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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kash johal who wrote (71521)	9/9/1999 3:01:00 PM
From: dumbmoney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573980

Actually multithreading is not the same as on-chip SMP. In multithreading the execution units are shared between the threads. This can work pretty well because threads often stall waiting for data, so the execution resources are underused.

To: kash johal who wrote (71521)	9/9/1999 3:21:00 PM
From: Charles R	Respond to of 1573980

Kash, <IBM is putting 2 CPU's on a chip for multi-threading. I guess Willamette will do the same.> I am not aware of IBM is doing but based on what you say this is different from what Wilamette does. Think of this more like context switching. <Why do u see AMD can not do the same for dec 2000.> From what I gather they are but I do not know which particluar program is implementing it and what the time frame is. <Clearly a dual Athlon with shared off chip cache could be a compelling solution.> Yup. But relative comparisons are tough to make this early in the game. I am content to wait until Wilamette of Foster get into market to see how good the implementation is and what the platform/software issues are. <And win 2K will support mutli-threading.> Yup. But, like I said, I do know know if this has any bearing on the mainstream desktop market. <I think Athlon has pushed what a single x86 CPU can do close to its limits - except for integrated level 2 cache.> It appears that way but I have been surprised before on this count. Architects have a nasty way of dreaming up something to change the playing field. <The next big step is surely multi-threading with dual cores on a chip> What timeframe do you think that will happen? I am talking about silicon, software, apps and the whole solution. Chuck