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

In my opinion... i

[Azadre]

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.

They should code name it Iberg

[Master Switch]

Because it will sink the Itanic

Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk

Hmm..

[downix]

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.

And for that had the alpha processor to die

[uxu.ch]

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

More brainless ad campaigns...

[Realistic_Dragon]

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.

Severe backtrack

[Coryoth]

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.

Intel does not have a new 64-bit chip

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually a 32-bit chip with some horrendous rounding errors.

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.

Re:Intel's new 64-bit CPU's

[MBCook]

Yep. I would expect the difference to be just like what we see now. Intel will have one version of the instruction set (x86-64 + SSE4 or whatever) and AMD will have another (x86-64 + 3DNow!, for example). They will work, but there will be specializations for some things. Basically they are as compatable with one another as the P4 and Athlon are.

As for this whole thing, I'm not suprised and this is a MAJOR boon for AMD, because now people have no reason not to port their software to x86-64. The companies get customers now (Athlon64 and Opteron) and more later when Intel releases their chip. The other big win for AMD is that their chips is out NOW. So when the software starts to come, people who want/need that 64bits will get Opterons and they can gain some real market share before Intel's processor comes out (especially the desktop one since Intel is releasing the server chip first). As long as AMD is willing to cut back on their prices a little now to trade for future gains, this could be a MAJOR opportunity for them.

As for us consumers, this is a win. Intel trying to push Itanic (or even worse a THIRD arch) down our throats would be terrible. Now we have one clear "winner" in the 64 bit wars (don't reply with stuff like the G5, I'm talking the Intel/AMD/Transmetta/etc. side).

And where is Transmetta's announcment? They should make one two! I bet they could get a good chip out the door before Chipzilla gets a good mobile x86-64 chip out there. This would be a great chance for them too, they could grab a good chunk of the laptop market becuase it would only be them and AMD, and AMD isn't marketing towards low power ultra-lite laptops.

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.

Re:Why 64 bit?

[trtmrt]

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.

Re: Intel complaining

[spells]

Don't you get nervous saying "64" and "never need" in the same sentence?

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

Re:Itanium Haiku

[LearnToSpell]

Formatting is hard
With HTML, I know
Next time use preview

Re:Is this a surprise to anyone?

[Fnkmaster]

People do not need 64-bit computing for standard desktop computing applications - of course not. But the point here is a further shift down in price point of the workstation and server markets - lots of applications where you did need 64 bit memory addressing or where 64 bit calculation helped a lot are now cheaply implemented on commodity hardware. And if you don't need it, the AMD 64 bit hardware still runs your old 32 bit apps better.

Your derisive tone clearly does quite a disservice to your employer (whether it's Intel, Microsoft or related) - makes you guys look like a bunch of whiny shits. Athlon64 and the other 64 bit Athlon processors are doing well because they perform well with both legacy apps and OSes as well as 64-bit apps and OSes. They are good products, and yes, the 64 bit "higher numbers are better" marketing factor is part of it. Assuming you work for Intel (or are an Intel "fanboi" of some sort to use your own gay little derogatory term), you should be very familiar with making higher-is-better a key part of your marketing strategy, since Intel has been doing it with MHz for years now, pipelining until the cows come home to crank the MHz rating higher and higher to generate sales of new processors, whether or not their "goodness" is actually directly related to the operating frequency of the processor or not.

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.

i960 is not like the i432 or Itannic

[erice]

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.