why cant AMD quad pump FSB?

[Corporate Thug]

just curious...

 

[Peter D]

good question..

 

[sman789]

why can intel 8 pump

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: sman789
why can intel 8 pump

soon enough dear boy

 

[MDE]

They can do it but it would require a complete redesign of their processors and motherboards. Plus they don't really need to right now and all it does in introduce added expense. (flame away, I know it's gonna come)

 

[Megatomic]

Perhaps it's a limitation of the Alpha EV-6 bus? Same reason why they won't officially push the FSB above 400MHz IIRC.

 

[sinthon]

800MHZ FSB would be nice. That would definitely make AMD rock the Pentium with raw power and skill.

 

[zephyrprime]

They can do it but it would require a complete redesign of their processors and motherboards. Plus they don't really need to right now and all it does in introduce added expense. (flame away, I know it's gonna come)

I think you're right on. Back when the first athlons came out quad pumping was too far out to think about. And now that opeteron has a built in mem controller, the FSB isn't so important anymore.

 

[Jeff7181]

It's not a question of why they can't, it's a question of why they don't, which can probably be answered simply by saying, they didn't think it was necessary when they designed the chip.

 

[Goi]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
Perhaps it's a limitation of the Alpha EV-6 bus? Same reason why they won't officially push the FSB above 400MHz IIRC.

 

[Amorphus]

isn't the "x-pumped FSB" thing because of the separate pipelines? AMD has two longer ones, Intel has 4 shorter ones, isn't it?

 

[Soulkeeper]

the eve6 protocol was never designed for reading more than on just the rising and falling edge of each clock cycle
P4 systems read four times (that's at 4 different voltages) which is very difficult to do and would require a complete redesign of not only the athlon cpu but also the chipsets
the eve6 was designed to max out at 200mhz dual pumped (400mhz) and has reached the end of it's effective lifecycle

now we can see new and interesting designs from the hammer

 

[redhatlinux]

yep, its the limitation of the Alpha EV-6 bus, double pumped and maxes out at 400 mhz. When AMD chose this technology, Intel was limping along at 100 mhz. There isn't an FSB with Opteron/A64 so its now a 'non-issue'.
Hyperchannel links operating at various speeds have replaced the FSB.