Intel 64-bit Announcements at IDF 518
cribb writes "Some fascinating stuff is going on over at the IDF. Ever since the first sneak previews of the Opteron, there has been lots of uncertainty around its future, and that of AMD. AMD have bet everything on the success of their new 64-bit CPU, and with Microsoft severely delaying the release of a 64-bit Windows, and Intel complaining that 64-bit processing has no place in the desktop market, things were starting to look dim for AMD. However, after rumours around the 64-bit extensions of the Pentium 4 EE, it became clear that Intel is not willing to lag behind AMD in the 'innovation' department. Now comes the shocker: Intel boss Craig Barrett today anounced that Xeon-class 64-bit server CPUs codenamed Nocona will be coming out the second half of 2004. It isn't clear whether they will support AMD's Opteron AMD64 extensions. Barrett is quoted saying, 'There will be one operating system that will support all (64-bit) extended systems.' Maybe 64-bit computing is right around the corner after all, and we may even see compatible instruction sets from Intel and AMD! And does this mean that Intel will be dumping Itanium, which never caught on as expected in the server market, and forget the billions spent on developing it?" See some other articles at EE Times, and EWeek.
Intellectual Exercise (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure it was an interesting intellectual exercise, and that they learnt a lot.
Re:Intellectual Exercise (Score:5, Informative)
The iAPX 432 [brouhaha.com] was a 32-bit processor Intel developed starting in 1975 that embodied CISC technology to the max. It was innovative, but also expensive and slow, and targeted towards the Ada programming language, another market failure.
Re:Intellectual Exercise (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel 960 (Score:5, Interesting)
It was supposed to replace X86. Itanic will go same route. Repositioned and slowly fade into the sunset.
i960 is not like the i432 or Itannic (Score:5, Insightful)
432 and Itannic had full management support. The 432 failed becuase the market rejected it. Itannic appears destined for the same fate. The 960 wasn't rejected by the market, it was rejected by Intel management.
Re:i960 is not like the i432 or Itannic (Score:3, Informative)
On the iAPX-432 and the Ada programming language (Score:4, Informative)
First, your statements above are contradictory, in 1975 there was no Ada programming language, only a spec (steelman ??) that described what the language should contain (and not contain).
Also, it is not clear whether you meant that the 432 or Ada was a marketing failure (or both). Certainly the 432 was. OTOH, from its first release in 1980 or so, the Ada language has been far from a "market failure", despite there being no low-cost compilers for it and despite the limitations required by the SteelMan spec. Virtually all aeronautics, astronautics or critical communications software (Military or civilian) and weapons control software for the last 20 years was written in Ada (and not just in the US).
In addition, several commercial SW firms also found, even w/ Ada-83, that it allowed them to ship w/ far fewer bugs left for customers to find that code written in (Ugh!) C, as well as allowing bug-fixes using less than 50% of the developer resources than to fix bugs in (Ugh!) C.
As of 1995 the Ada language is much more oriented towards general programming, as well as being much cheaper to use than it had been. There has been a FREE (GPL) Ada compiler available since 1995 or so, and it is now (since version 3.2) integrated into GCC.
For more info on how Ada is being used and why it should be used for all new projects, see My small Ada site [nyct.net] or David Botton's Ada Power [adapower.com] site.The Register agrees (Score:5, Interesting)
Intel wouldn't ditch Itanium... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the 'big iron' enterprise market against RISC where Itanium is beating everything handily (check out the latest TPC-C list Top 10 [tpc.org] where Itanium holds spots 1,3,4,7,10 (5 out of the Top 10 are Itanium systems running a mix of Linux, HP-UX and Windows on HP and NEC systems), Itanium is gradually out-selling all of the big RISC opponents like Power4. Note that IBM is certainly not spending the money to put up an Opteron cluster for the TPC-C test(no 32-way or 64-way scaled solutions for it on the horizon) even if they got good enough results (which they wouldn't) if they can't beat Itanium 2 right now with the high-margin Power 4. No doubt they'll have a run at Itanium again this year with Power 5.
But there's no way that Opteron OR a 64-bit Xeon plays in the big high thoughput space, so people that assume Intel would get rid of Itanium simply don't know what they're talking about.
As for Itanium not selling, That's funny. Itanium sold over 100,000 cpus last year which is a big number for the enterprise server market (That's more than some other major RISC processors sold in 2003 (like Power 4)). If you don't believe me Google "Itanium" "100,000" and "Otellini" and you'll see lots of links [com.com] to Intel pres Paul Otellini's announcement back in Nov that Intel would ship over 100,000 Itanium processors in 2003.
Re:Intel wouldn't ditch Itanium... (Score:5, Informative)
The other major RISC CPUs sell by the millions. Your whole post is one big pointless troll.
Re:Intel wouldn't ditch Itanium... (Score:5, Informative)
The G5 is a PowerPC. PowerPC is RISC (or was, due to the blurring over the years). Apple is putting G5s into their servers, too.
As far as numbers go, the market reports I see via Google put Sun's annual server sales at 200,000 to 300,000 servers. Multiply by some SMP co-efficient, and it isn't hard to get over 1,000,000. These numbers also do not include workstations, motherboards sold to OEMs, embedded units, and replacement parts. If Itanic is just getting over 100,000, then Intel has some problems, espcially considering just how long that CPU has been around (I first heard about it in college in 1997 or so, I think).
Re:Intel wouldn't ditch Itanium... (Score:4, Informative)
So Power4 is the only processor you'll admit to being a "like" processor? The biggest RISC processors are Sparc and PowerPC. Each out sells Itanium by a huge margin.
Sun sold more total systems, but they weren't all SunFires, and we weren't talking about them.
Intel sold 100,000 processors, Sun sold close to 300,000 systems. See the significance of the difference? The parent of this thread was talking about RISC processors. Power4 was mentioned specifically, but Sparcs are certainly in the the same class.
Re:Intel wouldn't ditch Itanium... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intel wouldn't ditch Itanium... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for Itanium not selling, That's funny. Itanium sold over 100,000 cpus last year which is a big number for the enterprise server market (That's more than some other major RISC processors sold in 2003 (like Power 4)). If you don't believe me Google "Itanium" "100,000" and "Otellini" and you'll see lots of links to Intel pres Paul Otellini's announcement back in Nov that Intel would ship over 100,000 Itanium processors in 2003.
Yes, except that Itanium's biggest competitor in the enterprise server market isn't the Power4, its G5 cousin or any other RISC chip. The Itanium's lunch is being eaten by the Xeon. If you'd Googled on the less specific "itanium sales" your first hit would be IDC Waterfalls its Itanium Sales [xbitlabs.com]. As that article observes, "The [100,000] number may seem relatively huge, unless we do not take into account sales of Intel Xeon processors that amount in millions."
The problem, when push comes to shove, is that for "enterprise" customers, 64-bit CPUs are still a solution in search of a problem. As of right now there aren't any applications I can think of that most businesses use where the Itanium has a pure performance advantage that outweighs the Xeon's much higher price-performance advantage. The High Performance Computing market, which is what you really referred to above, is not the enterprise market, and as flashy as HPC is, it's not where the money is, either -- go into any business using Intel architecture machines and you will see server rooms filled with HP ProLiants and Dell PowerEdges, and all of those will be P4/Xeon boxes.
It doesn't matter whether Mr. Otellini tells people he's happy with "over" 100,000 Itanium processors being shipped or not. Compared to the amount of money Intel sank into the processor, this is peanuts. If they deliver a 64-bit x86 processor and it outsells the Itanium by an order of magnitude in its first year or two, which is not unlikely, it's going to be very hard to justify not end-of-lifing the Itanium line and migrating customers to the new processor.
Re:Intel wouldn't ditch Itanium... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, spot #1 is held by IA-64 with 64 processors, and #2 by Power4 with 32 processors, as are all except #10 on that list (where every power4 is a 32 processor box)
Not to mention TPC-C is something for which vendors tweak heavily, and it is a fairly exclusive and expensive club to get into.
The only TPC comparison between Itanium & Opteron can be found in the 300GB TPC-H with a 2GHz 16-way opteron cluster (13,194) vs a 1GHz Itanium 2 (4,774) SMP box. Unless a 1.5GHz Itanium2 has a significant core change it isn't going to deal with the almost 4x lead, assuming the benchmarks are good, which I have some doubt of.
Re:Intellectual Exercise (Score:2)
And maintains its VLIW architecture that is still poorly supported.
Face it, Itanium has been a disaster from the start, and it will continue being one. Get used to it.
Quote (Score:3, Insightful)
He's right. It's called Linux.
Re:Quote (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Quote (Score:4, Insightful)
That brings up an interesting point. Who is actually buying these things to run Windows on them? The only application I can possibly imagine is if you had a really huge database and for some reason you wanted to run MSSQL Server. This is one of the main reasons people buy Suns or IBM Power machines, after all (except with different databases).
However, the other big market for 64-bit computing (and arguably, the more important one) is technical computing, and there Windows is (mercifully) virtually nonexistent. People wanting to do number-crunching use Unix, almost without exception. I'd imagine that cuts down on the number of Windows machines out there. On the other hand, Itanium isn't really proven in the HPC/scientific arena yet, and so maybe people are just buying it to run big web/database servers and because the name sounds cool.
So, the end question is, what applications (in the broadest sense) is Itanium currently being used for in production systems, and under what OSes? My expectation would be that the proportion running Linux is very high compared to Xeon systems, but I've observed that many of the type of people who say "Ooooh, Intel has a new 64-bit chip! Let's buy it!" are the same people who say "Microsoft is the industry standard! Let's convert everything to run on Windows!" Like, say, a former boss of mine.
Re:Quote (Score:4, Insightful)
64 bit computing is invaluable anywhere you need oodles of RAM. That would include 3D modelling, film editing, music production and the like. Those are all desktop apps, and all of them have a significant Windows presense in their respective marketplaces. Being able to stick 16 GB of cheap RAM in a commodity Windows box and do video editing will be a lot nicer than editing the same footage in a machine with 2 - 4 GB.
Re:Quote (Score:3, Informative)
Intel was also a major early investor in Red Hat...
In my opinion... i (Score:5, Insightful)
They should code name it Iberg (Score:5, Funny)
Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk
Re:They should code name it Iberg (Score:4, Insightful)
Intels P4 was poised to gain the frequency crown, and it made the Itanium look even worse (though it was not true performancewise), and you could buy Xeon III with 933MHz cores, good enough for most business servers with their large caches, with sophisticated chipsets for SMP, and with OS support for clustering. So Itanium suddenly was only a processor for numeric applications, because Intel had to fight AMD in the bread-and-butter PC business.
The Itanium II is still an impressive processor with its number crunching abilities and its integer performance. But it's cheaper for most people just to throw more P4 Xeons at the same problem, because the underlying technology has been implemented in millions of systems. Tightly packed blade servers are mostly based on P4 architectures, and increased redundancy by having more processors and systems clustered can't be easily beaten by less processor cores for more processing power.
The processor race between Intel and AMD has cannibalized the possible markets for the Itanium, and the number of fields, where Itanium make sense from a price/performance ratio are getting smaller.
With the upcoming of AMD's x86-64 even the More Address Space argument is looking weak, because you can get the same with AMD's architecture, which seems to have the smoother migration path due to its outstanding x86-32 performance. Again less business cases for Itanium.
So were are the application Itanium fits best in, if the alternative is to take a blade server with twice the numbers of P4 processors running at top speed? Or get an SMP Opteron system, which is cheaper, more widely available and seems to have the better OS support?
They know how to keep a secret... (Score:4, Interesting)
As for one operating system, who? They in cahoots with Microsoft, after Microsoft dragged it's feet on AMD? Sounds like collusion, anti-competitiveness, and all that.
Re:They know how to keep a secret... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what I think happened: Intel thought their server reputation would trump AMD's 64-bit offering. They thought their Itanium would be the only reputable and reliable 64-bit platform for x86. They were wrong: they started having problems and delays, while AMD was well ahead with backward compatible Opterons. Intel was not going to have major market share with Itaniums. However, while AMD most likely bet their entire existence on x86-64, Intel took into account the worst-case scenario with Itaniums and developed 64-bit Pentiums on the side.
After the Itanium failure, they came to a realization that MS was not willing to develop and support 2 different instruction sets. Praise as you may how advanced MS' NT kernel is, and how portable it is - it just doesn't make business sense, even for Microsoft, to support it on more than one platform (remember Alpha?). Also, as I remember, Linus also expressed his preference was AMD's solution and hoped Itanium would lose out. Intel is not so powerful after all. So, now they are forced to execute their plan B, and introduce their 64-bit Xeons.
Also, the statement "one operating system" was made by MS spokesperson, not Intel, as suggested by the
Intel's approach is compatible with AMD's, the Microsoft representative said. "There will be one operating system that will support all (64 bit) extended systems," the representative said.
Re:They know how to keep a secret... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They know how to keep a secret... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They know how to keep a secret... (Score:4, Interesting)
It turns out M$ weasled their way by being in bed with intel and AMD at the same time.
They launch win64bit development like they promised AMD and hector ruiz but!, Then they go to intel and tell them they're going ahead and subsequently agree to delay it or drag their feet. I wonder what they got from intel in return? Palladium hardware commitments? I think they got those from AMD on the original deal.
Either way M$ made deals with intel and AMD which nullified each other while at the same time getting *very* big favours in return from them both.
This is just my theory, but I would lay money that it's true and someone's face is turning pale or blushing as they read this.
Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3, Interesting)
NetBSD had full support for the Hammer architecture before IT WAS EVEN BURNED ON SILICON. It is also a true 64-bit operating system unlike Debian/SPARC64 which utilizes a 64-bit kernel w/ 32-bit userland.
NetBSD is definately 64-bit clean for the most part.
And no, BSD is *NOT* dying.
Where have I heard this before? (64-bit computing) (Score:2)
And for that had the alpha processor to die (Score:5, Insightful)
Felix
Re:And for that had the alpha processor to die (Score:4, Insightful)
-----------
Um, that's the story of computer history. The best technology is always killed by the best marketed or most compatible technology.
Nice to see Intel on the defense (Score:3, Insightful)
desktop chip and server chips? don't mix those up! (Score:2, Insightful)
Right, so introducing a 32bit/64bit "server chip" is absolutely NOTHING like introducing a "desktop chip". They still clearly are pretending that they are not competing with AMD's strategy. Who are they kidding?
Re:desktop chip and server chips? don't mix those (Score:2, Funny)
Dell, apparently. Since Dell has continued to be exclusive Intel, in the face of the onslaught of AMD64 PCs, you can pretty much imagine a call from Dell to Intel going something like this:
Dell: "Those 64 bit processors are very interesting, we get calls asking abou them."
Intel: "The Itaniums?
Sandal Platform (Score:2)
More brainless ad campaigns... (Score:5, Interesting)
In the mean time my 1998 vintage Mesh/Alpha desktop system (no, it's not a server, it was sold via consumer magazines in the UK) is still running happily with 64 bit Linux... and that was hardly the first either, an honour that probably belongs to someone like Sun.
Re:More brainless ad campaigns... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, there were Alpha desktops long before that, and the Alpha chip was certainly around before Sun had any 64-bit machines. As were the 64-bit MIPS chips, which ran in desktop machines.
At any rate, it depends what you mean by "desktop", although your system sounds like it'd qualify. SGI machines make fantastic desktops (IRIX is very well-designed) and they're mostly 64-bit, but they also cost upwards of $10,000 (much upwards, quite often) when they came out. So they aren't consumer grade by any standard.
I think Apple's campaign has some truth to it in the sense that theirs is the first 64-bit desktop that normal people will actually buy and use. And it's definitely the first that's explicitly designed to do normal desktop computing stuff, as opposed to high-end graphics or engineering apps.
Re:More brainless ad campaigns... (Score:4, Informative)
I think intel has only a small storm to weather (Score:3, Informative)
Cheers for AMD and their success wit x86-64.
Completion is best for everyone in this game.
Severe backtrack (Score:5, Insightful)
What this really signals is that Opteron, and AMD64 are really quite impressive indeed. It's billions that Intel will be dropping so they can compete with it, and you don't make that sort of move unless you're really very very worried.
As to whether they will be compatible with AMDs extensions: I suspect Intel won't be ale to bring themselves to that. The "One operating system will support all 64bit extensions" sounds more like a deal has been cut with Microsoft to make the 64bit version of windows work with Intel's 64bit extensions as well of those AMD. In practice I suspect that means Intel will be very close to AMDs extensions, with a few quirks, and the intention of trying to grab the market and drag things away with their own extra extensions with newer chips.
Could this be behind the slowness of 64bit windows for Opterons?
Jedidiah.
Re:Severe backtrack (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel does not have a new 64-bit chip (Score:5, Funny)
Intel may also push new memory standard (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how this figures into their processor/chipset roadmap...
Windows 64-bit preview available (Score:5, Informative)
Intel's new 64-bit CPU's (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Intel's new 64-bit CPU's (Score:5, Insightful)
As for this whole thing, I'm not suprised and this is a MAJOR boon for AMD, because now people have no reason not to port their software to x86-64. The companies get customers now (Athlon64 and Opteron) and more later when Intel releases their chip. The other big win for AMD is that their chips is out NOW. So when the software starts to come, people who want/need that 64bits will get Opterons and they can gain some real market share before Intel's processor comes out (especially the desktop one since Intel is releasing the server chip first). As long as AMD is willing to cut back on their prices a little now to trade for future gains, this could be a MAJOR opportunity for them.
As for us consumers, this is a win. Intel trying to push Itanic (or even worse a THIRD arch) down our throats would be terrible. Now we have one clear "winner" in the 64 bit wars (don't reply with stuff like the G5, I'm talking the Intel/AMD/Transmetta/etc. side).
And where is Transmetta's announcment? They should make one two! I bet they could get a good chip out the door before Chipzilla gets a good mobile x86-64 chip out there. This would be a great chance for them too, they could grab a good chunk of the laptop market becuase it would only be them and AMD, and AMD isn't marketing towards low power ultra-lite laptops.
Is this a surprise to anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone that didn't think Intel had 64-bit Workstation and Desktop chips "in the pipeline", as it were, must be sitting in a cave humming with their fingers in their ears.
The production pipeline on these sorts of products. take years, so this was not a knee jerk reaction. If you look very carefully at what Intel has actually officially said the whole time, you'll see that they simply said they would provide a solution when the appropriate OS support and perceived need becomes available, and that is EXACTLY what has happened here. What do you know, Steve Balmer announces Windows XP 64 now has support for these "Xeon" extensions. These things don't happen over night.
It is still a fact that most people DO NOT need 64-bit computing in any way shape or form, but one mistake that Intel did make is the fickleness of the vocal minority and AMD fanbois.
Also, if you think that the existing Prescotts don't already have these extensions (just disabled at the moment), you are also kidding yourself.
Re:Is this a surprise to anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your derisive tone clearly does quite a disservice to your employer (whether it's Intel, Microsoft or related) - makes you guys look like a bunch of whiny shits. Athlon64 and the other 64 bit Athlon processors are doing well because they perform well with both legacy apps and OSes as well as 64-bit apps and OSes. They are good products, and yes, the 64 bit "higher numbers are better" marketing factor is part of it. Assuming you work for Intel (or are an Intel "fanboi" of some sort to use your own gay little derogatory term), you should be very familiar with making higher-is-better a key part of your marketing strategy, since Intel has been doing it with MHz for years now, pipelining until the cows come home to crank the MHz rating higher and higher to generate sales of new processors, whether or not their "goodness" is actually directly related to the operating frequency of the processor or not.
Should have seen it coming.... (Score:2)
Opteron -- compatible, inexpensive (relative to Itanium), also great speed, initial sales are good
Result: Intel releases server-class 64-bit x86 CPU.
Bottom line: Itanium is dead.
Inquirer.net (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially there will be a single OS for the two (Intel and AMD). Unspoken is that Intel's implementation is AMD64 ISA, but a different technical architecture. If it's compatible, who cares. Secondary confirmation via Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]
And lest we forget... (Score:4, Informative)
More info (Score:5, Informative)
News.com article [com.com]
Intel's 64 bit extensions are compatible with AMD's. You will be able to run the same 64 bit OSes on them. Intel's 64-bit capable Xeons are Noconas, which are Prescotts in a Xeon package.
I work for Intel, but I do not speak for Intel. My opinions are not necessarily the opinions of Intel Corporation.
Nintendo 64 (Score:3, Funny)
64 bit systems for whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes I know 4G of RAM is getting increasingly common, but is it really needed? just because Windows is as thick as a whale omelette doesn't mean you need that much to achieve the same result.
Honestly, I could understand the need to have more than 8 and 16 bit processors, to make multiprecision calculations less necessary for common things and to avoid segmentation kludges, but for the majority of people (i.e. people running Word and Excel, and playing Minesweeper a little), I don't see the interest at all. Better have good fast cheap 32-bit systems than expensive, underused 64-bit ones. Unless of course future versions of the Windows require that much power, which doesn't even seem likely for the short term.
Re:64 bit systems for whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
KFG
Researchers in University. (Score:5, Informative)
The Register (Score:4, Informative)
Intel won't say if it has licensed AMD's x86-64 extensions. But Barrett seemed to hint that Intel's technology will be somewhat less than completely compatible with AMD's instruction set.
"For the most part, (software) will run on both systems," he said. "Intel has some (things) unique to Intel, which we will make sure people write, port and tune to."
--
Sigs are for geeks
Re:The Register (Score:3, Insightful)
Missing step (Score:5, Informative)
Intel's shortcommings in the IA32 to IA64 switch were the following:
In the meantime, AMD took the evolutionary path and provided the 64-bit capability from desktops, to middle tier servers and higher end machines. They implemented an architecture that directly executes the IA32 but that was extended to the much needed now 64-bits. The performance / price ratio are much better than that of Itanium's and compilers were much easier to come about since the x86 ISA is a well known one.
There is no surprise that AMD made the right strategic move to provide the needed missing link in the evolution of the popular (but crappy) x86 ISA to the 64-bit arena. There is no surprise either that heavy weights such as IBM, Dell, SUN and even HP -- who pretty much designed Itanium -- put some of their eggs in their AMD busket.
And there is no surprise that Intel realized after the fact that it should had provided the missing step and it is now playing catch up.
Isn't unbridled competion good? The pervasiveness of Intel forced the AMD and the RISC designers to do their best to improve their own designs which now in turn are forcing Intel to improve its own?
The same story with UNIX/Linux and MS windows.
People need decent alternatives to chose from. Forced monolithic single-vendor solutions are bad for everyone.
Re:Missing step (Score:4, Informative)
But you can excuse DEC for the mistake - they had migrated their customers to a radically different architecture before. When DEC killed the PDP-10 line, they put in a lot of effort to move their existing customer base for that machine to the VAX. And it worked. People may have bitched, but they moved because there was no real alternative then (the only other 36-bit line at the time was Univac, and they were getting ready to throw in the towel). So the DEC customer choice was either another DEC machine or an IBM mainframe of some sort. And guess which one their customers chose? Sure they bitched about it, but it wasn't as if they had any real choice in staying with some sort of comaptible system. And most of their software that wasn't written in MACRO-10 or Bliss was tied to DEC Fortran or COBOL.
It's clear that when DEC did the switch to the Alpha, they expected something similar to happen. The few things they didn't notice? First, there were other 32- and 64-bit platforms to migrate to. A lot of the customers took the opportunity to look at SPARC or MIPS or (GASP!) Intel 32-bit offerrings as well as the 64-bit goodness soon to come out from the other two. Second, most customer's software was not as tied as heavily to their platform. In the interrim, code had migrated to C, FORTRANs and COBOLs had become much more standardized, and very few folks wrote in MACRO-32. Toss in the fact that it's a lot easier to port a program from one 32-bit platform to another 32-bit platform and it's no wonder that DEC's customer base ran away screaming. And that was the end of DEC.
Now Intel, OTOH, has gone through this with at least two other architectures - the IA-432 and the 9900(??) - you'd have thought they's learned their lesson by now. Oh well, third time's a charm - maybe thry'll introduce the 128-bit extensions next year to retake the lead!
Itanium Haiku (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Itanium Haiku (Score:5, Funny)
With HTML, I know
Next time use preview
Re:Itanium Haiku (Score:2)
Necessary. Sufficient?
Oops! Missed a close tag
AMD Low Power (Score:5, Informative)
More information: AMD [xbitlabs.com], Intel [xbitlabs.com] at xbit
Discussion: AMD [aceshardware.com], Intel [aceshardware.com] at Ace's
I'm not surprised at all. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always thought it unlikely that Intel would be caught off guard by AMD's Opteron. I think Intel could have announced this earlier, but wanted AMD to become overconfident with its Opteron and spend oodles of cash etc. on developing public awareness of 64-bit computing, explaining what it is, convincing people that it's worth the upgrade, etc. Then, after AMD (who is already cash-strapped) puts all its eggs into the 64-bit basket, Intel finally comes out and says "Thank you for raising public awareness about 64-bit computing for the desktop for the past year, AMD. Now that you have no more money, we will now announce our 64-bit chip and compete with yours." Here's a list-form of Intel's strategy:
1. AMD comes out with Opteron.
2. Intel waits.
3. AMD spends all its money and resources on promoting 64-bit computing, thinking this will make Intel look obsolete and make themselves the chip-maker of the future.
4. Intel waits.
5. Intel releases own 64-bit computing and takes over the market that AMD spent all its money developing.
6. (AMD pulls out empty pockets and holds them like wings and wonders what happened:) ?????
7. Profit for Intel!
8. I cry.
Re:I'm not surprised at all. (Score:3, Informative)
While I think the Opteron is a great choice, and kudos to your company for getting the best of what they can right now, many companies are also e
64 bits is old History (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. 64-bit computing is ten years old with the Alpha, including PCs running GNU/Linux. Not to mention the later UltraSPARC, PA-RISC 2 and MIPS workstations.
And today we already have the PowerPC G5.
This all proves Wintel is the biggest drag in Informatics.
The G5 is NOT a 64-bit "machine" (Score:3, Informative)
If your definition of 64-bit is a 32-bit operating system around a 64-bit chip, then the G5 is a 64-bit platform. Mac OS X 10.2.7 (and the upcoming 10.3) is not a 64-bit operating system [osnews.com]. This is particularly frustrating because Apple's marketing machine has very carefully crafted their message [apple.com] to make a reasonable person believe the operating system is 64-bit, especially if you download and read Power Mac G5 Tech Overview [akamai.net] (PDF). Apple says about the G5 version of
64 bit screw up (Score:2)
with pointer math since most software assumes that an integer is large enough to do pointer math.
Their are always good sounding arguments in favor of every bad decision; it there weren't, sane but ignorant people wouldn't make bad decisions.
If Intel sets the default integer size on their X86-64 to 64 bits they stand a chance of winning the marketing fight with AMD, even though they are late to the
Re:64 bit screw up (Score:3, Informative)
Second, int is 32 bits on most 64-bit platforms (PPC64, SPARC64, etc.).
Third, long is the same size as void* on virtually all modern platforms, so that's the assumption people should be making.
I love the remark (Score:2)
Yup, can't wait for a good SG...oh...
well...maybe soon Apple will...oh...right...
well SURELY AMD will come out with...oh...you don't say?
Why is it that just because 'Intel' hasn't come out with a widely accepted product, many people act as if it doesn't exist???
Wrong quote, Wrong info by implication... (Score:2)
Barrett is quoted saying, 'There will be one operating system that will support all (64-bit) extended systems.'
WRONG. Barrett did not say this, a Microsoftie did. (Makes sense since Intel doesn't make OSes)
The article says:
Intel's approach is compatible with AMD's, the Microsoft representative said. "There will be one operating system that will support all (64-bit) extended systems," the representative said.
Note that this refers to "(64-bit) extended systems" -the pure, native (non-ext
Link to Intel 64 Bit Extensions (Score:5, Informative)
From the Intel FAQ Site:
Q9: Is it possible to write software that will run on Intel's
processors with 64-bit extension technology, and AMD's 64-bit capable
processors?
A9: With both companies designing entirely different architectures, the
question is whether the operating system and software ported to each
processor will run on the other processor, and the answer is yes in
most cases. However, Intel processors support additional features, like
the SSE3 instructions and Hyper-Threading Technology, which are not
supported on non-Intel platforms. As such, we believe developers will
achieve maximum performance and stability by designing specifically for
Intel architectures and by taking advantage of Intel's breadth of
software tools and enabling services.
See the doc: IA32-e is in fact x86-64 (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry Intel. There is no AMD words in your doc, but now all the worlds known that your IA32-e is no more than the AMD X86-64. For me you just act like a child!
Intel IA32-e documentation:
http://developer.intel.com/techno
http://developer.intel.com/tech
AMD x86-64 documentation:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/c
http://www.amd.c
http://www.amd.c
http://www.amd.c
http://www.amd.c
How long Intel while wait before it make the same kind "new extention" compatible with HyperTransport ?
Some more info... (Score:3, Interesting)
On another note, these new Xeons are based on the Prescott core, so it is now extremely likely that the existing Prescott cores all have the capability, just not turned on, like what Intel did with hyperthreading on the Northwoods. It's been clear from the start that Prescott is hiding some functions up its sleeve, as there are at least 10 million transistors that can't be accounted for with the increased cache and other added functionality, even when being very generous with the estimations.
Re: Intel complaining (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Intel complaining (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why 64 bit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why 64 bit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why 64 bit? (Score:2)
Wake up bro. Smell the coffee. 64-bit processors are the future. And, one day, they'll be standard on new PCs and 128-bit processors will be the future. It's called progress.
Perhaps you preferred it when computing was all punch cards but some of us quite like these new-fangled PCs that are all-singing and all-dancing and that have visual displays
Re:Why 64 bit? (Score:5, Informative)
2^64 is 18446744073709551616. This is BIG. 17179869184 gigabytes. 16777216 terabytes of addressable memory. 16384 petabytes. This is basically the maximum amount of physical memory and the maximum size of one individual process's virtual memory mapping on a 64 bit architecture (yes, I know many current 64 bit implementations, including AMD64 are limited to 2^48 in practice; but the architectures can fundamentally handle both 2^64 physical and virtual addressing).
This is enough addressing that you can have 2.5GB of memory in a process for each man, woman, and child on the face of the planet.
And as to doing integer math larger than 2^64-- why? 2^32 is already overkill for most things.
Nope, I don't see "128-bit computing" becoming mainstream anytime soon. And it's far from clear 64 bit on the desktop is all that close, given the fact that A) the added code size contributes cache misses and saps performance, and B) there is not much done on the desktop now that requires more than 2^32 bytes of memory in a process, and C) not much stuff does math on quantities greater than 2^32 (4294967296). Keep in mind bank switching allows you to have more RAM than 4GB on all recent ia32 processors (2^36/2^40).
If we change architectures, it will be less about addressing limitations and more about the piss-poor quantity of registers available on ia32. More registers means more obtainable instruction-level parallelism.. this equals more work done on modern architectures.
128-bit computing? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the designers of IBM's venerable AS/400 might disagree with you. Its architecture has been enabled for 128-bit computing since the early 1970's [channelweb.com].
Re:Why 64 bit? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure plenty of people said the same thing about 32-bit (and even 8 and 16 bit) at some point in the past.
Aside from just the addressable memory is the ability to do larger math calculations in the larger registers. I've done some side by side comparisons of 32 and 64 bit compiled openssl on opterons and the 64bit version has a huge speed increase, very likely due to the additional size of the registers, and the additional regi
Re:Why 64 bit? (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe you should check out some benchmarks on something newer than a 486, because most current CPUs can actually do floating point calculations faster than integer ones.
The Future... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just a guess but I wouldn't be suprised in "Longhorn" will be native 64 bit. Maybe Microsoft is waiting for the hardware to catchup so their inefficient code can take advantage of more memory. (I know, it's a cheap shot at Microsoft)
Re:The Future... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it really matter anymore what Microsoft is doing?
Where I live, opterons are selling like hotcakes and something [redhat.com] must [debian.org] be going onto them.
Re:The Future... (Score:4, Informative)
This how it typically works in UNIX-land: 64-bit kernel with 32-bit and 64-bit applications. Solaris has been like this for three generations, IIRC. For general day-to-day use, it is typically 99.9% 32-bit applications and the occasional life-saving 64-bit app for that immense data file or whatever that comes up.
Re:what is benefit of 64 bits over 32 bits? (Score:2)
Have more complex/complete single-cycle instructions.
Create better instruction scheduling pipes (aka, on the fly reordering of instruction for optimisation in the many sub cores of a single processor, like instruction units, integer units and floating point units)
But this really depends on the processor itself. You'll find a lot of differences between a PowerPC 970 (aka, G5) and an AMD 64. So much that you can make any benchmark say pretty much anything
Re:I can't wait... (Score:2)
80386 preceeded win95 by a couple of years (Score:2)
Re:64-bit misinformation rampant in the press (Score:3, Informative)
How the hell did the parent get modded up?
Re:Will not sink the Itanic (Score:3, Informative)
Theyre shipping, theyre just real expensive
I'm still bitter about the Athlon MP - which was supposed to allow for 4-way Athlons.
IANA chipset designer, but AFAIK, that's a physical impossibility, there's only one CPU select pin on the socket A, which'd allow for merely 2 cpus.
Re:Where was itanic going? (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? Looked at some benchmarks lately? (And not the ones produced by Apple that compare really obscure synthetic benchmarks of Opterons underclocked and running with half the same RAM as a PPC)?
SPARCs and Alphas are cheaper than Opterons by several orders of magnitude? Are they still making Alphas? If they are, and they're cheaper, and "more powerful", I can't see why there aren't a whole bunch of Linux gamers using them.
Who modded this guy insightful?