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Intel Opens Its Front-Side Bus
vivin writes "The Inquirer is reporting that Intel has opened up its FSB. Intel did this during IDF 07. What this means is that you can plug non-Intel things into the Intel CPU socket. The article says 'This shows that Intel is willing to take AMD seriously as a competitive threat, and is prepared to act upon it. In addition to this breaking one of the most sacred taboos at Intel, it also hints that engineering now has the upper hand over bureaucracy.'"
This isn't the first time socket sharing has occured
The old Socket 7 used to fit Intel and AMD and Cyrix.
Hell, it can even house socket 5 cpus!
Back then it wasn't a big deal to upgrade a CPU.
All the companies started changing sockets at a frantic pace and made a simple CPU update essentially mean a whole machine.
A new motherboard for the new socket but it also has new memory footprint as well so that gets replaced, and the PCIx slot won't fit my agp card.
liqbase
Imagine if amd starts making processors that can fit onto intel motherboards? That would be interesting :)
I hope so. Every time I have to upgrade my machine I have to spend an hour on the web working out the 700 different kinds of processor I can buy and what type of socket I need to support them.
I had an AMD Duron 800MHz that I tried to replace with an Athlon 1300MHz which should have been supported, but created a nifty column of smoke when I plugged it in. Anything that reduces that likelihood is good in my book.
Peter
This is a brilliant trend I'm seeing.. one can only hope this sets a precedent for other companies in this field.
I for one can see AMD going all the way with this recent news headline on Intels part... Intels started it, now let's hope AMD can finish it.
There are no AMD chips that you could plug into it. It is not that Intel created a socket/bus that can take AMD chips. The news is that they opened it so that their competitors can develop chips for their socket/bus if they would desire to do so. So in the future we may see AMD chips that will fit into Intel FSB, but I doubt that will happen in the near future.
>> 'This shows that Intel is willing to take AMD seriously as a competitive threat, and is prepared to act upon it.'
I'm not sure how much sense this statement really makes. If they take AMD as a serious threat, wouldn't they WANT AMD to be forced to continue using their own bus? AM2 was probably a misstep, given the performance drops, giving intel the upper hand, but now they are willing to let AMD play in their sandbox - it helps AMD more than it hurts them.
I'm not complaining about the move, I just found the article a bit sparse on details and the statement at odds with common sense. Is it fully open, or does it require licensing? What is AMD's take on this news? How much re-work will be required to move AMD's processor cores to the intel bus? Will they gain performance or lose it in the translation?
Lots of questions that the Inquirer seems to totally ignore in what may be a significant development in the battle of the big boys.
Intel Opens Its Front-Side Bus
... just like your sister
Back in the late 80's or early 90's couldn't you swap out processor's? I admit I didn't know much back then but I thought that was how AMD and Cyrix got started, on boards meant for Intel CPU's.
:)
And by CPU, I DON'T mean the case and everything inside
Honest question: can someone explain how this means that Intel is taking AMD as a serious threat? The only way I see this benefitting Intel is if people are buying Intel motherboard because they can then go with a cheaper third party processor. Is that it, or is there something I'm missing? Is there really a large enough market out there for this kind of thing to warrant opening the FSB? How many people would really buy a cheaper processor thinking that they'll "upgrade" to an intel later?
I've bought Intel motherboards (and of course processors) for my last three computers, and they've been pretty rock solid.
Perhaps they think it wise to sell products that can be used even if their competitor gets a few bucks- until today didn't they effectively yield the floor for AMD motherboards to other companies?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
But it sure is good. It may encourage others to make CPUs without the need to develop their own chipsets, FSBs, motherboards and therefore will bring more competition to the market. ATM we only have two players on the field, right? At least players that matter.
It would indicate they are taking the Linux desktop threat seriously.
Maybe I'm too optimistic here, but could we imagine this as an example to other old-style corporate execs that being open sometimes can be a winning strategy?
Example: Intel opens up FSB. Motherboard manufacturers tell AMD: making boards for multiple socket types is a pain and decreases profits. Why don't you make a CPU for the Intel socket instead? Intel of course will make sure to design it so that it's great for an Intel CPU and suboptimal for an AMD one.
The other companies probably don't worry Intel much. VIA might make something, but I highly doubt they could manage to make anything that'd take any significant market from Intel, given what they've been releasing.
Or maybe just a "genderbender" socket replacement type thing - put a new socket in your existing mobo socket, put a CPU in the new socket.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Way back when, there used to be a real benefit to upgrading your 133MHz PC to 200MHz and it was easy to do so just by changing the CPU.
TBH, these days, for general desktop use I don't think that benefit's there any more. If you want to see a real benefit, you're best off replacing the CPU with something drastically faster. This may well involve a new motherboard and possibly new memory.
Alternatively, you upgrade the more sensible way - look at your computer needs, look to see what's causing a bottleneck currently and upgrade that. Much more cost-effective than just replacing a CPU and hoping you see a benefit.
I'm not complaining about the move, I just found the article a bit sparse on details and the statement at odds with common sense. Is it fully open, or does it require licensing? What is AMD's take on this news? How much re-work will be required to move AMD's processor cores to the intel bus? Will they gain performance or lose it in the translation?
Intel is not trying to open their bus up to AMD. That is not at all the goal. First of all, access to the the Intel bus requires a license. I'm not sure Intel would even grand AMD one for a sane price. Second of all, AMD would in no way want Intel's bus. As has been the hot topic of discussion for over a year, AMD's HT (HyperTransport) point-2-point links are faster both in terms of bandwidth, and latency than Intel's FSB. HT uses less pins than Intel's bus, and HT devices are simpler, cost less, and use less power. HT is a pretty neat and effective technology. Intel's FSB on the other hand, is much the same as it was around 10 years ago. To answer your question, AMD would take a massive hit by going to Intel's POS bus. It's funny, ATM, AMD has the better bus/platform and Intel has the better core. No one here seems to realize that AMD would never be willing to throw out their main advantage right now... AM2 isn't the issue. The issue is HT. Hell, even IBM announced that Power7 will use AMD's HT links. No one will be dropping HT for the POSFSB any time soon.
Intel/AMD are only opening their sockets/buses in an attempt to get third party developers to make FPGAs, JAVAics, and other accelerators. AMD has had some luck with this, and one can buy co-processors that drop into an AMD socket today. Intel is trying to get the same benifits, but I don't really see the point until Intel can get CSI working and drop the antiquated FSB.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
AMD opened their HyperTransport bus, royalty free, in 2001. They've signed people like Sun and Cisco, who have a big interest in moving a lot of data on buses. And if you get people using your bus, you can easily talk them into using your processors in their embedded devices.
That was a while ago, but I suspect it's coming to fruition or perhaps gaining more traction, if only now Intel is saying "me too."
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-528221.html
Does anyone here actually believe anything that is reported in The Inquirer?
Please elaborate unless you are referring to the IDT/Centaur/VIA/Cyrix WinChip C6.
"In addition to this breaking one of the most sacred taboos at Intel, it also hints that engineering now has the upper hand over bureaucracy."
The way it should be in a company like this.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
Maybe the advantages of this aren't apparent right now. Besides, isn't open information a good thing in itself?
This opening of the front side bus also means that you'll be able to plug FPGAs into it, which could be very cool. One way to solve the gigahertz slowdown is to specialize hardware: think co-processor that can be reconfigured in seconds to fit the particular task at hand, like video encoding.
Didn't Asus or somebody have one those for a P4 socket which let you put in a Pentium M (If my memory recalls)? So the P4 socket was open to Asus for some reason? This is definitely competing with AMD, in the HPC market where the HyperTransport is aiming, making FPGA's act as co-processors. But, HyperTransport's bandwidth is ~20GB/s, and the last time I checked Intel's FSB speed was still 1333Mhz which makes it atleast half as fast (~10GB/s?), if not slower. Why would I want to make something for a much slower bus if I can use a faster bus standard instead and both cost the same?
And yes, the bus speed matters. I've seen neural net tests in which Woodcrest, for example, does much better at 1333MHz using four cores than you'd see at 1066MHz. That's the same architecture except for bus speed. AMD's memory bandwidth is still better, though they lag in other areas.
I don't know whether, or how much, you'll see that bus bandwidth matter in the typical slashdotter workload (games).
"This shows that Intel is willing to take AMD seriously as a competitive threat, and is prepared to act upon it. In addition to this breaking one of the most sacred taboos at Intel, it also hints that engineering now has the upper hand over bureaucracy."
When they have to spell it out for you what their actions supposedly "hint" at, you know you're reading quite a silly PR spin on the matter.
MS competed and released competetive IE browsers until Netscape died painfully. It then stagnated, and continued to consolidate its monopoly position. Intel has shown no evidence that it will not do exactly the same, once AMD goes away. Don't think for one second that they won't put shareholder profits before customers.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
That's all we need to know. [So long as you know what an FPGA is - it's a blank slate that lets you design a hardware circuit/chip/whatever all the way up to CPU scale and then just load it up into the device as software. The result is a chip of your own design built in software running at _hardware_ speeds. No need for a fab or anything.]
Now I can buy a commodity PC sans CPU and a blank chip. Burn the chip with my own hardware, plug it in and it has access to all that lovely commodity PC I/O and memory stuff, all at FSB speeds.
This is very significant as it opens the way to backyard specialist devices - do this on a microboard like the PC104 format (small PC-on-a-single-board) and you'll be raking it in.
I think this is Intel's lame attempt at competing in the HPC market. They're pulling out all the stops prior to AMD's Barcelona release. I can't think of any other reason for Intel to be going apeshit the way they are lately - announcing huge price cuts 4 months in advance to coincide with a competitor's next gen release and now opening up their FSB. All this started occurring just after the initial pre-prod Barcelonas became available. Coincidence?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
So now that Intel's flagship is head and shoulders ahead of what AMD is making, now they're going to be swell guys and open up their FSB specification?
Some encouragement of competition. "We'll complete as long as we're winning."
I wonder if other companies will decide to get into the desktop CPU markets and use this as a starting point.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The day Intel adopts Hypertransport is the day I move to Antarctica.
Cheers
If you like tweaking you can get more than 512 RAM on Win98 already. However, I suspect that if Windows 98 was ever GPLed, the Linux community would take one look at it, then proceed to gouge their eyes out.
In addition to this breaking one of the most sacred taboos at Intel, it also hints that engineering now has the upper hand over bureaucracy
No decisions involving that much money are left to engineers.
Engineers are the people who say, "You know what would be cool?" and then lay out an idea. The bean counters study it, perform an analysis, and then decide if there is money in it. If there is, then the idea is given a green light. If not, no matter how cool the idea is - it gets buried.
Remember, we're talking about one of the major money making product lines for Intel - a company worth billions. Engineers are never going to have an upper hand in that environment.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Considering the Intel FSB is essentially slated for obsolescence within 1.5 years with the introduction of Nehalem, why would anyone design anything for the Intel FSB?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Everyone brings up Socket 7, but don't forget there was Socket 370 also. Ok, so it was only used by one other manufacturer, but this is probably the intent of this. Via after buying out Cyrix put out its C3 processor. Given these are not major performers, they ran on low power and had the ability to run with just a heatsink decreasing noise. This allows for cheaper low cost systems. They aren't for gaming, but can be a suitable media center pc, and can be small enough with the worries of loud fan noises and heat-related issues. Intel is just doing the same here. I am sure Via will jump on this opportunity to get itself into a newer platform.
Intel has specified that the traces for its FSB layout be as compact as possible in order to prevent retarding hole propagation. They call it the "Short Bus" protocol.
Just FYI, nForce 860i SLI for LGA775 uses HyperTransport Link between north and south bridge. So, essentially you have Intel system that uses AMD HT bus :)
Hyperom.com
How useful is this really? Intel has opened an FSB that they intend to replace with CSI in the next 18 to 24 months. Does this "opening" include CSI as well, or will anyone who accepts this be stepping into rapidly obsolete technology?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I think this article (which I admit I didn't read) and discussion (which I have read) both go in the WRONG direction. Intel may be attempting to get the hardware hackers (corporate or basement) to IMPROVE thier FSB. They have "open sourced" their hardware for anyone to tinker with. /. might have understood that. ;>
I'd have thought youz guyz here on
(No, I'm not affiliated with Intel or anyone else).
Last time I "opened my front-side bus" I got arrested for public indecency. ):
If you simply say 'if...was', then we assume it might actually have happened at some point in the past, but you just aren't sure, whereas what you're really trying to say is that it might happen at some point in the future. So, use 'were'.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Don't have been counters in management positions. A lot of people doing management are CS grads these days. That said, even they would (or should) not make a bad business decision just because it sounds cool.
Intel who?
No, seriously, I don't even consider intel chips any more. They aren't a good deal. Intel thinks way too much of themselves and really, honestly? They aren't any better. They are surviving on name alone right now.
AMD beats them hands down in anything but cache starved wait cycles and price hikes. I still can't believe anyone still pays too much for inferior chip technology when there is a cooler, faster, cheaper technology available.
-AC