Slashdot Mirror
Intel Begins Shipping 64-bit Prescotts
Rucas writes "With a minimum of fanfare, Intel has begun shipping a version of the Pentium 4 with 64-bit instruction set extensions. The news came to light not via an Intel press release, but rather through the spec sheet for a new server from IBM. In the midst of the new IBM eServer xSeries servers based on the recently released 64-bit Xeon is a blade server powered by the 64-bit Prescott. This marks the first product appearance of the new CPU."
"Intel president Paul Otellini said that Intel was building the capability for its 64-bit extensions into Prescott. At the time, he said that Intel wouldn't enable the feature until Microsoft released a 64-bit version of Windows; that operating system is expected later this year. "
Does this mean that we will have disabled and enabled versions? Like the old 486SX and DX (SX I understood was a disabled/failed math co-processor). I suppose like all their other chip lines, each will be labled distinctly with some marketing nomenclature.
Have you Meta Moderated t
It's pretty astounding that major jump from 32-bit to 64-bit processing isn't even mentioned by Intel.
Think about how big a jump it was from the i286 to i386 (16-bit to 32-bit.) That release was a major deal for Intel.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
"AMD welcomes Intel to the world of AMD64, said Ben Williams, director of server and workstation marketing at AMD.
It's kind of funny to watch. Intel is choosing their words very carefully. They're saying things like, the new chip "will run programs currently being developed for AMD's 64-bit processors with very little modification." They absolutely refuse to call the new chip "AMD compatible" even though that's exactly what it is. Intel is having a lot of trouble facing the facts: they poured zillions of dollars and years of R&D into an architecture that nobody wants (Itanium), meanwhile AMD got it right (Opteron) and now they're playing catch-up.
You'd think that Intel, moreso than anyone else, would know that you just can't kill x86.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Uh...he did say "within 1GHz of the speed." You're talking about a chip that's well over twice as high in frequency....or, another way, nearly 2GHz faster. Or, a third way, several times as expensive. So, uh....can it.
And while you're at it...what's this about USB being broken and never fixed? I haven't noticed it on any of my AMD machines.
For the record, I have many, many Intel boxes, and many (though not quite *as* many) AMD ones as well. If cost is no object, and insano speed and/or 64bit isn't necessary, I'll choose Intel. If I'm paying for it, it will be an Athlon. If I want the fastest thing I can lay hands on, I'll get an opteron.
There is no point in bickering over vi vs. emacs. Or NVidia vs. 3dfx.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
I'll take a chipset that work (never had a problem with my NForce2) over one that doesn't work with a major new technology (PCIe) any day.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Remember, the AMD hammers all have a lot of history going back to an ancient Alpha pedigree - a lot of the Alpha design team went to work on the 64 bit implementations for AMD.
It shows in the excellent IPC scores of the hammer series, and the incredible scaling for SMP systems that Opterons enjoy.
So alpha technology lives on in a small way in the AMD hammers.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
The "buzzz" is poor shielding of the audio chipset on the MOBO...not AMD's problem...just a cheap motherboard. Also, the SB live was ENTIRELY creative's problem. They went more than 3YEARS without driver updates for those cards...meaning that they didn't account for the variations in higher-speed/ processor changes in that time... heck, I have an INTEL board/proc [i815 made by asus] from 2001 that simply refused to work with the thing. Anyway you can't blame AMD for SB problems!
I ran into a similar issue dealing with some local banking institutions years ago. EVERY bank in this area was hooked on Token Ring. Now this was understandable from the perspective that Token Ring was arguably better than most older forms of networking, but this was 1997. New installations were still getting 16 Mbit Token installed. In some case we saw twisted pair installations, but they were still running 16 Mbit Token! What the hell? Ethernet over twisted pair was so much cheaper, faster, AND established.
Then I started noticing that EVERYTHING was IBM. The servers, the workstations, even the CABLING. I saw this at every bank we did work for (at least 8 different organizations).
So if it wasn't for the quality, expense, and/or speed, what was it? I later learned that this was a common theme in many larger organizations and it had a lot to do with how much IT stock was owned by the execs.
A friend of mine - a CIO - relayed to me that when a large organization buys a ton of equipment from IBM, the resulting sales figures usually give a bounce to the stock. Better still, if you coordinate your efforts with other execs in other companies, you can often make yourself a tidy profit.
During my time consulting for these banks, management did not want to hear about any other solution that wasn't IBM. I suspect that most Fortune 500 companies play a similar game with Dell product - and that would certainly help explain Intel's entrenchment.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."