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Linus on Intel's 64 bit Extensions
ceswiedler writes "KernelTrap is running a thread on the Linux-Kernel mailing list about Intel's new IA-32e 64-bit chip. Linus complains 'what I found so irritating is that _hours_ after the Intel announcement,
people were _still_ confused about whether the new intel chip was actually compatible with AMD's chips.' It is, of course, but you have to do a thorough comparison of Intel's reference manuals to discover that-- they don't mention the fact that their new chip is instruction-set compatible with AMD's x86-64 chip." See the previous story for background. So it looks like the reason Intel was vague about their announcement is that they didn't want the WORLD TO KNOW THAT THEY WERE COPYING AND FOLLOWING AMD rather than developing some new thing on their own. Slashdot is proud to help Intel in this quest; wouldn't want the public to know that INTEL WAS SIMPLY FOLLOWING IN AMD'S FOOTSTEPS. Hope this helps.
On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Mikael Pettersson wrote: ;)
>
> What about naming? IA-64 is taken, AMD64 is too specific, Intel's
> "IA-32e" sounds too vague, and I find x86-64 / x86_64 difficult to type.
> "x64" perhaps?
x86-64 it is. Maybe you can remap one of your function keys to send the
sequence
This whole "ia32" crap has always been ridiculous - nobody has _ever_
called an x86 anything but x86, and Intel is just making it worse by
adding random illogical letters to the end.
In contrast, x86-64 tells you _exactly_ what it's all about, and is what
the kernel has always called the architecture anyway.
Linus
On Sun, 22 Feb 2004, Herbert Poetzl wrote:
>
> hmm, so the current x86_64 will be changed to x86-64 or
> will there be x86_64 and x86-64?
No. The filesystem policy _tends_ to be that dashes and spaces are turned
into underscores when used as filenames. Don't ask me why (well, the space
part is obvious, since real spaces tend to be a pain to use on the command
line, but don't ask me why people tend to conver a dash to an underscore).
So the real name is (and has always been, as far as I can tell) x86-64.
Actually, I'm a bit disgusted at Intel for not even _mentioning_ AMD in
their documentation or their releases, so I'd almost be inclined to rename
the thing as "AMD64" just to give credit where credit is due. However,
it's just not worth the pain and confusion.
Any Intel people on this list: tell your managers to be f*cking ashamed of
themselves. Just because Intel didn't care about their customers and has
been playing with some other 64-bit architecture that nobody wanted to use
is no excuse for not giving credit to AMD for what they did with x86-64.
(I'm really happy Intel finally got with the program, but it's pretty
petty to not even mention AMD in the documentation and try to make it
look like it was all their idea).
Linus
On Mon, 23 Feb 2004, Adrian Bunk wrote:
>
> In the long term, x86_64 creates more confusion:
> - SuSE says AMD64 [1]
> - RedHat says AMD64 [2]
> - Debian says AMD64 [3]
>
> Renaming might be some work today, but it might actually remove
> confusion in the future.
Well, the thing is, I _like_ a vendor-neutral name.
I think it's important to have multiple sources for a chip, and I think
one of the problems with IA-64 was that it was a locked-in chip with
patents and no serious competition internally (ignore the Intel mouthing
about "open").
The x86 is so great partly because there's been real competition. So I
think it's very important to x86-64 to have real competition to make sure
nobody gets too dishonest.
So AMD64 is a bad name, partly for the same reason IA32 is a horrible name
(and who have you ever heard use the IA32 name except for people who are
paid to do so by Intel?)
What I found so irritating is that _hours_ after the Intel announcement,
people were _still_ confused about whether the new intel chip was actually
compatible with AMD's chips. Why the f*ck not just come out and say so,
and talk about it? It took people actually reading the manuals (which
didn't mention it either) to convince some people on the architecture
newsgroups that yes, "ia32e" was really the same as "amd64" except in the
small details that have always set Intel and AMD apart.
So I don't really want to change the name. "x86-64" is a good name. I just
wish there was more honesty involved, and less friggin *POSTURING*.
Linus
Dude... are you serious??
:-)
Take another look. Every article will give a sentence or two to downplay an intel feature and several paragraphs reminding us why such-and-such AMD feature is better.
Maybe I'm thinking of ATI vs nVidia but I'm pretty damn sure it's both of them. TomHardware likes the underdog just like everyone else that's cool.
All your pentiums are not belong to us! We set us up AMDs.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
here, check this out. First off, I want to say that Toms Hardware is pretty good at fairly representing all sides but I still think they favor AMD. Here's the opening paragraph to a Athlon XP 3000+ vs. P4 3.06 GHz article. And here's the link.
h tm l
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030210/index.
"It is pretty certain that hardly any x86 architecture processor has a longer history. The idea for the first Athlon core goes back to 1998, when Dirk Meyer of AMD impressed us all and, most importantly, gave a jaded Intel competition jitters.
It was a market revolution, and not long before the Athlon started its victory march, winning everyone's heart along the way. The essential ingredient was its very good price/ performance ratio.
From the very beginning, the focus was on the thrifty end user. Moreover, there was the option of overclocking, which helped countless freaks squeeze the same power as they could with much more expensive CPUs. In short: Athlon became a philosophy, a staple of conversation among sophisticated users, and, in part, the subject of heated debate, the likes of which sometimes degenerates into fanatacism." Wow! I think that makes look AMD look pretty good. Could just be though. Check it out.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
Intel and AMD have, and have had for many years, full cross licensing agreements. AMD could use MMX, SSE, and SSE2 from intel's original implementation, and Intel can use x86-64 directly from AMD's reference implementation. Similarly, Intel could use 3dnow instructions in their processors, but they simply haven't exercised that option.
These companies been `not reinventing the wheel` for quite a while not.