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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (59378)	10/19/2001 6:22:01 PM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

BMW, seems like anybody can talk processor architectures, and clock cycle times, but Intel is the only one I've seen with a five year process technology plan. That's right, the one you posted here. If I'm a serious OEM, I want to see that process roadmap alongside the architecture/performance one, or you can forget the latter. Tony ps, I know IBM has all the roadmaps, just like Intel. AMD hasn't shown squat beyond next year.

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (59378)	10/19/2001 6:34:51 PM
From: Gopher Broke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

announcing the Itanium project in late 1997 - 4 years ago Perhaps that was when they went public but not when they started development. I think it was back in 96 that Intel offered our company a prototype software development platform, so the hardware development must have been going on for years beforehand.

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (59378)	10/19/2001 9:56:54 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 275872

"Wen-Mei had an Itanium timeline in his presentation that showed Intel and HP as announcing the Itanium project in late 1997 - 4 years ago." HP started work on what became EPIC in the late '80s. They had just acquired some engineers from CyDrome(I think), and were trying to map out their follow on to PA-RISC. Here is what HP has to say about it hpl.hp.com . Yeah, the joint announcement was not made until late 1997, but a lot of work had been done by then. "Considering how difficult SMT is to implement (it took Intel more than a year after Pentium 4 launch to enable it, when it should have been available from the beginning), I don't expect to see it from AMD until 2004." Remember that AMD has some of the ex DEC/digital engineers. There still was contact with those that went to Compaq. It is likely no accident that the Hammer resembles EV7 (basically the same core as the previous generation, but a lot of attention paid to multi-processor and memory bandwidth). It is reasonable to assume that the follow on will look like EV8.

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (59378)	10/19/2001 11:53:03 PM
From: jcholewa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

> First, Itanium itself has not been around for > close to a decade. Wen-Mei had an Itanium > timeline in his presentation that showed Intel > and HP as announcing the Itanium project in > late 1997 - 4 years ago. That is pretty > typical for a processor architecture. However, > work related to advances in ILP compiler > technology can be traced all the way back to > 1987. In 1995, Intel and HP first began their > alliance, but work on the architecture > infrastructure began long before the processor > did. I think that your argument is contradictory. The Merced was initially expected to come out in 1997. Creating a microarchitecture based on an already existing architecture seems to typically take two years. Creating a microarchitecture and an architecture in tandem should take longer. I fully expect that work on the architecture began in 1995, as soon as Intel and HP could start to compare notes. Comb was exaggerating by saying that it was worked on for close to a decade, but it definitely was not a short perior of time, either. I think that it's really not fair to test the philosophies of the architecture in the first generation or even the second. We should really wait for, say, the followup to McKinley before judging the viability of VLIW. My objection, though, is that there is no longer a control in this experiment. What are we comparing it to? x86? That's made primarily for a lower end market, and nobody is going to make an x86 chip measuring 300sqmm+ to compete in the high end server market. IBM? No way, they're committed to using Itanium. HP? They made the Itanium's architecture! Compaq/Alpha? ...heh. SGI? They decided to become an all Intel chip shop without even looking at mature samples (and proceeded to slowly die). There is no real competition against the Itanium save for Sun, a company who really serves a different angle of the market. I dismiss the claim that these companies just blindly assumed that the Itanium would be faster than anything else in the universe. They support IPF because of its strong impending market pressure, not for any technical reason. This really, really causes my blood to boil. Itanium now stands a chance of dominating not because it was the best technological choice, but because the competition had no other marketing choice. Grrr! I wanted an all out battle between IPF, Alpha, Power, SGI's chips, and everybody else! A market without competition is a market that dishonours the end user. Of course, that's probably why I started using Mandrake 8.1 as my primary operating system this past week. I can't stand it when marketing beats innovation. So, in a way, you can consider me biased against antitechnologists. > As for AMD's processor lines, Intel will have > their 2nd generation McKinley processor 2-3 > quarters before the Hammer even launches Hmmm. Is Intel skipping McKinley's pilot production stage and going right to full fledged introduction? If not, then McKinley and Hammer may come out at the same time (I have not seen any recent IPF roadmaps). > The 2.5 generation Madison will be out in the > first half of 2003, meaning that AMD's 2GHz > Hammer will compete with Intel's 1.5GHz+ Madison 2.5 generation? Is Madison a McKinley shrink? Anyway, if the Hammer is introduced at a maximum frequency of 2GHz, I will orally gratify anybody who expected as much. A 180nm K7 could probably come close to 2GHz. A 130nm K7 will likely be able to reach higher than 2GHz. The K8 has a longer pipe than the K7, and I would be utterly shocked if it were unable to ramp better than its parent. Incidentally, won't the Hammer be much cheaper than the McKinley, in both chips and motherboards? I know that it won't be competitive from a marketing standpoint (because a Pentium II is more attractive than an Athlon MP), but from a performance standpoint, it'd really be more like a four-way 2.5GHz K8 competing against a one-way 1.5GHz (or whatever frequency) McKinley. > Itanium has a good future, and competition > isn't going to bury it any time soon. That's because the competition gave up before the cards were dealt. :p