news.com.com— Advanced Micro Devices in August will begin selling its quad-core "Barcelona" Opteron processors, models that answer Intel's current products but soon will face stiffer competition.
Jun 29, 2007View in Crawl 4
So on july 22 when the core duo drops price wont amd have another price drop to? Just to counter intel..If thats the case ill go for the top of the line amd just becouse I can still get the extra processor which no program or better yet any game has put to good use to date...Same will go when those 4 processor cpu's come out..Why waste the extra money thats ..BEER MONEY !
geminitojanus -"True Quad Core" isn't just a marketing point - it's a pretty relevant technical point. Most parallel software is written assuming that the different processors will be in completely different sockets on the motherboard - that communication between processors is very expensive. The native dual core chips change this - With Core 2 Duo's shared L2 cache and Althlon X2's on-chip hypertransport link the two cores can communicate very quickly. With today's quad-core solutions (either Intel's Core 2 Quad MCM or AMD's 4x4 two-socket system) it's really bad: communication speed between cores varies massively - on chip is fast, off chip is comparatively very slow. With native quad core, all communication between cores is fast. That allows app writers to take advantage of inter-thread communication more - which will eventually lead to much faster software.
The difference between DDR2 and DDR3 is pretty small compared to the bandwidth gain from 4-way NUMA with on-chip memory controllers. The Xeons are neat, but for a 4 socket server running some memory-limited task where you can use NUMA, they really can't even touch Opterons.
Sure, sequential programming has worked for a long time, has been the most efficient solution, and has gotten free performance improvements as clock speeds increased. Programming in an innately concurrent style has worked for a long time too, and has been slightly less efficient than sequential code. Now innately concurrent code gets the free performance boost and sequential programming doesn't... it's time for people writing performance-critical code to learn a new style.
<a class="user" href="http://game.paramegsoft.com/">http://game.paramegsoft.com/</a>Who cares how fast Penryn or Neh-who will be- FACT: most applications are not designed for multicore processors, and the ones that are, cost a hefty buck because they are professional applications and time is money. It also happens to be that new technology CPUs are close to $1000. So top performance is for top players. Who cares how fast of a processor you have when XviD does 75% utilization- it's still inefficient. Intel will still spend a lot of money convincing you that you need that power. Now just imagine what will Intel have to do to counter $300 native(cheaper to make) quad core and how much will that eat into their margins both in home and server market.FACT: most home computers idle majority of the time - it sure helps to spend heaps of money for that stellar performance. I think just recently after seeing HP's success, Dell realized the "Wal-mart" potential- customers going for the lowest price regardless of brand or performance- reason- consumer appliances have been around for a while and people are getting used to having a wide choice of prices with the lowest being most popular. AMD has been the king of "cheaper than Intel" and is the only logical choice for rock bottom computer price...it happens that AMD makes video cards too...hmmm let's throw 1, 2 or 3 of them in this brand spanking Dell and sell it in Wal-mart (in front the heart of Wal-mart, right next to electronics department) and see what happens. Time will tell the reasons for the delays with Barcelona but I wouldn't be surprised when Dell comes out in August (back to school) loaded with them.<a class="user" href="http://www.paramegsoft.com/forum/">http://www.paramegsoft.com/forum/</a>
bnajbertJun 30, 2007
What happens on the 22nd of July? Is it all your birthdays? LOL
mofokerJun 30, 2007
So on july 22 when the core duo drops price wont amd have another price drop to? Just to counter intel..If thats the case ill go for the top of the line amd just becouse I can still get the extra processor which no program or better yet any game has put to good use to date...Same will go when those 4 processor cpu's come out..Why waste the extra money thats ..BEER MONEY !
chandonJun 30, 2007
geminitojanus -"True Quad Core" isn't just a marketing point - it's a pretty relevant technical point. Most parallel software is written assuming that the different processors will be in completely different sockets on the motherboard - that communication between processors is very expensive. The native dual core chips change this - With Core 2 Duo's shared L2 cache and Althlon X2's on-chip hypertransport link the two cores can communicate very quickly. With today's quad-core solutions (either Intel's Core 2 Quad MCM or AMD's 4x4 two-socket system) it's really bad: communication speed between cores varies massively - on chip is fast, off chip is comparatively very slow. With native quad core, all communication between cores is fast. That allows app writers to take advantage of inter-thread communication more - which will eventually lead to much faster software.
chandonJul 1, 2007
The difference between DDR2 and DDR3 is pretty small compared to the bandwidth gain from 4-way NUMA with on-chip memory controllers. The Xeons are neat, but for a 4 socket server running some memory-limited task where you can use NUMA, they really can't even touch Opterons.
chandonJul 1, 2007
Sure, sequential programming has worked for a long time, has been the most efficient solution, and has gotten free performance improvements as clock speeds increased. Programming in an innately concurrent style has worked for a long time too, and has been slightly less efficient than sequential code. Now innately concurrent code gets the free performance boost and sequential programming doesn't... it's time for people writing performance-critical code to learn a new style.
thegreatantiJul 10, 2007
AMD will be crushed by Intel's Penryn. Period.
thegreatantiJul 10, 2007
You meant: Sell your AMD stock. Now it has some value, next year it won't.
mhmdkhamisDec 14, 2007
<a class="user" href="http://game.paramegsoft.com/">http://game.paramegsoft.com/</a>Who cares how fast Penryn or Neh-who will be- FACT: most applications are not designed for multicore processors, and the ones that are, cost a hefty buck because they are professional applications and time is money. It also happens to be that new technology CPUs are close to $1000. So top performance is for top players. Who cares how fast of a processor you have when XviD does 75% utilization- it's still inefficient. Intel will still spend a lot of money convincing you that you need that power. Now just imagine what will Intel have to do to counter $300 native(cheaper to make) quad core and how much will that eat into their margins both in home and server market.FACT: most home computers idle majority of the time - it sure helps to spend heaps of money for that stellar performance. I think just recently after seeing HP's success, Dell realized the "Wal-mart" potential- customers going for the lowest price regardless of brand or performance- reason- consumer appliances have been around for a while and people are getting used to having a wide choice of prices with the lowest being most popular. AMD has been the king of "cheaper than Intel" and is the only logical choice for rock bottom computer price...it happens that AMD makes video cards too...hmmm let's throw 1, 2 or 3 of them in this brand spanking Dell and sell it in Wal-mart (in front the heart of Wal-mart, right next to electronics department) and see what happens. Time will tell the reasons for the delays with Barcelona but I wouldn't be surprised when Dell comes out in August (back to school) loaded with them.<a class="user" href="http://www.paramegsoft.com/forum/">http://www.paramegsoft.com/forum/</a>