Re: Intel vs AMD x86-64

Bill Davidsen
2004-02-25T15:36:48Z

Timothy Miller wrote:

> I've been reading some people's comments relating to this, and it
> reflects a glimmer of an idea that occurred to me initially. To begin
> with, I completely agree that it was unethical for Intel to imply that
> this was their innovation, giving no credit to AMD. It was wrong, and
> they should be ashamed.

Actually, it is unclear enough to me if the Intel chips will have any
technical advantages that I have postponed buying the dual Opteron I was
planning for 1Q04 until I read the Intel specs more carefully.

These are the issues of interest:
- hyperthreading

will Intel offer it and will it be in some way better than the 10-30%
gain I see from HT on a P4.

- cost

If Intel follows the previous price models for new chips they are not
in any way going to be competitive on cost/performance. On the other
hand they know that, they know they are playing catch-up in this market,
and they might be aggressive for a change.

- SSE3

what does it provide, is it in any way useful for anything I ever do,
and will gcc or the free for personal use Intel C compiler support it?

- availability

will this be a product or just a product announcement? I can wait
until 2Q04 if there's a reason to do so, after that I assume it's just FUD.

- will it work

or will it follow Itanium and take another generation before it runs
faster than the hardware emulator? Speaking of which, I would like Intel
to release the hardware emulator so I can do benchmarking now.

Having HT in a single package has some advantages, but talk is cheap,
and AMD is shipping. I personally hope it works really well and keeps
prices down.

--
bill on the road