Replies to post #12458 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[aixman]

SMP and iHT are really hard to use

kpf - I would guess to go over your software to take advantage of SMP is about the same effort as going over it to take full advantage of AMD-64-capabilities. Intel already initiated software to be ready for SMP by means of Hyperthreading, so a lot of software will be ready to take advantage of SMP next year.

What is written above is a huge misconception. I am speaking from a programmer's perspective here. Converting to AMD64 is either really easy if the code is 64-bit clean, or tedious but doable since the majority of changes will be simple. Converting to AMD64 is basically the same as making the code 32/64 bit clean. Thus anybody dealing with 64-bit platforms can get the application to run under AMD64 in almost no time.

SMP (and iHT) on the other hand, require algorithmic changes, sometimes quite serious. Programs have to be restructured, parallel branches balanced for good performance, variables need to be designated local/shared, etc. Of course, whatever programs are multi-threaded already would use SMP as before. Others will stay with single threads simply because SMP is too damn time consuming to code for. Certainly very very few will suddenly decide to rewrite for SMP just because Intel said so.