AMD 4x4 Quad Father, Quad Core CPU Details Emerge

JiminyDigits writes "AMD recently revealed a few more details of their upcoming quad-core platform architecture called 4X4. With CPU bundles affectionately dubbed 'Quad Father,' AMD is taking advantage of the inherent benefits of their HyperTransport interconnect technology to directly connect a pair of dual Athlon 64 desktop chips together with system memory. Details here show a dual socket motherboard that support a whopping 12 SATA connections, four X16 PCI Express slots (x16,x8,x16,x8 configuration) and few other bells and whistles. Supposedly Quad Father kits will come with matched CPUs from 2.6GHz up to 3GHz."

Comments

Re:4 * x16 == x16+x8+x16+x8?

[FuturePastNow]

I think they're going by the size of the slot rather than the number of PCIe lanes it has. An x8 slot can support graphics cards fine, if it has the x16 physical connector.

Re:4 * x16 == x16+x8+x16+x8?

[masklinn]

There are something like 3 parts to PCIe-speak on motherboards:

• The number of lanes, which depends of the motherboard chips. That's the total PCIe bandwidth your motherbord can handle
• The physical size of the PCIe slots. That tells you what you can fit in the slots. For example, graphic cards use x16 slots, but can hum along perfectly with only 8, 4, 2 or even 1 lane (albeit with a much reduced bandwidth to work with).
• The number of lanes in every slot, which gives you the bandwidth per slot: all PCIe devices must support x1, but they can use up to x32

What they're saying here is that you're getting 2 x16 and 2 x8 lanes slots, but all the slots have a physical x16 size, which means that you can plug pretty much anything in it, including 4 PCIe graphic cards at once (since graphic cards require physical x16).

I'm not sure I've been perfectly clear though, anyway it's fairly clear when you talk about slot size versus number of lanes.

Re:= 4 Acentral Processing Units

[ocbwilg]

With two CPU chips with 2 cores each, shouldn't that be called "2X2"?

It was explained awhile back, but 4x4 isn't directly related to the core count. Otherwise, why wouldn't a dual CPU workstation class system with dual core CPUs be considered 4x4?

4x4 actually is in reference to 4 CPU cores and 4 video cards, at least that is the way that it was explained to me.

Re:Forced Overkill

[ocbwilg]

Which means it will cost $1000-$2000 just for CPUs and motherboard. AMD's and Intel's quad cores will cost a grand also, which limits all of this to people with more money than sense. If they're going to allow dual processors, why not let people use the $150 2.0GHz dual cores? Then the whole thing will come in under $500 and have much wider appeal.

The target price is under $1000 for the CPUs and (presumably) board. That really doesn't price it out the range of people who were previously buying Athlon FX and Intel EE CPUs. Keep in mind that this is a high-end enthusiast-class platform, rather than the future of AMD's mainstream computing. If you just want dual CPU dual cores, you can buy an Opteron 200-series workstation for less probably. You won't get 4 PCI-E x16 slots and 12 SATA ports, but who needs that anyways? Or, you could just wait until 3Q of 07 and get a native quad core CPU.

Would it be great if they made it cheaper so that everyone could have one? Absolutely. But then they would be cannibalizing the sales of their other higher-end CPUs (why buy a $700 FX-series when you can spend $300 on low end X2 CPUs and get more performance?).

two dual-cores?

[DreadSpoon]

I thought AMD was bragging about how their qaud-core CPUs were going to be "native," unlike Intel's which were going to just be two dual-core CPUs on one die? Or is this 4x4 platform not meant to be their real quad-core solutions, just an interim "hack" until the quad-cores come out in 2007?

Re:"Enthusiast Megatasking" is a lousy catchphrase

[Mad Merlin]

(Come on, where's dual-core gzip?)

Gzip is sufficiently fast that I suspect in most cases it's more limited by your hard drive speed than your CPU speed. There is however, parallel bzip2, which most certainly does benefit from parallelism.

Re: 5, common. How about 80.

[theexcogitator]

Didn't you see the article on intel. http://techfreep.com/intel-80-cores-by-2011.htm . Talk about an expensive chip.

Re:Not as good as intels quad core?

[KitesWorld]

They're talking about access to system memory for independant applications.

Basically, if you farm out four tasks to a 2xDual intel setup, the memory bandwidth available doesn't scale. IE, you can add more dies, but at the cost of reducing the memory bandwidth available to each of those dies (to/from system).

With AMD's setup, adding a new die also adds a new memory controller (they're on the die, remember?), which in turn increases the amount of memory bandwidth available (to/from system).

It's already bieng proven an effective scheme in certain server markets, but as always the best solution for you will always depend on exactly what you are doing with the hardware.

Re:= 4 Acentral Processing Units

[Dun Malg]

I never thought that the "4x4" designation for "all wheel drive" cars made any sense, either.

I helps once you understand that the designation isn't limited to "cars", but applies to ALL wheeled vehicles. The format is (total number of wheels) x (number of driven wheels). For example, the US Army's M-939A2 5 ton truck is a 6x6-- 6 wheels, all driven-- and the M1074 PLS is a 10x10! Civilian trucking, by comparison, will usually make do with 10x8 on the tractor unit, being more concerned with weight capacity than offroad ability.

Re:These cores go up to eleven..

[phaxkolumbo]

We need to be able to moderate to (Score:6, Funny) for comments like these...

Re:Think outside the Desktop Market...

[Brian Stretch]

Couldn't this sort of beast be aimed at the Server Market? I have an application that would eat up this sort of config. Curently we use a Dual Xeon or a Quad Xeon and these get maxed out at times.

4x4 uses low-latency unbuffered RAM while servers use ECC RAM. More importantly, you can already buy dual CPU Opteron motherboards and chips. They've been capturing LOTS of market share from the Xeon, especially at the quad chip (8 core) level where the Xeon's obsolete FSB architecture falls down. Some vendors even have 8 CPU (16 core) boxes. And then there's Cray's Opteron-based supercomputers...

4x4 is basically an Opteron 2xx-series platform adapted for the desktop enthusiast market.

Re:Forced Overkill

[WuphonsReach]

You won't get 4 PCI-E x16 slots and 12 SATA ports, but who needs that anyways? Or, you could just wait until 3Q of 07 and get a native quad core CPU.

Those of us who want to drop in PCIe RAID cards and dual/quad port PCIe NIC cards? (Both of which are usually only available in PCIe x4 sizes.) Plus for less expensive servers, 12 SATA ports could allow the use of Software RAID without having to use up a PCIe slot for a SATA card.

When you get into NIC bonding, it's not unusual to want 4-8 gigabit NICs in the unit. Especially if you're connecting to an iSCSI/AoE switch fabric and you want to connect to multiple switches for fault-tolerance (along with bonding for bandwidth). Even with dual-port NICs, you start running out of space quickly (it's better with quads, but they're hard to source).