AMD 4x4 Quad Father, Quad Core CPU Details Emerge 178
JiminyDigits writes "AMD recently
revealed a few more details of their upcoming quad-core platform
architecture called 4X4. With CPU bundles affectionately dubbed 'Quad
Father,' AMD is taking advantage of the inherent benefits of their
HyperTransport interconnect technology to directly connect a pair of dual Athlon
64 desktop chips together with system memory. Details here show
a dual socket motherboard that support a whopping 12 SATA connections, four
X16 PCI Express slots (x16,x8,x16,x8 configuration) and few other bells and
whistles. Supposedly Quad Father kits will come with matched CPUs from
2.6GHz up to 3GHz."
Fuck it, we're going to five cores. (Score:5, Funny)
Just like the SX/DX line (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fuck it, we're going to five cores. (Score:4, Funny)
"Sir it's AMD.... they've gone plaid"
It won't. (Score:4, Funny)
These systems will allow Windows Panorama (codename: Holstein) to run, although not with the new SuperTransparentyandFlashyandGooeyWoohoo interface, of course.
Of cores... (Score:2)
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Re:Fuck it, we're going to five cores. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's 4x4 so next step is 8x8 and ultimately to 64x64.
Maybe the number of cores will be the new Ghz?
Re:Fuck it, we're going to five cores. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: 5, common. How about 80. (Score:2, Informative)
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Re:Fuck it, we're going to five cores. (Score:5, Funny)
Responding to my post with a serious one suggests: (Score:5, Funny)
o
-|- <---You
/ \
(the joke looks like a chair because it was originally a Steve Ballmer joke)
Vista (Score:5, Funny)
-DaMouse
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Or a full Linux install with OpenOffice, Mozilla applications, dev tools, utilities, etc.
Sad to say, XP vs. Linux isn't much of a performance competition any more. With a slow enough old box, you'll find they both take forever to boot... ;)
What worries me with Vista is the memory expense of full-application rendering regardless of surfaces displayed, as well as the application expense of always rendering a full screen of widgets instead of skipping over clipped/obscured regions.
The graphics hardware
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Sure, running a full redhat distro on an old box li
Re:Vista (Score:5, Funny)
When I read this, I snickered uncontrollably.
That is all.
4 * x16 == x16+x8+x16+x8? (Score:2)
Re:4 * x16 == x16+x8+x16+x8? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:4 * x16 == x16+x8+x16+x8? (Score:5, Informative)
There are something like 3 parts to PCIe-speak on motherboards:
What they're saying here is that you're getting 2 x16 and 2 x8 lanes slots, but all the slots have a physical x16 size, which means that you can plug pretty much anything in it, including 4 PCIe graphic cards at once (since graphic cards require physical x16).
I'm not sure I've been perfectly clear though, anyway it's fairly clear when you talk about slot size versus number of lanes.
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Wow (Score:3, Funny)
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Forced Overkill (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means it will cost $1000-$2000 just for CPUs and motherboard. AMD's and Intel's quad cores will cost a grand also, which limits all of this to people with more money than sense.
If they're going to allow dual processors, why not let people use the $150 2.0GHz dual cores? Then the whole thing will come in under $500 and have much wider appeal.
Re:Forced Overkill (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, $1000 doesn't seem that expensive, spending about $2500 on a computer (which you probably wouldn't need to upgrade for about 5 years) wouldn't be that crazy, would it? It seems cheaper than spending $1000 every year and a half (which might be an average upgrade cycle)
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I considered it some of the best $900 I ever spent, and I still do. No regrets. In fact, it's still humming along in my Indigo2, which I pulled out of the scrap bin some years later.
$1000 bucks for a system loaded with quad processors won't scare many people off. $1000 for a motherboard m
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I remember paying $350 for a blazing fast, 2400 baud Hayes modem!
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Forced Overkill is Right! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Forced Overkill (Score:4, Informative)
The target price is under $1000 for the CPUs and (presumably) board. That really doesn't price it out the range of people who were previously buying Athlon FX and Intel EE CPUs. Keep in mind that this is a high-end enthusiast-class platform, rather than the future of AMD's mainstream computing. If you just want dual CPU dual cores, you can buy an Opteron 200-series workstation for less probably. You won't get 4 PCI-E x16 slots and 12 SATA ports, but who needs that anyways? Or, you could just wait until 3Q of 07 and get a native quad core CPU.
Would it be great if they made it cheaper so that everyone could have one? Absolutely. But then they would be cannibalizing the sales of their other higher-end CPUs (why buy a $700 FX-series when you can spend $300 on low end X2 CPUs and get more performance?).
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Those of us who want to drop in PCIe RAID cards and dual/quad port PCIe NIC cards? (Both of which are usually only available in PCIe x4 sizes.) Plus for less expensive servers, 12 SATA ports could allow the use of Software RAID without having to use up a PCIe slot for a SATA card.
When you get into NIC bonding, it's not unusual to want 4-8 gigabit NICs in
Re:Forced Overkill (Score:4, Interesting)
This is called an "early-adopter price". You see, there ARE people with a lot of money...and contrary to your statement, they may, and probably do have plenty of sense, they just have more disposable income than you. They buy these when they first come out, and a year or two down the line when they are buying the next hottest toy on the market, companies will be forced to drop the prices on this bad boy so that the rest of us can afford it.
Don't bitch about the price of this just because you're jealous you can't afford it. Just realize that that is how the market works.
Think outside the Desktop Market... (Score:4, Insightful)
Couldn't this sort of beast be aimed at the Server Market? I have an application that would eat up this sort of config.
Curently we use a Dual Xeon or a Quad Xeon and these get maxed out at times.
Think outside of the Desktop Beige Box.
After a while, the technology will filter down to desktops but the server end is where people will pay top dollar/yen/euro/rouble for a system that really performs.
Re:Think outside the Desktop Market... (Score:4, Informative)
4x4 uses low-latency unbuffered RAM while servers use ECC RAM. More importantly, you can already buy dual CPU Opteron motherboards and chips. They've been capturing LOTS of market share from the Xeon, especially at the quad chip (8 core) level where the Xeon's obsolete FSB architecture falls down. Some vendors even have 8 CPU (16 core) boxes. And then there's Cray's Opteron-based supercomputers...
4x4 is basically an Opteron 2xx-series platform adapted for the desktop enthusiast market.
Quad 2.0GHz? No problem (Score:2)
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Bleeding Edge Technology is rarely purchased by Joe Public, even the vast majority is not even adopted by gamers. Big businesses generally absorb the early adoptors cost of this kind of technology.
A perfect example of a use for this is a vmware environment. Their licenses are based off the number of PHYSICAL cores you have, and each license for their Infrastructure 3 (Standard and Enterprise versions) are well above the cited $1,000 to $2,000 you mention.
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p.s. You don't launch an expensive technology based on cheap commodity parts, that's like subsidizing their waiting with your R&D dollars... You don't want them to wait, and the whole point of it being more expensive at launch, is that the target audience is those early adopter folx. They pay the R
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The cheaper processors don't have the additional inter-socket hypertransport link that's needed for a dual socket setup. They *could* create low end Socket F processors for 4x4, but it's more effecitve for them to use their production capacity for higher margin stuff. Remember that these 4x4 FX processors are basically identical to their current-generation Opterons - a market that they can't really afford to either give cheaper processors or reduce production for.
These cores go up to eleven.. (Score:5, Funny)
AMD PR Rep: The chips have four cores. Look, right across the board, four, four, four and...
Tech Columnist: Oh, I see. And most chips go up to two?
AMD PR Rep:: Exactly.
Tech Columnist: Does that mean it's more powerful? Is it more powerful?
AMD PR Rep:: Well, it's two more powerful , isn't it? It's not two. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing games with two. You're on two here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on two on your PC. Where can you go from there? Where?
Tech Columnist: I don't know.
AMD PR Rep:: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Tech Columnist: Put it up to four.
AMD PR Rep:: Eleven. Exactly. Two better.
Tech Columnist: Why don't you just have two and make them a little more powerful?
AMD PR Rep:: [pause] These have four cores.
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4x4 eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
That aside the dual x16 PCI express Mobo looks sweet. I can finally have my triple headed, neigh, quad head display! Note that a quad cpu quad display setup might be useful for MMO gold farmers... they could have one machine running 4 bots unencumbered and have the ability to monitor all 4 at the same time...
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Absolutely. AMD full-time all-core processing provides outstanding traction with almost any air- or water cooled system. It constantly monitors processing conditions, sensing any loss of traction and automatically transfers processes from the cores that slip to the cores that grip. And cores that grip are especially nice if you're into Doom3 or any other game that demands a lot from a processor. Like grid computing, where AMD is a consistent
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Actually, that's not a bad analogy. Each AMD CPU has its own memory controller and bank of memory so there's lots of memory bandwidth to go around, whereas an Intel dual CPU config has both processors accessing memory through an obsolete FSB architecture. Accordingly, an Intel dual CPU machine will be spinning its wheels in situations where an AMD 4x4 has memory bandwidth to spare.
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Actually, you could have an 8-head display, because you can put graphics cards (albeit not super-high-end ones) in the two x8 slots also.
= 4 Acentral Processing Units (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, with 2 microprocessors, can they still be called "Central Processing Units", when each is "offcenter" to the other?
Re:= 4 Acentral Processing Units (Score:5, Informative)
It was explained awhile back, but 4x4 isn't directly related to the core count. Otherwise, why wouldn't a dual CPU workstation class system with dual core CPUs be considered 4x4?
4x4 actually is in reference to 4 CPU cores and 4 video cards, at least that is the way that it was explained to me.
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Actually, I think that was the point of the grandparent's post. The name 4x4 to those unfamiliar with the term in the context of motherboards is misleading. I thought the name referred to a quad core chip in a quad chip configuration. The grandparent's question and a few of the other comments I read implies I am not the only one to make this mistake. To the uninitiated a dual CPU workstation with dual core
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I tbink 4x4 is suffering from the Moore's law syndrome - it applies to whatever you want it to apply to which happens to fit the concept (quads, exponential growth).
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I'm pretty sure they're referring to four cores and *four graphics cards*. The "x" isn't multiplication, it's more like a funny looking comma.
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But then, they're inserting two "father packages" into a single "motherbo
Re:= 4 Acentral Processing Units (Score:5, Informative)
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Would Paris Hilton please demonstrate an "animal style with the works, 4x4 down on the floor" to me?
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"Animal style" means you have to hide in tall grass, sneak up on the cow, tear its throat out, then use your teeth to pull steaming hunks of raw meat off of its still-warm carcass. It is indeed better than 'the works', if you're into that sort of thing.
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So where's the quad core cpu? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Enthusiast Megatasking" is a lousy catchphrase (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an OS problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is with Windows and its tireless efforts to fill memory with dirty pages that get flushed at the most inconvenient times. Lots of CPU-intensive Windows applications support multithreading. It's not as if multiple CPUs are a new thing in desktop PCs. The old thing is the crappy NT scheduler and the OS's bizarrely dysfunctional memory m
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In fact I was going to go on a second diatribe in my previous post about how my new dual-cpu computer seems more disk-bound than ever, but I don't have any good suggestions on how to fix that.
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Back when supercomputers were a lot less powerfull then todays desktop pcs, someone made the comment that supercomputers are machines that turn compute bound problems into io bound problems. It should be little surprise that this applies to many a modern computer now..
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from "Memory Space" (Score:4, Funny)
Peter Gibbons: What would you do if you had two cores?
Lawrence: I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two gzips at the same time, man.
Peter Gibbons: That's it? If you had two cores, you'd do two gzips at the same time?
Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had two cores I could hook that up, too; 'cause processes dig CPUs with cores.
Peter Gibbons: Well, not all processes.
Lawrence: Well, the type of processes that'd double up on a PC like this do.
Peter Gibbons: Good point.
Lawrence: Well, what about you now? what would you do?
Peter Gibbons: Besides two gzips at the same time?
Lawrence: Well, yeah.
Peter Gibbons: Nothing.
Lawrence: Nothing, huh?
Peter Gibbons: I would idle... I would sit on my ass all day... I would do nothing.
Lawrence: Well, you don't need two cores to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's got a 386, don't do shit.
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Yeah, instead they should present real situations, like playing oblivion/F.E.A.R./Doom while ripping and burning DVD's and seeding torrents...ooops
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Well, I don't know of a dual-core gzip, but there is an SMP bzip2 [compression.ca]. Is that good enough? Their tests seem to indicate that the speedup is very close to linear up to around 30 processors.
Re:"Enthusiast Megatasking" is a lousy catchphrase (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bet you a beer that in 10 or 15 years you'll look back on the above statement and admit that you were completely wrong. You may be right that current apps, and even current types of apps, will receive limited benefit from dozens of processors, but what you're missing is that massive parallelism will enable new types of application that are barely imagined now.
Perhaps you remember the famous (apocyphal?) quote, "640K of RAM ought to be enough for anybody". I suspect that the author of that statement thought that because all apps at the time ran in 80x40 monochrome text mode, and what text-mode app could possibly need so much RAM? He didn't forsee the migration to GUI-based apps that was made practical by the availability of large amounts of RAM.
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This is the problem with uninspired formalism. You throw up your hands and say "impossible," when a small (and very reasonable) compromise would yei
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There is something to be said about being overly formal. There is also something to be said about comparing apples to oranges. The GP made a statement about bit-serial compressors, and the parent cited information from a batch compression algorithm.
bzip2 is based around the Burro
My upgrade path... (Score:5, Interesting)
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And well, yeah, 4x4 is obviously aimed at people with lots of money.
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AMD never claimed that they would be using socket 939 for 4x4, or that any Athlon X2 processor would work. In fact, if you thought about it a little bit you'd realize that that isn't even possible... socket 939 doesn't have enough hypertransport links.
From an upgradability perspective, Socket 939 is pretty solid. The fact that they needed a new socket for their riduculus enthusiast platform isn't something that you should really be upset about.
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He didn't say 939, he said AM2.
two dual-cores? (Score:2, Informative)
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Intel's current quad-core solution is 2 dual-core dies in a single package, not "two dual-core CPUs on one die".
In this context, my definition of "a hack" is engineering short-term solutions that don't have much ben
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Let me be the first on slashdot to ask, "but will it run Vienna?"
AMD 4x4 - The off roading CPU (Score:2)
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I'm finally cashing in! (Score:3, Funny)
Not as good as intels quad core? (Score:3, Interesting)
TFA seems to suggest that somehow AMD' hypertransport system gives it an edge over Intel's solution, however any external bus (i.e. hypertransport) is going to be slower than package-internal interconnects.
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Basically, if you farm out four tasks to a 2xDual intel setup, the memory bandwidth available doesn't scale. IE, you can add more dies, but at the cost of reducing the memory bandwidth available to each of those dies (to/from system).
With AMD's setup, adding a new die also adds a new memory controller (they're on the die, remember?), which in turn increases the amount of memory bandwidth available (to/from system).
It's already bieng
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That might be true, but Intel has no package-internal interconnect. Kentsfield has a single FSB that connects the two processor dice and the northbridge; there is no on-package fast-path between the dice. 4x4 has twice as many memory channels and several HT links in addition.
Kentsfield may still end up fa
the obvious reaction (Score:2, Funny)
*pant*pant*pant*
*gasp*
*faint*
Having just seen Murderball... (Score:2)
Quad Father? Charming. (Score:2)
Re:Quad Father (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, it's a father to stick in your mother board.
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I don't get it... "Quad Father" ~= "God Father"...
Re:So there's... (Score:5, Funny)
I met a man with 4 computers
Each computer had 4 CPUs
Each CPU had 4 cores
Each core had 4 pipelines
Pipelines, cores, CPUs, computers
How many were running SPECint?
(Answer: one, me. This guy was trying to boot Vista.)
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No, you just suck.
[rimshot]
I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress....
=tkk
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No... it's not just you. In fact, this comment has appeared something like five times before you said it.
And, beyond that, the comment is idiotic because adding more cores continues to be useful for quite a while - it's not a useless marketting thing like the seventh razorblade.
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Current games support two cores pretty well. Games currently being written are generally written to support either "up to 4 cores", "up to 8 cores", or "a whole shitload of cores".
Since core count is going up, multi-core systems is where it's at for future high performance applications.
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