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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."
Although LKML has appeared to agree on x86-64 the folks over at Debian appear to have gone the other way and name the arch amd64.
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How will it perform compared to AMD's chips? AFAIK AMD usually performs better clock to clock?
Buy Intel, Buy Quality.
Don't you mean Bye, Intel. Buy Quality.
I suppose in most technical circles that always pull for the underdog and cheer when the big dog stumbles that items like this come as great news. But its appearing more and more like Intel is the one playing catch up. They may still have market share and a far wider range of products to support them, but AMD has taken the Intel bull by the horns and is beginning to bring it to its knees. Problem is, its the competition that has driven the market and without Intel, AMD has no identity. I just hope Intel can turn things around.
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... an Intel guy I chatted with last fall said that they did not expect to put 64-bit processors in desktop machines for at least a decade. I smiled politely. ;) -ghostis
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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/
As an interesting side note, check out this story. It says that Intel reverse engineered the AMD64 architecture (which isn't terribly surprising) but then flat-out copied the documentation, even though some of their implementation didn't match up!
Nice one, guys.
HA-HA!
Sure, you can't build a $1500 Itanium box, but at the same time, the second fastest computer in the world is powered by Itanium processors. So is the fifth. AMD Opterons power #17.
their glory days are now more or less behind them. No computer in my house uses Intel processors. My family has running AthlonXPs, 1 running a Sempron and 1 Powerbook with a G4. The 32bit AMD hardware is very, very affordable and perfect for tossing together something that just works and needs to be run by someone who doesn't have a lot of disposable income.
No one I know of talks about Intel and 64bit processors except to make fun of the Itanic. The Athlon64 and Opteron processors on the other hand are the objects of lust for many of the geeks I know. When they think 64bit that they can own, they think either AMD or Apple, not Intel.
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Back on December 26, 2002, Robert X. Cringely stated this would happen.
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Yes. At least with AMD's implementation. I am not sure about Intel's. AMD64 runs x86-32 natively. IIRC there are two modes (one mode has 2 submodes). There is legacy mode, which is pure 32 bit x86 with standard registers, and then there is long mode which can either operate in legacy submode, which can run 64 bit code or 32 bit code, but is limited to 32 bit address space and registers, And then there is 64-bit mode which runs 64 bit code with all the added registers, but cannot run 32bit code.
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http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/
or was it when they started shipping 64 bit Prescotts?5 &tid=118&tid=137&tid=126
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/06/00025
Just because it shows up on the Register it is now news again.
The Intel chips don't have an IOMMU. This means that unless the chipset provides one (none currently do) 32 bit PCI cards cannot do DMA into memory beyond 4GB, forcing the use of bounce-buffers.
In short, 32 bit PCI cards on systems with > 4GB memory will be G L A C I A L L Y S L O W.
On AMD64 the IOMMU remaps memory for 32 bit DMA below 0x10000000, thereby allowing 32 bit cards to access the full 64 bit address space.
The lesson: Buy the original. Buy AMD.
If the big advantage of these new 64-bit processors is nominally found in servers, then AMD will clean house because their systems scale and perform VERY well in the server role compared to Intel. Sure, you may not be able to tell the difference between AMD and Intel on the desktop, but for most types of server loads, there is no contest. The Opterons are very, very good server systems, and for many types of loads e.g. database servers, they run rings around Xeon processors for a very low cost.
Unless Intel matches a very competent ccNUMA and I/O fabric to their EMT64 cores, they will not be competitive where it matters.
"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.
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For those who missed it last time around, Linus was also tempted to call it amd64 in reaction to intel's handling of the subject but decided to stick with the vendor neutral x86-64.
:)
And yeah, this moved from the realm of rumor to fact nearly a year ago
I call bullshit on that. It first appeared in the prescott core. Die photos of northwood and earlier processors clearly do not have the room for AMD 64 bit extensions.
Ian Ameline
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