contradictory, in 1975 there was no Ada programming language, only a spec (steelman ??) that described what the language should contain (and not contain).
Also, it is not clear whether you meant that the 432 or Ada was a marketing failure (or both). Certainly the 432 was. OTOH, from its first release in 1980 or so, the Ada language has been far from a "market failure", despite there being no low-cost compilers for it and despite the limitations required by the SteelMan spec. Virtually all aeronautics, astronautics or critical communications software (Military or civilian) and weapons control software for the last 20 years was written in Ada (and not just in the US).
In addition, several commercial SW firms also found, even w/ Ada-83, that it allowed them to ship w/ far fewer bugs left for customers to find that code written in (Ugh!) C, as well as allowing bug-fixes using less than 50% of the developer resources than to fix bugs in (Ugh!) C.
As of 1995 the Ada language is much more oriented towards general programming, as well as being much cheaper to use than it had been. There has been a FREE (GPL) Ada compiler available since 1995 or so, and it is now (since version 3.2) integrated into GCC.
For more info on how Ada is being used and why it should be used for all new projects, see My small Ada site or David Botton's Ada Power site.