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AMD Demos 1Gigahertz cooled K7
An anonymous reader wrote in to say that "At the
AMD shareholder's meeting today, AMD and KyroTech demonstrated
a K7 system running at a cool 1 GHz! " Update: 04/29 10:26 by J : An article at news.com
discusses AMD's plans for the chip, including pricing and initial speeds.
As i understand it upping the core voltage of a chip will allow it to run faster. Thats how i overclock my celeron after all. But it also gets hotter than hell from this so: Cryo Cooling.
I have a 500lb uncle. So there.
And this summer comes the 0,18 micron Pentium III, while AMD doesn't plan anything that small before 2000. Since the K7 seems to be marginally faster than the Pentium III, and considered the many problems AMD has with manufacturing, I wouldn't bet much on the chances of the K7.
The thing is, Intel has a lot of margin on the new 0,18 Pentium III, so if AMD gets dangerous they'll just pump up the clock faster than planned. Intel is leading the game, if they want to make faster processors it's very easy (they could have come out with a Celeron 450A instead of the 300A, but at that time there was no need to so they marked them as "300 Mhz only" while most of them were really 450 or 500 Mhz capable).
Check out Ace's Hardware , they have some good articles on the K7. I like that site a little better than other hardware sites, it seems more technically oriented in content. I remember reading an article on there about how K7's in an SMP setup use independent busses to the chipset, unlike the Intel SMP setups share busses (which is why SMP with more than four Intel CPUs doesn't work very well).
i have a 250lb tv. so there
There *is* a compiler. That's the problem.
A compiler was made, and it exists. But for
some reason, a decision was made to give
an *exclusive* license to codewerks(or whatever
their called).
You obviously don't own a K6, nor bothered to look at any data aside from MHz.
Yes, the K6-233 was the fastest chip according to MHz on the market for a while. My friend bought one for that reason. It couldn't compile the kernel, thanks to various errors AMD eventually got rid of.
I also own a K6-200. It's a decent chip. However it was never a fast chip thanks to a truly inferior FPU. For some stuff, it's as good as a pentium 200. However if you try something FPU intensive like playing mp3s or quake, it can't compete with an equally clocked pentium-mmx.
Be careful buying AMD. They make good chips, but they've never released a chip which could compete with its intel equivilant in all categories.
Yeah, but the processor still runs no faster at a lower speed. If an instruction takes 10 clock cycles, and the processor is sufficiently cooled to prevent it from incorrectly working, but not any more cooler than that, the instruction still takes 10 clock cycles. If you cooled that sucker down to -200 deg. C you'd still find the CPU taking 10 clock cycles to do that instruction (it's just built like that), and therefore it runs no faster at all. You need to adjust the clock rate feeding the processor to take advantage of the cooling. ie. At 200 Mhz, that instruction can be run 20 Million times a second at a max. temperature of (probably) 80 deg. C, at 1 Ghz it can be run at 100 Million times a second at a max temperature of (maybe) -50 deg. C. If you don't beleive me, get the EE specs for the 8088 CPU from intel, harris semi., or whoever else still has them (I have them in a harris databook). They'll tell ya the same stuff, and, as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same (It still applies to the K7).
;-)
Peace out...
You'd have to have a huge pocket to fit the tower case that most (all?) of Kyrotech's products come in in your pocket. The refrigeration unit itself would be a beeatch.
I'd recommend the "Janitor" approach.
(besides, the system's probably at AMD, anyway)
Um... The K6-3 450 is THE FASTEST single processor development machine available today. Faster than a PIII 450. Can't remember what site that was measured on, but saw it a couple of weeks ago. The Linux kernel compilation took something like 80 seconds from a fresh source extraction. Sure, the floating point without 3DNow! might not be quite as fast, but I have yet to find a game that doesn't play well on my K6-2 300.
IBM beat them both.
When you click the link to view what it looks like you might of noticed that the case had a big chunky thingy at the bottom. I'm guessing that this is where the cooling system is.
Agreed, but my ideas of what will happen to Intel (eventually, with all this gnawing at the uP bit) are a little different. I figure they're going to end up like IBM. Still in business, big, but quite "Atrophied". Eg. When you go to a computer store do you say "Sell me an IBM compatible" or "Sell me a PC"... 10 years ago it was IBM Compatible. Today its the same. "Sell me an AMD K6, they'll work with Intel stuff for less.". Tomorrow (proverbially speaking) it'll be "Sell me a processor. I want something fast." If Intel doesn't make the faster processor for tomorrow, then you'll buy whatever is faster (or for some, cheaper. Maybe there'll be an Intel Aptiva ;-).
How much was the motherboard then? From what I've seen, the CPUs don't seem so expensive, but the mainboards are rather high.
Chris
>nasm, an open-source assembler that compiles on >everything under the sun, has 3dnow extensions.
pfft..It's not gonna do you any good if you're
gonna compile the kernel, or anything else for that matter, unless you want to write asm.
AMD has turned a bling eye to us because we don't seem demographically interesting to them.
That's it period.
K62-3dnow's FPU is a _dog_. You ever try to run seti@home? It's about enough to bring tears to your eyes. But that's not what bothers me. What bothers me is that it doesn't have to be a dog. It could have been some sort of kick-ass number crunching phenomena if AMD would have created a compiler that would allow the chip to function to it's potential.
If they repeat this sad mistake with the K7, they are proven morons and there is no hope for them.
Think about it...The whole push behind the k6-23d was it's "blinding" simd performance..but
they gave us no reasonable method to take advantage of 3dnow.
3dnow without a compiler == nothing!
I'm sick of waiting for all these "to be released"
3dnow patches for $$ software. I want a compiler damnit, or so help me I'll never buy AMD again.
their losses are due to lack of supply-not lack of demand
If you're going to spend that much money on a new system, you might as well buy a real SGI box instead of a SGI with Intel processors.
Then again, it all depends on what you're going to be doing with it.
Don't jump to conclusions:
:P
> We all know they didnt come through as strong
> as they wanted or they would not have reported
> such huge losses.
I own an AMD 350Mhz chip and I can vouch for its
speed and stability. For some reason I don't completely understand I like the super7 board more than the slot 1 board my pentium-II uses as well, but I'm getting off track.. The chips are plenty strong enough, the reason AMD's posting huge losses is largely due to supply problems and intel's super low celeron prices.
There are a lot of good reasons to support AMD:
1. Their past chips have been solid performers.
2. They don't implement a CPU ID "feature".
3. They don't aggressively hamper overclocking.
4. They don't have bunny-suit mascots
5. They keep intel's pricing low.
I know this is sacriledge to most of the people here but I really don't think it makes a difference if one processor gets a few more idiotstones than another, so long as they are in the same ballpark. When it's that close you might as well go with a company that will keep the market competitive.
-Outland Traveller w/o passwd
Come on'? AMD and INTEL with a 1gighertz processor. First of all, like the man said, it would have to be chilled way below freezing. So don't expect it to reach home/small business and some larger business users any time soon. Shit, if you want REAL speed, go buy yourself SGI with a QUAD PIII at 500mhz (for the lamer: yes, that means 4 PIII 500Mhz processors) with 4 512MB RAM bays. I'd like to see AMD compete with that.
The fpu is no problem in the k7. THe k6 was designed for boring bussiness machines that want high performance for spreadsheet number crunching but nothing else. The k7 is being designed as a workstation and game chip as well as server. The k7 is 2-3 times faster then intels cpu core and the fpu is three times faster and on top of that their is 128K or 64k or some chache thats in the chip itself thats alot more then 16k from the p3. THis means the gcc compilier and quake as well as autocad will fly on this thing. THe problem is the cpu would calculate only as fast as the memory and cahce would allow. OH and also the bus operates at 200mhz and has a max bandwith of 3.2 g/b's compared to 200-300 megs a sec with a p3. OHHH I am having an orgasim just thinking about this chip. AMD allready sells just as much chips as intel on new pc's and the k7 will also make it faster then the p3. THe only reason intel called the enchanced p2 with mmx as p3 is because they were scared of amd. I guess people will think that the p3 is an 786 and refuse to even look at the amd. HAHA nice try. Bye intel! May you rest in peace.
Yeah, short circuit was one of my fav. movies! Wouldn't You Like To Be A Pepper Too? Others on the list (gee, I wonder why I went in the computer /electronics field...):
;-)
- Robocop I and II (III just sucked)
- Short Circuit II
- Spacecamp (real lame now though, ahhh... to be 8 again!)
- Star Trek * (Not incl. latest trash Insurrection)
- Abraxas
- I Come In Peace
- Cyborg I & II
- X - Files
- The Matrix
- 2001, 2010
- Soldier
- Event Horizon
- THX 1138
- The Lawnmower Man I and II
I used to watch them damn lame Pacman cartoons religiously too. ARGH... Gotta work. And I was just about to watch THX 1138 AGAIN...
Actually the 1GHz PowerPC chip was not a real cpu. It was just the CPU core, it did not have any instruction decoders, bus units, etc. Hell, the instructions had to be fed into it with a modified probe!
ummmm I have been running a k6-2 300 at 444 (4x111) since september and it hasn't yet crashed
i'd call that pretty safe
(plus it makes quake fly)
Well, according to the press release:
``The Super-G is derived from two years of technical cooperation between KryoTech and AMD,'' said Al Quick, Chairman and CEO of KryoTech.
``Working together, we have produced the Super-G, a true next-generation computer system. With performance measured in gigahertz instead of megahertz, and state-of-the-art cooling integrated as a feature rather than an afterthought, the Super-G establishes a new standard for the rest of the industry to follow.''
So maybe this is different than Kryotech's present offerings. It also says it took two years of cooperation of this thing, so I would expect this cooling device to be different from Kryotech's present offerings.
Added benefits:
Free aircon
actually reduces the heat buildup associated with greenhouse effect as the the heat exchange engine lowers the air temp as the engine passes through it.
of course TAANSTAFL still holds true and the is a degree of ineffiency but it seems like a good mid term solution.
AC at work
Me at Home
It's not really an Alpha motherboard. They're just implementing Alpha's 200 Mhz bus specs on it. As far as I know it should work just fine.
Has anyone seen numbers om pure floating point performance from the K7?
If their about equal to the PIII then they are about equal to the celeron as well. (any `streaming instruction thingies not inluded)
Urrgghhh your out in the car park... Hiding in the boot of a mini moke....
catch me if i'm misremembering, but i think intel used liquid nitrogen. That's a little bit cooler than the -40 to -60 that kryotech uses. One could probably take a 8088 to close to a gigahurt with liquid nitrogen.
C'mon! They put all the opcodes up on their
page! Who needs a compiler?
nasm, an open-source assembler that compiles on everything under the sun, has 3dnow extensions.
Run it in software then. Should still be like 50fps in 640x480
intel is _not_ going to ship that 1 ghz PIII.
Yes, Intel did demo a 1 gig chip some time back, but tell me... Do you really *want* a spiffy little ID for everyone to check out??? Just a thought from an anonymous coward...
Me too! I recommend some black fatigue pants instead of tights, though. No pockets in tights...
acshully its just an ATX case w/ the cryo unit on the bottom *coff*cray*coff*
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
anybody notice the guys name? Al Quick? heheh
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
duh... the K-7 supports SMP
Life is like an egg better scrambled than fried. -- Ken Sawatari
Who gives a shit?
Are you one of those creeps who thinks we still need MS crap on linux?
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
Still would need at least 8mg cache.. Radther have 32-64 meg cache.. *grin*..
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Um, 5 hp? My lawn mower is more powerful than that and gets 100 mpg..
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
In the 40's? Now thats impressive!
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
That's all.. My Sun 21' weighs that much..
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
... that when our cars all run on liquid nitrogen, that it will be cheaper to put a fast computer in your car than in your house?
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
It's nice to know that this world is
populated by a bunch of people willing
to have such a strong opinion on what
other people have fed them. I think I
counted about 20 "engineers" who know
all the in's and out's of every
processor and why their's is best.
(Hey, such and such website says it
rocks. It must be true.)
Screw the hype-machine. Let me see some benchmarks. Like a 2.2.5 kernel compile time. .18 micron by then as well.
K7 has gotta by the most over-hyped, under
specified chip I've seen yet.
Alpha's are gonna be cheaper than K-63's
by mid-summer. (250$ range) And quite possibly
faster than the k7..if it ever get's released.
Also they will be
I'm still smarting from AMD's moronic
move in which they gave compiler technology
to *one* vendor..Morons! They coulda helped
gcc or egcs but nooo... They force all AMD
owners to buy from metrowerks _AND_ run wintel
to produce 3dnow optimized code....*spit*.
Their mystical attitude about the K7 isn't
giving me much confidence about their ability
to produce something that's gonna be useful
to me.
and resisting the urge to visit their offices at 3:00 AM in black tights and a glass cutter.
Quake will not run much faster unless you cool your fav 3D card as well or unless you use only software renderer (absent in Quake3Arena).
Hence, your example of "benchmark" is not relevant.
The judgement of a cpu's ability to compute is not
just based on MHz. It is based on many other
factors including cache and pipeline size. The
K-7 is an infinitely superior product to the
celeron. A 500Mhz K-7 will easily outperform
an overclocked celeron. No comparison.
Well, AMD made the announcement for their Ghz 2000 goal in Maximum PC, and it looks like they're going to deliver!!
> Honestly, I think I'll be happy on the
> day the Alpha comes out on top of said
> "chart". Unfortunately it's still priced
> out of the range of something I would
> purchase for personal use.
The Alpha will unfortunately never be at the top of the price/performace list until it becomes a commodity like the x86 processors have become - mostly due to the Wintel duopoly (and some help from IBM in the beginning). Once the masses break away from Wintel, architectures that are technologically superior to the x86 will take over. I can see AMD positioning itself to be making Alpha clones in the event the bottom drops out of the x86 market.
Posted by The Masked Miscreant >:):
Actually, the flash on the MB is more likely to have been produced by AMD. They have a larger market share in flash memory than Intel, due largely to the fact that they sell it for less AND it has a longer life cycle (measured in write/erase cycles).
Or maybe your 100 mpg meant "meters per gallon"?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I think the more important story here is that AMD
is much more friendly to overclocking than Intel
is. As I recall, Intel won't let Kryotech sell
systems with overclocked Intel chips. It's nice
to see AMD being more friendly to the overclocking
community. Now what I'd REALLY like to see is
something along the lines of "This chip is
verified to run at speed X MHz at temperature A
and at speed Y MHz at temperature B...", etc.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
but there's not much software being written for them.. when ms ports to these chips a huge userbase will follow. until then the alternatives u suggest wont be adopted regardless (sadly) of their technical superiority.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
If they are still using a MOS transistor design, the current gain decreases with increasing temperature. While this temperature/voltage gain ratio is good for preventing thermal runnaway (that bipolar junction transistors can exhibit,) this may pose a limit on high frequency operation at high temperatures.
When frequencies increase, the higher gate switching speed generates tremendous heat.
I would imagine that cooling it down may allow for useful operation of the transistor gates as they still have sufficient gain to operate usefully. I suspect that my celeron 300a did not like 504MHz longer than 10 minutes due to the gate temperatures decreasing the gain required to switch logic reliably.
That's my guess.
WORD UP!
Hmm, I think at around a gig, I may just need
to stick a slightly larger heatsink, or just go
way out and put a fan on a PowerPC CPU..
The previous comments are only true, if no-one says they're wrong.
Does anyone know when the K7 will hit the market? Tom's is not more specific than 1H99, and that is in an article from October. Ars Technica (as far as I can tell) has no articles on the K7 at all. So- does anyone know anything about a release date? Speculation and wild rumours welcome...
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Kryotech sells refigeration units for CPUs. Basically, it's a little refigeration motor about the size of a shoebox that sits under your PC, connected to an appropriately sized little cover for the CPU.
It's news just because it's cool to have a chip running at 1G in a commercially viable environment (kryotech already sells systems with K6's and alphas).
Shurely a warm 1Ghz ;)
hert is not the singular form of hertz.
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
My UPS weighs 120lbs.. hehe :)
-Jason
I can't really tell what they are selling here. Have they integrated cooling onto the CPU, or are they selling some kind of box with active cooling built in?
If this is just Kryotech getting a stamp of approval from AMD, I can't really see it as news.
But if they start selling chilled-down K7 cpus on the Chip Merchant, that would be pretty spiffy.
\
Flame me if i'm wrong, but KryoTech's assertion that CMOS chips naturally run faster when they are cooled sounds a little fishy. The clock oscillator that provides timing to the chip is on the motherboard, not in the CPU core, where it would be cooled. The clock chip runs at room temperature, and runs at its normal speed, therefore the clock pulses go to the CPU at the same rate. Unless the K7 adjust its multiplier depending on temperature, all cooling the chip does is *allow* it to run at high speeds (on a fast MoBo, with all the clock jumpers maxed out). This is a little different from my definition of "natually faster" I may be splitting hairs here, but they ought to let people know you can't just slap an active cooler on a pentium in a tx motherboard and expect it to run at 1.0 GHz...
0 1 - just my two bits
I read an interview with an AMD employee who was talking about the SMP capabilities that the K7 would have, they said that since it is running on the ev6 bus, it'll be able to support 16(I think that was how many it was) CPUs.
Sorry, I don't remember where it was at. I'll look at a couple hardware sites I frequent and see if I can stumble onto that... if I do, I'll post a reply with the URL.
OK. Cool and I want one.
How would you get Linux on it though? It's got
an Intel compatable chip and an Alpha motherboard.
Anyone know? Is there a project working on this?
Am I just waaay out in left field?
********************************************
Superstition is a word the ignorant use to describe their ignorance. -Sifu
...assuming that your audience had at least the IQ of a pencil.
I've always wondered about that. Thanks for clearing that up.
Yikes! Where do I begin?! ``Performance measured in gigahertz instead of megahertz,'' OK. I ``measured'' the performance of my old Columbia Data Product XT-clone in megahertz. Guess I can drag it un from the basement and re-``measure'' the performance by saying the CPU clock is running at 0.00477 Gigahertz (BTW, it's not ``gigahertz''). When was the last time someone actually spouted crap about performance based on clock speeds? About 1985? Thought we knew better than that by now. Of course, the CEO was talking at a shareholders meeting so I guess he had to dumb it down just a tad, eh?
All the technical usage errors aside, I want one of these! Of course, that'll be after I install a screen room at home to run this computer in so I can keep the FCC at bay.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
That's *Alpha*, not "altha"...
The cool thing is that this is a .25 micron chip oc'd to 1GHz. This pretty much makes it clear that when AMD switches to .18 + copper they'll clear 1GHz easily. Quad .18micron 1.5GHz K7 w/8Mb full speed L2....mmmm...drool.
-- d'arcy poirot
There's nothing magical about operating in the microwave frequency range. In fact, your cell phone already does. 0.18 micron chips will be able to do it fairly easily, and will cost no more than any other chips made with the same process technologies.
Re. microwave emission, I wouldn't worry. Designers go to great lengths to minimize emissions (microwave or radio) from chips and bus traces because that causes cross-talk between lines. Modern motherboards put a lot of ground wires and plates around active wiring to shield them and reduce capacitive coupling between signal wires (at the expense of capacitive coupling to ground, but that's a tolerable tradeoff). If communication was done using microwave waveguides instead of wires, then there would still be little or no leakage - because leakage would again mean cross-talk, and waveguides are by nature very well shielded.
Even if an incredibly poorly designed motherboard did manage to radiate microwaves in quantity, you'd end up with an output power no greater than your input power. A few tens of watts (the amount of power that the eletronics consumes, as opposed to the drive motors and monitor (if you plug that into your power supply). It takes a couple of minutes at over a _kilowatt_, confined, to nuke a hot dog. I wouldn't worry about being near an unconfined (radiating in all directions) source in the range of a few tens of watts.
Re. sterilization, I've been hearing mixed information about whether or not that actually happens and under what conditions. It's generally associated with people stepping into microwave relay beams, which are *far* more powerful than anything your motherboard would produce. More information on this, with hard references, would be appreciated, though.
not that im an Intel lover or anything like that, but I wish I a dollor for everytime I thought Intel should be worried...
The K7 bus system is not just the same one as the newest alpha uses, but it's been designed by the same person who was involve in the alpha design (whatever it's called - I keep forgetting).
If AMD would make their chips pin compatible with the alphas, there would be a very strong case for buying K7/alpha based system (or would there?). In fact it could easily be AMD's chance to steel one up on Intel. Especially given the K7 is aimed at high end of the industry (who might use alphas anyway).
And personally I'm putting off my next computer upgrade until the K7 comes out. The P-120 is fine for everything except mp3 encoding.
AMD has make specs form 3DNow available--nothings stopping you from writing support for it into egcs yourself.
:) but I sometimes think we need reminding that the linux kernel doesn't exist because of corporate support. Same goes for the GNU utilities, the Gimp, and the a lot of the rest of free software.
Yes, it would have been nice if they'd paid someone to work on this (not that SIMD optimization is exactly a solved problem
Don't complain that AMD didn't give us a compiler, complain that there is no compiler.
take a look at the picture of the machine on www.kryotech.com, its a monster of a box.
At lower temperatures electrons flow alot easier. So when you cool a chip it can run faster with less resistance. And when you run a chip fast it heats up. Anyone who's overclocked knows this...but if you cool the chip ALOT you can overclock it alot. Along with a smaller transistor size means you have a much faster chip.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
But I still want to see the SPECfp numbers. (not bloody likely since you need an expensive license)
I have a feeling that the Alpha 21264 will _still_ toast the K7 on SPECfp at half the MHz. Unfortunately, the 21264 is sort of out of my price range -- unless someone sells it for a lot less than Compaq does at around $7000 for NT and $10000 for Digital^H^H^H^H^H^H^HTru64 Unix.
Of course, on the 21264, just about all my Windows 95 games are useless. Looks like the K7 wins...
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Well i'd hope the alphas would wipe the table with just about any other processor around, I am biased for them and all that...and i do love them to death. The best thing coming out of the K7, besides some nice competition for microsoft is hopefully cheaper and more availible boards for the alpha processors, and hopefully cheaper alphas sometime in the near future.
I hope this is the start of K7 news from AMD, nearing release :)
Duh, I know that... I meant is Kryotec going to build SMP systems that are OCed to 1GHz? Probably not, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
All I said was that I wouldn't want one of these supercooled systems unless it was an SMP rig.
ya jerk!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I run BeOS. The rules don't apply.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I run BeOS. The rules don't apply.
The spec for the K7 is awesome (200Mhz bus, with rambus ram, altha techonlogy bus, designed by the very person you designed the altha chips, multiple cpu support, ohh and almost forgot COPPER instead of aluminium ). All that sounds very tasty and i will get it for sure. I think AMD are slightly over confident of their chips but then again if you know anything about marketing then you would know that calling your chip slower then your competitiors is not gonna help sales. Intel have too much of my money already why not give some to AMD.
Are you sure IBM demoed a 64bit chip at 1GHz? I could have swore it was a modified 604, being as how IBM still doesn't have a single chip 64bit implementation other than the 620...
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
I'll disclaim that I'm not an ECE but the way I read their statement is that the actual transistors on the chip operate in a more electrically efficent manner at lower temps. As a result, when the higher clock speed sends more pulses into the chip, the more efficient transistors are able to cope where at a higher, less efficient temperature they would malfunction. In this way the chip core is "naturally faster" at lower speeds, since it can raise its theoretical top speed.
First of all, performance won't be terribly stellar for applications that thrash the K7's cache. Main memory isn't cooled, and still has a _latency_ in the 6-10ns range (bus speed notwithstanding).
OTOH, things like Quake that fit within the cache will run more quickly.
Just remember that the K7 has the ability (with the extra [tag?]-RAM added) to use up to 8 MB of cache. Now, granted, things can still thrash 8 MB, but it's a lot less likely than with Xeon's 2 MB maximum.
my 0.4c (hey, Rands don't go as far these days
You obviously don't own a K6, nor bothered to look at any data aside from MHz.
I've owned three. And received excellent performance from all of them. Integer performance has always been a strong point of the K6, and that held true. Certainly I am able to perceive a difference in performance between the K6/200 and the MMX/200, in the AMD's favor.
My friend bought one for that reason. It couldn't compile the kernel, thanks to various errors AMD eventually got rid of.
The Signal 11 / Segfault problem was resolved in steppings prior to the debut of the 233. I believe it existed only in steppings prior to revision C, all of which were 166 and 200 MHz parts. My early K6/200, at 225 on a 75MHz bus, is quite good at compiling kernels, or X, or what have you.
if you try something FPU intensive like playing mp3s or quake
Need I even bother trotting out the old "AMD FPU is faster, it's just not pipelined enough" argument? I get the feeling this is going to be one of those perennial Hatfield & McCoy blood feuds.
Be careful buying AMD. They make good chips, but they've never released a chip which could compete with its intel equivilant in all categories.
I would say the same things about Intel chips. The C300A cranked up to 464MHz, roughly the equivalent of the K6/3-450, lacks 3DNow and the AMD part's higher-performance cache, for example.
I'm a firm believer in price/performance. That's why I sprung for the C300A with my most recent CPU. $60 for a 464MHz part that outstrips a P2 is, hands down, the bargain of the year. Until the stock of 300 MHz Celerons dries up completely, Intel is at the top of my chart.
Honestly, I think I'll be happy on the day the Alpha comes out on top of said "chart". Unfortunately it's still priced out of the range of something I would purchase for personal use.
First AMD said about the same thing about the K6 among other chips...
And shortly after ramping up production, the K6 was the fastest x86 chip in production inclusive of Intel's offerings for several months. Try not to omit that little tidbit.
Then I'll get a K6 III and start
watching the price of K7's come down.
I like to stay a gen or 2 behind.
IBM joins 1,000 MHZ Club
... that I can afford
Here's to:
1GHZ processors
1GB plus RAM configurations (QUIMMS?)
TByte storage
cheap big HD displays
Committee for Symmetric Distribution of the Future
From what I've heard K7 SMP setups will probably have to wait on none-AMD designed chipsets. They are quite possible, but I don't think AMD plans on having their reference chipset design do SMP or we would have seen an extra processor slot on the pictures of the motherboard they've been using (the nice looking red one). Hopefully Ali & Via make chipsets that can do SMP for the K7. They could have for socket 7, but didn't so I guess we will just have to hope they think SMP is important this time.
Just the CASE and fridge unit weigh 77pounds!
And my Sony 24" monitor weighs in at 88 lbs. What is your point?
I read something to that effect here. They're using TEC elements and anti-freeze ro run it @-57C or so.
While the K7 has multiple processor support, Kryotech's releases indicate that they are making cooling devices for uniprocessor systems only.
Kryotech clearly has the ability to cool a multi-processor system, in an older document of theirs they claimed to be able to cool processors up to 1KW. This looks like a newer cooling system - one which might not have quite as much capacity, but I would certainly expect them to be able to do 4 processors without much difficulty.
Only time will tell. I certainly hope they do come out with a multi-processor solution, even if I can't justify spending that much money on a computer for myself.
The Celeron is NOT to underestimated. I've got a PPGA 300A running 504mhz no sweat with only a TEC and decent heatsink to cool it. Another system runs SMP Celerons@464mhz each. I measure performance by the bang for the buck ruler - Celerons clearly win that battle right now! None of my CPUs cost me much more than $60 plus heatsink and MSI adapter. That's dirt cheap computing and I'm going to be very interested to see how my NT server responds to an overclocked PPGA 366. Don't worry - the SMP system is RH5.2 right now...
.18 it's supposed to halve the wafer real-estate needed and increase the number of chips produced by better than half....
As for the K7 - I'm waiting for it to arrive with bated breath. I've got contacts in the hardware world telling me that the performance numbers quoted by so many hardware sites are crap - the K7 configs seen by those sites were far from shipping systems. Whether or not this is true I don't know but I REALLY want the K7 to succeeed. My biggest concern is cost - will this puppy be so expensive that no one can afford it? I'm hearing that the new PIIIs are overheating so maybe the competition is faltering and AMD will have a good chance - we'll see. AMD is supposed to release this chip in July at something like 550mhz, meanwhile Intel readies it's 600mhz PIII to counter the faster AMD. If both chips benchmark closely (FPU on the K7 promises to be stellar tho') then it'll be interesting to see who decides to switch. Overall cost of switching (mb etc.) may be what stops many from doing it.
Next couple of months are going to be VERY interesting. I'm rooting for AMD myself and have bought some stock as well. If nothing they'll give Intel a pretty good run for their money. Don't use their previous CPUs as a benchmark for the K7 - I don't believe those had the benefits of Alpha technology. The yield they can produce from such a big die will make a difference, K6-3 are supposed to be hard to get now (sigh). When they goto
P.S. Since AMD has said they won't be locking these chips it's overclocking ability will be fun to explore - someone needs to mass produce a cooling system like HOCP used, I'd buy one!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
IBM showed off a 64 bit PowerPC 1 Ghz chip back in feburary of 1998. I think that IBM and their server/mac chips are way ahead of Intels' chip designers.
IBM has created Sillicon on Insulator(+33% performance), changed the wiring to copper(+33% performance), and have been keeping the chips small, less power comsuming than previous models, cooler, and still standard with the ZIF socket.
AMD chips run cooler, and sometimes depending on configs faster than Intels. AMD's K7 specs look a hell of a lot better in technology than anything Intel claims to be making in the next few years.
All Intel has done is extend their old chip set in a poor manner, their chips are proietary with the slot 1, excessively large, way to hot in laptops even with cooling features.
I think that IBM and AMD look like the leader in chip technology for the presonal computer. Intel is no longer doing anything worthwhile.
have you ever watched short circuit? its a damn good movie...
anyways amd and kyrotech both need to put better spec's on there about their machines... but im still drooling... i think i have even convinced myself that i need one. and hell for 1200 banana's i might even be able to afford it. actually im seriously debateing on whether or not to buy up a little amd stock. its really low right now so why not buy a few shares?
"English, who needs english? I'm never going to England." -- Homer Simpson
> ERROR: IEXPLORE caused an invalid page fault in module MSCONV97.DLL at 0137:01212d19. Stack dumped:
Just remember, without the K6-2, We wouldn't have the Celeron 300A (450)....
Its a win win for the consumer.
Ps-As for quality, The only "errata" I've experianced is that my chip seems to be running one more MHz than it's supposed to. I can live with that.
And because each cpu has it's own bus instead of sharing one like Intel's P-II's and P-III's... the K7 will actually scale above 4 cpu's without bus contention.
Intel ought to be very worried
Life is like an egg better scrambled than fried. -- Ken Sawatari
Sort of that, but the main thing was not that they couldn't put out the chips fast enough. They made money on the processors anyway, though they could have made more if they had better production. It was the fallout in the prices of RAM (AMD makes RAM too) and the Asian crisis (they like AMD stuff, aparently) which made them actually lose money.
Looks like not even Kryotech can get a hold of a dual K7 (and you know that if they could make a dual GHz machine, they would -- wouldn't you?). At least if they had a demo of a cooled SMP K7, we'd know if such a thing even exists. I personally can't wait to get a K7, and I'll probably get one the day they come out. But if AMD will have dual CPU setups coming out later, I'll have to wait. Does anyone have any info about a the dual K7 rumors? I haven't been able to find out anything.
Also, you might want to get Kryotech into the next century and tell them to ship with Linux pre-installed. I already mailed them about it and you can to. Kathy Hemby is the person you want to talk to. Maybe if we /. them, they'll wake up.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
If it started out as a 500MHz chip, and they O/C it to one GHz, then it's no different than what Intel did, except it will be for sale. There have also been reports on Ars Technica that someone has gotten a Celeron 300a to 633 MHz.
Personally, I would only buy one of these if they had SMP machines like this. mmmm 2GHz. drooooool
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I run BeOS. The rules don't apply.
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I run BeOS. The rules don't apply.
Okay I hear a lot of people really excited here about the K7. Put a few things into perspective. First AMD said about the same thing about the K6 among other chips... We all know they didnt come through as strong as they wanted or they would not have reported such huge losses. Now I hear all this talk about the K7 and SMP and 2,000 MHZ processors. Im more weary than excited about the K7. And possibly a little fearful that the only real competition INTEL has seen on the PC market is going to die out. And what about the SMP all anyone talks about or ever says to the press are these obfuscated riddles. Nothing concrete has yet to come from AMD. Yet people want the chips even if they are not as great as said? AMD has showed stockholders a overclocked chip thats all. Ugh I can see this being just like the K6-2
Jeremy Allen
knights@hom.net
the K7 because of the bus system used (the same one in fact as the newest alphas) can support up to 16 processors on one board if someone felt like making a motherboard like that. A little more power & I think Kyrotech might be able to cool them all even....
Just think a 16 Ghz system (for only ~14,000 probably), that would be fun...
Hence, your example of "benchmark" is not relevant.
Geometry acceleration is still done by the processor for the time being. AI and physics for your game will always be. Go to Tom's Hardware Guide and check out figures for the same game on the same card using different processors.
Any game that performs better on a PII-400 than on a K6-2-400 is CPU-bound.
Any game that performs better on a PII-450 than on a Celeron "450A" is cache-bound.
Any game that performs equally well on most processors, differing only with the video card, is bus-limited or fill-rate limited.
OTOH, things like Quake that fit within the cache will run more quickly.
Secondly, 0.18 micron fabrication should start some time this summer, and should have decent yields for high clock speeds by the end of the year. You should be able to pick up a chip in the 800 MHz - 1 GHz range *without* cooling around then. Drool over what will come out of AMD/Kryotech then, as opposed to now (at the tail end of 0.25 micron)
Anything bought now will depreciate rapidly in value over the next few months, as 0.18 micron fabs are almost due to come online.