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K7 Info
TBM writes "This is an article on the new K7 chipset from AMD. Pretty much all information that has been released to date and even rumors are included. Information on what mainboard manufacturers will be supporting the new slot-A and slot-B and which tier-1 OEMs will be selling K7 systems. A very useful read for anyone interested in a new system... "
BFS can handle files larger than 18 terabytes. I'm not going to put down a number, because then I would be the third person that gave a wrong number in this thread :) If you really must know what BFS can handle, go to Barnes and Noble and thumb through Dominic G's filesystem book.
As for Genki, chill out... It's so close you can almost taste it. Barring nuclear war you should have it installed RSN.
Whoa, your music ain't that bad (Im listening to Return-dinomix now) infact its pretty good. A lot better then mine, but I dont have them nifty PC music making thingies... damn linux needs more midi/sequencing/synth apps.
:)
But, its the artist who makes the song, not just his tools
I'll take the risk of being wrong :-)
18 petabytes is the current maximum for BFS.
Roll on Genki...
I haven't seen any benchmarks yet and he seems overly fond of AMD. Wait till it's out.
Windows 2000 supports 64gigabytes of memory too.
AMD has done this time and time again: claimed their product will be the greatest then fallen short. While I'll admit there is a possibility that the K7 may be everything they say and more, don't hold your breath. AMD claims that the K6III 450 is faster than a PIII 500. Now while it's true that it beats a PIII 500 out at bussiness Winstone, it gets rocked by a longshot by even a Celeron 400 at 3d games like Quake2. It gets beat even worse in high end 3d rendering like 3dstudio MAX. So clearly the K6III isn't the dynamite chip that AMD wants us to think it is. Now this should come as no supprise, processor companies seem to make "massaging" the data about their processors a way of life. The PIII is supposedly so much faster than the PII but for 99% of the software out there, it's not. Why? Well, it suffers from one of the problems that the K6's do and that's a new instruction set. Now having done assembly programming for Intel chips I can tell you that it's hard enough to remember all the instructions and you need huge refrences as it is and adding a whole bunch more sure doesn't make it any easier. That is why RISC chips are so cool because they take the approach of having a few instructions, but making them all work very fast. Makes it much easier on programmers. I get real sick of hearing AMD people whine all the time that K6's would preform better if only the games would support 3dnow. Well, they don't so you just have to live with it and I can sympathize with the point of view of the programmers. It is a lot of time and energy (and in bussiness those mean money) to add support for 3dnow to your game. Most companies find it's just not good use of their programmer's time to add support for 3dnow since the games will RUN with out it, just not as well. If you don't like it well, tough you should have bought a Celeron that what I did and it runs my Quake 3 rather nice. If AMD chips grow more popular you may see mroe applications that specifically support them but again, don't hold your breath.
I think that back in the 80's Bill G said something along the lines of ``nobody will _ever_ need more than 256 bytes".
.. still, I fail to see why you'd need to be able to support 18TB files *JUST* yet considering noone even makes a 1TB HD or other storage device yet. Okay, you even RAID some HDs (22GB?) together and have yourself 0.1TB of storage .. whooo doesn't look like bouncing off the limits yet :)
:)
Wasn't that the old DOS memory '640K will be enough for anybody' line?
Let's not worry about 'still' having 32-bitness yet... it's good to get the most out of things before moving on to new architectures, can you say 'backward compatible'?
Delphis
You won't be able to buy one until after you got the full specs. Intel aren't stupid, they are funding gcc and by extension Linux development on IA64, and they will release all the docs before the hardware is on sale.
Isn't it time for x86 to die? I mean theres no use for chipmakers to make thease internal risc hardwareemulating x86cisc CPU's enymore is there?
This must cost lots of money? Why not just go risc all the way? I mean more speed less cost.
Cars don't look like horsecariges anymore no do they?
FRA: STFU GTFO
Right, I checked it out a couple of times and in fact, BFS does support files up to 18 PETAbytes.
So incredibly huge, the mind boggles. In 1999 there is probably NO practical use for such a file, but hey, it's cool to be able to brag about it.
Got Genki?
This was a really good article. It was informative, clear, and for the most part accurate with its information and definitions. There's just one problem. The X-Force sounds just plain lame, and I think the authors of this article knew it. Consider such choice lines as:
"This is where Cult of the Dead Cow released Back Orifice, ostensibly to expose Microsoft's security shortcomings."
"...Rouland got a copy to Jon Larimer, the X-Force's 'back door' guru."
If they're not trying to imply that these dudes are gay, be it intentionally or unintentionally, then I guess I'm just the sick and peverted one.
-
it's June already, and I don't have a K7 under my desk. I ask you AMD, why?!
Ah well, it's not like these K6's will break down anytime soon.
1) Announce chip that will blow away Intel's top of line
2) Allow delivery date to slip
3) Finally deliver chip that doesn't meet expectations
4) Repeat
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Those "strange practices" are the best AMD can do. They have some excellent designs, but they just don't have the kind of production facilities intel does. Intel has something like 13 fabs. AMD has one. Plus, with this one fab they are making K6-2s, K6-IIIs, mobile K6-2s, mobile K6-IIIs, and now K7s (I believe the K7 chipsets are being made by a Taiwanese company). I'd like to see you do any better. Things will definately improve when AMD's massive new fab in Dresden, Germany is complete.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
Over in his Computex recap.
In it, he says that so far the K7 is looking like a "clear winner" and that for once, its floating point performance beats Intel's. He does, however, also mention that AMD has strange practices when it comes to production, and says they need to step it up it they want the K7's performance to be timely.
More of the facts than you probably think are true on that page. I tried to place question marks next to the questionable bits or otherwise mark them as rumour.
The bit about the PLL is 100% true, for example -- it's just that for some stuff like this, I cannot reveal my sources.
I can't *believe* that I forgot to mention anything regarding SMP. I mean, that was just *wrong* of me! I'll have to update the page in full force, though it might take a bit. I do recall that there is a company making very high SMP (for x86) chipsets for K7, but I keep thinking it's Profusion (the folks who are doing similar stuff on Intel's platform).
The company making for EV-6 could conceivably make specialized 8-way K7 a possibility for 1999, though it all depends on market demand, of course.
Oh...I think their name might have been Poseidon.
Anyway, that page is far from finished. It just covered a bunch of stuff that I think were important at the time, such as the concern over cost, exactly why the floating point unit is so fantastic, who might be supporting the platform. I even ignored MHz, since I'd basically assumed since November that the K7 would be coming out at 600MHz. I mean, wasn't it obvious?
-JC
PC News'n'Links
http://www.jc-news.com/pc
We are very fortunate that there is competition for Intel. All my systems are either Cyrix or lately AMD. It is simply cheaper ...
Wasn't there a time when 64 bit processors were going to reign over the world by mid 1999 and Linux was going to take over the world as the only 64 bit operating system? Instead we have yet another generation of 32 bit processors coming out. We're still stuck with the 1 gig maximum file size.
Probably the most accurate collection of information concerning the K7 on the net, but still largely based on hardcopy and heresay. Biostar, MSI and Gigabyte will be offering Irongate boards. Asus will as well, but will sit on the idea for a few months (typical Asus. Case and point: the P5A).
I'm not sure about the 500 MHz. I was pretty sure the first one would be a 550.
Also, concerning the "MHz" gap between the K6 and K7s: There WILL be a K6 550, so those of you with Super Socket 7 boards will not have to build up all new PCs (yet) to have an AMD with 550 Mhz speeds.
Another important factoid is that the K7 can be run in tandem....or more. At AMD they have a test machine with 4 K7s running NT. They only use 32MB of RAM in it to prove the lack of any sort of bottleneck in such a system. The x86 has come of age! Booo yeah.
Intel's new one is 64-bit. And it has _lots_ of general-purpose registers. Technically better than IA32 (386+, 7 not-so-general-purpose registers). But I won't buy until I get the _full_ specs (the OS part too). If they don't release, they lost one potential customer.