AMD to ship Athlon 64s as Athlon XPs

[superpsa]

<A HREF="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/32467.html" target="_new"> Click!</A>

Interesting.

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[slvr_phoenix]

It's very interesting.

And some of it even makes sense. I mean it's fairly obvious by now that the whole K8 core that the Opterons/Athlon64s use is just a few additions and minor improvements to the K7 core. There's really very little different in the architecture. So K8s with some features disabled would make a great K7 replacement.

And that would allow AMD to shift their <i>entire</i> FAB space to producing K8s instead of having a mixture of production lines. (Which in turn would increase the amount of chips they could produce while decreasing production costs.)

And of course getting rid of that pesky ancient SocketA means that they can:
1) Force users to buy new mobos. (Which will be a major temporary boost in income for partners like nVidia.)
2) Have a lot more room to grow with future chips because they're not being hindered by being forced into the contraints of the ancient SocketA format anymore.

All in all it's a very smart move. Of course it's basically pissing on all current Athlon owners who were expecting AMD to at the very least continue producing K7s through the 0.09 micron era, but hey, sometimes these things just <i>have</i> to be done. I mean the ISA bus was dropped for a reason. So too will be SocketA by the looks of it.

I do have one qualm though. Forcing the AXP replacement stripped-down K8 to <i>only</i> run in 16/32-bit mode <i>is</i> a bad idea in my opinion. I mean I could talk about this one for hours, but it all basically boils down to that unless Intel picks up the x86-64 concept too, AMD's only real hope on selling software developers on porting to 64-bit is to prove that there is an actual user base worth targetting/supporting. So <i>anything</i> that AMD does to decrease the number of people who can run x86-64 software is shooting themselves in the foot. Despite the fluffy-bunny sunshine-filled happy-world that AMD seems to live in, most software developers think of x86-64 as a bane, not a boon. And <i>most</i> software development groups won't go out of their way to target small niche groups of users no matter how easy you make it to port the code. They aim at the largest user base because that's where they'll make their money. (Thus why both Mac users and Linux users have such a small/long-delayed selection of games compared to Windows users.)

That's just the way it works. I mean would you rather spend your next five grand porting your software to a market so small that you'll be lucky to even make up that money, or would you rather spend it fixing bugs and better optimizing your software to give the majority of the market even more of a reason to buy it? It's really a no-brainer from a business perspective. The sooner AMD realizes this and starts convincing <i>users</i> to switch to x86-64, the better their chances of creating a user base large enough for software developers to actually have a <i>financial</i> reason to support.

But anywho, back to the more interesting stuffus, and it is is intersting indeed. Thanks for the link.

Though it makes me wonder what all of this talk about Appalbred and Thorton is then. I mean those make a certain sense too, but if AMD can <i>actually</i> pull off a complete shift to K8 production then they'd have to be nuts to diversify their K7 line so much just before they drop it. **ROFL** I'm starting to wonder if AMD isn't currently flailing around in the water, trying not to drown. It kind of reminds me of the Terminator2 shape-changing death scene. How many things are AMD going to shift through before they find a concept that works or die trying?

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[superpsa]

I think the problem is there's a lot of theories going around about all these different cores and CPUs and AMD haven't actually properly said "This is the new desktop chip", "this is the new server chip" or "this is the new budget chip" all they seem to do is agree with every rumour on the go Isn't the Applebred just for developing countries or something? I don't know...DAMN YOU AMD

AMD Is An Anagram Of MAD, Intel Is An Anagram Of INLET, Cyrix...Ah Who Cares?

 

[eden]

Haha, the core will likely be the same core of the Athlon 64s and there will be some hack to unlock the x86-64 registers, LOL!

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[eden]

What's more interesting and rather suspicious, is how will they manage compatibility of mainboards currently using Socket 754, with those who have some architecturally-changed CPUs in them. I don't know if they can support both kinds, but one thing is for sure, they are using one Socket for two cores that vary in BIT technology.

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