Replies to post #40388 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Ixse]

Joe, I think what is more likely is that Sun will commit to purchasing certain minimum quantity of special purpose chips, and for that, Sun will get some exclusivity for a period of time.

That's likely, I agree.

These things could include:
1. More L2
2. More cores
3. More HT links (new socket)
4. Wider HT links (new socket as well)

Why not:

5. Chip to chip interface via capacitors on the side of the chips instead of routing via the pcb (SUN invention, first mentioned about a year ago). It's certainly a rather nice fit for Opteron, whether it'll happen remains to be seen. Note that this will allow them to be faster, and wider, though not more ht links.

Almost would not mention this one as it's so unlikely but as I wrote the above I migth as well mention this one too:
6. The Rock - Opteron hybrid (i.e. Opteron with Sun cells added to it). Rather remote possibility but one that comes back to my mind every couple of months when I'm trying to think out of the box.

Kind regards,

Rink

[sgolds]

jhalada -

"1. Integrated multiprocessing design (vs. AMD's stated plan to put multiple cores on the die)."
What do you mean by this?

Well, AMD plans to put two independent CPUs on a die, as we know. Intel has their HyperThreading. Sun is developing multiprocessing SPARC designs which will run many threads at a time. This isn't simply bolting together individual CPUs, of course, it is designing parallelism into each CPU. They've stated that this is the future of performance increases in an era where it is getting harder and harder to increase clock rate.