Originally posted by: Gautam B
Reading some of this stuff just makes me want to kill Intel's management.
As we mentioned before, Timna was to feature an integrated memory controller, but at the time it was on the drawing board Intel still had delusions of grandeur about RDRAM being the future of all memory technology by 2001.
They had a potential A64 killer about 3 years...why didn't it see the light of day? Because of RDRAM...[rolls eyes]
You are correct about the Dothan not benefitting from greater memory bandwidth. It interestingly reacts very similarly to the A64 as memory speed is increased (read, not very much at all).
As far as the IPC goes, what I find most interesting in this article is the discussion of micro-ops fusion. Reducing the usage of the pipeline serves as a pretty good explanation of why the Dothan/Banias is as efficient as it is.
I bought it as a toy, but it has been serving me very well as a daily rig, at least as well as the A64, if not more. Rocky to get set up, but past that, really a wonderful setup.
Indeed its Intel that's dropping the ball. Once they get this architecture into a proper form that the end-user can user (if they ever will), I strongly believe that not only will they give A64 a run for its money, but will very explicitly gain an upper hand.