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970 Could Trounce Itanium With a Release This Year.
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The 970 is not even supposed to compete with the Itanium, which is being aimed at the server rather than desktop markets.
Itaniums competition will come from IBMs POWER series. Another thing to remember is that the Itanium IA-64 instruction set is also RISC. The only 64-bit offering for x86 will be AMDs new x86-64 processor (set to be released around September i think).
So by the end of the year, We aught to see the Itanium2, the POWER 4 from IBM and whatever Sunss SPARC offering is, in the server market, and the 970, the AMD x86-64 chip and the P4/ on the desktop/ (oh and the G4, hopefully only in Apples consumer range). Interestingly, (assuming that the G4 has been largely retired by this stage) the P4 will be the only 32-bit chip in the high-end desktop range. Cant wait to see the marketing wars on this one.
Itaniums competition will come from IBMs POWER series. Another thing to remember is that the Itanium IA-64 instruction set is also RISC. The only 64-bit offering for x86 will be AMDs new x86-64 processor (set to be released around September i think).
So by the end of the year, We aught to see the Itanium2, the POWER 4 from IBM and whatever Sunss SPARC offering is, in the server market, and the 970, the AMD x86-64 chip and the P4/ on the desktop/ (oh and the G4, hopefully only in Apples consumer range). Interestingly, (assuming that the G4 has been largely retired by this stage) the P4 will be the only 32-bit chip in the high-end desktop range. Cant wait to see the marketing wars on this one.
Well, some of those processors are already out. For example the 64-bit Sun SPARC processor is in it's third generation already. The UltraSPARC 3 has been out for a couple of years. The UltraSPARC 64-bit processor was first introduced in late 1995 or early 1996.
And of course there was the DEC Alpha CPU (remember DEC?) which is a 64-bit processor and it came out in 1992. And MIPS Co. has had a 64-bit processor for a while.
I think that both chips should enter fabrication in or around September. There probably won't be a huge time difference.
AMD was planning an earlier release, but this has been postponed (I dont know the timescales as I haven't been following this). IBM is planning to start production of the 970 in the second half of this year, so I dont think September is an unreasonable estimate for its release.
Personally I hope that IBM is the first out of the door. Though it would be interesting if both chips were released at about the same time. The market would be full of stuff on the move to 64-bit (both for and against) and Intel would be left without a 64-bit consumer offering. Though, in their marketing, Intel will probably still be pushing the clock speed of their chips, which would be higher than the 64-bit chips, even though the SPECInt and SPECfp ratings of the 64-bit chips would be as good, (and hopefully better than) those of the P4
On an aside; once the 970 is released, it would be very interesting to see how lower clocked 970s compare with the Centrino (Intels new mobile chip range) both in terms of performance, battery life and heat dissipation.
Sorry about the length of the responses
Actually the Itanium is not RISC, it has some RISC features, but it is actually VLISW, something like that, like Torovolds said, the chip is great in theroy, but theory is not real world. Intel sunk a lot of money into this chip, and they are not going to let it go, but Torvolds saying it basically sucks, is not a good sign, this could be a major downfall for Intel in the server area.
Thanks for the correction, i probably read 'RISC-like' as 'RISC' somewhere along the line.
Itanium's IA-64 is indeed a VLIW-RISC hybrid. Intel and HP are using the term EPIC (Explicit Parallel Instruction Computing) to describe the architecture. Interesting that after almost a decade they still havent gotten it quite right. 'Itanic' may end up being a good moniker after all
It would also be interesting to know what Linus's opinions on the powerpc are, especially given his affinity for the x86 design.
Originally posted by Zaid
Thanks for the correction, i probably read 'RISC-like' as 'RISC' somewhere along the line.
Interesting that after almost a decade they still havent gotten it quite right. 'Itanic' may end up being a good moniker after all
It would also be interesting to know what Linus's opinions on the powerpc are, especially given his affinity for the x86 design.
Intel's 64 bit chip strategy is crazy. I can't figure out what they're thinking. Itanic is clearly not going to be a good desktop chip until .065 micron (probably even smaller than that), and before then, they're going to NEED to address more than 32 bits. Unless their "Tejas" processor is a lot more than it seems, AMD's going to make a killing, and Apple shouldn't do to badly either. Itanic is fast, but it's fast because it has a huge budget and several thousand dollars worth of on chip cache (I've heard that over 90% of its die is cache). The Pentium 4 squishes it in SPECint, and the POWER4+ and Alpha EV7 give it a lot of competition in SPECfp.
Maybe Intel will keep pushing the processor speed and market that. That way even though Macs will have advanced 64bit chip that runs at 1.8 Ghz, Intel could have 32bit P4 that runs around 4Ghz. Most consumers will think P4 is faster simply because of its raw speed. This will probably be easier and more economic for Intel.
What I'm curious about is how PC application developers will react when AMD introduces 64bit chip and Intel does not. How will they make their applications? 32bit only? 64bit only? Probably 32bit only, since AMD 64bit chip is supposed to be backwards compatible? That would make AMD's effort to bring 64bit chip total waste of time.
What I'm curious about is how PC application developers will react when AMD introduces 64bit chip and Intel does not. How will they make their applications? 32bit only? 64bit only? Probably 32bit only, since AMD 64bit chip is supposed to be backwards compatible? That would make AMD's effort to bring 64bit chip total waste of time.
They WILL do that, but it won't matter. When one machine is 3-4GHz with 8GB of ram, and the other is 4-6GHz with 4GB of ram, guess which one wins? Pretty soon we'll be getting ram totals high enough to load an entire OS install plus apps into ram, while Intel will still be stuck with 4GB, except on their Xeons, which use a slow kludge to support more.