off topic (amd vs ppc)

[ffakr]

Originally posted by manitoubalck
And the cost of this would be😕 not good to say the least.😡
Also the preformance gains are negligable at this time, using the Graphics cards that have been released with DDRII thus far as a guide.

If this is the case, it might be a case of Intel and RAMBUS all over again.

I think this would be a case of early adoption of the next big thing rather than some great performance leap. DDR2 isn't especially compelling right now but it's just in its infancy.
It is, however, a technology that is designed to scale farther than DDR. It would be a good move for Apple to adopt DDR2 in the near future, but it doesn't have to be in REV 2. Dual Channel DDR 400 still has life in it and the G5 would probably do fine by sticking with it till next summer. Apple could always simply rev the system to use a faster DDR variant. If they release an rev2 early next year, they could probably ship DDR 466 or DDR 500. Though limited to marginal 'OC' markets now, they'll likely be more popular in the near future.... especially if Apple orders a quarter million DDR 500 DIMMs.

 

[Tim Flynn]

Originally posted by Amdfan Well AMD does around 20 % of all processors sold in the world.

Actually PC processors only account for 2% of all processors sold in the world. So AMD's PC processors account for only 0.4% of world wide processor market.

World wide processor market includes DSPs, 4,8,16,32,64 bit processors.

Check out Jim Turley

P.S. Last year I heard a quote about if you rounded to the nearest whole percent MS Windows market realtive to all processors, it rounded to zero (0).

 

[mvc]

Originally posted by manitoubalck
Ha ha, cough🙄, while this is only mildly amusing, what on earth doest it have to do with this topic?

Even mild amusement is probably preferable to pointless argument. 😉

 

[Amdfan]

So you compare the beta of OSX to a final version of Windows? Frankly, that's kinda stupid.

Funny I didn't know that apple shiped ther computers with beta operating systems.

- about my cube, I got it for cheap cause they would not sell at my work. For 300$ it was a nice computer. I don't imagin that i would ever spend 1000$ on any outdated computer (yes outdated). any single g4 sytem sold for 1000$ is a ripoff. Just like any sub 2 GHz p4 system for 1000 is a rip off.
--- World wide PC market.
the dsp's 4 and 8 bit procs alnoe make up the vast majority of the market
and if you look on the front page of his site he says that the pentium acounts for 2% of the microprocesor market. AMD wiht all of its chips has out sold the Origional Pentium many many times over

 

[the_mole1314]

If I am not mistaken, they booted into OS9 and you had to change the start-up disk to OSX, if I'm not mistaken. That's what you had to do with all the new white iBooks back in 2001.

 

[ffakr]

Originally posted by manitoubalck
Didn't the very first G4's come with a beta version of OS-X?

Well, you can make a strong argument that 10.0 was a Beta OS. It didn't even have a DVD player (though XP didn't have the codec for playing DVDs either).

 

[Amdfan]

Or how about Intel who release their chipsets early next year...

Intel will not have a ddr-2 chipset till latter this year. And yes Intel is getting DDR-2 from micron but they have no plans to use it until later, when socket t comes out. I may be wrong, if you can find any information on future Intel chipsets let me know.

I remember buying a stick of 128 pc 2100 DDR the month it came out for $278. So I would bet that DDR-2 would be almost as expensive.

AMD licensed SOI from the AIM partners.. I'm very impressed that they'll be able to make a much larger processor run so much cooler than a technological lightweight like IBM on the same process.

The reason for AMD to be able to make there chips run coolers is because AMD's transistors have a lot less leakage when the transistor is off, compared to IBM and Intel. The less leakage you have the less power it requires to run the chip and thus, with less power, equals less heat.

 

[ffakr]

Originally posted by Amdfan
The reason for AMD to be able to make there chips run coolers is because AMD's transistors have a lot less leakage when the transistor is off, compared to IBM and Intel. The less leakage you have the less power it requires to run the chip and thus, with less power, equals less heat.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this a 'feature' of a particular process. From an architectural standpoint (call it the 10 micron view as opposed to the '10,000 ft. view'), these different processors with different ISAs look essentially the same. Intel, Motorola, IBM, and AMD all have their own process though. They don't all make a .13 micron wafer in the same manner, they don't even use identical materials.
Your assertion regarding current AMD processor being more efficient may or may not be true, but it doesn't seem to remain likely when AMD moves to .09 micron since they will be licensing the .09 micron SOI process from IBM. I would expect that the resultant chips will perform very similarly regardless of whether they are designed to run the x86-64 ISA or the PPC ISA.

The real difference would be, what core voltage to they ship at, what clock speed, and how big they are. These factors will all be related though me thinks. I have no reason to believe that the .09 micron PPC 970 will be larger than the .09 micron Athlon64 even if the 970 doubles the L2 to 1MB. The Opteron is currently quite a bit bigger than the 970, more so than could be explained by the extra L2 and large L1 caches.

Side note, I've never personally heard this about AMD gates. I'm really surprised since AMD processors have never historically performed much better than P4s as far as thermal output. My 1.3 with the stock AMD heat shink (which I put on instead of a very loud Thermaltake dual fan orb, to no ill effect) has always run at idle at around 60° Celsius! PowerPCs, though smaller, have always run significantly cooler than PC chips on the same size process.

 

[Amdfan]

but it doesn't seem to remain likely when AMD moves to .09 micron since they will be licensing the .09 micron SOI process from IBM. I would expect that the resultant chips will perform very similarly regardless of whether they are designed to run the x86-64 ISA or the PPC ISA.

AMD Is co developing the 90nm w/SOI with IBM. Also, where do you think IBM got the PPC architecture? That can handle 64bits AND 32bits natively
Right now AMD's transitors have 2 gates insted of just 1 compared to IBM and Intel. That is a big big diffrence in the designes. Soon, 65nm, AMD's transistors will have 3 gates.
The only thing IBM is helping AMD with is SOI.

 

[Sun Baked]

Originally posted by Amdfan
AMD Is co developing the 90nm w/SOI with IBM. Also, where do you think IBM got the PPC architecture? That can handle 64bits AND 32bits natively
Right now AMD's transitors have 2 gates insted of just 1 compared to IBM and Intel. That is a big big diffrence in the designes. Soon, 65nm, AMD's transistors will have 3 gates.
The only thing IBM is helping AMD with is SOI. [/B]

IBM and Motorola co-developed the PPC, with some input from Apple since they needed a new chip to replace the 68k series.

Before AMD decided to have IBM Fab processors, they were working with Motorola on process tech. And the Motorola-AMD partnership was buying process fab tech from IBM.

Motorola is still partners with IBM on the basic PPC ISA (32- and 64-bit) and the new Book-E subset of the PPC, but Motorola is using somebody else for Fab tech.

So yes I can see where the 64-bit and/or the PPC wouldn't exist without AMD.

 

[Amdfan]

Alderwood is an 800MHz dual DDR2 chipset which runs in so called "turbo" mode and is similar to Grantsdale P, which launches at the same time.(second quarter)
--- thats from the inq today
that chipset would equal 6.4 + 6.4 Gb/s = 12.8GB/s bandwidth for Intel or if its DDR 533 it would be more.
g5 bandwith @ 1.5ghz fsb 12GB/s. 2 chips @ 24GB/s
Of cource both these architectures pale in comparison of AMD's bandwidth due to the onchip memory controler. 😛
If the g5 was to add an onboard memory controler as say dual channel @ 6.4GB/s per proc. That would be the most improvement that they would see next to going to scsi again. Think if you could remove half of the trafic on the FSB, and inclued really fast hard drives. Then add PCI express. All I can say is if they did that and it wasn't 10K a lot of people would buy it.
Now that what they should do for there 20th birthday 😛

 

[Telomar]

Originally posted by Amdfan
Intel will not have a ddr-2 chipset till latter this year. And yes Intel is getting DDR-2 from micron but they have no plans to use it until later, when socket t comes out. I may be wrong, if you can find any information on future Intel chipsets let me know.

Just do a search for Grantsdale. It's widely acknowledged it'll appear Q2 of next year. Nobody will have a chipset supporting DDR-2 prior to then contrary to what rumours claim.

Originally posted by Amdfan
The reason for AMD to be able to make there chips run coolers is because AMD's transistors have a lot less leakage when the transistor is off, compared to IBM and Intel. The less leakage you have the less power it requires to run the chip and thus, with less power, equals less heat.

AMD Is co developing the 90nm w/SOI with IBM. Also, where do you think IBM got the PPC architecture? That can handle 64bits AND 32bits natively
Right now AMD's transitors have 2 gates insted of just 1 compared to IBM and Intel. That is a big big diffrence in the designes. Soon, 65nm, AMD's transistors will have 3 gates.
The only thing IBM is helping AMD with is SOI.

PPC was designed with 64 bit in mind and has a history of at least 5 years in the 64 bit arena, since the 620. That's not considering the POWER series or some of IBMs other designs though.

As for power leakage through transistors although it's true that becomes a far more significant problem as transistor sizes shrink it's hardly the only way to minimise power usage.

Finally that's just nonsense. IBM has dual gate transistors patents and Intel has its own tri-gate transistor that will appear around 2007, about the same time AMD and IBM and most other manufacturers will introduce their own funnily enough or about when the 45 nm manufacturing processes come online.

 

[rickag]

Amdfan
"AMD Is co developing the 90nm w/SOI with IBM. Also, where do you think IBM got the PPC architecture? That can handle 64bits AND 32bits natively"

I'm confused, totally. How is AMD at all involved in PPC, especially the ISA?

The PPC ISA was written during the AIM Alliance to be 64 bit and the 32 bit instructions as a subset of these instructions. This was thoroughly hashed out over @ Arse Technica with plenty of supporting links to IBM documentation. Not once in any of the discussions, did I read AMD was responsible for the PPC in any fashion, architectually or process technology.

 

[Sun Baked]

Originally posted by rickag
I'm confused, totally. How is AMD at all involved in PPC, especially the ISA?

They were working with Motorola on the die shrinks, and advancing their process technology -- but that was also the brick wall that everybody splatted into at the same time, resulting in poor yields. And when AMD-Motorola needed help they turned to IBM for technology.

Now AMD is working with IBM, and Motorola went off to another technology source.

Can't you see the connection? If AMD was helping Motorola make PPCs, and now that they're using IBM as a technology partner/source, and IBM makes PPCs -- it means AMD invented the PPC. Sort of like Papa John invented the pizza. 😉

 

[pgwalsh]

Originally posted by Sun Baked
They were working with Motorola on the die shrinks, and advancing their process technology -- but that was also the brick wall that everybody splatted into at the same time, resulting in poor yields. And when AMD-Motorola needed help they turned to IBM for technology.

Now AMD is working with IBM, and Motorola went off to another technology source.

Can't you see the connection? If AMD was helping Motorola make PPCs, and now that they're using IBM as a technology partner/source, and IBM makes PPCs -- it means AMD invented the PPC. Sort of like Papa John invented the pizza. 😉

Or AMD is going to do the same thing to IBM as Motorola.

😱

 

[ffakr]

Originally posted by Amdfan
AMD Is co developing the 90nm w/SOI with IBM. Also, where do you think IBM got the PPC architecture? That can handle 64bits AND 32bits natively
Right now AMD's transitors have 2 gates insted of just 1 compared to IBM and Intel. That is a big big diffrence in the designes. Soon, 65nm, AMD's transistors will have 3 gates.
The only thing IBM is helping AMD with is SOI.

hahaha... You are a dumbass.

The PPC ISA was designed from the start to be 64bit compatible. Though the product never came to market, IBM was working on a 64bit PowerPC back in 1995! It was called the PPC 620, and companies like Bull [supercomputers] actually marketed products on the chip, though IBM pulled the plug before release.

sheesh.

the contention that IBM learned how to make 64 bit (or even 64bit / 32bit) processors from AMD is by far the stupidest thing you've said yet.
PowerPC is a subset of the 64bit Power ISA. 64bit Power processors can run PowerPC code, even 32bit PPC code.

 

[Amdfan]

its more like the ceo of the proc devision at motorola was working at AMD and Motorola at the time. ehhh?
--- edit
Also AMD was working on x86-64 at the same time. Like in 1995


ffker, do you go to any 2600 meetings?

 

[Sun Baked]

Originally posted by Amdfan
its more like the ceo of the proc devision at motorola was working at AMD and Motorola at the time. ehhh?
--- edit
Also AMD was working on x86-64 at the same time. Like in 1995


ffker, do you go to any 2600 meetings?

So by that logic, I guess that means Apple invented, scripted, and produced the movie Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc. and/or any other Pixar movie?

[edit - oops wrong movie]

Somebody, PLEASE stop this silly fight...

 

[Telomar]

Originally posted by Amdfan
its more like the ceo of the proc devision at motorola was working at AMD and Motorola at the time. ehhh?
--- edit
Also AMD was working on x86-64 at the same time. Like in 1995


ffker, do you go to any 2600 meetings?

x86-64 was under development for around 4 years I believe it was. As for Hector Ruiz he was at Motorola from 1997, well after PPC was developed. Anybody with any familiarity with x86-64 and PPC can inform you they are not similar or related though. x86-64 is similar to current x86 really in that it is just an extension of the old architecture, even AMD themself will tell you this. There is no connection between x86-64 and PPC and to claim otherwise is silly.

 

[ffakr]

I think we are done here

I think it's pretty clear that every argument amdfan has posted in this thread has been trashed.

-AMD did not teach IBM how to make processors capable of running 32bit and 64bit code.
-I've found NO indication that AMD is currently using a dual-gate process, though I've seen references to them looking into it for future processes (and triple-gate by 2007!). I've found more info about Other companies work into dual/triple-gates
-x86-64 was NOT in development 10 years ago
-AMD will NOT SOON have .65nm triple gate transistors (see above.. 2007!)
-Cubes did not have rampant overheating problems
-A Voodoo PC with a 150 watt heat pipe (and a heatsink/case) does not prove that Athlon64s run cool
-SPEC Does run slower with Hyperthreading on (and spec isn't a great isolator of Processor performance)
-Apple Did NOT cripple the Dell in benchmarks (as reported on the soapbox)
-Opterons do NOT always beat G5s in benchmarks
-G5s Do have different pipeline lengths in different functional units (it is possible to do this dispite amdfan's claims)

I'm done. Does anyone here think he knows what he is talking about? He came in here telling us that Mac forums were full of people spouting crap and fud. Unfortunately, pretty much everthing he has said doesn't stand up to scrutiny. His arguments fall by the wayside, one by one, as they are all debunked.

On to the next topic. I'm going to bed, and I'm going to appologize to my Athlon for AMDFan. ;-)

ffakr.

P.S. No, I don't go to 2600 meetings. I've read a few issues but I don't find phone freaking interesting and most of the other topics don't stimulate my curiosity either. I've got a few old copies, but for the most part I flip through them at the rack and put them back.

 

[Amdfan]

your so silly ffaker.
you have disproved 3 at most. and those were not even close to the most important one I posted.
BTW you should be banned because you directly insulted me.

-Cubes did not have rampant overheating problems
-A Voodoo PC with a 150 watt heat pipe (and a heatsink/case) does not prove that Athlon64s run cool
-SPEC Does run slower with Hyperthreading on (and spec isn't a great isolator of Processor performance)
-Apple Did NOT cripple the Dell in benchmarks (as reported on the soapbox)
-Opterons do NOT always beat G5s in benchmarks
-G5s Do have different pipeline lengths in different functional units (it is possible to do this dispite amdfan's claims)

-my cube had overheating issues.
-athlon 64's use less watts then the g5
-why did apple use SPEC if it isnt a good judge of performance? And why if the p4's with HT on beat the apple benchmarks(even though HT APARENTLY slows performance)?
- opteron was only beat on one benchmark program hardly a victory.
-g5's DO have a set pipeline lenth, AltiVec can so a differing number of instructions

 

[the_mole1314]

I'm sick of this ****. Just nobody reply and let this thing die.