Replies to post #3350 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[yourbankruptcy]

Haddock, please don't use the "redesigned" word. Opteron project was started many years ago, probably not much later than Athlon. It's like Microsoft was designing Windows 95 and NT more or less at the same time.

[chipguy]

Could you name some other times? The Inq sometimes gets fed duff information, but
I don't think you can name a time when they just made stuff up. They publish their stuff in good faith.

They recently suggested that Intel stored uP configuration info for things like enabling HT
in P4s in on-chip flash. This is an absurd suggestion they seemed to have pulled out of
thin air. It is easy for Magee and most alledged contributors to publish in good faith simply
out a high degree of technical ignorance.

I read the inquirer and theregister every day because they often catch whiff of interesting
stuff before anyone else. But both are basically gossip sites with low batting averages and
a propensity to focus on trivia at the expense of the important but not unexpected. These
sites works best for readers with a sensitive BS detector backed by a lot of technical
knowledge and industry experience.

I'm wondering why you don't want to believe that the Opteron was so thoroughly redesigned. It's not
like they haven't had time!

I for one believe that Opteron was thoroughly redesigned - at the circuit level. It is a given when
moving from bulk to SOI. The real issue is at what other levels it was redesigned. Much of the
pipeline, functional unit characteristics, and basic floorplanning seems straight out of Athlon
(which is quite reasonable, Athlon is a sound CPU design starved for bandwidth for most of its
life. And AMD ain't exactly rolling in the dough enough to change things just for the sake of change)
As far as HDL and logic re-use from Athlon we can only speculate.

[wbmw]

Haddock, I wasn't speaking of the Inquirer in general, but for the author of the particular article. I have seen him post on the Ace's forum, and I've begun to expect very slanted comments from him. I've seen you post on Ace's as well. Maybe you also know the author in question.

As for Opteron, like I have said, I am speaking at the logic level. I don't see why AMD would change the logic in any significant way. This comes from my experience in the field, and the need for engineers to reuse code whenever possible. It looks like Opteron was improved on a circuit level, which you can tell slightly from the die plot. In terms of logic, that goes against the grain for me. It doesn't make much sense.

In terms of the comments from the engineer, I am inclined to believe that the author who wrote the article for the Inquirer either made up the information, or he misunderstood what the engineer was trying to say.