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SUN Microsystems has Solaris up and running on Itanium platforms in their lab - and will be offering it real soon to Itanium customers.
Sun ponders Solaris for Power, Itanium
"We have a very productive dialog currently ongoing with Intel.
Solaris is working on Itanium servers in the lab, Schwartz said.
Sun ponders Solaris for Power, Itanium
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-5277375.html
Story last modified July 20, 2004, 7:01 PM PDT
Sun Microsystems, which has already resurrected its Solaris operating system for one processor architecture, is considering a further expansion to Intel's Itanium and IBM's Power chip families.
Sun floated the Solaris expansion idea during a conference call after reporting on Tuesday a return to revenue growth after 12 quarters of declines. The move happens at the same time Sun is embarked on an effort to bring its Java Enterprise System server software to rival operating systems.
"We've begun looking at Solaris on Power as well as Solaris on Itanium as a way of delivering incremental volume," said Jonathan Schwartz, who was appointed chief operating officer in April. Sun believes that distributing as high a volume of its technology as possible will mean the company will be able to recruit software partners more easily and have a bigger foundation for future sales of upgrades, services and software.
The Solaris project marks yet another aggressive expansion plan for a company that's cutting 3,300 jobs and trying to reduce expenses by $500 million in the next year. But Schwartz thinks it can be done.
"We're not worrying about spreading too thin," he said in an interview. The Solaris and Java Enterprise System expansions are projects he initiated, Schwartz said.
For years, Sun focused on just one processor architecture, UltraSparc, and one operating system, Solaris. Sun has been working to resurrect a version of Solaris for x86 chips such as Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron and Intel's Xeon.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based server and software company also worked on Solaris for Itanium, but that project was canceled before it yielded a product, because of squabbling between Sun and Intel.
Intel and IBM could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
HP--which initiated Itanium, helped Intel develop it and is its biggest advocate--saw evidence of Sun's troubles in the move.
The Solaris expansion "demonstrates they know it's a two-horse race for high-end computing between Itanium and Power," said Mark Hudson, vice president of marketing for HP's Enterprise Storage and Servers group. "If they try to focus on both hardware--Sparc--and software they will fail, as they can't afford it," Hudson predicted.
Schwartz said Sun is "very" serious about the effort and argued that it's in the best interests of rivals who wish to spread their chip architectures to support Sun's push.
"It's up to the hardware vendors to worry about volumes, to join us in developing it and the ISV (independent software vendor) population," Schwartz said. "We have a very productive dialog currently ongoing with Intel. IBM has a bit tougher, but we'll get there."
Solaris is working on Itanium servers in the lab, Schwartz said.
Sun also is spreading its Java Enterprise System software to Windows, IBM's AIX version of Unix, and Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX version of Unix. Windows and HP-UX versions are due by the end of the year, Sun has said.
It's easier to embrace rival technology these days, McNealy said, because there's less of it.
"To be heterogeneous now isn't such a complicated thing anymore," McNealy said in an interview. "There's less stuff out there to be heterogeneous with. DEC is gone, HP-UX is going away, PA-RISC is gone," he said, referring to Digital Equipment Corp., HP's version of Unix and HP's in-house processor design.
But Sun considers the non-Solaris versions of Java Enterprise System a stepping-stone. "We've got to provide (customers) bridges and migrations. Ultimately, it makes more sense to be on a Sun Solaris sever than other environments running JES," McNealy said.
SUN Microsystems has Solaris up and running on Itanium platforms in their lab - and will be offering it real soon to Itanium customers.
Sun ponders Solaris for Power, Itanium
"We have a very productive dialog currently ongoing with Intel.
Solaris is working on Itanium servers in the lab, Schwartz said.
(Note: SUN must be an Itanium cutomer already - and knows where the market is going in terms of enterprise hardware.)
Sun ponders Solaris for Power, Itanium
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-5277375.html
Story last modified July 20, 2004, 7:01 PM PDT
Sun Microsystems, which has already resurrected its Solaris operating system for one processor architecture, is considering a further expansion to Intel's Itanium and IBM's Power chip families.
Sun floated the Solaris expansion idea during a conference call after reporting on Tuesday a return to revenue growth after 12 quarters of declines. The move happens at the same time Sun is embarked on an effort to bring its Java Enterprise System server software to rival operating systems.
"We've begun looking at Solaris on Power as well as Solaris on Itanium as a way of delivering incremental volume," said Jonathan Schwartz, who was appointed chief operating officer in April. Sun believes that distributing as high a volume of its technology as possible will mean the company will be able to recruit software partners more easily and have a bigger foundation for future sales of upgrades, services and software.
The Solaris project marks yet another aggressive expansion plan for a company that's cutting 3,300 jobs and trying to reduce expenses by $500 million in the next year. But Schwartz thinks it can be done.
"We're not worrying about spreading too thin," he said in an interview. The Solaris and Java Enterprise System expansions are projects he initiated, Schwartz said.
For years, Sun focused on just one processor architecture, UltraSparc, and one operating system, Solaris. Sun has been working to resurrect a version of Solaris for x86 chips such as Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron and Intel's Xeon.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based server and software company also worked on Solaris for Itanium, but that project was canceled before it yielded a product, because of squabbling between Sun and Intel.
Intel and IBM could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
HP--which initiated Itanium, helped Intel develop it and is its biggest advocate--saw evidence of Sun's troubles in the move.
The Solaris expansion "demonstrates they know it's a two-horse race for high-end computing between Itanium and Power," said Mark Hudson, vice president of marketing for HP's Enterprise Storage and Servers group. "If they try to focus on both hardware--Sparc--and software they will fail, as they can't afford it," Hudson predicted.
Schwartz said Sun is "very" serious about the effort and argued that it's in the best interests of rivals who wish to spread their chip architectures to support Sun's push.
"It's up to the hardware vendors to worry about volumes, to join us in developing it and the ISV (independent software vendor) population," Schwartz said. "We have a very productive dialog currently ongoing with Intel. IBM has a bit tougher, but we'll get there."
Solaris is working on Itanium servers in the lab, Schwartz said.
Sun also is spreading its Java Enterprise System software to Windows, IBM's AIX version of Unix, and Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX version of Unix. Windows and HP-UX versions are due by the end of the year, Sun has said.
It's easier to embrace rival technology these days, McNealy said, because there's less of it.
"To be heterogeneous now isn't such a complicated thing anymore," McNealy said in an interview. "There's less stuff out there to be heterogeneous with. DEC is gone, HP-UX is going away, PA-RISC is gone," he said, referring to Digital Equipment Corp., HP's version of Unix and HP's in-house processor design.
But Sun considers the non-Solaris versions of Java Enterprise System a stepping-stone. "We've got to provide (customers) bridges and migrations. Ultimately, it makes more sense to be on a Sun Solaris sever than other environments running JES," McNealy said.
"Some users are reporting system lock ups and even spontaneous reboots. "
"It's an AMD CPU - what else would you expect?"
Quote from Michael Dell.
"Currently we have 20 percent. We have a
near term goal of 30 percent market share. "
Clever Mr. Sanders...his market share went down to 15% - where it stands now - after sucking up to Bill Gates in the Microsoft trial.
And Microsoft is 1 1/2 years late in delivering a Hammer version of Windows - and will be another 9 months late for a total of 2+ years late for AMD.
Bill must be chortling right now.
And by the way...why haven't the AMD fanboys ever reviled AMD for totally blowing that 30% market share goal that they promised for year 2001 or 2002?
Seems that goal should have been easy to reach in light of all of Intel's screwups over the years.
"Intel is putting a fair amount of effort and expense into developing the DDRII alternative (how much did they pay Micron?). "
How much is AMD paying IBM to bail AMD out of their technology development morass?
"Poor Intel. Lately it seems that strategic decision they make is wrong.
Rambus instead of DDR
IA-64 instead of X86-64
MTH instead of new controller
Strained silicon instead of Silicon on insulator
DDRII instead of ramped DDR
External chipsets for SMP instead of integrated switches"
Perhaps you can tell us how AMD's losses and debt have increased during this troubling time period for Intel?
AMD sure didn't take advantage of these stumbles, as they have plenty of stumbles of their own.
Funny you never bring up AMD's stumbles.
Why is that Dan?
"Artificially assuming linear scaling, for every MB of cache Opteron adds, the Itanium needs 6-9 more to maintain parity. "
Maybe you never tested a 16-way or a 32-way Opteron system - or a 64-way Opteron system - for comparison to a 16 or 32 or 64 way Itanium suytem?
"I wonder what are implications for AMD? Can IBM share this? Can IBM fab Opterons?"
Here are the implications for AMD:
Due to IBM’s slow ramp, Xilinx, Nvidia raise outsourcing to UMC, TSMC
Samson Yu, Taipei; Jack Lu, DigiTimes.com
Xilinx and Nvidia have raised their orders for advanced processes to Taiwanese foundry giants Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) at the expense of IBM Microelectronics, due to IBM’s slow progress ramping its advanced technologies, according to sources.
Xilinx originally planned to use IBM as the secondary source for its most advanced 90nm-based FPGA (field programmable gate array) – Spartan 3. However, as UMC continues to widen its production volume and yield advantages over IBM, Xilinx has outsourced all of its orders for 0.13-micron and more advanced processes to UMC, according to a high-ranking executive at Xilinx in Taiwan.
In addition, Xilinx has shifted a portion of its orders for 0.18- to 0.25-micron processes from IBM to China-based He Jian Technology, a UMC ally, the source added.
“We’re a little concerned about IBM not having much capacity for us, and that could cause us to look somewhere else,” a February 11 EETimes report cited Xilinx CEO Willem Roelandts as saying.
According to the source, UMC’s 0.13-micron and 90nm processes have been qualified by Xilinx and Motorola. Although operating at over 90% utilization rates, the Taiwan-based foundry has provided additional capacity to its major customers via He Jian and its Singapore-based affiliate UMCi.
Not only providing capacity support, UMC has not yet raised its prices for major customers such as Xilinx, sources said. UMC earlier announced plans to raise prices as demand picked up.
Similar to Xilinx, Nvidia has increased outsourcing to TSMC for its high-end graphics chips produced with a 0.11-micron process, which TSMC has shipped in small volumes, according to a source with Nvidia.
Given that production on a 0.13-micron process can handled with 0.11-micron technology more cost-effectively, Nvidia has delayed its original production plan at IBM, the Nvidia source said.
IBM’s strengths in non-standard processing technology and the companies’ concerns about maintaining adequate capacity have prompted Xilinx and Nvidia to continue pilot runs at IBM. However, they may consider seeking capacity from other sources, the sources indicated.
"that underperforming dud Prescott"
Oh yes, Jerry Sanders' favorite word "dud".
Remember when Jerry called the original Pentium 4 a "dud" back in late 2000?
That turned out to be the last year that AMD made a profit - didn't it?
And AMD's market share - about 23% in 2000 - plummeted to about 15% last quarter - 3 years after Intel's so called "dud" was launched.
Oh yes, and Jerry and Hector were so fond of thumping their chests about AMD's smaller die size - in light of the original Pentium 4 die size of 217 sq. mm.
So, why aren't Hector and Jerry thumping their chests about AMD's new 193 sq. mm. die size vs. Intel's new 112 sq. mm. die size?
Seems like Intel's "dud" blew up in AMD's face - didn't it now?
When will we see AMD's debt increased to $2.6 Billion with the loan from AMD's DeutschMasters?
"Throw in the fact that by the end of Q1 AMD will likely have over 1.5 billion in cash "
How much is AMD going to borrow this time?
Will the DeutschMasters be loaning a few hundred million to AMD again? Or will they just allow AMD to once again postpone repayment of existing loans?
"AMD only has to do a die shrink this time and you can figure they are getting help from IBM"
Then why has AMD delayed the 90 nM 64 bit product twice already?
AMD originally promised it for late 2003 - then they moved it to H1 of 2004 - and now AMD says it will arrive sometime in H2 2004 - with plenty of time to add a few more delays into 2005.
"They did not do this, but rather developed prescott. Since some of us know that Intel does things for good reasons,"
Prescott performs quite well - but most of the AMD fanboy sites have identified a series of benchmarks in which the AMD64 performs better than Intel's CPUs (Unreal in particular) - and they use these almost to the total exclusion of those benchmarks in which Intel's products outperform AMD's devices.
For example - go back to Anand's reviews of Athlon and AThlon XP - and the recent Prescott - you will notice that Anand has dropped a whole suite of benchmarks that will show the Prescott to perfrom quite well - Tom's Hardware site has many of these benchmarks - and the Prescott does extremely well.
Here is a more balanced review - and pay particular attention to the benchmarks which show an excellent improvement in hyperthreading performance of the Prescott over Northwood - and hence, over AMD devices.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1478837,00.asp
Review: Intel Prescott Pentium 4 Processor
January 30, 2004
By: Loyd Case
The German strategist Helmut von Moltke once said, "No plan survives contact with the enemy."
That adage is certainly true in the technology world. In Intel's ideal world, the company would have had all the time it needed to tweak and perfect its 90nm process. Rumors over the last few months pointed to teething problems with the new process, including higher operating temperatures and power consumption than had been expected with Intel's strained silicon process. The net result has been a somewhat restrained launch for Intel's new progeny. Initial plans had called for launching the 3.4GHz CPU in quantity, but yields of 3.4GHz Prescotts have apparently been quite low. One of Intel's biggest OEMs scaled back its system offerings to not include Prescott-based systems in one product category due to the lack of 3.4GHz Prescott availability.
On top of that, AMD has been on a roll. The recent release of the Athlon 64 3400+ proved to be a pleasant surprise, offering better performance gains than anticipated -- a rarity these days. Sales of the new Athlon 64 line have propelled AMD to its first quarterly profit in over a year. Performance enthusiasts have been buzzing about AMD's new flagship CPUs.
As we noted, Intel originally planned to launch its new 90nm Pentium 4 with a top clock rate of 3.4GHz. In fact, Intel may still paper launch at 3.4GHz, but only 3.2GHz and slower parts will be widely available. Supplies of the 3.4GHz Prescott will be "low," and Intel will likely say so during its launch events.
To fill the gap, Intel is also launching a pair of new Pentium 4's built around the older Northwood generation technology. One is a standard Northwood-based CPU, with 512KB of L2 cache, while the other will be an update to the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition (dubbed by some pundits as the "Emergency Edition"). Like the first P4EE, the new chip sports 512KB of L2 cache and 2MB of L3 cache. Both of the new/old CPUs will ship at 3.4GHz. All Prescott CPUs shipping on February 2nd will support Hyper-Threading and an 800MHz FSB (200MHz actual FSB clock, quad-pumped).
Intel supplied ExtremeTech with two processors: a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition and a 3.2GHz Prescott CPU. Given that, it would be interesting to compare the performance of a 3.4GHz Northwood to Intel's new baby. We sorely wanted to do this, but Intel was understandably reticent to hand out old-generation CPUs that might "distract" from the launch of their new architecture. However, we were able to obtain a 3.4GHz Northwood from another source, so we have performance data for a nearly complete suite of new CPUs to present -- only the rare 3.4GHz Prescott is missing from the mix.
Before we get to the performance tests, though, let's take a stroll through Prescott's internal architecture. The new CPU is more than a die shrink, adding some significant architectural enhancements.
Prescott Microarchitecture
Prescott is more than just a die shrink. When Intel moved to the 130nm process with Northwood, designers added an additional 256KB of L2 cache and fine-tuned a dormant feature present in all P4's existing since the original "Willamette" design: the ability to perform simultaneous multitasking, which Intel dubs Hyper-Threading. Initially, Hyper-Threading was disabled in Northwood chips, but turned on when Intel launched the 3.06GHz version.
Moving to 90nm, Intel has once again enhanced the microarchitecture. Prescott has a number of tweaks, some simply to take advantage of the new process, while others are actually changes to the internal architecture. The most obvious change, brought about by the reduced die size available at 90nm, is the additional cache. Both the L1 and L2 cache sizes have doubled. The L1 data cache is now 16KB, while the L2 unified (data and instruction) cache size is now 1MB. Let's take a quick look at how the various Intel Pentium 4 CPUs compare, and toss in an Athlon 64 for comparison.
Current Feature Set (2/2/04) Willamette Northwood P4EE Prescott Athlon64 (FX-51 & 3400+)
Process 180nm 130nm 130nm 90nm 130nm
Transistor Count (Million) 42 55 178 125 106
Die Size (mm2) 170 131 237 112 193
L1 Cache (KB) 8 8 8 16 128
L2 Cache (KB) 256 512 512 1024 1024
L3 Cache (KB) NA NA 2048 NA NA
Max Frequency 2/2/04 2GHz 3.4GHz 3.4GHz 3.2GHz (3.4GHz
soon) 2.2GHz
The die shrink enables Intel to build a processor with double the cache of Northwood, but with a smaller die size. Intel has also aggressively moved to 300mm wafers, so the net result is a much lower cost per CPU manufactured. Of course, the cost of transitioning to new fabrication technologies still has to be amortized, but the long term result is lower costs, and eventually, lower prices.
Pipelines and Predictions
We covered the original Pentium 4 architecture extensively two years ago, so our discussion here focuses on changes to the architecture inherent in Prescott.
click on image for full view
Intel's CPU architects weren't content with simply shrinking the CPU and adding more cache. The underlying philosophy of the Pentium 4 is to scale performance by increasing the clock frequency. One method for enabling higher clock rates is to increase the number of pipeline stages (more stages yield less circuit propagation delay per stage, permitting higher clock rates). A deeply pipelined architecture needs to have fairly good knowledge of what instructions are likely to enter the pipeline in the near future. Further, most software these days isn't just linear streams of code, but often loops and branches, as needed by the application.
The ability to predict when code will branch, and hence know what code will enter the pipeline, is known as branch prediction. A deeply pipelined architecture needs to have highly accurate branch prediction. If the pipeline is filled with incorrect instructions and has to be flushed and reloaded with proper instructions due to an unpredicted code branch, the performance penalty can be pretty stiff. For example, a pipeline flush in Northwood results in a 20 cycle performance penalty.
The pipeline in Prescott has been extended to 31 stages, so a pipeline flush due to poor branch prediction can result in a much larger clock cycle penalty every time a branch misprediction occurs. Therefore Intel's architects worked to improve Prescott's branch prediction over that of Northwood.
Prescott has a few areas of enhancement in branch prediction functionality. Before we get into details, understand that all P4 processors actually have two areas where branch predictions are performed -- in the front end of the pipeline, where x86 instruction streams are loaded, and at the trace cache (L1 instruction cache containing micro-ops). Most instruction sequences are retrieved from the trace cache during normal program execution. The pipeline depth (20 or 31 stages mentioned prior) is measured from the point of obtaining the trace cache instruction pointer from the Branch Target Buffer (BTB) associated with the trace cache. You can see this BTB in the block diagram has 2K entries (up from 512 entries in older P4s) versus 4K entries for the front-end BTB (same as older P4s).
Static branch prediction (a technique that relies on prior knowledge of branch behavior before actual program execution, such as knowing most loops branch backwards) was improved in Prescott. In all P4's, static branch prediction will occur at decode time if the Branch Target Buffer (BTB) has no dynamic branch prediction data for a particular branch. In prior P4 static branch prediction algorithms, backwards branches were assumed to be part of loops, but that's not always the case. Prescott adds logic to help determine if a backward branch was part of a loop or another type of backwards branch. Loop branches tend to have shorter jumps than other types of backward branches. If the branch was not included in the BTB and must be statically predicted, a check is made on both branch direction and branch distance. If a predetermined threshold for branch distance (seen in typical loops) is exceeded, the branch is predicted to be not taken. In other cases, it was determined that certain conditions would typically result in not taken branch behavior, regardless of distance and direction.
Dynamic branch prediction accuracy is enhanced by adding an indirect branch predictor. Interestingly, this is similar to a technique used in the Pentium-M (Banias) processor. Intel's trace data revealed that the new techniques improved branch prediction in a number of SPEC benchmark from 2 - 20%.
Other Architectural Changes
The Prescott architecture team incorporated additional tweaks to the new Pentium 4 microarchitecture. The L1 data cache associativity was increased from 4-way to 8-way when the size doubled (8K in Northwood to 16K in Prescott). The new 1MB unified, write-back L2 cache is still 8-way set associative, as in past P4s, and still has 128 bytes/cache line.
The size of the instruction schedulers for x87 and all levels of SSE instructions were increased to improve the ability to find parallelism in multimedia code, as were the effective size of the queues that feed all the schedulers, not just a subset. Increasing scheduler queue size reduces allocator stalls, permitting the allocator logic to continue assigning micro-ops to individual functional unit scheduler queues that follow in the pipeline, while also processing machine resource requests from new micro-ops entering the allocator stage.
A dedicated integer multiplier has been added. Previously, the floating point multiplier had been used for integer multiplies, but that increased latency by moving operands to the FP unit and routing the result back to the integer unit.
More types of micro-ops can now be encoded inside the trace cache than in prior P4s, rather than being sequenced by the Microcode ROM (a slow process for complex and/or infrequently used instructions). Two common instruction types that can now be encoded and stored in the trace cache are indirect calls with a register source operand, and software prefetch instructions.
Additional processor resources were incorporated, including the ability to have 32 stores outstanding (versus 24 in past P4s) and increasing the number of write combine buffers to eight (from six). The processor also keeps track of eight loads that missed the L1 data cache; previously, only four missed loads were tracked. Some changes were made to the hardware prefetch mechanism to increase its efficiency, in addition to software prefetches now being stored in the trace cache.
Shift and rotate instructions can now be executed quickly by a new shifter/rotator logic block included in one of the two fast ALUs. In prior P4s, such operations were complex and took many cycles.
Sequencing of load and store micro-ops (instructions) was reworked in Prescott to avoid latency and load re-execution. This occurred when store data is required to be forwarded to a load instruction (prior to storing to the L1 data cache), yet the load micro-op executes prior to the store micro-op. Prescott adds a predictor to indicate a load is likely to need data forwarded from a particular store micro-op, and the load scheduler can hold the load until the specific store is scheduled.
Most of these seem like relatively minor increases in efficiency, but they all serve to also improve Hyper-Threading performance. In fact, some of these changes may have little effect if only a single thread is running, but affect performance in a multithreaded environment. Some additional resources were added to specifically improve performance in a threaded environment, such as the ability to simultaneously access the memory page table while handling a memory access that splits a cache line.
SSE3 Instructions
The new 90nm Pentium 4 adds 13 new SSE instructions, aka "Prescott New Instructions." These include:
An instruction to speed up x87 floating point to integer conversion
Five instructions to improve the efficiency of loading, moving and duplicating SIMD data, useful in complex arithmetic algorithms
An instruction to avoid cache line splits when loading data, useful in certain video compression applications
Four instructions to enable more efficient handling of arrays of structures. This is useful in 3D graphics, particularly when processing vertex buffers.
Two instructions that help manage thread synchronization, which will in turn improve Hyper-Threading performance.
Like past additions to the SSE instruction set, applications will need to be recompiled -- and in some cases, hand-tuned -- to take advantage of the new instructions. Since Prescott has been sampling for a number of months now, the wait for some key applications may not be too long. More detailed information on SSE3 is available on Intel's developer site
Testbed Setup
We built several testbeds to run benchmarks, striving to keep them as similar as possible. Let's look at the configurations.
Component All P4 Systems Athlon 64 FX-51 System Athlon 64 3400+ System
Processor 3.2GHz Northwood, 3.2GHz Prescott, 3.2GHz P4EE, 3.4GHz Northwood, 3.4GHz P4EE Athlon 64 FX-51 at 2.2GHz (socket 940) Athlon 64 3400+ at 2.2GHz (socket 754)
Motherboard Asus P4C800-E, Intel 875P chipset, 1014 BIOS Asus SK8N, Nforce3 Pro 150 chipset, 1004 BIOS Asus K8V Deluxe, Via K8T800 chipset, 1004 BIOS
Memory 2 x 512KB (1GB) Kingston HyperX PC3200 unbuffered, CAS2-3-3-6 2 x 512KB (1GB) Mushkin PC3200 Registered, CAS 2-2-2-6 2 x 512KB (1GB) Kingston HyperX PC3200 unbuffered, CAS2.5-3-3-6
Graphics Asus Radeon 9800XT, Catalyst 4.1 drivers Asus Radeon 9800XT, Catalyst 4.1 drivers Asus Radeon 9800XT, Catalyst 4.1 drivers
Hard Drives 2 x WD360 10,000RPM SATA drives configured as a RAID 0 striped array, 128K block size 2 x WD360 10,000RPM SATA drives configured as a RAID 0 striped array, 128K block size 2 x WD360 10,000RPM SATA drives configured as a RAID 0 striped array, 128K block size
Optical Toshiba DVD-ROM Toshiba DVD-ROM Toshiba DVD-ROM
Audio Creative Labs Audigy 2 Creative Labs Audigy 2 Creative Labs Audigy 2
Networking Intel Pro1000 CSA Nforce3 10/100 Ethernet 3Com 3C940 Gigabit Ethernet
Chassis Antec SX-830 Antec SX-830 Antec SX-830
Power Supply Vantec Stealth 430W Vantec Stealth 430W Vantec Stealth 430W
Operating System Windows XP SP1, all current patches installed, DirectX 9 and Windows Media Player 9 installed Windows XP SP1, all current patches installed, DirectX 9 and Windows Media Player 9 installed Windows XP SP1, all current patches installed, DirectX 9 and Windows Media Player 9 installed
Each system was initially configured with a clean install of Windows XP (service pack 1). Then all current critical patches were downloaded and installed from the Windows Update site. We also installed DirectX 9.0b and Windows Media Player 9. Virtual memory was set to be a 2048KB fixed swap file.
We had initially tried to use the latest spin (3.1) of Intel's D875PBZ. The Intel motherboard group worked to improve memory latency and throughput on the new spin. However, the beta BIOS that had been supplied choked when trying to configure our Raptor SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration, so we switched to the Asus boards. Intel has since uncovered a BIOS issue with the beta BIOS. The official BIOS release that both supports Prescott and fixes the RAID issue we uncovered should be posted on Intel's site soon.
Note that the memory configurations varied slightly. Both the Athlon 64 3400+ system and the Intel processor testbeds used 2 x 512MB, PC3200 DIMMs, for a total of 1GB. The FX-51 testbed was configured with a pair of Mushkin PC3200 registered DIMMs, as recommended by AMD. We ran the systems with the best possible, stable memory timings. The P4 testbeds required latency settings of 2-3-3-6 to remain stable in all benchmarks. The Asus K8V deluxe refused to post at any setting other than the default SPD setting, which is 2.5-3-3-7. As we'll see shortly, that proved to be a non-issue. The Asus SK8N was stable with timings of 2-2-2-6, but this didn't seem to overcome the handicap of having to use registered (buffered) modules.
The hard drives were defragged before any major test requiring hard significant hard drive access. Vsync was disabled for all real-time graphics tests. We executed the following command before any test cycle: rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks. This completes any background idle tasks, and improves benchmark score reproducibility.
Benchmark Suite
Our benchmark suite has evolved over time. However, our suite covers a wide range of applications which are significantly affected by CPU performance. The suite consists of a mix of synthetic and actual applications, but is heavily weighted towards real applications. Here are the tests we ran for this processor preview:
Business Winstone 2004
Business Winstone 2004 is the latest version of Veritest's Winstone benchmark suite. It consists of a variety of common desktop applications, run in a scripted sequence that resembles actual user usage patterns. Most of these consist of Microsoft Office applications, including Microsoft Project and Access. Also included are Norton Antivirus Professional 2003 and WinZip 8.1
New this year is a second set of four inspection tests designed to yield information on multitasking performance. The first runs Outlook and Internet Explorer in the foreground while performing a file copy in the background. The second runs Excel and Word operations while WinZip runs in the background, archiving files. The final test runs a Norton Antivirus scan in the background while Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Access, FrontPage and WinZip perform foreground chores.
Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004
The latest release of Content Creation Winstone updates most of the applications to recent versions. It also shifts away from Windows Media Encoder 7.1 to the current Windows Media Encoder 9. Sound Forge has been replaced with Steinberg's WaveLab. One note: LightWave is currently running as a single threaded application.
Both Business Winstone and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 can be ordered from Veritest and delivered on CD-ROM for a nominal shipping charge. They cannot be downloaded.
Adobe After Effects 6.0 Professional
This is an updated version of our earlier After Effects 5.5 test, using the newer version from Adobe. After Effects is a professional video compositing and editing tool. This test runs a scripted set of typical After Effects composting and filter operations and generates a log file with elapsed time data at the end.
DiVX 5.1.1 Encode
We use the freeware VirtualDub and the latest DiVX 5.1.1 codec to compress a very high bitrate 330MB AVI file extracted from the DVD The Rock and originally encoded at full resolution with Indeo 5.1 to about 80MB. The AVI file offers both rapid action and high contrast scenes, making it a challenging scene for any compression scheme. The same file is used in our other video compression tests.
WME 9 Test
We use Windows Media Encoder 9 to encode the above video to a 60MB WMV file. Audio is compressed to 70kbps, and the total bitstream is encoded at roughly 2050 kbps.
Quicktime 6.5 / Sorenson Test
We used QuickTime Professional 6.5 and the highly regarded Sorenson 3 codec compresses our 330MB AVI file to about 75MB, using its highest quality settings.
MusicMatch 8.2 MP3Pro Encode
We use the latest version of MusicMatch to encode a 248MB .WAV file to an 11.8MB MP3Pro file at 64 kbps and note the time.
WMA 9 Encode
We use Windows Media Encoder to compress a 248MB WAV file to 11.3MB at a 70kbps data rate and record the time.
Cinebench 2003
We run Cinebench 2003 to test the software 3D rendering performance using Maxon's Cinema4D engine. Cinebench also allows us to see how performance varies with multiple CPUs, virtual or real.
LightWave 7.5
NewTek's LightWave is a highly popular 3D modeling and rendering applications used extensively in Hollywood and elsewhere. We run three different renders from LightWave's benchmark folder to hammer on the CPU. All LightWave renders take place with two threads enabled.
Discrete 3ds max 5.1
Another popular professional 3D modeling app, 3ds max is multithreaded. We run a variety of rendering tests, and report several results. We rendered five consecutive frames and recorded the rendering time.
PC Mark 2004
The latest iteration of FutureMark's suite of synthetic tests has expanded on the limited repertoire of the original. FutureMark has added several multithreaded tests, as well as expanded to include storage and graphics. We focus on the memory and CPU tests here.
3D Mark 2003
The latest version of 3D Mark has had its share of controversy. However, it's useful for gauging how a processor might fare in real-time 3D applications.
3D Gaming Tests
Perhaps no application exercises the system more than current generation 3D games. We use the following games to test the performance of these processors. Note that all results are reported at low resolutions and, in most cases, low detail. While you'd never play a game at these resolutions, running that way serves to isolate CPU performance and negate any potential impact of the graphics card. The games we use include:
Halo for the PC
Dungeon Siege
Flight Simulator 2004
Comanche 4
Serious Sam SE
Unreal Tournament 2003
Splinter Cell
Multitasking Tests
One of Intel's key value propositions for its new generation of Pentium 4 CPUs is simultaneous multithreading, or what Intel calls Hyper-Threading. We wanted to examine multitasking performance carefully, so we looked at the results of several tests:
Business Winstone multitasking tests
A custom scenario, involving Norton Antivirus and Photoshop Elements 2.0 running simultaneously
PC Mark 2004 multithreading tests
A custom scenario where we run Flight Simulator 2004 and Windows Media Encoder together. However, rather than report a single result, we look at the frame rate over time of FS2004.
With these tests in mind, let's look at actual performance data.
Performance Results and Analysis
Given Prescott's architectural tweaks, we'll try to analyze the performance results in terms of those changes. Since we have three different Pentium 4 variants, all running at 3.2GHz, comparisons of performance are possible, but we'll be cautious in our assessment. For one thing, none of these applications have been enhanced for Prescott's new SSE3 instructions, and some would clearly benefit. But if you're buying a system today, performance of today's applications are certainly valid on a new architecture.
Business Winstone 2004 / Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004
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The Athlon 64 3400+ puts a hurt on all the other processors in the Business Winstone test. At first blush, the difference in scores between the 3400+ and the second place Athlon 64 FX-51 seems a bit mysterious, but it's probably due to the use of unbuffered memory, which seems to overcome the memory bandwidth deficiency. Prescott trails the rest of Intel's offerings in this test, though the gap isn't all that large.
What's really impressive is that AMD's 3400+ also cleans up in Multimedia Content Creation Winstone. However, part of this may be due to the fact that multithreading isn't enabled in CC Winstone's LightWave test. Still, it's an impressive showing. The P4EE 3.4GHz places second, ahead of the FX-51.
In both tests, Prescott is essentially in a statistical dead heat with the 3.2GHz Northwood part -- slightly behind in Business Winstone and slightly ahead in CC Winstone. Given the branchy nature of business applications, Prescott's performance in Business Winstone is surprisingly good. Clearly the larger cache, improved branch prediction and better memory handling offsets the deeper pipeline.
Media Encoding
Video processing, including applying filters, video compression, and transcoding are increasingly important applications in today's media-rich computing environment. Note that Windows Media Encoder 9 was set to dual-pass mode.
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In general, Intel's CPUs do well in media encoding. AMD's processors have tended to trail in this type of application, despite now having SSE2 instructions built in. However, the Athlon 64 3400+ again proves its mettle in a couple of tests, outpacing Intel's CPUs in the Quicktime/Sorenson compression test and the DiVX 5.1.1 test. However, Intel's processors still hold sway in WMV9 transcoding and Adobe After Effects processing.
Prescott acquits itself pretty well here in video encoding and transcoding, essentially tying or leading the 3.2GHz Northwood. It even holds its own against the 3.4GHz Northwood in several tests. Audio compression seems to be a different story, as the new Intel CPU lags a bit behind the Northwood. AMD's 64-bit CPUs do well here, outpacing the 3.2GHz Prescott, but lagging behind the other Intel CPUs.
3D Modeling and Content Creation
3ds max, LightWave and Maxon's Cinebench 4D are professional modeling and animation tools. Here, we test rendering performance, enabling multithreading where needed (3ds max is multithreaded by default).
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Performance in these applications is heavily dependent on floating point performance. All of them have been optimized for SSE2, but it's also clear that the clock rate has some impact. Once SSE2 enters the mix, the Pentium 4 line does very well. Here, the champ is the 3.4GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition.
The anomaly here is Prescott. Prescott's 3D rendering performance trails pretty much everyone in LightWave and lags behind all the Intel processors in 3ds max. We find this a bit puzzling, as this type of rendering code isn't terribly branchy. The same holds true for the Cinebench test, whose workload is a bit more synthetic. In fact, Prescott would be dead last here, save for its Hyper-Threading capability, which allows it to post a dual CPU score higher than the Athlon 64 single CPU scores.
Perhaps optimizing these applications for SSE3 will offer some boost. That certainly occurred with the older Pentium 4's, which once performed relatively inefficiently with 3D content creation applications. As optimizations were added for the P4, rendering performance saw a substantial boost.
PCMark 2004 and 3DMark 2003
These are synthetic tests, but can reveal the behavior of key subsystems.
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The P4 has classically garnered good results in PCMark 2004, so it's scores are no real surprise. What is interesting is how well Prescott performs here. In the CPU test, it ties the 3.2GHz Northwood and 3.2GHz P4EE, and places second in the memory test. The PCMark 2004 CPU test has cache locality properties that do not derive any tangible benefit beyond a 512K L2 cache. All performance gains shown across the P4 chips relate to clock speed, not cache size differences.We'll take a closer look at the memory results in a bit.
When using software vertex shaders, the Athlon 64 3400+ outpaces Prescott, but not by a wide margin. As we'll see shortly, this result is a leading indicator for game performance. If we look more closely at the 3DMark CPU test, we see the Athlon 64 3400+ performing exceptionally well in CPU test 1, which is more of a DX7-style rendering engine. In the more vertex-shader intensive test, the P4's perform fairly well, though Prescott does lag a bit.
3D Games
Our 3D game tests offer a mix of CPU-intensive and memory bandwidth hungry tests. We keep the resolution low, so that the graphics card doesn't unduly affect the CPU impact.
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If you're primarily a gamer, the CPU of choice here is the Athlon 64 3400+. When mated to the Asus K8V Deluxe motherboard, the 3400+ outpaced all the other processors in most tests, with the exception of Comanche4 and Serious Sam SE. The 3.4GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition took the honors in those titles.
Note that frame rates at playable resolutions -- 1024x768 or higher -- tend to be much more evenly matched, due to the influence of a fast graphics card. But even in those cases, the Athlon 64 3400+ tends to be a bit faster than the pack.
The 3.2GHz Prescott performance is a mixed bag. The new Intel processor actually does pretty well in several tests, edging out the 3.4GHz Northwood in Dungeon Siege and Flight Sim 2004. It only loses to the Northwood 3.2GHz part in one test, Comanche 4. So despite the added pipeline stages, Prescott turns out to be a decent performer in games, albeit overshadowed by AMD. We're certainly looking forward to checking out the 3.4GHz Prescott when that becomes available.
Multitasking Performance
Intel has suggested that multithreaded performance should improve with Prescott, since specific features were added to the processor to enhance its Hyper-Threading capability. Let's look at multithreaded performance in a couple of different ways. First up are PCMark 2004's system multithreading tests.
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As we can see in this chart, Prescott does pretty well, essentially staying even with the higher clocked Northwood 3.4GHz CPU. In fact, on the first PCMark test, which simultaneously runs file encryption and file compression algorithms, it gets the highest score of any CPU. This behavior, plus the result of the memory test, explains Prescott's solid PCMark 2004 score.
Next, let's look at one of our older multitasking tests, involving Norton Antivirus 2003 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0.
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We've used this test in the past to gauge multitasking performance. Photoshop Elements 2.0 runs a scripted set of filters on a photograph while Norton Antivirus 2003 runs a virus scan on a fixed directory of files and folders in the background. Prescott outperforms both Northwood processors, although it falls behind the Extreme Edition CPUs. This suggests that cache size may play a role in these tests. But given the deeper pipeline of Prescott, it's an intriguing showing.
The third multitasking scenario is one that really hammers the system. We run two highly CPU intensive applications, Windows Media Encoder 9 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004.
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This messy-looking chart shows the frame rate of Flight Simulator 2004 over a 140 second run. Each data point represents the momentary frame rate at roughly 1/2 second intervals. During the first run (labeled "solo"), Flight Simulator 2004 had the entire system to itself. In the second run (labeled "multi"), Windows Media Encoder 9 was busily compressing a 330MB AVI file to an 84MB WMV file while FS2004 was running its test.
Note also that we only ran the Prescott and P4EE 3.2GHz Intel CPUs. We could have added the results of all the CPUs, but the chart would then be nearly impossible to decipher. We also ran the test with the Athlon 64 3400+, which garnered the best overall Flight Simulator 2004 benchmark. The resolution here is a bit higher than our earlier game test, and the graphics features turned up a bit, too, to represent a more playable game experience.
Several interesting things about this chart jump out after a little study. First, both the top and the bottom data lines are both from runs with the Athlon 64. When WME9 was running, the Athlon 64 averaged less than 4 frames per second. We did see one large spike in frame rate, but the curve pretty much remained under 4 fps for the majority of the run. All three Pentium 4 processors performed more poorly when running Flight Sim 2004 solo, but managed to average around 17 frames per second while WME9 was chugging along in the background. The other interesting data point is that Prescott's average frame rate of 17.2 fps when multitasking was essentially the same as the 3.2GHz P4EE's 17.5 fps. Of course, the frame rate dipped on occasion, but the point here is that Hyper-Threading clearly has a major impact.
Memory Performance
Finally, let's take a quick look at Prescott's memory performance using PCMark 2004's memory tests.
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The first two charts deal with raw block reads and write to memory. The 192KB raw block tests fit into L2 cache, but not L1 cache. Since the data resides in the cache, the on-die memory controller of the AMD CPUs don't come into play. The P4 processors offer superlative performance when reading data in and out of the L2 cache. All the P4 raw block write results are fairly similar, while the reads do vary a bit. Even so, there's not a lot of differentiation in P4 cache read and write performance for this particular test.
Next up is the 4MB raw block read and write tests. This test breaks even the L3 cache on the P4 Extreme Edition CPUs. Curiously, the integrated memory controller on the Athlon 64s doesn't seem to help much here. Since we're essentially streaming data in one direction from contiguous memory locattions, the lower latency offered by the on-die memory controller may not have a large impact.
Interestingly, P4 write performance is roughly the same across all processors. However, Prescott posts a noticeably higher 4MB raw block read result than the other P4's. Perhaps the deeper buffers and other enhancements to the way Prescott handles memory assist here.
When we move to random access tests, the Athlon XP's integrated controller seems to once again have relatively little impact here. Perhaps the 192KB block size is still too large to really have an impact here. The 4MB random access tests are relatively even across the Intel processor family, but the Prescott fares quite poorly in the 192KB test.
Note that these block sizes are fairly large. What happens when you try to move small chunks of data in and out of RAM?
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The Athlon 64s do handle smaller blocks better when it comes to random access patterns and 4KB block writes to memory. However, the Pentium 4 has a seemingly staggering appetite for memory reads, which is no surprise to anyone who has seen P4 performance increase with memory bandwidth increases.
Dollars and Cents
How much will all this set you back? Let's look at the latest CPU pricing (quantity 1000):
CPU Price
Pentium 4 2.8GHz $178
Athlon 64 2800+ $193
Pentium 4 3.0/3.06GHz $218
Athlon 64 3000+ $233
Pentium 4 3.2GHz $278
Athlon 64 3200+ $293
Pentium 4 3.4GHz $417
Athlon 64 3400+ $417
Athlon 64 FX-51 $725
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz $925
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz $999
If you look at the pricing table, you'll see no differentiation between Northwood and Prescott. In fact, Intel is offering identical pricing for Prescott and Northwood processors running at the same clock speed. The Extreme Edition CPUs are a different story, but that's no surprise. Prescott's pricing is a pleasant surprise, and Intel even seems to be trying to undercut AMD here.
Simply because Intel's quantity 1000 pricing is the same doesn't mean you'll see identical prices from resellers. But the prices for the different processors should be close. How do you tell apart a Prescott from a Northwood, then? Intel is appending an "E" to the end of the frequency for 90nm Pentium 4s with 1MB of L2 cache. So a 3.0GHz Prescott will be labeled "3.0E". The most confusing model will be the 2.8GHz P4, which ships in a variety of flavors: 2.8 (Northwood, 533MHz FSB), 2.8C (Northwood, 800MHz FSB) and 2.8E (Prescott, 800MHz FSB).
Of course, the 3.4GHz version of Prescott isn't currently available, but George Alfs of Intel told us that systems based on the 3.4GHz Prescott would be available by the end of Q1 (end of March). Retail, boxed versions should also be shipping by then.
Should you buy today? The new pricing for Intel CPUs makes them more affordable than in the past (Extreme Edition excepted).
Of course, if you have an older motherboard, Prescott may not be an option, even if it's using a current generation 865 or 875P chipset. Some motherboards had to undergo a respin to improve power regulation to support Prescott. So if you want to move to the latest Intel technology, you might need a new motherboard. Note that the Asus P4C800-E deluxe we used only required a BIOS update.
Final Thoughts: CPU Genesis
A new processor is always difficult to test. When we originally previewed the Athlon 64 FX-51, we were somewhat frustrated by our inability to adequately test its most salient feature: performance on 64-bit applications in a 64-bit operating system.
With Prescott, we were also somewhat hobbled by the lack of SS3-enhanced applications. Not all applications will benefit from SSE3 optimizations. For example, it's unlikely that office applications will benefit much. And until the DirectX libraries and various graphics drivers are optimized for Prescott, gaming performance may not improve dramatically.
Surprisingly, Prescott disappointed us a bit in the content creation arena. While still holding its own in video processing chores, it lags a bit in audio. Most of all, its performance in 3D content creation seemed sub par.
However, the real strength of Prescott seems to lie in its Hyper-Threading performance. In the majority of our multitasking tests, the Prescott performed as well as the higher clocked 3.4GHz Northwood CPU. In at least one case, Intel's latest offering even outpaces the 3.4GHz P4 Extreme Edition, so it's not just a matter of cache size. So if you're running a system with a lot of windows open, and lots of background processes running -- a situation all too common these days -- Prescott may be just your cup of tea.
But for the dedicated gamer, the Athlon 64 3400+ is tough to beat, provided you're not running many background tasks. We were pretty impressed by the performance of the 3400+ when running games as the only major task. On the other hand, the reliance of the Athlon 64 FX-51 on registered memory seems to hobble its performance by comparison. Although you may pick up a bit of performance with a different motherboard, the 3400+ is still a relative bargain. AMD really needs to get out the socket 939 versions, which will support unbuffered SDRAM, if they want to continue to command such a high price for the FX line.
The Pentium 4 Extreme Editions are pricey, and may really be luxury items for most users. However, the P4EE proves to be a productive processor in content creation and video editing applications. Users looking for a good, entry level workstation processor for those types of applications may actually find the high end of the Intel desktop line to be good fits for their needs. The P4EE also does pretty well in games, but the price/performance ratio is fairly unimpressive. Note that systems from major suppliers who incorporate the Extreme Edition may be more cost effective than building your own P4EE-based system.
Recently, more rumors have been flying around the Internet regarding 64-bit support in Prescott. A recent posting on the popular site Slashdot pointed to several articles speculating on Intel's shift towards something that may resemble AMD's x86-64. The next several weeks should yield more concrete information on this.
While Prescott did not provide notable performance improvement running at the same GHz as Northwood, we can look forward to much higher performance with 4 GHz parts likely by year end due to its longer pipeline. A longer pipeline permits much higher frequency scaling than Northwood. That, plus its improved multitasking performance, are Prescott's aces in the hole. And of course, we'll likely see Xeon spins of Prescott's core architecture, but with larger caches and multiprocessing capability later in the year. And who knows, maybe all the rumors circulating over the past year about Prescott having latent 64-bit x86 "Yamhill" features built-in are true.
Product: Intel Pentium 4 with 1MB L2 Cache
Web site: www.intel.com
Pros: Improved multithreaded performance; good price
Cons: Slightly slower in some applications than the old Pentium 4; no 3.4GHz CPU at launch
Summary: Offering excellent multitasking performance, the new Prescott CPU does lag behind other processors for dedicated gaming and several other applications. The price is right, but you may need a new motherboard.
Price: $278
Score:
Product: Pentium 4 3.4GHz with 512KB L2 cache
Web site: www.intel.com
Pros: It's a 3.4GHz part that won't set you back an arm and a leg.
Cons: It's older technology; the slower 3.2GHz Prescott outdoes it in multitasking performance
Summary: This is the last gasp for Northwood, but it goes out with a bang to beat it's younger sibling in the clock rate race.
Price: $417
Score:
Product: Pentium 4 Extreme Edition at 3.4GHz
Web site: www.intel.com
Pros: Intel’s fastest desktop CPU; offers a staggering 2MB of L3 cache.
Cons: Very expensive
Summary: Unless you have a specific productivity need or want to own a status symbol, it's hard to justify the price/performance ratio.
Price: $999
Score:
Copyright (c) 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
AMD has already given their customers a heads up - that the 90 nM Opterons will burn 105 watts - about the same as Prescott.
AMD's slide can be found here:
http://webpages.charter.net/tates/MO/amd_90nm_heat.jpg
"how did Gateway do today"
They did good enough to buy the Droids' latest and greatest hope - eMachines.
I hear your brand new AMD64 motherboard is already obsolete - after less than a week.
Maybe your next one will last two weeks.
"And when a 64 bit OS does arrive, AMD 64 bit customers will have to buy all new 64 bit software to run on them
Wrong. BigTime!"
No.
You are wrong.
Anybody who buys a 64 bit computer will have to buy 64 bit software if he wants to run 64 bit software. Unless you think software vendors are going to provide free versions of 64 bit upgrades.
"I'm running a 64 bit operating system on my AMD64 system and it runs 32 bit software just fine."
What a waste of money. I am running a 32 bit PC that runs the same software and I didn't have to run out and spend a bunch of money on a new machine to run the software I already have. But you did. I guess that makes you smart.
Just think. By the time there is any decent 64 bit software available to buy, your 64 bit PC will be slow, old and obsolete.
Not a very sound investment.
"AMD is getting absolutely ZERO premium for thier "64" bit feature. nada. nothing."
Correct.
The large part of these have no 64 bit OS to run on them.
And when a 64 bit OS does arrive, AMD 64 bit customers will have to buy all new 64 bit software to run on them - yet another high cost which the cheap AMD customers will avoid like a one-eyed midget.
I'm sure AMD's friends at EPIC will eventually ship some 64 bit game that the AMD lovers can all go ga ga over.
"that also says that Intel's version of X86-64 should be offered with no price differentiation to Intel's 32 bit parts."
And just what Intel x86-64 version do you think Intel has?
"AMD getting enough money to keep building new fabs and be able to deliver volume"
AMD gets their fab money from the government of Germany - and has been dancing this jig for almost 10 years.
Face it - AMD is a subsidiary of the German Government.
Buy AMD - and you support Germany and the EU.
You like that cup of tea?
Why do you think the bulk of AMD lovers on iHUB are from Germany?
AMD also gets money from Credit Suisse - our good friends the Swiss - and their upgrade of AMD - by order of Joe Roby -an officer of Credit Suisse and Board Member of AMD. They did this to pump up the price of AMD's stock so AMD can call some of their old debt - and sell some new debts - all with the help of Credit Suisse.
"All their 90nm products will be more expensive to make. "
AMD should achieve a large die size reduction - I think 114 sq. mm for a 90 nM Opteron/Athlon 64 vs. 193 sq. mm.. for 130 nM versions.
If they don't change anything else (add additional metal layers, etc., increase cache size, etc.) on the 90 nM process, AMD's CPU costs should come down.
The only question is - come down from what level?
The 130 nM cost level is pretty high - since AMD is reluctant - or cannot - make them in volume.
"it suspiciously looks like AMD,Apple and Linux are all part of IBM's long-term revenge on Intel and Microsoft. "
Apple now has about 1.7% market share and continues to drop.
And AMD's market share continues to drop - even in the most recent quarter:
http://www.thestreet.com/tech/kcswanson/10137923.html
"Bolton also estimated that AMD lost about 70 basis points of unit market share to Intel in the quarter and said he wonders whether the adoption of Athlon 64 has been slower than expected. "With AMD sacrificing unit shipments to preserve higher processor [average selling prices] , we believe the company leaves itself vulnerable to a price war initiated by Intel," he wrote. "We believe the low profitability of the flash memory business and unit market share losses in [microprocessor units] will remain an overhang on AMD shares."
And, most Linux runs on Intel silicon - and quite a bit of it inside boxes with the three letters "IBM" on the outside.
"I give it a higher chance of survival over the next ten
years than the independent corporate entity known
as AMD."
As long as there is a Germany, there will be an AMD.
"Like all complex software meant to handle the general case of unknowable software applications (such as all Microsoft platforms), we won't know this until there is sufficient exposure in the field."
That sure puts a cloud over Microsoft's 64 bit OS for Opteron and AMD64 - now doesn't it?
"What I wonder about when the superior clock distribution that Intel claimed is going to finally bury AMD."
Where did any one from intel ever claim that they were going to bury AMD?
"might add I would expect issues for WoW-32 for the very same reasons; although less and easier to kink out, because the complexity-level is way lower here. "
Sure. That is why Microsft is about 18 months behind schedule in delivering WOW32 and the AMD64 bit Windows OS.
"Well they sort of made that choice didn't they? They are tacitly abandoning the low-end in hopes of enjoying the higher ASPs at the higher end."
That's not what I read or heard on the conference call.
AMD (Hector Ruin) admitted they couldn't make or sell many 64 bit CPUs and instead touted the robust demand for Athlon XPs.
ASPs were up slightly because overall demand for Intel products was great and Intel didn't need to cut prices very much in Q4 2003 - so AMD didn't cut them very much either.
Basically, AMD - and the AMD lovers on these threads have given their own testimonials - has established itself as the cheap alternative to Intel in CPUs.
And AMD is not charging cheap prices for the their 64 bit CPUs.
Hence, the 64 bit CPUs are not selling well - not even among the AMD faithful.
They all are waiting for the price to come down - probably below $100 - where AMD's real market lies.
When AMD64 products fall below $100, they will start selling.
Of course, AMD will lose more money because of the huge 193 sq. mm die size.
That is why AMD keeps saying that the "real AMD64 volume" will come when they hit 90 nM process.
So AMD has painted themselves in an awkward corner - they can't sell existing AMD64 CPUs in any volume at a profit and nobody really wants them becasue there is no real 64 bit OS for the "masses" (Linux geeks excepted, of course)
By then, Intel's Presqwatt will be delivering the heat to AMD's bottom line.
Again.
Yes - I own a small position in Intel.
"Perhaps the Intel iHub board would be a better spot? Intel is relevant to AMD as a competitor, but personal testimonials of faith and loyalty to Intel forevermore, and articles of general praise for Intel are surely more at home over there."
The article is extremely relevant to AMD and AMD lovers everywhere.
AMD lovers keep thinking that AMD is the center of the CPU universe and everything revolves around AMD.
The article I posted was to demonstrate how the real world perceives AMD - and AMD's competition.
You need a dose of reality - and you ignore it even when you're given one.
"Prescott: I am sure that the 3rd revision of the core will be manufacturable"
So....how many core redesigns will AMD go through with their Opteron on 90 nM before AMD can make it manufacturable?
Ever wonder why the AMD brethren were so heartened that AMD demoed 90 nM Opterons late in 2003 - but has continually delayed the introdcution of them until the second half of 2004?
3 more core revisions?
4 more core revisions?
..................?
"Bolton also estimated that AMD lost about 70 basis points of unit market share to Intel in the quarter and said he wonders whether the adoption of Athlon 64 has been slower than expected."
AMD - still losing market share - even in the best quarter they have had in over 2 1/2 years.
Doesn't bode well for their future.
The Wharton School & Nightly Business Report Name Intel's Andy Grove #1 of 'The 25 Most Influential Business Persons of the Past 25 Years'
I hope somebody sends a copy of this to Walter Jeramiah Sanders III
January 22, 2004 23:30
The Wharton School & Nightly Business Report Name Intel's Andy Grove #1 of 'The 25 Most Influential Business Persons of the Past 25 Years'
PHILADELPHIA, Jan 22, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- List Celebrates 25th Anniversary Milestone for PBS Show
An expert panel from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania helped public TV's Nightly Business Report (NBR) unveil "The 25 Most Influential Business Persons of the Past 25 Years" with Andy Grove, chairman of the board of Intel Corporation, named the #1 most influential person live on the Jan. 22 broadcast.
Nightly Business Report is celebrating a quarter century since it first aired on public television. Today, it is TV's longest-running and most-watched daily business news program. For several months Wharton faculty, who participated in the selection of the top 25, have appeared on Nightly Business Report to discuss some of the business issues that these business leaders have faced.
In alphabetical order, the 25 Most Influential Business Persons of the Past 25 Years are:
Mary Kay Ash - Mary Kay Cosmetics
Jeff Bezos - Amazon.com
John Bogle - The Vanguard Group
Richard Branson - Virgin Group
Warren Buffett - Berkshire Hathaway
James Burke - Johnson and Johnson
Michael Dell - Dell Computers
Peter Drucker - Educator and author
Bill Gates - Microsoft
William George - Medtronics
Louis Gerstner - IBM
Alan Greenspan - Chairman, Federal Reserve
Andy Grove - Intel
Lee Iacocca - Chrysler
Steve Jobs - Apple Computers
Herb Kelleher - Southwest Airlines
Peter Lynch - Fidelity Magellan Fund
Charles Schwab - Charles Schwab
Frederick Smith - Federal Express
George Soros - Philanthropist
Ted Turner - CNN
Sam Walton - Wal-Mart
Jack Welch - General Electric
Oprah Winfrey - Oprah
Mohammed Yunus - Grameen Bank
"It is impossible to conceive of today's global, networked economy without Intel, or to imagine Intel without Andy Grove," said Mukul Pandya, editor and managing director of Knowledge@Wharton. "He is a visionary, unconventional leader who excels at turning setbacks into strengths. Grove's life and career consistently reveal his imagination, resolution and integrity. That is what makes him the most influential leader of our times."
Hundreds of NBR viewers submitted their nominations for the most influential business person and the nominees were judged according to criteria established by the Wharton panel which included: Raffi Amit, Robert B. Goergen Professor of Entrepreneurship; Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor Professor of Management; Barbara Kahn, Dorothy Silberberg Professor of Marketing; Robert Mittelstaedt, Vice Dean and Director of Executive Education; Mukul Pandya, Editor and Managing Director of Knowledge@Wharton; and Michael Useem, William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management.
For more information about the list and program, please visit the Nightly Business Report Web site at http://www.nightlybusiness.org.
About Nightly Business Report
NBR is anchored by Paul Kangas in Miami, who has been with the program since its inception, and Susie Gharib in New York, a dynamic and experienced reporter who's been on the print and television sides of financial news.
NBR, produced by NBR Enterprises/WPBT2/Miami and distributed by American Public Television, is underwritten nationally by A.G. Edwards, Deloitte & Touche, LLP, and Franklin Templeton Investments.
About the Wharton School and Knowledge@Wharton
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized around the world for its academic strengths across every major discipline and at every level of business education. Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school in the nation, Wharton has approximately 4,600 undergraduate, MBA, and doctoral students, more than 8,000 participants in its executive education programs annually, and an alumni network of more than 77,000 worldwide.
Knowledge@Wharton is a biweekly online resource that captures knowledge generated at Wharton through such channels as research papers, conferences, books, and interviews with faculty on current business topics, and distributes that knowledge online to a global business audience. The site is free and can be accessed at Knowledge@Wharton.
Launched in May 1999, Knowledge@Wharton has over 310,000 subscribers in 189 countries. Subscriptions are increasing at a rate of 6,000 to 8,000 a month. Among business users, 15 percent are top managers at their companies, 35 percent are in senior management and 45 percent are in middle management. Sponsors of Knowledge@Wharton include Booz Allen Hamilton, GE Capital, Intel, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Bank of America, and Aon Consulting.
The Web site contains more than 1,500 articles and research papers in its database and more are added every week. Knowledge@Wharton has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Information Week and several other publications.
SOURCE: Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Peter Winicov, 215-746-6471
winicov@wharton.upenn.edu
or
Tracy Liebman, 215-898-2863
liebmant@wharton.upenn.edu
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" And during that time, the one thought that was dominating my mind was..... "This Chip stuff...... and this company someday......someday is gonna be BIG..... REAL BIG".
You aren't the only one that feels that way:
The Wharton School & Nightly Business Report Name Intel's Andy Grove #1 of 'The 25 Most Influential Business Persons of the Past 25 Years'
January 22, 2004 23:30
The Wharton School & Nightly Business Report Name Intel's Andy Grove #1 of 'The 25 Most Influential Business Persons of the Past 25 Years'
PHILADELPHIA, Jan 22, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- List Celebrates 25th Anniversary Milestone for PBS Show
An expert panel from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania helped public TV's Nightly Business Report (NBR) unveil "The 25 Most Influential Business Persons of the Past 25 Years" with Andy Grove, chairman of the board of Intel Corporation, named the #1 most influential person live on the Jan. 22 broadcast.
Nightly Business Report is celebrating a quarter century since it first aired on public television. Today, it is TV's longest-running and most-watched daily business news program. For several months Wharton faculty, who participated in the selection of the top 25, have appeared on Nightly Business Report to discuss some of the business issues that these business leaders have faced.
In alphabetical order, the 25 Most Influential Business Persons of the Past 25 Years are:
Mary Kay Ash - Mary Kay Cosmetics
Jeff Bezos - Amazon.com
John Bogle - The Vanguard Group
Richard Branson - Virgin Group
Warren Buffett - Berkshire Hathaway
James Burke - Johnson and Johnson
Michael Dell - Dell Computers
Peter Drucker - Educator and author
Bill Gates - Microsoft
William George - Medtronics
Louis Gerstner - IBM
Alan Greenspan - Chairman, Federal Reserve
Andy Grove - Intel
Lee Iacocca - Chrysler
Steve Jobs - Apple Computers
Herb Kelleher - Southwest Airlines
Peter Lynch - Fidelity Magellan Fund
Charles Schwab - Charles Schwab
Frederick Smith - Federal Express
George Soros - Philanthropist
Ted Turner - CNN
Sam Walton - Wal-Mart
Jack Welch - General Electric
Oprah Winfrey - Oprah
Mohammed Yunus - Grameen Bank
"It is impossible to conceive of today's global, networked economy without Intel, or to imagine Intel without Andy Grove," said Mukul Pandya, editor and managing director of Knowledge@Wharton. "He is a visionary, unconventional leader who excels at turning setbacks into strengths. Grove's life and career consistently reveal his imagination, resolution and integrity. That is what makes him the most influential leader of our times."
Hundreds of NBR viewers submitted their nominations for the most influential business person and the nominees were judged according to criteria established by the Wharton panel which included: Raffi Amit, Robert B. Goergen Professor of Entrepreneurship; Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor Professor of Management; Barbara Kahn, Dorothy Silberberg Professor of Marketing; Robert Mittelstaedt, Vice Dean and Director of Executive Education; Mukul Pandya, Editor and Managing Director of Knowledge@Wharton; and Michael Useem, William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management.
For more information about the list and program, please visit the Nightly Business Report Web site at http://www.nightlybusiness.org.
About Nightly Business Report
NBR is anchored by Paul Kangas in Miami, who has been with the program since its inception, and Susie Gharib in New York, a dynamic and experienced reporter who's been on the print and television sides of financial news.
NBR, produced by NBR Enterprises/WPBT2/Miami and distributed by American Public Television, is underwritten nationally by A.G. Edwards, Deloitte & Touche, LLP, and Franklin Templeton Investments.
About the Wharton School and Knowledge@Wharton
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized around the world for its academic strengths across every major discipline and at every level of business education. Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school in the nation, Wharton has approximately 4,600 undergraduate, MBA, and doctoral students, more than 8,000 participants in its executive education programs annually, and an alumni network of more than 77,000 worldwide.
Knowledge@Wharton is a biweekly online resource that captures knowledge generated at Wharton through such channels as research papers, conferences, books, and interviews with faculty on current business topics, and distributes that knowledge online to a global business audience. The site is free and can be accessed at Knowledge@Wharton.
Launched in May 1999, Knowledge@Wharton has over 310,000 subscribers in 189 countries. Subscriptions are increasing at a rate of 6,000 to 8,000 a month. Among business users, 15 percent are top managers at their companies, 35 percent are in senior management and 45 percent are in middle management. Sponsors of Knowledge@Wharton include Booz Allen Hamilton, GE Capital, Intel, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Bank of America, and Aon Consulting.
The Web site contains more than 1,500 articles and research papers in its database and more are added every week. Knowledge@Wharton has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Information Week and several other publications.
SOURCE: Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Peter Winicov, 215-746-6471
winicov@wharton.upenn.edu
or
Tracy Liebman, 215-898-2863
liebmant@wharton.upenn.edu
Customize your Business Wire news & multimedia to match your needs.
Get breaking news from companies and organizations worldwide.
Logon for FREE today at www.BusinessWire.com.
Copyright (C) 2004 Business Wire. All rights reserved.
"By comparison, the 130nm 970, currently used by Apple in its Power Mac G5 desktop line, consumes 51W at 1.8GHz."
And that is why Apple requires 9 fans to cool their 970 G5 box?
Somebody is lying.
"Comparing 3.4 GHz Prescott power to >4000+ Opteron power? Why bother?"
Simple.
3.4 GHz Prescott will be here in a few weeks.
4000+ Opteron is a Q4 2004 product.
"bug in an amd application?"
Love that bug free Linux stuff.
Ha.
Looks like Prescott is lower power than AMD's 90 nM 105 watt OpterHOT:
http://webpages.charter.net/tates/MO/amd_90nm_heat.jpg
Tejas appears on par with AMD's 90 nM OpterHOT.
Intel's itanium sneaks into AMD's back yard - in Saxony.
"BEA WebLogic JRockit will power Lower Saxony's enterprise-class Java applications on Intel Itanium 2-based servers . Similarly, mmO2, a leading provider of mobile services, under the O2 brand in the United Kingdom, Germany and Ireland, selected BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 to reduce the complexity of J2EE development and provide an enhanced service delivery platform for the O2 portal and O2 Active. BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 is running on Intel-based servers with the Linux operating system. "
January 21, 2004 06:00
Global Linux Leaders Choose BEA WebLogic JRockit to Deliver Superior Price and Performance
SUSE LINUX to Bundle BEA WebLogic JRockit; BEA Brings One of the Industry's Fastest Java Virtual Machines to Customers Worldwide
LINUXWORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO, NEW YORK, Jan 21, 2004 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- http://bea.com/more_info.jsp?p=117&r=13.15.28 BEA Systems, Inc., (Nasdaq: BEAS), the world's leading application infrastructure software company, today announced new alliances that further cement BEA's role as the leading global provider of Java Virtual Machines for the booming Linux operating system. SUSE LINUX, a product unit of Novell, has agreed to co-develop solutions and bundle BEA WebLogic JRockit(TM) with its upcoming SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 to help customers build and deploy a cost-effective, high-performing application infrastructure. Optimized for Intel-based hardware, BEA WebLogic JRockit is one of the world's fastest Java Virtual Machines-a technology that is critical for running Java applications on Linux.
Today's announcement with SUSE LINUX builds upon previously announced BEA alliances designed to make BEA WebLogic JRockit the leading Java Virtual Machine for Linux customers running Java applications. With a leadership position in Europe and strong U.S. presence, SUSE LINUX can extend the reach of BEA WebLogic JRockit on a global scale-offering customers worldwide reduced hardware costs and incomparable performance. Last year, Red Hat joined forces with BEA to co-develop solutions and bundle BEA WebLogic JRockit. Recently, Red Flag Software Co. Ltd., the leading Linux distributor in China and a leading Linux distributor in Asia Pacific, and BEA signed a memorandum of understanding in which Red Flag expressed intentions to bundle BEA WebLogic JRockit with an upcoming version of its product.
"BEA WebLogic JRockit has proven itself a necessity in helping our customers enable Java on Linux in the enterprise," said Uwe Heine, chief alliance officer, SUSE LINUX. "The combination of the industry-leading technologies from BEA and SUSE will help our customers establish powerful infrastructures to run their businesses reliably. And with the cost savings associated with Linux, customers can re-direct IT resources to realize competitive advantages."
According to Forrester Research [Schadler, "Linux Is More Than Ready For The Enterprise," 24-June-03], 17 percent of large North American companies already use Linux, and 72 percent of companies surveyed plan to increase Linux usage in the next two years. Outside North America, Linux adoption is equally strong. As an example, the Lower Saxony (Germany) police selected Linux as the core operating system to transform the communication process among police officers to tackle crime. BEA WebLogic JRockit will power Lower Saxony's enterprise-class Java applications on Intel Itanium 2-based servers. Similarly, mmO2, a leading provider of mobile services, under the O2 brand in the United Kingdom, Germany and Ireland, selected BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 to reduce the complexity of J2EE development and provide an enhanced service delivery platform for the O2 portal and O2 Active. BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 is running on Intel-based servers with the Linux operating system.
"Linux is approaching critical mass around the world as more and more companies realize its immense value, and in fact, Linux is one of BEA's fastest-growing software platforms," said Bob Griswold, vice president and general manager, Java Runtime products group, BEA Systems. "To respond to these ever-growing demands, BEA is working closely with Linux leaders to offer pre-configured, production-ready solutions designed to help customers rapidly realize increased performance and dramatic price reductions. As a result, BEA WebLogic JRockit can serve as the software cornerstone for thousands of applications worldwide."
In separate BEA news today, BEA announced BEA WebLogic JRockit 1.4.2, a new version of its industry-leading Java Virtual Machine. BEA will demonstrate this product, and other innovative technologies and programs, at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo this week at The Javits Convention Center in New York. BEA is in booth #239.
About Novell
Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) is a leading provider of information solutions that deliver secure identity management (Novell Nsure), Web application development (Novell exteNd) and cross-platform networking services (Novell Nterprise), all supported by strategic consulting and professional services (Novell Ngage). Active in the open source community with its Ximian and SUSE LINUX brands, Novell provides a full range of Linux products and services for the enterprise, from the desktop to the server. Novell's vision of one Net -- a world without information boundaries -- helps customers realize the value of their information securely and economically. For more information, call Novell's Customer Response Center at 888-321-4CRC (4272) or visit http://www.novell.com. Press should visit http://www.novell.com/pressroom.
About BEA
BEA Systems, Inc. is the world's leading application infrastructure software company, providing the enterprise software foundation for more than 15,000 customers around the world, including the majority of the Fortune Global 500. BEA and its WebLogic(R) and Tuxedo(R) brands are among the most trusted names in business.
Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., BEA has 77 offices in 31 countries and is on the Web at www.bea.com.
Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
Some of the statements in this press release are forward-looking, including the statements regarding future growth of BEA WebLogic JRockit and BEA WebLogic Platform on Linux; future product releases and features; the completion, implementation, benefits, and details of the alliance between BEA and SUSE LINUX ("Alliance Partner") and the memorandum of understanding between BEA and Red Flag Software; the development efforts, product delivery and other goals related to these third-party relationships; the features and benefits of BEA's and Alliance Partner's products; and data regarding companies' plans to increase use of Linux in the future. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially include risks associated with: any unforeseen technical difficulties related to the development and optimization BEA's; Alliance Partner's or Red Flag's products; the timing of additional investments of resources by BEA, Alliance Partner and Red Flag related their respective product development and any joint development initiatives; changes in the marketplace for enterprise-wide software solutions, including the introduction or increased sales of products competitive with BEA's or Alliance Partner's products; any software errors related to Linux, BEA's, Alliance Partner's or Red Flag's products or the integration thereof; and any unforeseen impediments to the growth of Linux due to such factors as competition, security concerns or the ongoing legal dispute related to SCO's intellectual property claims regarding Linux. Readers should also refer to the risk disclosures set forth in BEA's 10-Q for the quarter ended October 31, 2003 as filed with the SEC and subsequent reports filed thereafter by BEA from time-to-time with the SEC. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are made as of the date hereof, and BEA does not assume any obligation to update such statements nor the reasons why actual results could differ materially from those projected in such statements.
NOTE: BEA, Tuxedo, and WebLogic are registered trademarks and BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform, BEA WebLogic Server, BEA WebLogic Integration, BEA WebLogic Portal, BEA WebLogic JRockit, BEA WebLogic Platform, BEA WebLogic Express, BEA WebLogic Workshop, BEA WebLogic Java Adapter for Mainframe, BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic, BEA eLink, and BEA WebLogic Enterprise Security are trademarks of BEA Systems, Inc. All other company and product names may be the subject of intellectual property rights reserved by third parties.
SOURCE BEA Systems, Inc.
Patrick O'Rourke of BEA Systems, Inc., +1-408-570-8256, or
patrick.orourke@bea.com; or Nicole Roseveare of Bite Communications,
+1-415-365-0382, or nicole.roseveare@bitepr.com, for BEA
http://bea.com/more_info.jsp?p=117&r=13.15.28
Copyright (C) 2004 PR Newswire. All rights reserved.
"now seems to be close mouthed about Opteron shipments and backing off their previous claims.."
Sound familiar?
Remember when sanders and hector used to crow about their CPU shipments - when the shipments were rising?
And remember how the droids castigated Intel for never giving absolute shipment numbers of their CPUs?
And in an instant, about 2 years back, AMD completley stopped giving unit volume shipmemnts - as their shipmemnts tumbled?
And the Droids thought this was perfectly fine with them.
Ta da ta da ta da....
"I'm amused that the Intel crowd thinks a miniscule dividend is great news, "
Maybe you would prefer that AMD borrow a few more billion dollars from their parent company, the government of Saxony, and send out a few of those Deutschmarks to AMD's investors?
"It's good to see Itanium get a design win every now and then..."
Itanium has received a lot of design wins - far more than AMD's opteron.
In fact, AMD has had to resort to re-issuing press releases about prior opteron design wins - to make it look like they are getting new ones - when in fact AMD is just regurgitating the same old pablum.
Of course, the street realized this finally.
Especially when Hector Ruin declined to answer an analyst's question regarding opteron shipments - too chicken to embarrass himself since he and sanders were caught in another lie when they, several months ago, falsely claimed that opteron would outship itanium in just its first quarter of shipments.
"Intel's Itanium architecture is now well established as an outstanding performer for high-performance computing,".. Penguin Computing Launching Intel Itanium Platforms; New Itanium-Based Cluster and Server Products Demonstrated at LinuxWorld Expo
January 21, 2004 09:01
Penguin Computing Launching Intel Itanium Platforms; New Itanium-Based Cluster and Server Products Demonstrated at LinuxWorld Expo
NEW YORK, Jan 21, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Penguin Computing(R) today announced that it will launch servers and systems based on 64-bit Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors in Q2 2004. The new rack-mounted Itanium-based products are being demonstrated in Penguin Computing's booth at LinuxWorld Expo (Booth #865). Full product details will be announced when the products have completed Penguin Computing's rigorous Linux(R) compatibility testing and are ready to ship.
Penguin Computing's new Itanium-based platforms will be targeted at both the server market and the high performance Linux cluster market. In a related announcement, Scyld, a subsidiary of Penguin Computing, today announced that an upcoming release of Scyld Beowulf(TM), the leading second-generation cluster operating system, will support 64-bit Itanium 2 platforms in its upcoming release.
"Intel's Itanium architecture is now well established as an outstanding performer for high-performance computing, and we believe it will be a great complement to our very successful Relion-brand systems based on Intel Pentium(R) 4 and Intel Xeon(TM) processors," said James Carrington, director of product marketing at Penguin Computing. "Penguin Computing is taking a leadership position in supplying scalable high performance Linux-based enterprise computing platforms utilizing Itanium's 64-bit computing capability."
"Intel explicitly developed IA-64 for those customers requiring high-performance computing and enterprise platforms," said Lisa Graff, director, Itanium Group, Intel Corporation, "and companies like Penguin Computing, which serves the high-performance markets Linux cluster and server markets are ideally suited to take advantage of the growth in Itanium-based solutions."
About Penguin Computing
Penguin Computing is the leading innovator of highly scalable Linux cluster, server and workstation platforms based on open standards hardware and software. Scyld, a Penguin subsidiary, develops Scyld Beowulf(TM), the leading 2nd-generation cluster operating system. The company's extensive customer base includes Fortune 1000 companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. Founded in 1998, Penguin Computing is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit Penguin Computing at http://www.penguincomputing.com and Scyld at http://www.scyld.com.
Penguin Computing is a registered trademark of Penguin Computing, Inc. Scyld Beowulf is a trademark of Scyld Computing Corporation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation.
SOURCE: Penguin Computing
Penguin Computing
James Carrington, 415-358-2607
jcarrington@penguincomputing.com
or
Text 100 PR
Stacy Perry, 415-593-8484
stacyp@text100.com
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