Slashdot Mirror
AMD and Intel Update CPU Roadmaps
vincecate writes "Recently
AMD updated their processor roadmap. It shows their move to 90 nm and has a range of new processors over the next 1.5 years, including dual-core chips. An
unofficial AMD roadmap shows speeds and performance increasing.
Intel also recently updated their roadmap.
Intel does not show anything faster than
the current 3.6 Ghz in the next 11 months, including the recently delayed 4 Ghz chip, except to say '3.6 Ghz or greater.' Strangely, some of the recent SPEC benchmark results show the 3.6 Ghz chip to be slower than the 3.4 Ghz chip. One possible explanation for this is that the 3.6 Ghz chips will slow down due to 'thermal throttling' if you are not very careful to keep them cool. So it seems like heat may be the reason Intel's roadmap does now show much improvement."
Well, why not just make water cooling mandatory for new CPUs, just like Apple did?
The clock rate of the CPU went up madly through the 90s but the wind appears to have gone out the sails a little. Is the actual speed of the CPU still climbing but they're doing this without adjusting the clock rate?
:P
Don't really keep up on the hardware these days..
Cheers,
Simon.
I just got an MSI K8N Neo Platnium, which is a socket 754 motherboard. Looks like socket 754 is going no where.
Kind of but not really... There was a time in the nineties where if you waited two years you could get a system at least 2x as fast.
I built my system about two years ago (actually it's a few months short of two years). AMD would have to release the equivalent of 5600+ within a few months to match the speed of the 2800+ they released almost two years ago.
If they were a few months late that would be normal but it looks like it will take far longer.
Hmmm... Pie...
I've noticed this. I got a 1GHz Athlon a few years back and it doesn't seem to be much behind the latest Athlons (especially when I count my athlon's overclocked speed). My previous machine was a 100MHz pentium and that seemed to go out of date really quickly.
Are the new processors really much faster?
Don't get me wrong... I still love my Laptop! :-)
The important concept to keep in mind is that all these computers are powerful enough to do what I need them to do, so merely making CPU clocks tick at a higher rate isn't going to persuade me to run out and upgrade.
Well, it's a matter of opinion but, imo... yeah they are.
But then and again your upgrade cycle seems to be longer then mine. I think it all depends on whether or not you want to run some apps that require a more powerful system or actually runs them a good deal faster.
Hmmm... Pie...
Wake me when AMD or Intel realizes that with the same amount of silicon, they could have dozens of Pentium 3s/Athlons at close to the same clock speed, providing much better performance at a much lower R&D and silicon cost
I have always thought AMD is better than Intel (price/performance, no annoying jingle, no annoying "... inside", no "MHz myth"), but now it seems Intel is getting its arse kicked so much I worry AMD might get too complacent.
Sick, sad, and ultimately moronic
A GPU is still only a CPU that has been optimized for multicore vector operations
eg: a GeForce 6800 is approx 10 programmable pipelines, with some entangling fixed function pipes, such as triangle setup, cache, memory and IO, etc.
6 of those cores are independant vertex processors
4 of them include 4 "pixel pipes" each, which, unfortunately, aren't actually independant, they just include writemasks to prevent unused ones from affecting what they shouldn't. if one pixel pipe slows down, the rest slow with it. Each of these pixel pipes has a 2 stage pipeline, much like the early, early CPUs(im thinking pre-pentium), and 2 execution units, which each consist of a 4 floating point vector processor with inline integer math for addressing, filtering, etc.
so basically it is 10 processors that can handle 20 instructions per clock with an average of 176 data outputs per cycle(22 "pixel/vertex pipes" * 2 execution units * 4 components per vector)
Or 17.6 data outputs per processor per cycle
compare to a prescott
1 processor, 31 stages, 1 pipeline, 4 instructions per cycle, up to 4 components per vector(SSE) = 16 data outputs per cycle, 8x as many cycles per second, 1/2 as many transistors = 128 data outputs requiring half the silicon.
therefore, a dual core prescott could easily do (256/176=) 45% more work at the same price and:
1) have a decent level of precision(64 bit)
2) have integer math
3) be much more flexible and not rely on the AGP bus
4) be a hell of a lot easier to code for
what are you whining about?
consider the concept processor, Niagra, an 8 core, multi-ghz, 3 instruction per clock, 4 way hyperthreading processor, undoubtedly with vector extensions...who needs a GPU for some shitty 32 bit, AGP-bottlenecked results when the CPU is obviously superior?
Are we going to see a point where the convergence turns to over taking, and end-user CPU's need to be faster than a lot of corporate stuff?
I think we will actually. If I understand your meaning correctly when you say "corporate stuff" I'm thinking web, file, email servers and so on. Like you said, 3 year old machines are fine for most of that stuff now and will continue to be for some time. On the other hand, the end user is going to be requiring more and more power and not just for games or pretty interface animations. Apple and Microsoft have both been talking about the idea of the PC as a digital hub (well, I don't think MS uses that term exactly because it may be a Steve-ism) for a while. As it becomes a hub for more and more devices it's going to need more power. Loading an iPod with songs is trivial. Manipulating digital photos is a bit tougher. Beyond that you get into editing video and burning DVDs. Encoding and Decoding video. Music creation software. Maybe it won't be long before we see easy to use, prosumer quality 3D animation software...
We've seen a lot of things that used to require very expensive, specialized equipment make their way into the consumer space in the past few years. It's not too hard to guess where that trend may go next. One thing is for sure, it will continue to require more and more powerful processors. Not everyone will need all that power every day but when you get back from that European vacation and you want to do something cool with all the video you shot, you'll be glad it's there.
The Mhz Myth has been around for a while, and even some everyday-joe consumers are catching on. In the mean time, I'm typing this on my ThinkPad T21 which has something like an 800Mhz P3 in it. I only use it for Web, SSH connections to my server, p2p and a MS Office, along with tools such as my digital camera and scanner. Oh, and then I also rip loads and loads of CDs on it. Oh, wait, I also watch DVDs and DiVX files and... and... well, I do quite a bit with it. And I'm satisfied. No reason to buy a new laptop anytime in the near future.
I also have a PowerBook (Titanium) with an 800Mhz G4. This sucker gets a much harder load. I do video editing on it. I have loads of external peripherals plugged into it (5 FireWire devices, 4 USB devices) and it really gets a beating. I could use a little more power, sure. But it's not that I'm feeling stressed out over the TiBook's slowness. It isn't slow. I might buy a new machine in a couple years.
So really, I think most users (~90%) are satisfied with the machines they have. The other 10% are either slashdotters, or people that have very specific needs for very specific applications. (One I can think of is the Genetic Algorithm based optimzer system we use at the office, which could use a nice sized cluster if we could afford one. We're in the process of porting it to a 4 processor Itanium2 running HP-UX at the moment, but this has more to do with memory issues with a 32bit OS.) So in most cases, the people that really need the bleeding edge can afford the really expensive (and power hogging, and coolant requiring) systems.
So where does it leave us? I think we're doing pretty damn well right now. Computers are actually affordable now (I could't afford an 80386 in college, when I really needed one to compile my lab assignments) and the standard tools, including power hoggers like video editing, and this is really nice for a change. I actually just trashed my AKAI sampler and Yamaha MIDI synth yesterday because I can do everything I need to via GarageBand and a MIDI keyboard. (Yes yes, I know a lot of people will give me a reason why the AKAI sampler is better, but for what I do it really isn't, and I suspect this is a case for the majority of users.)
On the other hand, I really, really like Apple's new 30" LCD, and than alone is a tempting reason to try and buy a dual 2Ghz G5 system. (And sell a kidney to do so!)
True, he should go back and test 1.5 on the Xeon, but it's probably not a dramatic difference. The specweb results do verify that a dual Opteron 248 handles about twice the workload as a dual Xeon 3.06 though. The Xeon CPUs are a bit cheaper.
too bad the basic wafer is still round and ... ...
... *sigh*
they're still trying to squeze out as many SQUARE
chips from one wafer.
it's prolly not a chip design problem anymore but
more a wafer design problem
the basic chip design will have to address heat
disapation at the very basic level of the
transistors, meaning that maybe in a two core
setup there's acctually a hole in the chip
where the "whatever-heat-conducting" liquid
circulates thru the chip itself and maybe even
around the chip-to-mobo connector pins
but as you can see, a hole is another waste of
the wafer
The AMD roadmap says it all: "As market requires". If the market says give me 5 GHz and I'll pay anything you can bet 5 GHz will be on the shelves. Right now you can buy sub $500 supercomputers that sit relatively idle. Word processing, db query, e-mail, web surfing, solitaire - most of the world goes no further.
The next market force is competition. If AMD looks like it will be selling a 4000+ Intel will match that.
Processors capable of this speed are most likely possible. There's no way Intel can sell and support 3.6 GHz without having perhaps seen 2 to 2.5 times as fast in stable operation under extreme cooling. In the lab where they can really reduce the feature sizes and power consumption who knows what is really around the bend?
Has anyone noticed the recent trend in laptop computers? It's all marketing and forcing consumers to buy crap. No floppy drive - so how do you boot if you want to install legacy stuff? Ultra wide screens but I've seen screens at 12" and the laptop has all the interface goodies (CD-RW, parallel port, PCMCIA, USB, speakers, 10/100, modem, headphone/microphone jacks). The widescreen monsters don't have any new interfacing, but are super heavy and don't necessarily have long battery life. The idea is to hook the suckers who will see the error of their ways and buy a new version several years later for the sake of lighter weight and longer battery.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.