Slashdot Mirror
AMD to Demo '8-socket' Dual-Core Opteron System
flynn_nrg writes "AMD will make the first public demonstration of a system built out of its dual-core processors today, the result of a strategy first made public almost a year ago. Two-core Opteron chips aren't due to ship until the middle of 2005, but AMD will have four of parts running inside an HP ProLiant DL585 server at its Austin plant later today."
Is that 7 of 9's ugly sister?
I didn't see any specifics in the article, so I was wondering if anyone knows how fast the Dual-core Athlon 64's and Opteron's will be running? Has there been any clue's? I'm just wondering how long my processor will seem fast for, lol..
Boxing Equipment Reviews
but AMD will have four of parts running inside an HP ProLiant DL585 server at its Austin plant later today.
Does this mean HP is offically ditching the Itanium2? If so, strange move, albeit likely a smart one...
Is it it me or does anybody else see the irony in the fact that there was an intel advert on the page.....
It would be interesting to compare the price/performance of these AMD chips versus the 12 cpu transmeta workstations we heard about yesterday.
No, 4-sockets, each with dual core CPU.
Unobtainium?
Oh wait, that's something else...
While it will be a while before I will be able to justify one of these at home. I am happy for any technology that will further lower the price of processors. Maybe a nice AMD64 will be in the future of budget home users.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
4 procs, dual cores? Kickass. A short read on implementation differences between AMD64 & Intel's 64. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17906
...and you've eaten your pen. simply stunning.
i particularly like the way that on the register, an advert for intel's xeon processor came up on a page describing how great the new dual-processor amd chip is.
Clearly there is a performance benefit in both bandwidth and latency respects in multithreading/multioperating in this manner, but it's not difficult to see that the footprint limits the factor to which this technique can be exploited. Indeed even if they were able to fit three cores in the same chip the thermal energy would most likely outstrip the dissipation potential of conventional heatsinks -- unless of course the user is willing to invest in air conditioning or other mainframe-style cooling technologies (which may make sense for servers.)
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Would the Consumer model of these chips be called BiAthlons?
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
And just think, it was only last week when it was shown that most servers are never upgraded (Core Components), and that most people already buy their servers with growth in mind.
This kind of stupid comments are not helpful.
My question is this, how is this going to affect M$ licencing of OSes? I buy a dual socketed board and put in a couple of these babies is M$ going to complain that I have 4 CPUs and XP won't load because I have the 2 CPU version?
The idea of licencing software by HW is stupid, don't you think?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The only speed that counts is how fast you can grow the market for your product. In that category, AMD wins. AMD appears to be on a roll these days. In the latest quarter, the Opteron (AMD) outshipped the Itanium (Intel) by a ratio of 10 to 1. AMD shipped 60,000 units, and Intel shipped 5665 units. Apparently, the survivors of the microprocessor wars in the 1990s are the PowerPC architecture and the IA32-X64 architecture. The Itanium architecture will survive, but it will be relegated to a high-performance graphics engine.
In general, power dissapation scales in frequency with n^2, in multiple cores with n. So for the power of a processor 2x as fast, you could probably deliver 2^2=4x with 4 cores.
Granted, this is only true if the task is parallellizable, but with todays multi-tasking computers I could at least use two cores. (If main task is blocked, there's probably a dozen other background processes who'd like a few cycles).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I know, don't pick on the lack of grammar on Slashdot, lest ye be struck down by Great Powers On High. I just can't help but wonder if that's a minor arcanum/suit for some sort of geek tarot or playing card deck.
Canthros
I wonder if somebody could explain why dual-core CPUs are a good idea. If it's a pair of cores on a single piece of silicon, it seems it would take the same silicon as two separate cpus, so where's the benefit? You'd save the cost of an extra socket on the motherboard, but then again yield decreases roughly exponentially with die size, which argues for 2 separate cpus.
Christ in handbag covered in ketchup, AMD! WHY THE HELL CAN YOU NOT JUST TAKE A BREAK AND STOP INVENTING SHIT FOR A WEEK OR MONTH?!
It's not like AMD fanboys like me are going to let you go out of business. We'll still be buying your underpriced processors in lieu of Intel chips for a while to come. And we'll show up in droves to events that really tout your existing product line. We swear it!
Plus, Intel isn't moving that fast these days. I've read more about trouble for Intel in the past 2 months than I have in 5 years. "We can't frabricate this processor, or we're not responsible if that processor burns your house down when you overclock it." Come on! Let 'em catch up for the sheer thrill of beating 'em again with the Athlon128 a few years down the road.
Why? Why my insistence on your taking a g'damned break from inventing shit? You wanna know why?
I can't f---ing afford another upgrade for awhile. So stop it. Now. Dammit. Give us poor home built computer bastards a break.
And pass the f---ing message off to those asshats at ATI and Nvidia.
John Carmack too -- the "we're gonna change the world of gaming hardware every time we release a new game" motherf---er.
IronChefMorimoto
Clearly there is a performance benefit in both bandwidth and latency respects in multithreading/multioperating in this manner, but it's not difficult to see that the footprint limits the factor to which this technique can be exploited
Actually - if you have two cores on the same die you can minimize the needed bus transport path and use processor scale path => less heat... you still need the same components to provide the bus external to the two processors, but the speed gains from having a dual core should not have an impact on the heat dissipation other than just having two cores to cool down (and with modern HSF technology that is not a problem - If I can cool down a P4 3Ghz with a quiet HSF combo - AMD can do it too...)
Get your free iPod![it really works! - my buddy got his after I signed up, I have just 2 more referrals to go...]
How does Opteron shipments compare to Xeon shipments?
Or, more importantly, how fast is the Opteron market growing compared to
the Xeon's?
*sigh* back to work...
This is the hottest part. It means that I can take my current Operton dual CPU machine and make it into a 4-way, likely with just a BIOS upgrade.
I think that a lot of folks are going to go for this type of upgrade, just because the upside is so huge.
Socket implies the physical chip. An 8-socket system using a dual core chip implies 16 processors. The poster really meant a 4-socket dual core system.
Hmmm .. a graphics card with an Itanium core? That might be pretty sweet ...
Wait... four-way with dual core processors... so what they are saying is
THERE ARE FOUR SOCKETS!
Blockwars: free, multiplayer Tetris like game
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
ROFL!
Seriously, its soo great that we have an "Underdog" performing so well! I used to be an all intel person, until the AMD Thunderbird came out, since then, i cannot be convinced to buy a Intel, even if my life depends on it..
Have a nice day!
Imagine... a /. story where beowulf clusters are on topic! Imagine a cluser of cluster computing stories! Imagine... wait, what do you mean "recursive loo[NO CARRIER]
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Look up HyperTransport and the reason why the memory controller is onboard on opterons and you will see that they're working on this.
On the flipside, HD/Video card companies make money off SLOWING DOWN technology so people get hooked and play the upgrade game.
Companies don't make money off selling something that lasts 5 years anymore... they make money off selling something you buy every year. Thanks to consumer demand. We don't want to pay 500 bucks for a video card that lasts 5 years, we want to upgrade every year with a video card that costs 100 bucks.
Longrun price is the same, but in the short term consumers think they're getting a better deal and for ultra-consumers it feeds the addiction.
Somehow a Slashdot thread on Itanium and Opteron did not get into the Intel section.
From what has been published prior, the maximum number of coherent HyperTransport links in one Socket 940 interface is 3 and the number of logical processors has been limited to 8 to keep cache snooping traffic managable. Because each dual core chip will have 2 independent caches, the coherency traffic will increase regardless of whether external dual cores are addressed as single HT units. Will this result in either: a) reduction of sockets for general-purpose servers to 4 or b) entirely new ccNUMA protocols being developed from previous generation Opterons?
OS loaders and schedulers can help keep chatty processes allocated to the right mem/processor, but something more has to be said about hardware-level coherency standards. The X-box was fast and efficient largely because its CPU used the video RAM natively, but PCs still have to slog data over the slow and non-coherent PCI, AGP, or PCI-Express busses between the CPUs and GPUs. An inter-vendor standard could bring PC CPU-GPU interaction efficiencies much higher. ccPCI-Express or HyperTransportx16 slots anyone?
Look for a report this afternoon on AMDZone.com.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
Whatever do you mean?
Let me count:
-They have speedy Celerons,
-They have shiny 32bit HT P4s
-They have shiny blue and orange stickers that say "You just paid too much for a CPU... err, I mean Intel Inside!"
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I don't tend to be a grammar Nazi because as long as I get the idea of the post I tend to ignore it, especially on slashdot.
This shit, however, needs to stop. What the fuck do all these 'employees' do all day? How hard is it to read the submission and realize "FOUR OF PARTS" doesn't sound right?
I would have subscribed awhile ago, and continued contributing but not with this kind of crap. Slashdot is on top the same way MS is, mindshare and sheer numbers. They don't do anything better than anyone else these days.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/amd-hammer-fam ily/
Basically, 2.0 ghz Opteron SPECfp peak 1170
1 ghz Itanium 2 SPECfp peak 1356.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.