AMD Opteron Due In April 303
updog writes "Here's an article from Infoworld claiming that the new 64-bit AMD Opteron is ready to launch on April 22. Some of the notable features of the new chip are an address space capable of addressing up to 1 Terabyte of memory, the ability to link up to 8 processors without any external chips, and backwards compatibility with existing 32-bit applications ..." PapaFSmurf, meanwhile, links to a disclaimer-heavy article posted at amdboard.com which says that 64-bit Athlons may arrive in June rather than September as previously expected.
Whoa (Score:3, Funny)
TWICE as fast, at least!
Re:Whoa (Score:5, Funny)
Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Once the Athlon64 is available and people are building systems using it, AMD just stole back the "King of PC processors" title and in a BIG way.
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
AMD's future existence depends very much on the performance of the Opteron and Clawhammer with 32-bit applications, in a 32-bit environment. The best case scenario for AMD would be if M$'s next major OS release were 64-bit only. Unfortunately, this seems highly unlikely, but AMD can dream, can't they?
"Yes, sir, that new system with the latest Windows will be $12,000 if you go with Intel and the Itanium, or $699 if you go with AMD and the Athlon64. Yes, sir, it is pretty funny; I agree."
Re:Main Competitor = Itanium; Not Xeon (Score:2, Informative)
Geez.
Re:Main Competitor = Itanium; Not Xeon (Score:3, Informative)
Opteron 1xx series - Single processor workstations/servers
Opteron 2xx series - Dual processor workstations/server
Opteron 8xx series - Up to 8-way SMP servers
The first two are pretty directly targeting the market that the Xeons currently sell into, but the last one starts to touch on the Itanium's market. The Xeon tends not to scale well beyond 2 processors, and in fact, most Xeons won't work at all in anything more than 2-way systems (only the Xe
Re:Main Competitor = Itanium; Not Xeon (Score:4, Interesting)
Intel's point is that they don't believe anything other than high-end servers will use 64-bit chips effectively. AMD's point is that anyone can use whatever they like. A dual Opteron with 2MB L2 will most likely be targetted against dual Xeon machines. AMD will try to offer a better price point and the ability to run 64-bit applications to potential customers in their attempt to win partners. The launch of the Opteron had best go off MUCH better than the launch of the AthlonMP if AMD hopes to make it in the server business. Already weary of new products, big businesses will be looking for any excuse not to go with an Opteron. Even Intel has trouble convincing long-time customers to invest in new products, as evidenced by their dismal Itanium 1 launch. If the chipset and board problems we saw in the Tyan AthlonMPs creep up in any of the Opteron boards, AMD's cash cow will be seen in the business community as little more than the 'roo meat at McD's. That, potentially, could end up being the nail in AMD's coffin.
They have a lot riding on this launch, so let's all hope it goes off without a hitch. If it does, I think Xeon processors will be collecting dust within a year's time while Opterons slowly replace what's currently in the workplace. In very, very few circumstances will a company look at Opterons as an alternative for Itaniums. In terms of performance? Who knows; we haven't see benchmarks on production Opterons yet. If it's everything we're told it is, it may very well outperform the Itanium 2s vis-a-vis.
Re:Main Competitor = Itanium; Not Xeon (Score:3, Insightful)
These servers handle most of the workload, while a small few "high end x86" servers can handle database things. Sometimes, the database sits on non-x86 platforms.
The AthlonMP is a higher-performance alternative to the dual-Pentium 3 server/workstation, and c
Re:Not surprising (Score:2)
Maybe--- maybe not. Yes, there will be a pe
This is huge (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is huge (Score:2)
But there already are affordable 64-bit servers for the masses, cheap SPARCs, PPCs and so on. What does anyone need a 64-bit computer for? If you need to address large amounts of memory, or require compatibility with apps that are written to do so. The speed advantages of 64-bit per se simply aren't that great. People who need 64-bit can already get it, the apps are
Re:This is huge (Score:3, Insightful)
To add to the list of this siblings' posts, most newer video games from the top manufacturers are also going to need 64 bit. Unreal will soon require 64 bit for their mod development tools, I'm sure id software is also going to have no problem improving performance on 64 bit platforms.
Did anybody really need 32 bit CPU's when intel went from 286 -> 386? Maybe not, maybe so. But that is what happened, and
Just in case (Score:5, Informative)
AMD's 64-bit alternative
By Tom Yager March 14, 2003
After years of hype, the AMD Opteron 64-bit processor will debut in April. The company and its shareholders might curse the rotten timing, but the current contracted market is actually the perfect setting for AMD's new technology. While other chipmakers scramble to adapt, AMD seems to have designed current business challenges and priorities into its architecture. Considering how long Opteron has been in engineering, AMD is either very smart or very lucky. Opteron may be an opportune solution for customers looking to consolidate their servers and reduce operating costs.
The advantages of AMD's new design are many. The most talked-about feature is the CPU's support for 64-bit applications. Unlike previous 64-bit processors, Opteron implements the full x86-32 instruction set. Software that runs on a Pentium III or AMD Athlon now will run unmodified on Opteron. Opteron-based servers will likely spend the majority of their time running the 32-bit Windows and Linux programs that businesses use today.
Software written to exploit Opteron's 64-bit capabilities will break through the barriers that prevent the x86 from running extremely demanding server and technical applications. A vastly expanded address space (up to 1TB of physical memory), a larger set of high-speed registers, and new instructions will take affordable servers to a higher level of performance. Running in 64-bit mode, an Opteron application can crunch through mountains of in-memory data and perform blazingly fast data transfers to network and storage devices.
Unlike other x86 processors, the Opteron CPU has the inherent ability to link up to eight processors without specialized chips. Every processor has three HyperTransport bus controllers for fast connections to other CPUs and devices. Instead of using an external memory controller, which complicates system design and adds latency, AMD links memory directly to each CPU. The design has plenty of headroom to accommodate faster memory and I/O devices. The only speed limit is the 19.2GB per second capacity of each chip's combined HyperTransport channels, which exceeds the top speed of the most capable PC server bus.
In systems that require more than eight processors, Opteron will rely on external chipsets to provide communications between CPUs. The fact that HyperTransport is already on the chip simplifies the engineering. Systems running two- and four-CPU configurations -- which account for most x86 server sales -- will ship in 2003. How soon larger systems appear depends entirely on market demand.
Answering critics
The chief criticisms leveled against the platform by Intel and critical analysts -- mainly that Opteron is immature technology and that Microsoft is dragging its feet porting Windows to it -- will prove groundless. The well-respected and thoroughly debugged Athlon x86 processor is the foundation of the Opteron chip. The remarkable HyperTransport bus that AMD uses to tie Opteron chips to each other and to I/O devices is already in widespread use. The DDR (double data rate) memory that AMD has chosen for its first implementation is inexpensive and readily available. AMD's chipset implements standard PCI-X and AGP ( Accelerated Graphics Port ) peripheral buses. System manufacturers and customers will have relatively few adjustments to make.
The Windows question is slightly trickier, but it isn't an issue Intel should press too hard. Yes, the sole 64-bit version of Windows runs on Itanium and Itanium 2. However, Microsoft has repeatedly stated that it strongly prefers AMD's 64-bit architecture to Intel's. Opteron is not stuck in the same spot as Intel at the launch of Itanium. Intel had to wait for Microsoft to announce its Itanium-specific port of Windows . Opteron already runs 32-bit Windows at full speed, while other 64-bit CPUs must use emulation to run most Windows software. Microsoft's engineering task, which it needn't hurry to accomplish, is to
AMD's naming scheme... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AMD's naming scheme... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AMD's naming scheme... (Score:2)
Glad to hear i'm not the only one who thought that.
Re:AMD's naming scheme... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:AMD's naming scheme... (Score:2, Funny)
(after considering other names like Dodecahedron, Rhododendron, CowboyNeal-drone, etc.)
Re:AMD's naming scheme... (Score:5, Insightful)
The prefixes are just common sense, conveying to the potential buyer what the company would like you to believe about their product. Athlons are Athletic. Durons are Durable. Opterons are Optimized for Optimum performance, suggesting that it's the best of the best. The Latin optimus, from which the prefix is ultimately derived, simply means "best".
Course, they had to throw an "er" into that last one, 'cause otherwise it would have sounded like some sort of legion of boxy doom robots in a low budget SF invasion flick: Oh my God, the Optons are coming! Run . . . RUN!
But even then that extra joining syllable was carefully chosen. They could have picked an i, making the product Option. That would pick up on the Opti- prefix of optimum and optimize, but it would also make the word an English word that merely means "one possible choice", clearly not the best message to send to a potential buyer looking for the best.
-er- works much better. Not only does it call to mind the English comparative adjectival ending ("It's not only opt, it's opter!), it also rhymes with the middle syllable of their highly successful Duron line, suggesting by extension that these new chips will carry on that tradition of excellent value for the money.
Over-analysis, you say? That which we call a CPU would perform its function by any other name? Certainly the silicon would work the same; but the perception of the chip would be different, perhaps worse for AMD, and for that reason the name matters. Names are words, and words are how we define reality. You might ask me "What's a figgin?" And I would say "A figgin is a type of pasty, with chicken inside and raisins on top." Prior to that you probably had no notion what a figgin was, and I have now created in your mind the idea that it's a chicken pasty with raisins on top, and I may also have conveyed the idea to you that it is tasty and filling. And I have done it using words. This is exactly what the AMD marketing people are trying to do: they are using words to create a reality in which people believe that AMD's products are superior (Ha! there's the next one: the Superion), and buy from AMD rather than its competitors as a result.
Typical attention spans are short, moreso now than before we got so saturated with advertising, so they have to pack as much meaning into as few words as possible. Figgin is a rotten product name. It has no linguistic history; it could just as easily be a bodily organ, often removed in unpleasant ways by sadistic tyrants. Athlon, Duron, Opteron are much better: they are made from phonemes that have positive connotations to English speakers, and in several other languages as well, notably the Romance tongues.
Sensible buyers will not make purchasing decisions based solely on this, of course, but the initial impression remains and is reinforced every time you see, hear, or think the name. That counts . . . it may not be logical, but humans are not always logical. (Seldom, in fact.)
Basically, I think AMD's marketing team has done an outstanding job picking these names. Even you, oh parent poster, must have picked up on the positive connotations, even if you then realized how silly the whole thing is and mocked them for it. AMD's going to need every advantage they can get to win serious market share from Intel, but if their naming team is anything to judge by, then they've made a good start.
Only 1 TB? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Only 1 TB? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Only 1 TB? (Score:2)
Re:Only 1 TB? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, future opterons will be able to address a larger amount of memory without modifying the instruction set, and let's face it, by the time 1 TB of memory is affordable/useful, that original opteron is going to be long surpased.
Re:Only 1 TB? (Score:2)
Re:Only 1 TB? (Score:2)
Re:Only 1 TB? (Score:2)
Re:Only 1 TB? (Score:2)
Re:Only 1 TB? (Score:5, Funny)
does that make you a "peta-phile"?
Yuk yuk yuk.
Re:Only 1 TB? (Score:4, Informative)
The physical addresses are 52 bits, but only 40 bits are implemented. This means that the page tables can only assign pages to 40-bit physical addresses. Future x86-64 revs can implement up to 52 if desired. Why 52? The upper bits in the page tables that would be used for larger addresses are instead marked "available for software use". Advantage: only 40 wires are needed to pass around physical addresses, the caches only have to store 40-bit physical tags.
So in theory, one task could use 2^48 bytes of memory, but only 2^40 bytes would be in memory at any one time, the rest would be swapped out. The virtual-memory-manager (not the task iteself) would be responsible for keeping track of which pages are currently in memory.
Where are they getting this information? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, here it is. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Where are they getting this information? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Where are they getting this information? (Score:2)
Oh wonderful...I just upgraded (Score:5, Funny)
I never will win.
On a more positive note, any body know of motherboards for these monsters yet?
Re:Oh wonderful...I just upgraded (Score:2)
Um, I hate to break this to you, but you should have read the . You weren't cutting edge for even a day. Close, but no cigar. [slashdot.org]
I never will win.
Yea, that pretty well sums it up if you want state of the art.
Re:Oh wonderful...I just upgraded (Score:2)
By the way, besides your HTML skills being a bit under par, you forgot to mention to him that yesterday was the 14th. [slashdot.org]
;-)
Re:Oh wonderful...I just upgraded (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a lot of AMD users are misguided if they think 64bit chips are going to be what most users would call "afforardable" in the next year. Corporations might get ahold of these but only the most hardcore of hardcore will spend what's necessary to go 64bit x86 for a
Re:Oh wonderful...I just upgraded (Score:2, Funny)
I'm an AMD user
I don't believe I'm misguided
I know many computer users
I don't know one person who has referred to the chip professionally, casually, verbally, or in any other form, as "afforardable".
Where are you getting your informatinion?
sorry, couldn't resist
Re:Oh wonderful...I just upgraded (Score:3)
Re:Oh wonderful...I just upgraded (Score:4, Insightful)
I generally hold off upgrading until I see at least 4x performance improvement, barring special needs. My recent upgrade from a 450 Mhz PII >> 1800 Athlon is no exception. I probably won't upgrade again until at least 4 Ghz unless there is a real need for it.
Also, I never buy the "top end". If you look at prices, you'll find that prices start kinda cheap, rise slowly for a while, and then suddenly climb, as you go from low to high end.
The last item before that spike is the one I buy.
Notice: hard drives. (pricewatch.com =)
$49 = 20 GB
$58 = 30 GB
$59 = 40 GB (who'd get a 30?)
$67 = 60 GB
$77 = 80 GB
$100 = 100 GB (small spike = 80'd be ok)
$106 = 120 GB (don't bother with the 100)
$151 = 160 (Big spike. Go with an 80 or a 120)
Or, perhaps, AMD CPUs?
$50 1500 Mhz
$49 1600 Mhz
$50 1700 Mhz
$58 1800 Mhz
$63 1900 Mhz
$71 2000 Mhz
$83 2100 Mhz
$95 2200 Mhz
$122 2400 Mhz
$170 2500 Mhz (Big spike, get a 2200 or 2400)
This is true in almost every part of the computer industry. At this point, a 2400 Mhz AMD is considered "commodity" while the 2500 is not. Same with 160 GB HDs vs. 120s.
With this, I'm almost happy with my equipment, and still have money to spend on my 5 (yes, FIVE) children.
-Ben
Re:Why get a VIA 400? (Score:2)
But I would go for a VIA atm unless you are entirely MS bound.
32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:2, Interesting)
More addressable memory: cool.
8 way processors: cool*. (insert "do you have parallel apps to take advantage?" disclaimer. And some apps do.)
But if all my stuff is running in some 32 bit compatibility mode, then what real gain am I going to realize? The article did mention something about faster registers- does that mean small fixed point instructions run faster? (like increment register i, or add n to x, etc.)
And how many apps
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:5, Interesting)
micro-ops (actually it's rops for AMD) it can execute in parallel.
You're very likely going to see speedups on 32 bit code, simply because Opteron is twice as wide as P4 (and this has nothing to do with the size of the operands, which probably is not going to matter as much).
As far as the 64 apps are concerned - Linux already runs on it.
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:5, Informative)
If you use a source-based distribution, like Gentoo [gentoo.org], everything in your system will be compiled for your 64-bit architecture when it's installed. You'll be able to take advantage of your new 64-bit architecture right from the get-go.
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that, sure, everything is compiled into 64-bit mode. Fine. But can the compiler optimize the 64-bit code as well as it can optimize the older 32-bit code? Will the compiler make good use of the extra registers? I'm willing to bet that, for the first while, 64-bit AMD compilers will generate slower code than their 32-bit counterpart. (For 99% of all applications -- those which do NOT need more than 2 GB of memory).
And, of course, there is my major question: What kind of context switch and/or process latency can we expect from the Athlon64 & Opteron? I realize nearly all hard real-time apps don't need anything this powerful-- most good engineers will just put a microcontroller in to handle the hard real-time, and buffer things enough so that it doesn't matter that the workstation isn't hard real-time; but it does have a serious impact on other aspects of system responsiveness, as well as overall system performance for a microkernel architecture (such as HURD, Darwin, or QNX).
For that matter-- how will the Opteron's context switch time compare to other 'server' processors, like the UltraSparc, POWER4, Itanium, and, for good measure, PowerPC? Most of the arguments I've seen about modern x86 having a horrible context switch time don't seem to hold up to benchmarks I've seen-- where identically-clocked PowerPC and Pentiums take nearly the same time (and hence nearly the same number of clock cycles) to context switch...
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:3, Informative)
Blockquoth the poster:
Your caution in this is reasonable, but don't forget
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:4, Interesting)
GCC is already ready for the Hammer chips. If compiling for x86-64 you get code generated that can make use of mmx, mmxext, 3dnow, 3dnowext, sse, and sse2. It actually prefers those instructions over the old x87 functions by default.
I've heard that the Hammer is 2.5 times faster per clock than the lastest Athlons in 32-bit mode, and faster still in 64.
I WILL be building a machine around 2 of these chips as soon as the first Tyan board ships with PCI-X slots.
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:3, Interesting)
When 386 came out we already had exhausted 20bit adress space we had and trying funny hacks with accessing the memory thorugh the keyboard controller chip (not really but A20 thing was close enough.) And 32 bits merely 4096ed it. The transition from 32 bits to 64 bits will increase the addressable space 4 billion times, which is a million times higher than four thousand of 3
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:2)
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:2)
64-bit code should be applied selectively, only to the prorgams that actually need the extra address space.
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:2, Insightful)
And how many 32-bit OSses and apps were there back in 1985, when the 80386 was released? At the time it was released, it was treated by most users as an even faster 8086. It took ten years before a semi-32bit OS was accepted mainstream, and on top of that another 7 years before every sold PC had a full 32-bits OS. The success of the 386 was in its backward compatibility, and so will the success of x86-64 and the failure of the Itanium as mainstream-cpu be.
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:2)
A lot more than you think. Most Open Source apps compile and run on 64-bit OSes like Solaris, HP-UX, Tru64, Linux (when run on Alpha, PPC64, etc), etc.
There will be work that needs to be done to clean up some apps, there's no denying that. But a large chunk of the work is already done on the unix side. It's the Windows side that has a lot of catching up to do.
I guess what I'm asking is- aside from custom code, what are the reason for me to early ado
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:2)
All AMD CPUs are "emulating" the x86 ISA. Athlons decompose x86 instructions and execute them on an essentially RISC core, no? AMD CPUs happen to do it very well, routinely matching higher frequency Intel parts.
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:2)
Of course, this is the great equalizer: Sure, you can generate 64-bit code; but the new 64-bit architecture is new enough that for the time being, it's pretty unlikely that any of the current compilers will be able to optimize 64-bit AMD code as well as they can optimize 32-bit x86. So, sure, you can be assured you're running in full 64-bit mode... but unless you need to a
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:5, Informative)
Linux has been running on 64-bit architectures for some time now, so 64-bit'ness isn't a new thing. And with distros like Debian that support everything from m68k up to Alpha a large portion of the issues have been taken care of already. Debian 'sarge' currently has 10058 packages, all of which compile and run (I'm not going to say all are 64-bit bug free, that would be stupid).
And also most Open Source apps are used on Solaris, Tru64, HP-UX, etc which are 64-bit. Windows may have a big transition ahead of it, but for the rest of us it'll be just like any other motherboard upgrade =)
Re:32 compatibility mode vs. true 64 bit apps... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh man, I'm so excited about:
gimp2.0_x86-64 provides gimp
gimp2.0_x86-32 provides gimp
yes, the little things in life...
-l
Re:chicken before the egg? (Score:2)
So anyway, I have a 2.4.20 Linux kernel, glibc, gcc, binutils, make, bison, flex, ncurses, perl, texinfo, man, bash, fileutils, textutils, findutils, inetutils, grep, groff, grub, file, less, vim, util-linux, e2fsprogs, procps, sysvinti, sysklogd, shadow suite, sh-utils, sed tar, gzip, bzip2, openssl, openssh, and who a few o
Slashdot a Little Slow? (Score:5, Informative)
(ie: January 21, 2003, just incase you didn't get the picture)
Re:Slashdot a Little Slow? (Score:2)
Palladium? (Score:4, Interesting)
Opteron and Athlon 64 are not the same CPU (Score:5, Informative)
Athlon 64 is coming out in September. It is the desktop and mobile version of Hammer that was codenamed Clawhammer.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:nekkid Opteron boards! (Score:2)
(If anyone knows of a maker, point me to them, I think PCI-X is the future, AGP was just a gap bridging hack, who's time has passed.)
Clawhammer earlier than Sept? (Score:2, Insightful)
When betting on Clawhammer release dates, you'd be best advised to always count on the later date, rather than the earlier.
I'm actually more excited about PPC 970, thus finally allowing Apple to have a decent amount of hardware horsepower.
Re:Clawhammer earlier than Sept? (Score:2)
Opteron vs. Athlon64? (Score:2)
What's the difference between an Opteron and an Athlon64?
</QUESTION>
Re:Opteron vs. Athlon64? (Score:3, Informative)
There's more to it than that. (Score:5, Informative)
What makes the Opteron a server chip is the presense of three hypertransport links, the bus used for communication between multiple CPUs and other components such as the motherboard chipset. The Athlon64 will have only one. This is important since hypertransport, unlike say PCI, uses point-to-point links. The AGP and PCI bridges could be on separate hypertransport links and in theory we could see things like gigE controllers directly attached to the hypertransport bus.
Also, last I heard, the Opteron will use Dual DDR memory, while Athlon64 will have to make do with single-channel DDR. Recall that both Hammer chips (SledgeHammer, aka Opteron, and ClawHammer, aka Athlon64), have the memmory controller integrated onto the CPU.
For both of these reasons, the Opteron and Athlon64 sockets are incompatible (Socket 754 vs Socket 940). There's an old review with plenty of information here [anandtech.com]
Re:Opteron vs. Athlon64? (Score:2)
They built it, now who will come? (Score:2, Troll)
Re:They built it, now who will come? (Score:2)
I don't know, they have used AMD off and on, and any look at TV shows that Dell is going for the server market with a vengence. I could possibly see only using AMD for servers and not the regular athlons. I own several dell servers, they are aggressive as hell on price and marketing, and frankly, make a good entry to entry/midlevel server, IMHO.
So you're going to build your datacenter around Gateway? MOO.
Yea, thats not gonna happen
Re:They built it, now who will come? (Score:2, Informative)
However, Michael Dell has historically been Andy Grove's bitch...
I dount Dell will ever use an AMD chip, even if it means losing sales.
No Matter How Much Ram You Have (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No Matter How Much Ram You Have (Score:5, Informative)
Windows is still going to use the swap file.
Why was this moderated as funny? It's certainly true for the NT series (including 2K and XP). Their VM strategy allocates all the ram (except the part reserved for the kernel) as disk cache, and all allocated memory is swap, cached by the main memory. This allows the kernel to dynamically tune the amount of disk cache used according to how much is required. It sounds insane, but is actually quite an elegant solution (in theory at least, I'm not convinced it works in practice. A lot of disk I/O throughput will kill system performance as all your apps get swapped out in favour of disk cache).
Dual 64 boards (Score:2, Flamebait)
I've been using dual boards for awhile, then switched my workstations to a fast single CPU setup. What a mistake. With I/O taking so much CPU time, a dual setup is the best solution. I have not tried P4's hyper threading, but I wonder if thats the cheapest way to get the performance on a s
Re:Dual 64 boards (Score:2)
Also I'm not saying this is the case but if your having a general IO slowdown on your workstations that goes away on dual CPU systems then you may want to check and make sure DMA is enabl
Years of optimizations are reaching their end (Score:2, Interesting)
8 way interleave (Score:2)
Rus
Re:8 way interleave (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:8 way interleave (Score:2)
But yes, part of the Hyper Transport is to allow better cache sharing between chips.
tebibytes (Score:3)
which disambiguates the base-10 and base-2 scale
prefixes: 2^40 bytes is a tebibyte.
Also, although the Hammer implementation may be
limited by physical address lines, I believe the
AMD architecture uses a 48-bit address space,
for 256 tebibytes of addressable memory.
Cost of Multiprocessing (Score:3, Insightful)
Speak nothing of the many-thousand dollar eight processor boards.
Damn cushy profit margins.
The Abit BP6 was my introduction to low cost SMP. Now I've got a craving for more, but I dont think its going to happen. Even thought it could.
Maybe someone will get smart and make a enthusiast board. I seriously doubt it though. Not when there's bigger fish to fry. How long is it going to take for someone to realize that although less profitable, there will be untapped demand for non-server class quad systems.
Myren
On sale (Score:2)
Some of the notable features of the new chip are an address space capable of addressing up to 1 Terabyte of memory
That's awesome because, Dude, Dell is having a sale on half terabyte memory modules this week!
But seriously, how could one ever pack that much memory onto a board? It sounds physically impossible unless you have some crazy expansion pack but that would slow the system down so what's the point?
5 reasons to get 1TB memory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:wow (Score:2)
Re:Check out the linux bechmarks with optron! (Score:2)
Re:Check out the linux bechmarks with optron! (Score:2)
Re:Check out the linux bechmarks with optron! (Score:2)
Major vendors (IBM, HP, etc) offer this level of support (and better) for there Linux products right now. Sun does too. When these vendors sell x86-64 CPUs, they will offer the same level of support on day 1. This is understood.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Can you imagine... (Score:2)
Re:What about intel (Score:3, Funny)
The article did include all details of all 64-bit Intel CPUs which are backwards compatible with x86 CPUs without emulation.
Re:1TB (Score:5, Informative)
Limiting the physical memory to 40 bits reduces the cost of building other system components, such as chipsets and motherboards, dramatically. Further, 1TB of RAM is sufficient for the current market. That is 1000 1GB parts, to give it some perspective.
As customers begin to approach 1TB requirements, AMD only has to implement more lines. No need for any segmentation hacks. The ISA needs no modification. This is a pragmatic and wise design decision.
64 bits of address space is still very useful without having actual RAM to back it up. It means you can map large quantities of storage into RAM directly. For example; if you have 10TB of disk, you can map all of it into a single virtual address space and address it with simple offsets. Obviously this is useful for large databases.
addresing? (Score:2)
Re:1TB (Score:3, Informative)
These chips (for the first few years *at least*) will be low end or mid range small servers. Small in that they won't be competing with Sun Fire 15K servers which themselves only support physical memory of up to 576GB. No one will need those extra 24 memory address lines, so why build chips or motherboards with them?
Another way of looking at it is real-estate.
Currently 1GB dimms are the normal upper end, with a few 2GB dimms around.
At that rate, can you imagine the motherboard that could ac
Re:1TB (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why Release a Server and Desktop Version? (Score:5, Informative)
Manufacturing ICs is not an exact science. Very small impurities can render a die, or a part of a die unusable. The manufacturer can either throw these away, or disable the broken part and sell it as a crippled version. Intel's Celerons were just the P2/3s that had failed part of the cache tests. A lot of the difference between the Athlon64 and Opteron is cache size. A second is SMP support. The Opteron has 3 HyperTransport controllers on die that allow it to communicate with other CPUs with no 'glue' architecture. The Athlon64 will only have one, so any Opterons which have one defective HT controller can be sold as 2-way SMP parts, and those with 2 defective HT controllers will be Athlon64s (those with 23 defective HT controllers will be marketed as paperweights).
AMD has only developed a single CPU, and it will only manufacture a single CPU. It will market this as the most expensive Opteron. All the other versions are simply failed versions of this, with the broken parts disabled.
As an aside, you actually could enable the other half of the cache on some Celerons by mutilating the CPU a little. It was a particularly bad idea, since errors in cache tend to make your system rather unstable, but it could be done...
Re:*ahem* (Score:2)
"Can't touch this....."