To All,
I hope everybody had a great Christmas (and other holidays). I see number of guys from here made it to Chips Ahoy Hall of fame ;-).
I received a back issue of Microprocessor Report covering MXi. It is going to be one hot chip. This report didn't cover the core, just the additional items. And they are hot.
The highlights are the memory transfer and the 3D functions. The memory can be accessed at speeds 133+ MHz (I guess this is 66 MHz double edge access) which would produce the peek 2 GB per second throughput combined with the 128 bit path. The chip will support the double data rate DRAM which should boost the memory access further.
The 3D subsystem will deliver the same performance as the high end 3D chips available at the same timeframe (2H 98).
The writer was speculating about the possible uses of the chip. 2 things he mentioned are add in graphics cards and Nintendo/Playstation type machines.
They mentioned that 2D performance is mainly function of memory bandwidth, so MXi will be a great 2D performer.
Here is another piece of information I found on the slide presentation from Microprocessor Forum about the memory subsystem og MXi:
Up to 16 open banks and up to 32K pages.
Now this is only a speculation, but if each bank can have 1 page open, and with 16 open banks of 32K, it adds up to 512K of memory accessinble from current active pages. The L2 access speed is 15ns, active page access is 20ns and a miss is 60ns. Given this, lack of cache on MXi is not much of a penalty.
Another thing the author mentioned is that MXi should perform great on applications that need high memory bandwidth type applications, like databases, even though Cyrix is not planning to target that market.
The pricing is still unknown. The author was speculating if Cyrix would try to capture a premium for this superior performance, and keep MediaGXm for the low end or if MXi will go directly to Presario 2200 type computers.
I was just thinking about the future of Socket 7, and the company that may actually kill it will be Cyrix with the proprietory MXi atchitecture. I don't see much of a point in coming out with Socket 7 type Cayenne chip, since Socket 7 delivers only a fraction of the plentiful bandwidth of MXi.
The only reason for Socket 7 of Slot 1 based Cayenne would be to play a spoiler to Intel and AMD to reduce their ASPs. (That's a good enough reason. Revenge is sweet)
Joe
PS: George Gilder is right. The bandwidth will be more important than processing power in the future. |
