sledgehammer for pc or work station

[wapaaga]

i've been looking around alot and i can't quite figure out who the slegehammer is target toward

the pc market or the workstation market
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by wapaaga on 01/24/01 09:02 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[mpjesse]

Well, AMD says it'll be targeted towards servers and it probably will be- at first. So far the only intel chip that has successfully been targeted at servers is the Xeon. Intel always said their high end chips would be "targeted for servers" and they always ended up in desktop PC's. I suspect that it'll eventually end up in desktops- only because It'll be the first processor able to run 64 bit code/OS's... which will be a landmark for PC's. That's probably why AMD hasn't come right out and said "this will be a server only chip" like Intel has said with it's Itanium. I think Intel will screw this one up too. They'll make the damn Itanium too frigin expensive for avergage people to buy and AMD will make the Sledgehammer cheap. Unless Intel makes a castrated version of the Itanium- I think AMD will once again dominate the price/performance sector this year and next year.

The sledgehammer and Itanium can be compared to the 386 in terms of technological advancement.

-MP Jesse

 

[Guest]

.... The 'Hammers will first be released in the ClawHammer variant at the end of 2001 for PC usage. In Q1 '02 or so the full-fledged server SledgeHammer is expected.

.... Both could be used in servers just as K6-2's, K6-III's, Pentiums, PIIs, PIIIs, Xeons maybe even PIVs have been and are being used in servers right now.

.... However, those are simple, cheap, lowest end servers and only penetrate a little bit into the server arena.

.... intel only has about 1-2% of the server market and only the 32bit segment. The 64 bit companies like Sun Microsystems, IBM, Dell, Compaq, and some others are the big names in servers.

.... OTOH, SledgeHammers are aimed at mid-range to high end servers and AMD wants the biggest server OEMs to pick up on them and use them in some of the biggest, fastest, highest volume, and most expensive servers including those costing $100,000 each or more.

.... The AMD 760MP MoBo chipset sampling now and coming out soon will allow Athlon and Clawhammer 2-way multi-processing systems for workstations and servers. AMD is also supplanting the EV-6 bus with a new NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) LDT (Lightning Data Transport) bus for 8-way (8-CPU) and higher systems for more complex servers.

 

[Guest]

<I suspect that it'll eventually end up in desktops- only because It'll be the first processor able to run 64 bit code/OS's... which will be a landmark for PC's.>
It'll be interesting to see if Micro$oft manage to produce a 64bit operating system in time though! It took them a couple of years to get one for the pentium pro which meant that hardly anyone ended up buying them.

It will be the first 64 bit processor for the desktop, so I reckon that there will be a lot of folks running 64bit Linux on their desktops. There's already 64bit Linux floating around for the 64 bit Sparc, Alpha, and MIPSco chips out there.

Fat Chucky

 

[DSutcliffe]

But what you must understand is that the 'Hammer family will run 32-bit applications and OS's even faster than current processors and still have the ability to address huge amounts of memory and run 64-bit apps and OS's.

That is AMD's strategy (more of an evolutionary strategy if I had to call it anything) for 64-bit processing, while Intel's Itanium will only run 32-bit apps and OS's through emulation which put the performance in the trash can.

The advantages of being able to do both will boost sales early on and also boost sales to people who need to do both 32-bit and 64-bit stuff.

The flip side is that clock for clock the Itanium will run pure 64-bit faster than the 'Hammer family.

Then the other flip side is that Itanium will be lucky to come out at 700Mhz for $2000.00 while 'Hammers will likely be at 2Ghz for a couple hundred dollars.

So take what you need and if you don't trust what I said here do your own research, this is <b>just</b> a message board.

T-Bird 800Mhz
2X IBM 75GXP 30GB in RAID0 config
Geforce2 32MB
SB Live

 

[slvr_phoenix]

It should be interesting to see what the 64 bit world will look like in a year from now.

I'm getting tired of waiting for 'The Next Best Thing' to come out and be all I had hoped it would be... And then waiting for a revision on it to see if that is all I hoped it would be... And so on.

I just need a time machine, that's all. Then I can go into the future, get a perfectly designed computer, and come back and be content with that. Yeah.

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.

 

[mpjesse]

Well, M$ is pretty set on delivering Whistler 64 bit on time (supposedly sometime in August). I think they will- from what I understand the BETA versions floating around are pretty reliable/stable.

Yeah- I agree that a big majority of Itaniums will be running Linux or Sun's OS.

I just read the article http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/16356.html
on The Register. From the sounds of it, this NUMA bus it doesn't sound like it was cheap to buy. However, imagine the bandwidth capabilities of the Hammer! From what I understand Itanium is still running on SDRAM with the GX chipset- using traditional ways of communicating with the bus. The Itanium may be revolutionary- but it's bus sure isn't.

-MP Jesse

 

[FUGGER]

Enough of the "I think" and "I suppose" crap. first off there is already win2k-64 available.

Yes thats a 64bit windows 2000.

Yes, there is already 64bits CPU's on desktops, Alpha
Linux 64 is available but requires a few patches to get operational.
There are a few other 64bit OS's out there, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, Irix,...

You can try to run the "desiel fuel" applications of today in the rocket engine of tomorrow. Good Luck.

Still unconfirmed, is the AMD designed 64 bit chip. to my understanding this is going to be 2x 32 bit cores on a single chip (double pumping comes to mind), that being said its not a true 64 bit core. SMP on a chip is not a new idea and a SMP machine that has 8 processors does not equil a 512 bit machine. but this is still unconfirmed. When it is Ill be here running it in AMD's face

AMD does have a 64bit data path to cache meory, Intel uses 128 bit data path. AMD would get noticible performance increase in fixing that bottleneck. As we all know Intel smokes the AMD in bandwidth on the BUS.

http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/cpu2000.html

NOTICE, the IA64 processors dominating all the SMP x86 and other SMP 32bit RISC CPU's.

AMD will be with the rest of the x86 32bit SMP scores =) if its true about the dual 32bit core.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

That sounds kind of freaky. I mean I had been expecting (hoping) that the 64 bit Hammer stuff would be aimed at a hybrid of both home use and server use. But to read that article, it sounds like AMD is aiming it totally for servers only. Bummer. It'll be darned expensive then.

I mean I was already expecting a huge pricetag on Itanium, since that's obviously aimed at servers. But to have both of them compete on the server level means that we don't get 64 bit for home use anytime soon. (At least not without paying through the nose.)

Still, it sounds like it has potential.

But then, the Itanium system also sounds like it has potential in the server market.

So it should be fun to see what happens. I was almost expecting them to end up aiming for different markets and keep us from seeing the sparks fly. Hopefully there will be a crash yet.

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.

 

[Grizely1]

The only way to know is to wait and see. All this arguing is pointless, just like arguing about what our next new propulsion system will be (I'm guessing lasers, BTW. Or maybe some Quantum stuff.)

 

[Guest]

<Well, M$ is pretty set on delivering Whistler 64 bit on time (supposedly sometime in August). I think they will- from what I understand the BETA versions floating around are pretty reliable/stable.>
They said something similar about Windows 95 when the Pentium Pro came out too

Fat Chucky

 

[mpjesse]

The only difference was that the P5 and 486's were 32bit chips- just like the P6. It's kinda funny that up until the P4 the P2's and 3's were pretty much P6's with SSE instructions and different cache designs. The core never really changed.

-MP Jesse