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Intel Quietly Adopts AMD's x86-64
HishamMuhammad writes "The rumors reported earlier at /. are confirmed. The latest offerings in the Pentium 4 family now support AMD's x86-64 architecture, even though Intel is not willing to admit it very openly, by using cryptic names like EM64T and (gasp) IA-32e.
(The naming issue was discussed on lkml, and the consensus there was to use 'x86-64,' even though sometimes AMD refers to it as 'AMD64'). Intel's FAQ admits their implementation is basically compatible with x86-64, except for the minor differences that have always set Athlons and P4s apart. It's about time Intel jumped on AMD's bandwagon, since its homegrown 64-bit architecture seems not to be doing
very well."
Sure, AMD is ahead right now. There is incompatibility between the two 64 bit architectures, and developers may choose to design for one or the other. But the Intel FAQ is right in that Intel processors support SSE3 and HyperThreading, for which AMD has no counterpart. This is in addition to Intel performance-enhancing compilers. If developers choose to develop around Intel's 64 Bit processor, then AMD may soon find itself behind again.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
A nice and confusing name apparently only chosen because the debian developers don't like intel for what they did (namely copying the amd64 and forgetting to mention that fact in their press releases).
I prefer the nice vendor-neutral x86-64.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
That's because Intel still acts as if the world will wait for it to deliver innovations at the pace that maximizes Intel revenue.
I have to agree with Intel that 64-bit desktops don't make a lot of sense right now. I would prefer systems that are quiet enough to be in the same room with a TV, for example. Still, this is Intel getting some of its own medicine. It didn't make sense to compare processors strictly by MHz alone, but Intel was happy to do that as long it was to their advantage. That's where I see AMD now, basically pushing the 64-bit advantage hard because it makes marketing sense.
Intel's been talking about this for some time, and it's been posted on /. numerous occasions.
I guess we're trying to paint them with a bad brush, just because. I don't see anything quiet about it.
Do you mean quiet as in they aren't saturating the market with bullshit about how much more amazing the internet will be with 64 bit extensions and other nonsense claims designed to sucker the technically illiterate into upgrading for no reason?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The question is not if it perform better for the same clock speed. The real question is to compare performance/price or performance/power consumption.
Uh, dual cores on a single die?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The complete architecture reference manual was available for free, including shipping, by requesting it from AMD's website. I doubt they needed to do much reverse engineering.
One would think that Intel, better than anyone else, should know one simple fact about the computer universe:
Try as you might, you just can't get rid of x86.
RISC vendors failed. Intel's own RISC efforts failed. Itanium is an overengineered design that nobody wants. What did they think was going to happen?
In the world of computers, especially PC type computers, backwards compatibility is king. That's what keeps incumbents like Intel and (especially) Microsoft on top. You'd think they'd know this better than anyone else. Has AMD beaten Intel at its own game? Time will tell.
Look on the bright side: the complete failure of Itanium in the marketplace (let's call it what it is, even though Intel hasn't officially thrown in the towel yet) means that we won't be stuck with an entire generation of computing where Intel calls the shots. Can you imagine what would have happened if Itanium prevailed and nobody else was allowed to produce a compatible processor?
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Where would the car industry, and the American economy, be if we had headlines like "GM Quietly Adopts Ford's Gascap Diameter"? These interoperability issues might make short-term profits for Intel, and offer marketdroid simplified lockin strategies, but they're inefficient limits to scaling the market to encompass everyone. So longterm profits are sacrificed, as well as usability. This fruit of the Intel/AMD crosslicense agreements should be congratulated and promoted as a "best practice" that's best for everyone touched by the industry - which is practically everyone.
--
make install -not war
It was only a matter of time for them to use AMD's extention. Common now, why would they want to have 2 different 64-bit extentions on the market competing. This would just be extremely annoying to developers and such. On top of that, AMD's has been out now for quite a while, so trying to jump into the market NOW with their own wouldn't be very smart ...
Thats my 2 dollars...
Which does make one wonder how Intel is squandering all that R&D money. The one good investment appears to be the Israeli design team, which did the Pentium-M (essentially a slightly reworked PIII design). Otherwise, every one of Intel's major efforts (with the possible exception of wireless chipsets) has been subpar for the last couple of years.
AMD64 is simply better at the present time, especially when you look at the SMP and multicore story.
The stock performance of the two companies (as opposed to the market cap) certainly reflects those facts! :-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Intel performs better with media encoding stuff, AMD performs better on other things.
Like code with branches, and code that accesses memory.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
"How will it perform compared to AMD's chips? AFAIK AMD usually performs better clock to clock?"
Comparing processors "clock for clock" has never meant a lot, and is meaning less and less all the time. Different designs do things so differently that clock rate has about as much to do with actual performance as the color of the chip package.
The best measure of CPU performance remains the price/performance ratio. That is, for a given amount of money, how fast will a CPU perform a given task? In other words, how much bang for the buck. AMD has consistantly been beating Intel in that department for years. Sure, you might find a chip from Intel that is 10% faster, but it will cost you 80% more.
Even comparing price/performance on just CPUs has become difficult to impossible. Core logic (especially the memory subsystem and periperal bus) have become so important, and so differentiated, that establishing an apples-to-apples CPU comparison is hard. So instead of comparing just CPUs, you have to compare CPU/chipset/memory combinations.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Give credit where credit is deserved, I say. AMD beat Intel fair and square this round, and Intel should do the honorable thing and conceede defeat. Go ahead and have this Intel-AMD fight as long as you want, but face the facts, when it comes to 64 bit computing and compatibility with x86, AMD won. Intel was too set in their old ways to put any kind of fight.
Learn something new.
A nice and confusing name apparently only chosen because the debian developers don't like intel for what they did (namely copying the amd64 and forgetting to mention that fact in their press releases).
Well, that and having to rearchitecture and rewrite virtually all of their package management software. But your theory is good, too. Don't let the truth get in your way there, bucko.
No comment.
Wow, wish I had mod points - that's extremely informative. That explains the retarded names from Intel and AMD ever since then. Such examples of horrible names - Athlon XP, Centrino, etc. I prefer 1.4 GHZ 686 myself. You know exactly what you're getting then, same goes for the stupid PR numbers.
Exactly two cores on a single die is _better_ than SMT(aka. HyperThreading).
In theory it is also more expensive to produce, but with the K7/K8 design, implementing a multicore cpu is just so much less R&D than implementing HyperThreading, that AMD might easily sell multicore-CPUs in direct competion with Intel HT chips.
The once-dominant and still-superior 64 bit Alpha processor architecture (which is unfortunately now owned by Intel) has also been suffering a decreasing market interest under Intel's evil and terminal stewardship.
After Intel bought the rival Alpha technology, perhaps they should have phased out the Pentium instead.
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itanium price/performance is still terrible, and market penetration is basically nil. itanium was originally designed to replace ia32, but it is being forced into ever smaller niches. soon there will be no niches left for ia64 to fit into.
intel has sunk billions and billions into this architecture, they've been banging away at ia64 for a decade now (ia64 development began in 1994). and intel has nothing to show for it yet.
project monterey was cancelled, and support from core itanium partners has been drying up. microsoft cancelled ia64 clustering.
and now amd64 is eating into itanium's target markets.
how long will intel continue to beat the dead horse known as ia64?
You work for Intel, right?
The Itanic has been sinking for a long time, even if you won't admit it. Denying it just makes it funnier for the people watching the wreck.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the Itanium is a bad chip; it performs very well at certain things. I'm just saying it's an overall failure.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Um but the amd64 can run 32-bit code [and 16-bit code] in full speed without "emulation layers" like the ia64 does. Sure the amd64 does more than an 8086 does but it still does what an 8086 does [and more].
Hell, everytime you boot an amd64 into winxp you're basically starting up a glorified 32-bit cpu with zero 64-bit extensions.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Sure, the Itanium does well in high-end supercomputers. But how much does it cost to build one? At something like 1200$ a chip, that's gonna get pricey quick. They might be the best for a supercomputer, but the price/performance ratio on them sucks the big one.
"So I says to Mable, "Hey, those are MY ferrets!"
Intel was too set in their old ways to put any kind of fight.
Wow. What an ironic assertion. Intel goes out of their way to produce a new 64-bit architecture, and AMD, clinging to the old instruction set, puts out a bolt-on 64-bit kludge in response.
Because a bunch of old farts want to 'stay the course' the kludge solution is perceived as 'more successful' (in the short term). As a result, you accuse Intel of being 'set in their old ways.'
That's amazing, ya know.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
Yes the IA64 route was all new but it presented adopters with no options. The Alpha processors are still the best but they aren't successful because there's no interest in rewriting the billions of lines of code that is out there to fit the platform.
That said, x86-64 is not a short term solution, it will work in the long term evolving much like i386 did. The world moved from 8088 to 80286 without a problem for a reason. This method is proven successful and why Intel abandoned it is beyond me. It doesn't help when you design a brand new incompatible instruction set that isn't any faster either.It's hard to call an Opteron an x86 chip. More accurately it's a superset of the x86 archtecture.
Kinda like how the 80286 is a superset of the 8086.... and the 80386 is a superset of the 80286.....and how the Pentium MMX is a superset of the 80386.... and how SSE makes the..... get the drift?
Opteron is an x86 chip. It's just been too long since we've had a 286-to-386 scale change in the architecture.
Actually, Intel started this trend, by extending the 8086 ad nauseam... AMD just learned from this...
Great, then you should have no trouble telling me which of these two processors is better:
2.4 GHz x86
2.4 GHz x86
I'll make it easy for you and say the 2.4 GHz x86 is a Celeron D with a 533 MHz FSB and 256K L2 cache and the 2.4 GHz x86 is an Athlon 64 FX-53 with a 1 GHz HT bus speed and 1 MB of L2 cache. We can also throw in three different Pentium 4s, an Opteron, a couple more Celerons, but hey, I don't need to tell you that, right? You already know which is which, remember?