Opteron

[jarich]

Originally posted by: BoomAM

Originally posted by: jarich
Really fast... especially for the money. They address more memory than anything else in their market (that is to say for less than 5x the price)... and they are backwards compatible with 32 bit.

I like them! 😉 Course, I'm on one now. dual box w/2 gigs of ram for $1,700... who thought we'd ever see that?

You have dual operons? I didnt think that they were available for buying yet. Are you sure you have one?

heh... You're funny! I just think I have a dual Opteron system on my desk at home... maybe it's a PPC instead? 😉


Micro Pro's Opteron server page

 

[jarich]

Originally posted by: digitalsm

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

Originally posted by: kylef
The biggest problem with them right now is that there is no 64-bit version of Windows to make use of them yet. SuSe released a 64-bit linux distribution for AMD64, but Windows won't be ready until Windows Server 2003 Sp1 comes out...

The hardest part about the 64-bit operating system is getting device drivers built and working native 64-bit mode, then implementing a "thunking" layer to allow 32-bit programs to access devices using the 64-bit drivers. I'd be surprised if all devices you can use in 32-bit Linux work correctly in the new 64-bit linux on AMD64...

[edit]:
I should have added, however, that they DO work quite well in "legacy mode" == 32-bit mode. So your regular operating systems will work just fine.

What about a 64 bit version of Windows XP? I thought I read that was scheduled for release about 3 months after the Athlon-64... which would put it at the end of this year, beginning of next year.

The Windows XP 64bit edition for AMD64/Opteron, will be out as you said sometime this year or early next. Though I am wondering when there will be wide spread 64bit applications.

MySql has already ported and released
press release

 

[jarich]

A few general replies

Opterons have one huge niche right now and that's people who need lots of memory. I worked at a bio-tech that would have killed for a dual box that could handle 16 gigs of memory for under 5 grand! The speed difference for people working with database applications is huge... an oder of magnitude faster. I bought one to do text mining on 44 gigs of data.

Also, Opterons do not require a translation layer to emulate 32 bit mode. Intel's Itanium chip does. The Opteron has the same lower 32 bit registers as a P4 or Athlon, so the software just runs native... (very cool!). If your OS is a 32 bit one (like the XP Pro I'm using now), it runs very nicely... but when 64 bit versions of Windows come out, I do expect things to be faster (especially large number crunching).

I'm a huge fan of the chip (and no, I don't work for AMD) . 🙂

 

[sandorski]

A 64bit OS *will* benefit 32bit applications, I'm guessing. The reason is that the 64bit version of Win X will include an optimization of the Athlon64s/Opterons Memory system. The memory system uses a new method which only the 64bit version of Linux currently uses. Memory performance is expected to improve significantly with this optimization.

 

[Macro2]

devex,
RE:"Centrino in the P6 family? I think not."

I was under the impression the Centrino was a warmed up P-III core.
Certainly it's not a P-4 derivative?

 

[bgeh]

actually the Centrinos are hybrids between the P3 and P4

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: Macro2
devex,
RE:"Centrino in the P6 family? I think not."

I was under the impression the Centrino was a warmed up P-III core.
Certainly it's not a P-4 derivative?

It uses NetBurst for sure, not the GTL bus of the P6 family. It also has SSE2 instructions. Thats a rather significant departure. A lot of people are saying its a Tualatin core because of its high IPC. I think thats rather irrelevant. However, there are signficant changes that include a dynamic L2 cache system that allows power down/up of individual sections and some other stuff to dwell on. It may very well be a Tualatin Core ported to NetBurst with enhanced power saving cache, but its definitely more P4 than it is Tualatin.

 

[BoomAM]

I thought the Centrino was a P3 with the SSE2 from P4.

 

[jarich]

Originally posted by: BoomAM
I thought the Centrino was a P3 with the SSE2 from P4.

I'm not sure of the technical details of the CPU but at my day job, the Centrino laptops were much much faster than P4 laptops. The P4s were 700 mhz faster in clock speed and ran our software 30% slower! It was bad enough that the sys admins spent a week trying to get the P4s "working right" before they finally admitted that the Centrinos were faster... whether it's the CPU or the motherboard chipset, I don't know, but Intel did something right! (btw, our software is number crunching so it covers both CPU and memory and disk intensive operations).

 

[BoomAM]

Im not sure if the latest incarnations of the P4 are the same, but the original P4s were designed to clock, nothing more. In fact, they were a step back from the P3, in a technical sence, but a major step forwards, clock speed wise.
It was supposed to be a basic processor that would allow big clock speeds, and so when at equal clock speeds to an XP, it got its ass kicked, cos of the more advanced core of the XP. But im not sure if this still holds true.

 

[SexyK]

Centrino does not use the NetBurst architecture. NetBurst is the marketing name for the 20 stage pipeline design of the P4, which the Centrino does not share. The main part of the P4 design that Centrino uses is the QDR bus. Everything else is basically updated P!!! design IIRC.

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: BoomAM
In fact, they were a step back from the P3, in a technical sence, .

I really thought people stopped believing this stuff months ago.

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: SexyK

I really thought people stopped believing this stuff months ago.

Theres no believing to to do. The original P4s were like i said. I just wasnt sure about the newer ones, i havnt had much interest in intel lately.

 

[kylef]

A 64bit OS *will* benefit 32bit applications, I'm guessing. The reason is that the 64bit version of Win X will include an optimization of the Athlon64s/Opterons Memory system. The memory system uses a new method which only the 64bit version of Linux currently uses. Memory performance is expected to improve significantly with this optimization.

There are a few tricks you can do with CC-NUMA architectures that try to speed things up like keeping processes attached to one processor as much as possible (read/writes to memory physically located on the other cpu's memory controller are about twice as slow as those to the directly attached controller).

But there is one big thing that can slow down 32-bit apps on AMD64 under a 64-bit OS: talking to drivers (which all must be 64-bits on 64-bit OSes) requires the CPU to change operating modes (from 32-bit compatibility mode to 64-bit native mode) and if necessary to convert I/O request packets to the proper size for the 64-bit driver.

There *is* a version of Windows for AMD64 due out in a few months, from what I understand. No word yet on what it will be officially called, but it looks like it will come out either in conjunction with SP1 for Server 2003 SP1 or just afterwards. It is reportedly based on the Server2003 codebase.

 

[TheBoyBlunder]

Give me dualie opterons, a couple gigs of ram and a board with an agp slot...and wow 😀.

 

[NicColt]

>The biggest problem with them right now is that there is no 64-bit version of Windows to make use of them yet.

HP is presently selling Itanium 2 workstations with Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003. I'm just saying that there IS a 64 bit version of Windows that is exclusive to HP right now but that will soon be available to everyone.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: SexyK
Centrino does not use the NetBurst architecture. NetBurst is the marketing name for the 20 stage pipeline design of the P4, which the Centrino does not share. The main part of the P4 design that Centrino uses is the QDR bus. Everything else is basically updated P!!! design IIRC.

Yep, the Pentium-M is a P6 core, with a crapload of modofications, AGTL+, SSE, enhanced SpeedStep, etc.
It still has the same L1 cache of the P6 cores, only 32/32 KB rather than 16/16, while the P4 has it's trace cache, same execution resources as the other P6's as well.

 

[AtomicDude512]

As of right now they look promising, I would like to see what they can do with 64-Bit OS, Drivers, apps, etc...

However I am going to wait for a more refined version before purchasing, plus that will give AMD more time to solidify standards making my purchase more future proof (more motherboard wise).

Wrong forum FYI...

-AD512

 

[kylef]

HP is presently selling Itanium 2 workstations with Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003. I'm just saying that there IS a 64 bit version of Windows that is exclusive to HP right now but that will soon be available to everyone.

But that version of Server 2003 will NOT run on AMD64, so it cannot make use of the Opteron processor. It is tied exclusively to the IA-64 platform and uses WOW64 to run 32-bit apps.

Like I said before, Microsoft is working on an AMD64 version of Windows (I have seen demos of it running on AMD64 hardware), but the name for it hasn't been announced and it probably will not come out until SP1 for Server 2003 is released or thereafter. High-profile OEM server manufacturers releasing Opteron systems will undoubtedly get first dibs on this new OS as it becomes available.

From what I hear, it looks exciting.

 

[sandorski]

Interesting article on 64bit computing. Disucusses Apple, AMD, and Intel. Comments from Tim Sweeney(Unreal/UT/etc), DivX, and others.