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AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?



 
 
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  #22  
Old April 29th 08, 02:26 AM posted to comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Robert Myers
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Posts: 606
Default AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

On Apr 28, 7:29 pm, "
wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:22:52 -0700 (PDT), Robert wrote:

snip/Without AMD, one of threee things would have happened:

1. Intel would have had the resources to deliver a satisfactory
Itanium product and accompanying compiler on schedule.


Itanium was stillborn, even more so than Netbust. Its only purpose
was to move everyone and their mother-in-law away from x86 and in the
process thereof screw all other chipmakers (chiefly AMD, since others
were, and still are, almost non-entities). While AMD and some other
guys have a license to churn out x86 compatible product, no licenses
were ever planned for IA64. Thanks to AMD and their Opteron product
beating Itanic on performance for a mere fraction of the price, it
didn't happen.

I've lived a long time now, and I've seen a lot of predictions come
and go. Anyone who wants to make emphatic statements about what was
inevitable should take a good, hard look at all the successful
predictions of the ramifications of the attack of the killer micros.

In all this "I knew all along" talk about Itanium, I've heard a few
insightful comments indicating that people actually understood
something of importance about the actual architecture, and not what
they've heard from others. If anyone *really* understood what went
wrong with Itanium, it would make the case study of all case studies
for business schools interested in the development and management of
technology. As it is, I don't think anyone really knows.

By comparison, it's pretty easy to see what went wrong with Netburst
and, among other things, we have public statements by its principal
architect, who no longer works for Intel. Even so, it's a puzzle as
to why Intel missed the importance of power consumption.

2. Intel would have been forced into a partial retreat to x86, anyway.


It took AMD64 (later renamed x84-64 to make it more digestable to
Intel) to do so. In all Intel roadmaps, x86 was to be relegated to
the low end of the market and then obsoleted in a matter of a few
years, if not months.


The more fool Intel. The "low end" is where all the action is. To
see that, you have only to look at Blue Gene that was built with "low
end" processors. Low end or high wasn't what mattered. Power
consumption did. Intel has it figured out by now, and they're pouring
resources into low-power processors. If Intel hadn't had a credible
x86 candidate, what would it have done? I have no idea. To give up
on the low-power market is essentially to give up on the future
because the cost of computation is going to be dominated by the cost
of electricity, including the costs of cooling.


3. Sparc or Power would be holding much larger market share under any
number of possible licensing and manufacturing arrangements.


Sparc is big iron stuff, it just doesn't scale down to desktop, let
alone laptop. And Power... It could not even hold on to Apple, the
only desktop/laptop maker ever using it. Ironically, it was dumped to
make way to Intel x86 product.

Sparc would have much of the market share for servers now dominated by
x86. The disappearance of Power is simply a matter of money. If the
market is entirely consumed by x86, no one will want to put the
resources into it necessary to compete with Intel's offerings. To be
sure, IBM has never been very much interested in that market, anyway.

I personally believe that what we've got is the worst of all possible
worlds: AMD on death's door, Microsoft holding on to its monopoly
catering to just one ISA, and, to all intents and purposes, zero
diversity in processor architecture.


Some prefer divercity, others prefer standard. Looks like you are not
in the business of writing software, otherwise you'd know what a pain
in a$$ is cross-platform compatibility.

I have very little sympathy for the concerns of software developers.
We'd be much better off with longer software development cycles so we
had less bad software.

Robert.

  #23  
Old April 29th 08, 06:11 AM posted to comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Robert Redelmeier
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Posts: 316
Default AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Robert Myers wrote in part:
Without AMD, one of threee things would have happened:
1. Intel would have had the resources to deliver a satisfactory
Itanium product and accompanying compiler on schedule.


Are you joking? AFAICS, Intel threw money and people at Itanium
well past the point of diminishing returns into the region of
negative returns (were additional people/resources consumed more
communications and managment than their contribution to the project).

Itanium did not fail for lack of resources. It might have failed
from a surfeit. Dis-economies of scale are real and a constant
peril in large projects.

2. Intel would have been forced into a partial retreat to x86, anyway.


Would it have been any more graceful than P4, ie an overclocked
original Pentium? Perhaps. It could hardly be worse.
Without AMD breathing down Intel's neck on the performance end,
INTC would have developed and released processors much slower.
There would have been no need.

3. Sparc or Power would be holding much larger market share under
any number of possible licensing and manufacturing arrangements.


Add in Alpha. In addition to the non-x86 code hurdle, they
have identical issues with AMD. None can deliver the sheer
massive volume that Intel can and the PC market demands.

I personally believe that what we've got is the worst of all
possible worlds: AMD on death's door, Microsoft holding on to
its monopoly catering to just one ISA, and, to all intents and
purposes, zero diversity in processor architecture.


I do not agree. Linux and to a lesser extent NetBSD have done
wonders to keep alt-arch alive and vital. ARM is far from dead.
I would not be at all surprised my next PC had one (ASUS EEE-like).

MSFT has been seduced down a dead-end. Sic transit gloria mundi.


-- Robert


  #24  
Old April 29th 08, 07:57 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.amd.x86-64,alt.comp.hardware.overclocking.amd,de.comp.hardware.cpu+mainboard.amd,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Wes Newell
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Posts: 687
Default AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:18:24 -0400, krw wrote:

In article ,
says...
" writes:
What could be more boring than the x86 domination we have now?
Without AMD, there would be no such monoculture.

Did you mean "without Intel"?


I suppose if AMD hadn't been around, there would have been a greater
chance of Intel getting their butts whipped by some other architecture,
instead of by AMD.


What architecture? You grossly underestimate the x86 inertia.

Of course AMD _did_ come up with "x86-64", which is an improvement over
the x86 (obviously even Intel thinks so).


Intel did too, but had no interest in pushing it forward to product.


Funny, that's not how I recall it. Intel dropped their x86-64 bit plans
after trying to push it onto Microsoft, and Microsoft telling them to
shove off. I think this link will get more to the truth.

http://www.gridtoday.com/03/0929/102028.html


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  #26  
Old April 29th 08, 09:28 PM posted to comp.sys.intel
John Dallman
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Posts: 18
Default AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

In article
,
(Robert Myers) wrote:

In all this "I knew all along" talk about Itanium, I've heard a few
insightful comments indicating that people actually understood
something of importance about the actual architecture, and not what
they've heard from others.


Indeed, at first, it looked convincing. My intuition still tells me that
it ought to be extremely fast, but when it clashes with repeatable
measurements, I have to believe the measurements.

If anyone *really* understood what went wrong with Itanium, it
would make the case study of all case studies for business
schools interested in the development and management of technology.
As it is, I don't think anyone really knows.


Here's two non-technical things that contributed to people getting fed
up with Itanium:

* Penny-pinching in the wrong places. The original Itanium I development
systems were not fast, but they were solid and workmanlike. Most of
them were shipped with early-stepping processors. There were some
upgrades, but if you wanted to upgrade from a B-series with some
significant errata to a fully working C-series, it cost you about
US$1000 per processor (and a lot of them were duals). It appears MS
found themselves facing a bill for a million or so dollars to get
proper hardware. That's the kind of thing that makes people ask
"why are we doing this?"

* Differences in objectives between Intel and HP. HP just wanted it as a
PA-RISC replacement, Intel wanted it as an everything replacement.
Notably, Intel allowed HP to have a monopoly in Itanium II systems
with 4 or less processors, like the ones used for most software
development. HP gouged on prices for these, and Intel abandoned
support on all the Itanium I systems they had given out - even
after you'd bought new processors for them - so you had no choice
but to buy new ones from HP.

I have very little sympathy for the concerns of software developers.


Funny, I always thought software was what made computers useful?

We'd be much better off with longer software development cycles so we
had less bad software.


Yes, we would. But the current economics mean that people perceive more
advantage in first-to-market than best-quality. If you would like to
start a political movement to change that, go right ahead.

--
John Dallman

"C++ - the FORTRAN of the early 21st century."
  #27  
Old April 29th 08, 09:41 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.amd.x86-64,alt.comp.hardware.overclocking.amd,de.comp.hardware.cpu+mainboard.amd,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Scott Lurndal
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Posts: 62
Default AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

Wes Newell writes:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:18:24 -0400, krw wrote:

In article ,
says...
" writes:
What could be more boring than the x86 domination we have now?
Without AMD, there would be no such monoculture.

Did you mean "without Intel"?

I suppose if AMD hadn't been around, there would have been a greater
chance of Intel getting their butts whipped by some other architecture,
instead of by AMD.


What architecture? You grossly underestimate the x86 inertia.

Of course AMD _did_ come up with "x86-64", which is an improvement over
the x86 (obviously even Intel thinks so).


Intel did too, but had no interest in pushing it forward to product.


Funny, that's not how I recall it. Intel dropped their x86-64 bit plans
after trying to push it onto Microsoft, and Microsoft telling them to
shove off. I think this link will get more to the truth.


From a history perspective, the P7 circa 1996 was to be the 64-bit follow-on
to the ia32 architecture. Then Intel shifted gears and joined with HP
to merge the P7 with some stuff at HP, producing Itanium. Itanium _was_
intel's 64-bit story (with the 32-bit x86 support in the processor). However,
Merced was late and slow and AMD did x86_64 and Intel was forced to include
it.

scott
  #28  
Old April 29th 08, 11:03 PM posted to comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Robert Myers
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Posts: 606
Default AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

On Apr 29, 1:11 am, Robert Redelmeier wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Robert Myers wrote in part:



MSFT has been seduced down a dead-end. Sic transit gloria mundi.


From your mouth to God's ear. Vista did it, as far as I'm
concerned. I was willing to pay my Bill Gates tax, no matter how much
I resented it. No more.

**Sigh** I *will* learn more about codecs and, if necessary, pay for
legal copies for Linux before I will pay one penny for Vista.

Robert.

  #29  
Old April 29th 08, 11:45 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.amd.x86-64,alt.comp.hardware.overclocking.amd,de.comp.hardware.cpu+mainboard.amd,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
krw[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 150
Default AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

In article KFzRj.12788$Rk6.2453@trnddc07,
says...
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:18:24 -0400, krw wrote:

In article ,
says...
" writes:
What could be more boring than the x86 domination we have now?
Without AMD, there would be no such monoculture.

Did you mean "without Intel"?

I suppose if AMD hadn't been around, there would have been a greater
chance of Intel getting their butts whipped by some other architecture,
instead of by AMD.


What architecture? You grossly underestimate the x86 inertia.

Of course AMD _did_ come up with "x86-64", which is an improvement over
the x86 (obviously even Intel thinks so).


Intel did too, but had no interest in pushing it forward to product.


Funny, that's not how I recall it. Intel dropped their x86-64 bit plans
after trying to push it onto Microsoft, and Microsoft telling them to
shove off. I think this link will get more to the truth.


Only after it was clear that AMD64 was going to happen whatever
Intel did, did Intel try to get in front of the train (to derail
it). M$ didn't see that in their interest either.

http://www.gridtoday.com/03/0929/102028.html



--
Keith
 




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