Thouroughbred to Barton, then what for x86?

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Quetzacoatl

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As most of you already have seen or guessed, AMD is pushing for the T-bred this month or early on in april. After that, AMD is shooting for Barton with SOI process in Q3 this year. If AMD is entering the 64-bit world, and is going to mainstream the new technology for both servers AND practical home PCs, what is the future of the x86? Will Barton have any reasonable upgrades, or is it the end of the line for AMDs SocketA and K7 line of processors?

"When there's a will, there's a way."
 
The general consensus from outside AMD seems to be that aside from die shrinks (.09 micron) Socket A will receive no major upgrades from here on out. Instead, AMD will likely move it down into the price category currently held by Duron; that being the budget processors., I think theis will keep it alive and kicking well into 2003 and possibly into 2004 as well.

Mark-

When all else fails, throw your computer out the window!!!
 
Don't forget that the Hammer is a 64-bit extension of the x86 architecture.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor
 
Are you saying that the Hammer is sharing roots of a 32-bit processor? I've read into it's ability to work in either 32-bit, 64-bit, or compatability mode. Does this mean that Hammer can be considered a transition point between 32 and 64 bit? It would be nice for AMD to make the big leap in the programming world for all of us. Considering these facts, would you consider Hammer the processor of the near future AMD_Man?

"When there's a will, there's a way."
 
I for one, would. The Hammer is made to make the transition fully functional, use 32-bit at extreme performance and be able to get into 64bit later on. That's the goal of Hammer, not be a 64-bit processor only. It is AMD's next BIG HIT like Athlon, majoy leap in performance.

--
For the first time, Hookers are hooked on Phonics!!
 
Yes, I agree with Eden. With the Hammer you won't have to throw away your old software, but in the future, you'll be able to rejuvenate your system's performance through a simple RAM upgrade and a 64-bit OS and 64-bit apps.


Why a RAM upgrade? I'm predicting 64-bit apps will use up vast amounts of RAM that the current standard of 256MB or 512MB RAM can't handle.


AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor
 
You are correct there. Most applications will be twice the size, as all pointers and references will be take up 8 bytes of memory space (64-bits) rather than 4. A 64-bit processor can only fit half as much into its caches as a 32-bit processor, unless it doubles all of its cache sizes. A doubling of cache sizes has other inherent problems, such as taking more time to search through the cache.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =
 
So then, Ray, what would you say the standard amount of RAM will become once 64-bit starts to take hold? 1024MB? Or will it be an even higher amount? That right there might make it cost prohibitive for many until large capacity RAM becomes norm (with a 1024MB stick of PC2100 costing $385 and a 512MB stick of PC800(not 2x256, but 1x512) being $213 as of 3/16/02 on pricewatch.com)

And, will the dual channel nature of RDRAM allow for those massive amounts of RAM? The reason I ask that is that I'm only aware of RDRAM up to 512MB, which means in a four slot MB, you'll only be able to get 2048MB (way more than enough by today's standards, but enough for high end 64-bit processing?) Does the RDRAM standard have a solution for this possible problem? Not that DDR might do any better, since most DDR boards are limited to 3 slots, since any more can cause timing issues... but still with 1024MB sticks out, that will make 3072MB. What are your thoughts, Ray?

-SammyBoy
 
I believe RAM prices will go down again by then and more dense RAM sticks will become available.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor
 
I believe RAM prices will go down again by then and more dense RAM sticks will become available.
Click to expand...

Unfortunatly, ram prices will never again fall to the levels they are at now and were at, for the past 6 months ram companies have been selling at a loss due to the dip in the industry, things are returning to normal and ram prices will probably double before its over.


Buy the ram NOW, before its too late!

"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
No Overclock+stock hsf=GOOD!
 
Matisaro, that's now. When there's a need for more RAM, RAM prices will go down again. RAM is a commodity so its price adjusts according to the purchase patterns of customers.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor
 
So then, Ray, what would you say the standard amount of RAM will become once 64-bit starts to take hold?
Click to expand...
This is difficult to say. The moment you begin running 64-bit applications, the memory requirement for your system immediately doubles. Thus, in order to get performance even equal to a 32-bit system, you will need to double the system memory.

Note that when we moved from 16-bit processors to 32-bit processors we jumped almost instantaneously from 1MB of memory to about 4-8MB of memory as being standard. The cost of these 32-bit computer systems (using the 80386 processor) was quite prohibitive for a while, especially due to the high pricetag associated with so much memory.


And, will the dual channel nature of RDRAM allow for those massive amounts of RAM?
Click to expand...
Current Intel-based RDRAM chipsets are not designed for a 64-bit processor, so we need not worry about this. 64-bit processing will not be attractive in the consumer market for quite a long time.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =
 
Matisaro, that's now. When there's a need for more RAM, RAM prices will go down again. RAM is a commodity so its price adjusts according to the purchase patterns of customers.
Click to expand...

Yes, but the level of the commodity is usually much higher than it is now, the cost of production usually ensures a high pricetag regardless of demand, recently the dramurai have been selling at a loss, thus we have very low prices.


The prices are stabilizing once more, but unless ram companies are going out of buisness, they will not drop this low again.

"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
No Overclock+stock hsf=GOOD!
 
and PC1700 (100Mhz DDR)...

This post is best viewed with common sense enabled<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by iib on 03/17/02 08:54 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
By June what will be Amd's newest Processor.... Will the Thoroughbred be the latest in June, or will something Be better by June?

Once you go AMD, You never Go back!!
 
Rob since Thoroughbred won't be available for sale until April or May even, it's safe to say Thoroughbred will still be the latest AMD processor available through June. In fact, I don't expect to see Barton until at least September or October. Hammer isn't expected until the very end of the year (November or december) and we may not see them actually on sale until January.

Look at AMD's roadmap. It's pretty clear and doesn't really change all that much except to extend the roadmap to new quarters over time.

Mark-

When all else fails, throw your computer out the window!!!
 
This list shows the maximum amount of RAM each type of processor supports. It all has to do with the largest number the processor supports, which means it's the highest adress it can create for a memory position. Yes, I know that definition sucked, but you get the idea.

16 bit processor - 64KB
32 bit processor - 4GB
64 bit processor - 16,777,216TB (16,384PB)

Now did I figure out the 64bit processor right? My method worked for the 16 and 32 bit processors so I'm assuming it works with the 64 bit processor as well.

2^x(bit) then divide by 1024 until you get useable figure.

if(GetSystemMetrics(SM_PROCESSOR) != AMD_PROCESSOR)
{
SendMessage(hwnd,WM_CLOSE,0,0);
}
 
true... Itanium pretty much sucks... its floating point preformance are matched by the latest x86 processors (P4 and Athlon) and its integer preformance are far infrior to x86...
it doesn't have a real scalibe multi-processor abiltys (not even glueless SMP - forget about HAMMERs HT and Bus-to-Bus protcols) and has very weak I/O... (PC100 or PC1700).
it is considered a pretty weak cpu amoung the RiSC top guns (DEC alpha, IBMs Power, Suns Ultra-Sparc).

did I mention it cost 5 times a x86 top-of-the-line processor eats twice the power and outputs twice the heat with virtualy no real software support?

go go intel...

-----
yes my stocks are on AMD...


This post is best viewed with common sense enabled<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by iib on 03/17/02 11:02 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
Ok so i guess i'll be getting the ThoroughBred.
Will a 2.0ghz or 2.2 ghz be available?? Any Comments would be helpful...one other thing..Kt400a will be out by June?

Once you go AMD, You never Go back!!
 
16 bit processor - 64KB
32 bit processor - 4GB
64 bit processor - 16,777,216TB (16,384PB)
Click to expand...
We used 1MB of memory in our 16-bit systems. The segment registers allowed us to access more than a single 64KB segment. The 20-bit memory bus allowed us full access to that 1MB of memory.

Our modern 32-bit processors come with a 32-bit memory bus. This gives us access to 4GB of memory, as you stated.

64-bit processors will allow access to up to 17,179,869,184 GB of memory, which is probably what you stated, though I do not feel like translating to terabytes.

Increasing from a 32-bit to a 64-bit processor (without a redesign of the instruction set) is similar to switching gears from 2nd gear to 3rd gear. The moment you do that you lose some power. But you have greater potential. Until we reach the limit of the potential of 32-bit processors, I do not think the loss in power is worth it. In essence, switching from 2nd gear to 3rd gear too soon will kill your performance.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =
 
Hammer puts you on automatic Gear...
you can switch to 3rd when ever you fell like it (if MS will produce a 64bit Hammer OS) and you can still go 2nd Gear even with a 64bit OS! depending on the application you run...

or go 2nd gear all the way if you dont fell like your ready for 64bit - just use a regular windows OS or Linux OS...



This post is best viewed with common sense enabled
 
Yes, but Hammer's 3rd gear has nowhere near the performance of the Itanium's 3rd gear. 😉 I will grant you though that Hammer's 2nd gear is a hell of a lot better than Itanium's 2nd gear. This is why Itanium is not targetted at the 32-bit market.

(For those having trouble following, 2nd gear is 32-bit performance and 3rd gear is 64-bit performance.)

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =
 
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