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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."
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.
This comment was generated by a squadron of trained super elite albino ninja chickens for you.
The primary reason seems to be that the dashes and underscores in x86-64 and x86_64 would have caused havoc with much of thier package management software.
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.
Back on December 26, 2002, Robert X. Cringely stated this would happen.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
AMD processors will soon have SSE3 and don't have much need for HyperThreading to make use of idle execution units as does Pentium 4. The highly efficient Pentium M doesn't need it either.
AMD had a 1+ year head-start distributing reference materials and winning developer mind-share. They're not likely to lose their advantage anytime soon, especially as Athlon64 is faster than current EMT64 chips in 64-bit mode, is cheaper, and runs cooler.
You can expect developers to write code that works on both architectures, it'd be unwise to release something which didn't run well on AMD's chips.
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.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
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
32-bit processors are not useful for most people even geeks. I only have one app that ould benefit from ronning on a 32-bit processor and that is NTP but it does fine on 16-bit processors. Games do not need 32-bit processors look at Sega, the games run fine on 16-bit processors and look as good the without the extra floating point accuracy. Why would I want a 386, gives my nothing but 32-bits.
I mean, come on. really, if we all went back to 8-bit processors, i think the world would be a better place.
Sitting Walrus Blog
I believe that AMD64 is the right way to go. Not just because I am an AMD guy, but because it is fair. AMD created the spec, and Intel copied it. Give credit where credit is due.