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zubro · Feb 25, 2005, 04:46 AM

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/V...~94936,00.html

"AMD plans to bring client dual-core AMD64 processors, based on the existing 939-pin socket, to the market in the second half of 2005."

Will we see Apple kick off before AMD with an IBM dual core?

DrBoar · Feb 25, 2005, 04:51 AM

Intel is supposed to relase dual core P4 for about 50 dollars more than the current single cores in the second quarter of this year, time to race again

zubro · Feb 25, 2005, 09:49 PM

Originally posted by DrBoar:
Intel is supposed to relase dual core P4 for about 50 dollars more than the current single cores in the second quarter of this year, time to race again

YO! That is going to be GREAT!

Might see new G5 (Dual core) with Tiger!

(can't wait, can't wait!)

zubro · Feb 25, 2005, 09:50 PM

Originally posted by DrBoar:
Intel is supposed to relase dual core P4 for about 50 dollars more than the current single cores in the second quarter of this year, time to race again

Detrius · Feb 25, 2005, 10:45 PM

Well, Motorola was first with 32 bit (68020 at the time of the 286). I don't remember if the Pentium beat the PowerPC (superscalar). Intel was first with vectorization (Pentium MMX before the G4), though it was quite pitiful in comparison. IBM was first with 64 bit (G5, not to mention the Power PC 620). IBM was first with multicore in their POWER line. Why on Earth would they LET some small time companies like AMD or Intel beat them to the punch with a product they have had for years?

Pierre B. · Feb 27, 2005, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by Detrius:
IBM was first with multicore in their POWER line. Why on Earth would they LET some small time companies like AMD or Intel beat them to the punch with a product they have had for years?

Intel does not seem so much small-time to me.

It is apparent that the whole industry has hit the head into the clock frequency wall, and they are trying to find other solutions to increase performance. For the time being, it seems that parallel code and multi-core processors is the way to go. And AMD and Intel seem really serious about that. Something I don't see on the Apple or IBM camp (as far as the 970 family of processors is concerned). You can say that this is due to Apple's secrecy, but IBM too has yet to announce some dual-core variant of the PPC970. I guess the 970 processor was much more of a challenge to scale up than what everyone originally thought. And the yearly update cycle Apple seems to adopt for the G5 based machines just backs this up.

It would be really a surprise for me if Apple came first with a dual-core solution. Which means I expect AMD and Intel to be there first.

Wiskedjak · Feb 27, 2005, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by Detrius:
Intel was first with vectorization (Pentium MMX before the G4), though it was quite pitiful in comparison.

As I recall, MMX was released in '98. That was about 2-3 years before the G4 ... of course a 2-3 yr old cpu is going to be pitiful when compared to a brand new one.

Detrius · Feb 27, 2005, 03:15 PM

Originally posted by Wiskedjak:
As I recall, MMX was released in '98. That was about 2-3 years before the G4 ... of course a 2-3 yr old cpu is going to be pitiful when compared to a brand new one.

I don't remember the time frame, but I do remember that it took several upgrades before people stopped saying that it was completely lame, and this was long after the G4 had been released.

zubro · Feb 28, 2005, 06:46 AM

Originally posted by Pierre B.:
It would be really a surprise for me if Apple came first with a dual-core solution. Which means I expect AMD and Intel to be there first.

That was my point Pierre.

jamil5454 · Feb 28, 2005, 11:03 AM

Originally posted by Detrius:
Well, Motorola was first with 32 bit (68020 at the time of the 286). I don't remember if the Pentium beat the PowerPC (superscalar). Intel was first with vectorization (Pentium MMX before the G4), though it was quite pitiful in comparison. IBM was first with 64 bit (G5, not to mention the Power PC 620). IBM was first with multicore in their POWER line. Why on Earth would they LET some small time companies like AMD or Intel beat them to the punch with a product they have had for years?

I thought the first 64-bit CPU was the DEC Alpha released in the early 90s. It sure is a hell of CPU.

power142 · Feb 28, 2005, 04:54 PM

Originally posted by Pierre B.:
Something I don't see on the Apple or IBM camp (as far as the 970 family of processors is concerned). You can say that this is due to Apple's secrecy, but IBM too has yet to announce some dual-core variant of the PPC970. I guess the 970 processor was much more of a challenge to scale up than what everyone originally thought. And the yearly update cycle Apple seems to adopt for the G5 based machines just backs this up.

It would be really a surprise for me if Apple came first with a dual-core solution. Which means I expect AMD and Intel to be there first.

I agree with you in that Apple will probably join the party with a "me too", but I'd say that Apple has been selling dual processor machines to their devotees for several years at this point, and I'd hazard a guess that much more of the software that people might use is more SMP aware than on other platforms ie Windows. In this respect, there is (slightly) less urgency to switch to a multi-core design. SMP is not inferior to dual-core designs in many respects, shy of the concept of the cores being connected to one another by a very high speed (on-die) connection. The processor to memory bus contention is bad enough already in some designs (read: Xeon), and having dual cores will not make that situation better. The POWER5 use something along the lines of 36MB L3 cache - is this to compensate for such issues? And without it, will a dual-core POWER5 "lite" be worth having? (The answer is probably yes, for the ??% improvement in certain operations.)

Detrius · Feb 28, 2005, 06:00 PM

Originally posted by jamil5454:
I thought the first 64-bit CPU was the DEC Alpha released in the early 90s. It sure is a hell of CPU.

Yes, the Alpha came before the PowerPC, but do you see ANY Alpha machines being sold?

macaddict0001 · Feb 28, 2005, 11:06 PM

Originally posted by Detrius:
Yes, the Alpha came before the PowerPC, but do you see ANY Alpha machines being sold?

True.
And I noticed that you got promoted to mod congratulations!

jamil5454 · Mar 1, 2005, 03:32 PM

Originally posted by Detrius:
Yes, the Alpha came before the PowerPC, but do you see ANY Alpha machines being sold?

Only by HP/Compaq and some other small vendors. They're very expensive but perform like a beast. Too bad they didn't get over 1ghz (if I remember correctly).

Detrius · Mar 1, 2005, 07:25 PM

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
True.
And I noticed that you got promoted to mod congratulations!

Thanks for the congrats, and thanks for noticing!

It feels good to know that I give enough good advice to be at least recognized by other members.

Tyre MacAdmin · Mar 2, 2005, 04:04 AM

It would be really a surprise for me if Apple came first with a dual-core solution.

Well technically Apple did, if you grant inheritance to IBM's POWER line, and it's dual cores. It is not out yet in the hardware Apple is using, but it is already to market in IBM's hardware lines.

The best thing about the Opterons is that when the dual core chips come out, you'll be able to take the old chips out and install the new dual core chips in the same motherboard. Not only will the clock speed of the cores be faster, there will obvioulsy be twice as many cores which will more than double whatever the base speed was on the replaced chips.

If Apple/IBM follows this model, which they will, it will mean an excellent upgrade path and more machine for your money.

zubro · Mar 2, 2005, 06:03 AM

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
Well technically Apple did, if you grant inheritance to IBM's POWER line, and it's dual cores. It is not out yet in the hardware Apple is using, but it is already to market in IBM's hardware lines.

The best thing about the Opterons is that when the dual core chips come out, you'll be able to take the old chips out and install the new dual core chips in the same motherboard. Not only will the clock speed of the cores be faster, there will obvioulsy be twice as many cores which will more than double whatever the base speed was on the replaced chips.

If Apple/IBM follows this model, which they will, it will mean an excellent upgrade path and more machine for your money.

What is the point there?
You will have a very fast Chip OK, but the rest of your machine will be as slow as before.

Tyre MacAdmin · Mar 2, 2005, 06:13 AM

Originally posted by zubro:
What is the point there?
You will have a very fast Chip OK, but the rest of your machine will be as slow as before.

With 6.4GBps hypertransport connects I would not expect this machine to need to be upgraded for a long time. It would make more sense to upgrade the cpu's instead of buying an entirely new system. Most servers are upgraded in this fashion before being scrapped. You could easily stretch ten years worth of service out of, say this SUN box:

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2354

We've still got compaqs running P3's in our server room that are close to 10 years old.

Obviously you'd probably replace a desktop G5 faster than 10 years but for server usuage the Opterons are fast and cheap... and believe me, there is no usuage for a 4-way server that can scale to 8-way, then 16-way, that will saturate the entire 6.4GBps bandwidth to cause for an upgrade. This is the midrange/entrylevel server level. It also happens to be the highend workstation level as well.

elvis2000 · Mar 8, 2005, 12:26 AM

Originally posted by Wiskedjak:
As I recall, MMX was released in '98. That was about 2-3 years before the G4 ... of course a 2-3 yr old cpu is going to be pitiful when compared to a brand new one.

MMX was at least '96... I had a 233MHz MMX around that time. By '98 we had the PII.