Author Topic: 3.5 GHZ (Read 995 times)

qts · « **Reply #45 on:** February 04, 2003, 05:00:48 PM »

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I also can't think of much of a reason to push 64 bit on the consumer market. The reality of the situation is that there are very few circumstances where a 64 bit processor would be required by most home users.

I remember much the same thing being said when the i386 came out in the mid-80s.

Don't forget that it took 10 years for 32-bitness to take off in the consumer sector. The market is much more mature now, and will take advantage much more quickly.

For example, artists will quickly benefit from the ease of manipulating 64 bit colour. This will have a knock-on effect on games.

Anyone doing mathematical modelling will benefit significantly speedwise - and that means spreadsheet users.

People authoring DVDs will benefit from the increased memory space - imagine being able to hold an entire DVD in memory.

I hope to be able to buy a dual AMD system sometime next year, once the price has come down significantly.

Mini D · « **Reply #46 on:** February 04, 2003, 06:38:06 PM »

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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Isn't Intel doing some 90nm runs this year?

Intel to qualify 90-nm process by mid-2003.

We've done 90nm. Making it what Intel terms a qualified process is another thing.

MiniD

bloom25 · « **Reply #47 on:** February 04, 2003, 07:26:11 PM »

You've got some good points there qts. The point about memory addressing is quite valid, but the impact of being able to address more than 4 GBs of memory would only currently benefit users of high end servers and workstations. It will also require the use of a 64 bit OS. (There is already a 64 bit Linux port available and Microsoft is working on an x86-64 Windows version.) Maybe in 3 or 4 years 4 GBs+ of memory be in typical desktop PCs.

The only thing you're missing is that a 64 bit ALU or FPU is going to be inherently slower than a 32 bit unit. (Why do you think the P4 uses 2 16 bit ALUs running at 2x clock frequency? It's FPU is also inferior in design to that of the Athlon. It is done to allow higher clockspeeds and to reduce the number of gates. ) A 64 bit carry lookahead or carry save adder unit, which are typical designs used for high speed ALUs, would have up to 4x the number of gates as a 32 bit unit. It would not surprise me the least that this is the reason that the Hammer CPUs are currently running no faster than 2 GHz. What a 64 bit FPU gives you directly is precision. Greater speed is not a given when moving from 16 bit to 32 bit, or likewise to 64 bit.

Unforunately, I'm not a graphics guy, so I can't comment on the 64 bit color issue, but I would imagine that specialized software would have to be written to take advantage of it. I do know that currently 32 bit color does not actually use all 32 bits for color information. (If I remember right, only 24 bits are used for the color, the last 8 bits are used for alpha information.) There is one other big problem: Most graphics cards only use a 10 bit D/A converter when generating an analog output and most digital LCDs can only display 16 million colors (24 bit).

I hope AMD is successful with the Hammer. The Hammer processor is certainly as revolutionary in design as the 80386 or the original Pentium. Hopefully, like them, it will in time prove to be a success.

Griego · « **Reply #48 on:** February 05, 2003, 02:59:03 AM »

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Originally posted by jihad
Bloom, check your private messages, I have a business proposition for you.

I think OBL is looking for a few good men. Don't forget your FLUX capacitor.

qts · « **Reply #49 on:** February 05, 2003, 06:24:57 PM »

Bloom, two points.

Firstly, with respect to DVDs, time is money, and memory is orders of magnitude faster than disk, so a business case can easily be made for large amounts of memory.

Secondly, with respect to colour, the issue is not how many colours end up being displayed, but the number of bits per channel (R/G/B) that the computer can manipulate. Very basically, the more bits, the less error. Carmack has written on this in relation to games, so I'll defer to him.

BTW did you note that the AMD64 was benchmarked at 1 GHz and matched a 2GHz P4?

bloom25 · « **Reply #50 on:** February 05, 2003, 06:47:00 PM »

Interesting point on the color issue qts, I hadn't considered that. (As I said, I'm not a graphics expert, though John Carmack certainly is.)

I certainly have high expectations of the performance from Hammer and haven't questioned that. I think I wrote something about this in the past on this BBS. (The original estimate, which I believe still stands, is Hammer at 2 GHz will match a 3.4 GHz P4.) Opteron will launch at 1.8 GHz in April.

I do have reservations when it comes to the economics of producing Hammer processors. The way I see it, AMD does not yet have the "image" that Intel does. They cannot afford to charge the premium price for a desktop version of Hammer that it's performance versus the P4 would likely afford. I honestly think that this is the reason that AMD is launching the workstation/server Opteron processor in April and delaying Athlon 64 until September. It's only in that market segment that AMD would be able to charge a high enough price to offset the increased costs of the Hammer core versus the current Barton Athlon MP core. I have no doubt that Opteron will easily match and exceed the performance of the Xeons available in April. The Hammer architecture lends itself extremely well to a multiple CPU machine. Also, that is the one market segment where 64 bit support will have an immediate impact. There is already a x86-64 Linux port available. A sucessful launch in the workstation market for Hammer should help to smooth its launch into the desktop market later in the year.