Yes, ARM is part of the reason to go low power with the x86 chips. But the real reason is that they have run out of steam in terms of getting higher performance. First they had so many transistors available that they just couldn't come up with productive ways of speeding up a processor with more hardware anymore, so they started adding more CPUs. However, once you get to 4 CPUs it is hard to get a wide enough pipe to memory.
Now the only thing left is to try to reduce power consumption for a given level of performance. Yes, they needed to do this 10 years ago, but the drive then was still for higher performance desktop and notebooks. Now they are motivated by the battery powered, hand held market. But even if ARM wasn't eating their lunch, they would be going this way just because that is where most of the CPU chips will be sold in the future.
What was that line in the "Untouchables"? Something about bringing a knife to a gun fight... even Intel can figure out how to make guns from the x86.
What? The last time I checked, AMD was a full process generation behind Intel with no prospect of catching up. The investment is just too huge. They were on the verge of going under when they won the European law suit and Intel handed them 1.2 Billion USD. They had sold off a bunch of fabs to remain liquid and ended up losing their interest in them altogether.
AMD is a hurting pup. Intel can't afford to see them go however... or at least in the old days Intel needed them to pretend to be competition. But now with the ARM doing well I guess AMD is dispensable. Is AMD maintaining market share at 18% these days? I haven't looked in a while.
Intel had leakage problems in their transistors as they shrunk the dies. And still do. Thatswhy they added cores and threads after pentimum. 3.5GHz speeds will be the norm until they can find a fix.
That's semiconductor physics, not competitive pressure. Everyone has the same problem. The speed isn't limited just because of the thermal load. The parts can't run faster because the transistors aren't significantly faster when you keep dropping the voltage. What is Vdd down to now, 0.8 volts, less?
The scary part, for Intel, is that the price per CPU chip is plummeting. The cost per MIP keeps coming down, tablets don't need a lot of MIPS, and nobody is going to put a $700 CPU into a $200 tablet.
I sort of like my huge HP box, but it's a dinosaur. Most people don't want boxes, cables, monitors, keyboards, mice, power strips, USB and Ethernet hubs, that mess of hardware and software that a PC is.
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John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
The Acer Aspire. I have 2. One is bolted onto the back of an HD display.
I also have an ITX PC I put together that has an i5 in it.
The problem is that when they hit the market the demand for PCs soured with the economy, and when it picked back up, the tablets were the in thing, so nobody made a next generation job with USB 3.0 ports and such yet. At least not one worth having.
The Aspire is also a $300 item,like the Intel thingy, but far more ports and far better looking form factor. They are made for HD and have
5.1 audio, optical, and even eSATA ports. A far better choice.
Intel copied AMD's 64-bit register model, but they didn't copy the instruction set: Intel64 and AMD64 are not compatible at the system programming level and are not perfectly compatible at the user level [though redundancy in the instruction set allows compilers to work around the differences]. Inside they have different micro-architectures with quite different performance characteristics.
OT: over in comp.arch Ivan Godard has been introducing a completely new architecture called "Mill", aimed at the high end market. So far we are hearing only details for which the patents have cleared, but it is very interesting.
The internal micro-architectures are somewhat different, such as the number and type of execution units. But the ISA - the "programming level" - is almost identical. It is only special-purpose instructions such as those related to virtualisation, and some SIMD instructions that are different. For general code, except when using the vector processing units (which always change from generation to generation), the instruction set is identical. Anything else would have been crazy.
Intel tried to make their own new independent 64-bit architecture with the Itanium. The idea was nice, since x86 is such a horrendous architecture that it would be good if it could be replaced. But the implementation was terrible, and the Itanium flopped. But Intel couldn't make a 64-bit x86 ISA without losing all credibility for the Intanium while they still had hope for it. AMD, on the other hand, /could/ make x86-64, and saw it as a chance for leadership in some areas. So they made the "amd64" or "x86-64" ISA, and did a pretty good job of it. Intel had no choice but to follow, and copied the ISA entirely except for differences in the SIMD and a few system instructions.
Yes, and the entire rest of the industry is behind Intel, aren't they? So AMD will be so perpetually, right?
What is your point?
prosper.
In what way does it make sense? AMD could easily be on the auction block in a few more years. I see ARM in too many products made by too many different people for AMD to have any impact. What exactly does AMD do that everybody else can't??? Is AMD even selling any ARM parts? I guess you are trying to tell them how to run their business?
What you say is true, but it ignores the fact that almost no one was willing to write code for the AMD 64 bit chips until Intel came out withe their new 64 bit instruction set. Then it got momentum. Why would anyone write code for < 20% of the market?
Yup, the computing world is changing dramatically as the market shifts to entertainment and away from the original purpose of computers, science and engineering.
Intel is not stupid. They can feel the winds changing just like everyone else. They also know a lot about making teeny tiny transistors and how to make them do big things. They will come out of the transition just fine by making both portable devices and still selling big iron to those who still need it.
Mostly that Intel is shrinking. x86 is their only trick, it's ancient, and the future is hard to predict.
prosper.
Gosh but you're crabby today.
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John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser drivers and controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation
The future? Not much. But I'm pretty sure things will change a lot.
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John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser drivers and controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation
The Linux kernel and most of the basic Linux system were ported and working on AMD's simulator before they had silicon available. By the time you could buy the chips, several major distros had full ports available (it helped that Linux was already available for four other
64-bit architectures, IIRC).
So for people using Linux, amd64 code was common from very early on. Considering the usage that Linux had at the time, that meant AMD had a big advantage in the "technical enthusiast" market (which was small), the high-power, clustering and supercomputing market (which was growing
- and vital to a processor manufacturer's reputation), and in the growing market of Linux servers (which encroached on Intel's biggest margin market).
/Windows/ was not 64-bit, so /windows/ users (and developers) had no use of x86-64. So for the huge majority of desktop users, it had no relevance - people bought AMD cpus because they gave better value for money for running 32-bit code.
So 64-bit got visible momentum in the mass market only after 64-bit Windows became common (on the desktop side there was 64-bit XP, but it wasn't until Vista that 64-bit versions were in common use). MS would not bother making 64-bit Windows until Intel had the chips. But Intel had to make x86-64 chips long /before/ this point - they had to stop AMD from encroaching the server market, and they had to stop AMD's reputation as the technical leader.
And please don't write things like "until Intel came out with their new
64 bit instruction set". Intel did not come up with a "new 64-bit instruction set" (except the Intanium, of course). Intel copied AMD, and paid dearly for the privilege. I can only guess what they paid in terms of licences, copyrights, trademarks, patents, etc. - maybe it was already covered in their technology cross-licensing arrangements. But they certainly paid in reputation.
I believe you are agreeing with me, right? The 64 bit market did not develop until Intel and Microsoft got behind it. End of story. Even if they had the better idea first, AMD was largely irrelevant in this regard.
My point in using the word "new" was to differentiate it from the "old" Itanium instruction set.
Pretty much all apps were 64-bit. That's what it means to compile a Linux distribution for a 64-bit processor.
There are a few things, like Wine or binary-only programs, that are
32-bit. Of course, 64-bit Linux distros run 32-bit code (for the same architecture) without problem.
Or do you mean how many applications were there that could really take advantage of 64 bits? Well, 64-bit had been in use in the workstation, server and high-performance (supercomputing) markets for a good while - at least in the serious market rather than the Windows market. Most such systems were Unix rather than Linux at that time, but Linux was already popular amongst more technical people. So you found 64-bit code on database servers, big CAD systems (Intel probably designed their processors on systems with 64-bit SPARC or PPC chips), video processing, animation, simulations, etc.
I think you have totally and utterly missed the point.
It is correct that the mass-market for 64-bit cpus came when Intel and Microsoft joined in. But the real money-making market for processor manufacturers is not the low-margin home/work PC world - it is the high-margin world of big servers, and performance workstations. Super computing hardware has mid-level margins, but very high visibility - you want everyone to know that the fastest computers use /your/ chips. These markets were dominated by 64-bit processors. Intel had tried to compete with the Itanium - and then AMD outclassed it with 64-bit x86 chips that were a fraction of the price and power, much easier to work with, but nearly as fast for most jobs (and faster for some tasks).
And in the home/work PC market, AMD had 64-bit processors while Intel was stuck with old-fashioned 32-bit chips. It did not really matter that the majority of people couldn't take advantage of the 64-bit power
- AMD's chips were also fast for 32-bit. But for the marketing numbers game, AMD had a huge leap over Intel.
Intel played catch-up by copying/licensing AMD's amd64 ISA because they had no choice. AMD was the driving force behind the 64-bit processor in the mass market.
That's just silly. x86-64 may have been new to Intel, but it was already established by AMD - it was not new. Nor was the Itanium particularly old - it was in heavy development at that time (though it was clear to the world that it was a doomed architecture).
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