Slashdot Mirror
Inside AMD's Phenom Architecture
An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek has uncovered some documentation which provides some details amid today's hype for AMD's announcement of its upcoming Phenom quad-core (previously code-named Agena). AMD's 10h architecture will be used in both the desktop Phenom and the Barcelona (Opteron) quads. The architecture supports wider floating-point units, can fully retire three long instructions per cycle, and has virtual machine optimizations. While the design is solid, Intel will still be first to market with 45nm quads (the first AMD's will be 65nm). Do you think this architecture will help AMD regain the lead in its multicore battle with Intel?"
Windows vista needs a lot of cpu power So 1 core just for the os. 1 for all the back round apps, anti-virus apps, and drivers. leaving 2 cores for your apps / games.
Who the fuck is coding THAT poorly?
If anti virus and background aps take an entire core to themselves I think we need to rethink our entire industry. I mean fuck me that is a lot of power for something we shouldn't even need if we had good security in the OS by default.
I like muppets.
Intel, a giant corp with continued antitrust oversight, was quite happy to allow AMD to appear to be a genuine competitor to the US authorities, as long as AMD's market share remained a relative sliver. Once AMD's CPUs achieved a much better price/performance ratio than Intel, Intel moved to squash them like a deer tick in Olde Lyme, CT.
Does AMD stand a chance against Intel? Not unless they can make a profit out of having less than five per cent market share for the rest of eternity. Perhaps they can.
In any event, any competition is better than none. If it weren't for AMD's great processor architecture and 64-bit extensions, we doubtless would not have Core-2 duos and quads at an affordable price point now.
But Intel's R+D PIZZA BUDGET must be larger than AMD's total worldwide cash flow.
(Full disclosure: I build my own boxen, and have since 1991. I have never used an Intel chip in any computer I've assembled. So I have no grudge against AMD; I used them because they performed very well for a low price. They still do.)