Detailed analysis of Core architecture

[brainysmurf]

Would anyone care to translate this for us non-engineers?
Or even better, put it into redneck English "so I kin unnerstand it."
Thanks!

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2748

 

[Bluefinger]

The Core processor is practically a revamped Pentium 3, with lots of good features added onto it. Of course, it isn't exactly a revamped P3, but it owes a alot of its design to the success of the P3. It has huge bandwidth capabilities and is a very flexible processor, much more so than the current AMD architecture (Which is very good... so it says something about the upcoming Core processor). Plus, the move away from hyperthreading is good, meaning less emphasis on threading applications in order to get more performance out of them, and less threading means less debugging for those lazy developers!

 

[gradius]

Do you guys think this is it for AMD or will they be able to counter?

 

[linux_0]

Do you guys think this is it for AMD or will they be able to counter?

I believe we will pleasantly surprised by the 65nm AMDs.

 

[xombie2000]

Do you guys think this is it for AMD or will they be able to counter?

I believe we will pleasantly surprised by the 65nm AMDs.

Is there some major architecture change that is being made or is just shrinking the die?

 

[Bluefinger]

Well... think about it, whilst they are shrinking the die, it would be rather stupid not to make some improvements. Come on, by shrinking the die, they also get some extra headroom for the improvements, so by not adding extra features and optimising the architecture more would be seen as a very foolish move by AMD. Plus, AMD have still got the advantage of having the memory controller integrated, so with the with the new 65nm process, we should see some nice optimisations. All in all, AMD should still surprise us all, even Intel.

 

[xombie2000]

Optimization does not mean new architecture and that was my question. We can certainly speculate all day but I thought maybe there was a more definitive answer by the way the post was made.

 

[linux_0]

Well... think about it, whilst they are shrinking the die, it would be rather stupid not to make some improvements. Come on, by shrinking the die, they also get some extra headroom for the improvements, so by not adding extra features and optimising the architecture more would be seen as a very foolish move by AMD. Plus, AMD have still got the advantage of having the memory controller integrated, so with the with the new 65nm process, we should see some nice optimisations. All in all, AMD should still surprise us all, even Intel.

Aye :-D

We'll have to wait and see.

 

[xombie2000]

Ok so it's all speculation, thanks!

 

[BGP_Spook]

Indeed it is all specualtion, but that makes it fun. :twisted:

I agree with Bluefinger.
AMD will be a little down for a couple of months. Until the begining of Q1 07 but then they will get a die shrink.

Along with the die shrink it has been widely reported that a change in how AMD makes their transistors should yield something like ~15% faster performance. Added to that (what I expect to be) significant revisions in the on-die mem. controler and it should be about neck and neck between Intel and AMD.

 

[dragabain]

I personally think that AMD is going to take the back seat when Intel releases Conroe's Core architecture for the desktop. But AMD will eventually come back with something better than Core. Its like Nvidia and ATI.

 

[xombie2000]

I personally think that AMD is going to take the back seat when Intel releases Conroe's Core architecture for the desktop. But AMD will eventually come back with something better than Core. Its like Nvidia and ATI.

Many of us would be very surprised if this didn't happen. Like you said it's NVidia vs ATI type of situation. It's being very optimistic to think that AMD will just pull something out of thin air and be ready by Q1 '07. Processor design and manufacturing is very expensive and exhausting, after all a modern processor can have 150,000,000 - 300,000,000+ transitors.

 

[spud]

Well... think about it, whilst they are shrinking the die, it would be rather stupid not to make some improvements. Come on, by shrinking the die, they also get some extra headroom for the improvements, so by not adding extra features and optimising the architecture more would be seen as a very foolish move by AMD. Plus, AMD have still got the advantage of having the memory controller integrated, so with the with the new 65nm process, we should see some nice optimisations. All in all, AMD should still surprise us all, even Intel.

Funny you say that I remeber the process shift for the K7.

 

[gOJDO]

Well... think about it, whilst they are shrinking the die, it would be rather stupid not to make some improvements. Come on, by shrinking the die, they also get some extra headroom for the improvements, so by not adding extra features and optimising the architecture more would be seen as a very foolish move by AMD. Plus, AMD have still got the advantage of having the memory controller integrated, so with the with the new 65nm process, we should see some nice optimisations. All in all, AMD should still surprise us all, even Intel.

no, the micro-arch improvements are not connected with the lithographic process.
no, the IMC is not adventage, it is disadventage for the DDR2, becouse it is not optimized for high latency. it is taking space on the die, and that space is used as L2 on the Core arch chips.

 

[Caboose-1]

Do you guys think this is it for AMD or will they be able to counter?

I made a whole thread about that and it has over 700 posts and over 35000 hits. Apperantly people were interested and the general aura was that they will survive.

 

[WoodenPupa]

So what kind of multi-tasking performance is this architechture going to have? It sounds like they're dismissing the whole issue.

 

[iterations]

A dual core, short pipeline, 4MB L2, one-cycle to complete all SSE instructions, memory disambiguating, fully shared cache architecture is overlooking multitasking? Nah. There just haven't been many multitasking benchmarks released yet. I doub't they overlooked it, just be patient. 8)

 

[Bluefinger]

Well... think about it, whilst they are shrinking the die, it would be rather stupid not to make some improvements. Come on, by shrinking the die, they also get some extra headroom for the improvements, so by not adding extra features and optimising the architecture more would be seen as a very foolish move by AMD. Plus, AMD have still got the advantage of having the memory controller integrated, so with the with the new 65nm process, we should see some nice optimisations. All in all, AMD should still surprise us all, even Intel.

no, the micro-arch improvements are not connected with the lithographic process.
no, the IMC is not adventage, it is disadventage for the DDR2, becouse it is not optimized for high latency. it is taking space on the die, and that space is used as L2 on the Core arch chips.

Well, an IMC may not give a full advantage, but I see it as one. I have noticed that the current IMC in the first lineout of processors for AM2 aren't optimised that well to DDR2, though they do get a performance boost out of the RAM, the latencies do cut down on that boost, limiting the overall boost in performance to about 5%, give or take. The thing is AMD has a lot of pressure coming in from Intel over the Core processor and so, whilst AMD shrinks the lithographic process for their current architecture, it would be foolish not to optimise the architecture at the same time. The IMC really needs the extra optimisations in order to be able to deal with the current latencies of DDR2 RAM, so it can really make use of that extra bandwidth. Besides, though the IMC reduces the amount of L2 cache that can be put on die, it shortens the pipeline required in order to access memory, which is why these latencies affect AMD processors more than Intel processors. Of course, all of this is speculation in the end of the day, and I am very keen in seeing what both companies can do with their new processors once they are out on the market.

 

[WoodenPupa]

I am still wondering how good the multitasking performance will be. It seems like HT is now history for the time being?? I'm confused...help!

 

[Bluefinger]

Multi-tasking should be fine. Look at AMD's dual-core processors, they don't have an equivalent of hyper-threading on their processors, but they still do very well, if not better than Intel's dual-core processors, which have hyper-threading. Just by looking at the Core processor specs, I can see that Intel are aiming for overall performance rather than just mult-tasking or boosting threaded apps, which is a good thing if I remind you. I reckon you will still be able to play a decent game and have loads of stuff running in the background with Intel Core processors, but of course, to really know if it can do what it says, we will have to wait for the chips to come out and for some serious testing and benchmarking to be conducted.

 

[linux_0]

Multi-tasking should be fine. Look at AMD's dual-core processors, they don't have an equivalent of hyper-threading on their processors, but they still do very well, if not better than Intel's dual-core processors, which have hyper-threading. Just by looking at the Core processor specs, I can see that Intel are aiming for overall performance rather than just mult-tasking or boosting threaded apps, which is a good thing if I remind you. I reckon you will still be able to play a decent game and have loads of stuff running in the background with Intel Core processors, but of course, to really know if it can do what it says, we will have to wait for the chips to come out and for some serious testing and benchmarking to be conducted.

Indeed. :trophy: :-D

HT is a more of a gimick than anything else. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it hurts.

 

[Action_Man]

How is it a gimmick if it helps?

 

[Bluefinger]

Multi-tasking should be fine. Look at AMD's dual-core processors, they don't have an equivalent of hyper-threading on their processors, but they still do very well, if not better than Intel's dual-core processors, which have hyper-threading. Just by looking at the Core processor specs, I can see that Intel are aiming for overall performance rather than just mult-tasking or boosting threaded apps, which is a good thing if I remind you. I reckon you will still be able to play a decent game and have loads of stuff running in the background with Intel Core processors, but of course, to really know if it can do what it says, we will have to wait for the chips to come out and for some serious testing and benchmarking to be conducted.

Indeed. :trophy: :-D

HT is a more of a gimick than anything else. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it hurts.

I wouldn't say it is a gimmick, since it does help performance, but I wouldn't go so far as saying it is a good feature, since its performance boost does not apply to all programs. If Intel decided to leave it out of their Core processors, it means Intel didn't see how hyperthreading could benefit the architecture, unlike with Netburst. Besides, hyperthreading does increase problems with hotspots on the processor.

 

[weskurtz81]

Of course they will, the question is when.

 

[captaincharisma]

Well if it like the PIII then i hope they don't go back to the good ol SEC cartridge type CPU's.