For an architecture details document, it seemed lacking in details. The actual Hammer core has a couple of diagrams that are fairly generic and don't provide much info on their own. Hopefully the actual presentation spent some time explaining what the diagrams mean, and we will find out more from various reporters at the Forum (like Tom). As it is, I still don't have any proof about dual cores on a die or not.
Most of the document was about x86-64 that we have known for a year now, and the system stuff around the core. Now I have to admit, the system stuff was interesting. It's very reminiscent of what Sun has been doing on their servers for years. Sun servers (back when I used them, some 7-8 years ago) distribute the memory on each processor board and use a message passing bus to transfer cache lines between boards. If I recall, they spent a lot of effort to modify Solaris (their version of Unix) so that code and data tends to be on the same board as the CPU executing that code, minimising the amount of data that had to cross to other boards.
Very strong server orientation, like glueless MP, ECC everywhere, and even hardware scrubbers. Scrubbers should help stability, even on normal PCs. With PC2700 chips starting to become available now, I would have hoped that they would go crazy and support PC 3200. By the time Hammer comes out, 2700 will be old hat and 3200 will be the new thing. I see that as the biggest weakness of a memory controller in the CPU. They are stuck without a CPU spin.
I was surprised to see 8x AGP. Is that something that's been brewing at Intel, that I wasn't aware of, or did AMD just make it up on their own? With Nvidia such a close partner, I wonder if they might come out with HyperTransport graphic cards, instead of AGP? Hmmm, maybe I should just lie down now.
Patrick Ellis
Most of the document was about x86-64 that we have known for a year now, and the system stuff around the core. Now I have to admit, the system stuff was interesting. It's very reminiscent of what Sun has been doing on their servers for years. Sun servers (back when I used them, some 7-8 years ago) distribute the memory on each processor board and use a message passing bus to transfer cache lines between boards. If I recall, they spent a lot of effort to modify Solaris (their version of Unix) so that code and data tends to be on the same board as the CPU executing that code, minimising the amount of data that had to cross to other boards.
Very strong server orientation, like glueless MP, ECC everywhere, and even hardware scrubbers. Scrubbers should help stability, even on normal PCs. With PC2700 chips starting to become available now, I would have hoped that they would go crazy and support PC 3200. By the time Hammer comes out, 2700 will be old hat and 3200 will be the new thing. I see that as the biggest weakness of a memory controller in the CPU. They are stuck without a CPU spin.
I was surprised to see 8x AGP. Is that something that's been brewing at Intel, that I wasn't aware of, or did AMD just make it up on their own? With Nvidia such a close partner, I wonder if they might come out with HyperTransport graphic cards, instead of AGP? Hmmm, maybe I should just lie down now.
Patrick Ellis
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