A First Look at AMD's M2 Platform

Knight Thrasher writes to tell us that Tom's Hardware has an interesting first look at AMD's AM2 platform. From the article: "While Intel will be answering later this year with its Merom/Conroe processors, AMD officially says that the introduction of its AM2 platform and DDR2 memory support in the second quarter of this year will be able to maintain its current lead. Unofficially, we know that AMD will launch six dual-core and two single-core AM2 processors on June 6 - later than initially expected but well in time for Intel's Conroe, which will be introduced in September. Tom's Hardware got its hands on a stable engineering sample of an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ for Socket AM2 and will publish benchmark results as first as a first impression of the new Socket and processors tomorrow."

Comments

Where are the FB-DIMMs?

[MBCook]

That's nice, good for AMD. But where are the FB-DIMMs? I like that AMD moved the memory interface onto the processor die and I think it was a great step (Intel is supposed to do this in a few years) but the fact they had to change sockets for DDR2 really bugs me. I understand why, but still.

FB-DIMMs should be available by now. If I would go out and buy a socket M2 processor, I'd have to buy a new socket and processor when FB-DIMMs came out (or the switch to DDR3 or whatever). If we had FB-DIMMs then one processor would work with DDR/DDR2/DDR3/SD/whatever just by switching out the memory since the interface is serial and built onto the memory chips. It would allow the life of boards to be extended much longer. Look how long PCI lasted. If you bought a new motherboard in the PCI era and you could keep using it all the way up to now because the socket stayed the same and the memory modules just changed (even though the physical pin out stayed the same) you could do it. Now that PCI-Express is here, we could do that easily for the future.

FB-DIMM is supposed to simplify the board layout too since you don't have to run all those parallel data/address lines to each DIMM. This is supposed to make layout much less complicated. Imagine how many pins would be needed on an Opteron if they wanted to put 4 memory banks on the processor instead of the 2 they have now. That would be a few hundred extra pins. With FB-DIMM that might be one hundred extra pins.

The only need to update the socket would be to provide additional power pins (you could future proof this a bit by putting extra power pins on) or other features (I've heard of someone, Sun perhaps, trying to put Ethernet on the processor die).

I like AMD, but isn't it time we get past these custom memory interfaces for each standard?

Socket?

[mboverload]

Why can't they just make a socket with 200 pins and stick with it for a few years? I'm very tolerant when it comes to planed-obsolescence, but this is just getting stupid.

Re:Socket?

[ortcutt]

What's the point in using the same socket if your old processor won't work with it anyway? Changing the socket keeps people from thinking wrongly that they can use an incompatible processor with the motherboard in question.

Re:DDR2?

[mcrbids]

Speaking of which, how many normal consumers actually DO upgrade their processors? Maybe we should move back to the soldered on processors of the past. No socket to be stuck to, no expensive ZIP socket to put on the board (you can't tell me that 940 pin ZIF sockets are cheap), not much downside (if your CPU dies, most people would just buy a new and faster computer today for the price to get the thing repaired).

What makes you think the ZIF socket is for the consumer? No, it's really about the small tech shops, which represent a significant portion of sales. Typically, you'll see a small shop stocking 2 or 3 different types of Motherboards (one for high performance, one for cheap-o upgrades, and one somewhere in the middle) and a half-dozen processor speeds.

With this scenario, the shop only has to stock 1 or 2 of each type of motherboard and maybe 5-6 processors. Stock is bad, because the deflationary index of computer gear is so high, so this lets just a dozen or so parts provide many different combinations for customer needs. This makes it more profitable for the business, and so more likely to stay in business.

This leads to more sales, and more happy customers. Probably worth the $0.45 it costs the manufacturers to have the ZIF socket.

A couple of things

[Rob_Bryerton]

Being sort of a slow news day, I tried something different and actually read TF "article", as there were no comments featuring "in Soviet Russia" yet posted. First off, SPONSORED LINKS are evil and annoying.

I see the blurb mentions introduction of 6 dual core & 2 single core chips, and I wonder if this will be the new product tier differentiating mechanism: dual and single. Traditionally, we'd see the low end, which was the crippled version of the mid-range, then the high end typically added more cache and un-crippled SMP abilities. Perhaps the low end will be single core, mid-range dual, and high end w/larger caches & 4/8-way ability.

Now that the MHz "wars" seem to be behind us, it's a race to pack multiple cores onto chips, which I see as a good thing. I've always had a thing for SMP rigs (my current & previous boxes are duals), and dual-core going mainstream means several good things for us SMP freaks, the least of which is more affordable 4-way boxen!

In closing, I'd like to mention that this whole blurb about a story (which is in fact an ad vehicle) which references a yet-to-be published story, is rather silly and bizarre. And poorly written. Like my post.

Re:This is nothing to complain about

[Gogo0]

Ah yes, all those dastardly intel sockets in the past two years...

478 to 775
umm...

I should have posted as AC because Im going to be modded down to hell, but whatever.

Mod parent +5 AMD Fanboy (people on slashdot call it Insightful for short)

Re:This is nothing to complain about

[ceeam]

What about mobile and "Core" CPUs?

Re:DDR2?

[dan the person]

Not just for the small tech shops.

Can you say "build to order"?

If apple or hp etc find that more people are selecting the option to upgrade from 2.0Ghz to 2.116Ghz processor than they anticipated, then they can direct the assembly plant to start putting more 2.116Ghz processors in the motherboards as they assemble a notebook or processor. That is going to result in a greater supply of the faster machines in a day or two.

Such a request to the motherboard manufacturing plant to start making more boards with the 2.116Ghz processor soldiered on is not going to see a greater supply to consumers in a day or two. The assembly line might take longer implement the change, but more importantly you've a couple of steps further down in the supply chain. Once the MBs have been manufactured you've still got to wait for them to be shipped to the assembly plant and then for them to be assembled into complete computers.

Re:DDR2?

[Surt]

Unfortunately, AMD has no choice. They have to change sockets every time they upgrade memory types, because the memory controller is built into the chip. As a result, expect another socket change in 3 years to switch to DDR3.