Intel Begins Shipping 64-bit Prescotts 411
Rucas writes "With a minimum of fanfare, Intel has begun shipping a version of the Pentium 4 with 64-bit instruction set extensions. The news came to light not via an Intel press release, but rather through the spec sheet for a new server from IBM. In the midst of the new IBM eServer xSeries servers based on the recently released 64-bit Xeon is a blade server powered by the 64-bit Prescott. This marks the first product appearance of the new CPU."
Disabled 64 bit extensions on first chips shipped? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does this mean that we will have disabled and enabled versions? Like the old 486SX and DX (SX I understood was a disabled/failed math co-processor). I suppose like all their other chip lines, each will be labled distinctly with some marketing nomenclature.
Re:Figures (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Figures (Score:1, Interesting)
Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about how big a jump it was from the i286 to i386 (16-bit to 32-bit.) That release was a major deal for Intel.
A few months late to the party... (Score:2, Interesting)
AMD welcomes Intel to the world of AMD64 (Score:5, Interesting)
It's kind of funny to watch. Intel is choosing their words very carefully. They're saying things like, the new chip "will run programs currently being developed for AMD's 64-bit processors with very little modification." They absolutely refuse to call the new chip "AMD compatible" even though that's exactly what it is. Intel is having a lot of trouble facing the facts: they poured zillions of dollars and years of R&D into an architecture that nobody wants (Itanium), meanwhile AMD got it right (Opteron) and now they're playing catch-up.
You'd think that Intel, moreso than anyone else, would know that you just can't kill x86.
Re:Figures (Score:2, Interesting)
So we wait for an Intel 64-bit because of slow MS? (Score:2, Interesting)
At the time, he said that Intel wouldn't enable the feature until Microsoft released a 64-bit version of Windows; that operating system is expected later this year.
But according to Computer World,
Microsoft Corp. has further delayed versions of Windows for PCs and servers equipped with x86 processors with 64-bit extensions. Analysts said the extra delay will slow the advent of 64-bit desktop computing and provide a head start for rival operating systems on servers.
Windows Server 2003 for 64-bit Extended Systems and Windows XP 64-bit Edition for 64-bit Extended Systems won't be available until the first half of 2005, a Microsoft spokeswoman said yesterday. The 64-bit Windows XP client was originally due early this year but had already been delayed. The server software was scheduled for late 2004. Who's correct?
Begin sarcasm I want my 64-bit Prescott chip desktop with the most awesome world's number 1 OS a.k.a. Microsoft's Windows XP (64-bit) and I can't take these delays any longer. Waaaa. end sarcasm
Seriously, though... why not release 64-bit prescott for retail and let people install whatever they want... e.g. Linux (64-bit)...
Re:Disabled 64 bit extensions on first chips shipp (Score:2, Interesting)
486SX - a 486DX with its FPU disabled.
486DX - 486SX with a working FPU.
487 - 486DX with a slightly different pinout for use in 486SX systems and sold as a "math-coprocessor;" actually, it would disable the 486SX and be used exclusively!
Source [ic.ac.uk].
Re:Figures (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fan Boy Alert (Score:5, Interesting)
And while you're at it...what's this about USB being broken and never fixed? I haven't noticed it on any of my AMD machines.
For the record, I have many, many Intel boxes, and many (though not quite *as* many) AMD ones as well. If cost is no object, and insano speed and/or 64bit isn't necessary, I'll choose Intel. If I'm paying for it, it will be an Athlon. If I want the fastest thing I can lay hands on, I'll get an opteron.
There is no point in bickering over vi vs. emacs. Or NVidia vs. 3dfx.
Re:Figures (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll take a chipset that work (never had a problem with my NForce2) over one that doesn't work with a major new technology (PCIe) any day.
Re:Figures (Score:5, Interesting)
It shows in the excellent IPC scores of the hammer series, and the incredible scaling for SMP systems that Opterons enjoy.
So alpha technology lives on in a small way in the AMD hammers.
Re:Is this just on e big penis size competition. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not the 64-bitness of the Athlon 64. It's the changes in architecture (more general purpose registers, on-die memory controller, hyperthreading, SSE2, etc.) The Athlon 64 out-performs any other x86 desktop CPU on the market today, including the P4EE.
Couple this with a much lower price than the P4EE. Hell,
All of this adds up to a very impressive package for my customers. And I'm getting nothing but rave reviews on the machines I'm building with Athlon 64s. To hell with whether or not they're doing what they're designed to do! They're fast, and inexpensive. Talk about a gamer's dream. And let's face it, the 64-bitness will be useful in the future, but is only an afterthought for the consumer, right now.
Where does that leave Itanium? (Score:3, Interesting)
I am bringing this up because Intel refused for a long time to bring in a 64-bit x86 due to invement with HP for Itanium. It seems so odd that we have a chip based on 1970's technology.
Itanium was supposed to be surpacing x86 by now like NT replaced win95 derivitives. Intel has a notion of sunkin costs while HP would rather beat a dead horse than admit it failed after billions of billions of dollars of development. I guess its the culture of zero accountability and perfection with no room for mistakes that Fiona implemented.
x86 just wont die.
I would prefer to see the Alpha as an eventual replacement for the aging x86 and its a shame it was bought up just to boast the Itanium.
Well long live the Pentium 64-bit and forever x86.
Re:Xeon-Nocona no faster on 64-bit code? (Score:3, Interesting)
The processor is not in-fact a Prescott. IBM Blades infact use Prestonias today. Prestonia are 400/533MHz FSB Xeon processors. These processors have in reality been shipping for over two years. These are also dual CPU blades (can we expect to see EM64T enabled 4-way Foster CPUs?).
This is much more interesting than Noconas and Prescotts having EM64T technology, as it shows that the technology is being retrofitted into older currently shipping CPUs (or perhaps retro-fitted is not accurate, perhaps it has always been there?).
The article hints a the truth though, as IBM did announce a EM64T Prescott, but on the xSeries 306 server, not the blade servers.
Re:Figures (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Disabled 64 bit extensions on first chips shipp (Score:3, Interesting)
Later SXs may have omitted the FPU completely but given that the SX was what amounted to a "loss leader" for Intel, intended to hold back AMD & Cyrix from the gates, they never spent a whole lot of time engineering the thing.
The real fun was when Intel sold a "FPU upgrade" for some 486SX systems. The "FPU Upgrade" was nothing more than a rebadged 486DX chip that mounted in a socket close to the original 486SX and, when installed, disabled the original 486SX chip.
That was the start of my hatred for Intel. I didn't buy one, I didn't get burned by one, I simply was a geek who knew what a lame duck looked like when he saw one. Crud, even back then I was doing tech support & MIS work.
Re:Opteron Still Better (Score:3, Interesting)
So.... To get beyond 8 processors in a true global-memory ccNUMA configuration, AMD is going to need to a) extend their coherency protocol to deal with that and b) come up with a way (external HyperTransport switch, perhaps?) to get more dimmensions off their chips. 6 is the minimum to do a 3D torus configuration (which is the topology of a Cray T3E and a Cray X1). SGI Origins, which are also ccNUMA boxes, uses a 4D hypercube.
Microcode? (Score:1, Interesting)
Does anyone know if this is true, or did they have to fix some circuit bugs before it was re-released? It apparently was true for hyperthreading on early Northwoods.
Re:A few months late to the party... (Score:1, Interesting)
Intel would still be on top if we did not do Itanium. Itanium was and is the biggest mistake Intel has ever made. The name "Itanic" is very appropriate. The Pentium 4 design team is bar-none the most talented team of microprocessor engineers on the planet. We called shenanigans on that Itanium BS years ago but management didn't listen.
Itanium crippled the Pentium 4 design team because they were NOT allowed to put in 64 bits because of competition with Itanium. If it weren't for Itanium, we would have had 64-bit x86 in 1999!
Itanium also blocked the Pentium 4 design team from putting in some very useful performance enhancements because then Pentium 4 would look better than an Itanium and then why would anyone pay a premium for it? For example, take a look at the Pentium 4 floating point performance (SPECfp) and compare it to the Itanium performance. The Itanium is much faster. There's a reason for that... The P4 should be at least as good or better.
Itanium also sucked design resources out of Intel that could have been working on x86 products that actually make money. Even with the Itanium handicap, the design team was able to pull out a freaking miracle and have a chip that is at least competitive. At the same time, the Banias design team in Israel (Pentium-M / Centrino) worked another miracle in designing a high-performance low-power CPU. For example, the design teams now working on Itanium products could have been put to use on REAL products like Willamette, Northwood and Prescott --- all of which would have come out 6-12 months earlier and likely at higher frequencies. Don't even start on the frequency vs. performance arguments... We're not stupid over here - almost everyone has a Phd in computer architecture -- increasing frequency is a very powerful way to increase performance (for example on SPECint we see approximately 80% performance scaling with frequency). We took a page from the DEC Alpha playbook and decided on a high-frequency approach.
The whole VLIW/EPIC style architecture is STUPID and doomed to fail. You can't beat a dynamic scheduler. That's why everyone on the godamm planet builds dynamic schedulers (unless you're Sun but they haven't had a competitive chip in about 7 or 8 years now). There are just some things that you need to know at run-time and the VLIW/EPIC compiler won't help you there. Predication is stupid because branch predictors are good enough. Over-predicating a highly conditional region of code tends to bloat the code exponentially which kills the i-cache performance. Rotating registers are stupid because they make the register file grow ridiculously large which limits your max frequency - notice how relatively LOW frequency the Itaniums are relative to say AMD. I could go on and on about how freakin stupid Itanium is and how much it has hurt Intel's reputation and profits...But I'm on vacation and I don't want to stress out too much
Any Spec 2000 numbers? (Score:1, Interesting)
In case anyone finds them, I've put some contemporary numbers for comparison. These are Spec 2k, Int, 64 Unix OS, base:
Opteron 2.2Ghz 1338 Suse 64bit
Itanium 2, 1.5Ghz 1380 HPUX
Fujitsu, 1.9Ghz 1174 Solaris
Nothing yet on Power5 on the spec.org website, and there are faster 32 bit Opteron numbers.
Spec(tm) links:
http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res20
http://www.spec.org/cpu20
http://www.spec.org/cpu20
Uh... CEO Reality check... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then I started noticing that EVERYTHING was IBM. The servers, the workstations, even the CABLING. I saw this at every bank we did work for (at least 8 different organizations).
So if it wasn't for the quality, expense, and/or speed, what was it? I later learned that this was a common theme in many larger organizations and it had a lot to do with how much IT stock was owned by the execs.
A friend of mine - a CIO - relayed to me that when a large organization buys a ton of equipment from IBM, the resulting sales figures usually give a bounce to the stock. Better still, if you coordinate your efforts with other execs in other companies, you can often make yourself a tidy profit.
During my time consulting for these banks, management did not want to hear about any other solution that wasn't IBM. I suspect that most Fortune 500 companies play a similar game with Dell product - and that would certainly help explain Intel's entrenchment.
Prescott? Surely Not ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Characterised by:
1). Rambling incoherent communications.
2). A violent temper which could blow at any time.
3). A tendancy to do a rapid about about-face whenever challenged by the realities of hard work.
Do we really need a chip like this?
Note: For those not in
Wintel (Score:3, Interesting)
Intel have already lost out on providing XBox2 with a CPU.
Re:Figures (Score:3, Interesting)
ostiguy