AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[scaryjim]

So Intel will now take your money to make *anything*?

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...bile-push.aspx

Hmmmm, most interesting bit for me is the fourth slide down: "Semi-custom Intel Architecture products for our key customers"

That sounds awfully like something AMD's been doing for a while now ... what was it? Oh, I remember: their semi-custom business

Seriously Intel, get your own trick

[DanceswithUnix]

Hmmmm, most interesting bit for me is the fourth slide down: "Semi-custom Intel Architecture products for our key customers"

That sounds awfully like something AMD's been doing for a while now ... what was it? Oh, I remember: their semi-custom business

Seriously Intel, get your own trick

Supposedly customers like Google/Amazon have their own instructions built into Xeon CPUs. Don't know how many years that has been going on for though.

[scaryjim]

Supposedly customers like Google/Amazon have their own instructions built into Xeon CPUs. Don't know how many years that has been going on for though.

Hmmmm, proprietary extensions to the AMD64 instruction set? Does the cross-licensing agreement allow that?

[watercooled]

That's the first I've heard of it, have any detail/links?

[DanceswithUnix]

Hmmmm, proprietary extensions to the AMD64 instruction set? Does the cross-licensing agreement allow that?

Intel didn't implement it 100% compatible with AMD, so it was messed with from day 1.

And yes, I think anything goes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#...4_and_Intel_64

[DanceswithUnix]

That's the first I've heard of it, have any detail/links?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05...customization/

Edit to add: That is for Facebook and Ebay apparently, so I got the companies involved wrong but then it is a Monday

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Quite funny on a certain plaice,AMD doing semi-custom stuff was seen as a sign of desperation,even after the console wins. It seems Intel must be desperate,too!

[scaryjim]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05...customization/

The one thing that Intel almost certainly is not going to do is make ARM processors in its fabs for third parties.

*ahem* How the world changes in 6 months....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TR delves deeper into AMD Mantle:

http://techreport.com/review/25683/d...amd-mantle-api

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Oh:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...&postcount=197

He already has samples of the desktop Kaveri chip. It means the release must be soon if system integrators are having them already!

[watercooled]

Wouldn't he be under some NDA?

[ik9000]

TR delves deeper into AMD Mantle:

http://techreport.com/review/25683/d...amd-mantle-api

That truly is a hypothetical scenario, though—in practice, Katsman pointed out that most games "flatten off at one core."

erm... BF4?

[scaryjim]

That truly is a hypothetical scenario, though—in practice, Katsman pointed out that most games "flatten off at one core."

erm... BF4?

BF4 is not "most games". A few recent game engines have started utilising multi-core systems well, but only in the last couple of years. Plenty of people still play and enjoy games that are a lot older than that (after all, my favourite game, NWN, needed a patch to stop it performing significantly *worse* on multicore systems....).

[DanceswithUnix]

BF4 is not "most games". A few recent game engines have started utilising multi-core systems well, but only in the last couple of years. Plenty of people still play and enjoy games that are a lot older than that (after all, my favourite game, NWN, needed a patch to stop it performing significantly *worse* on multicore systems....).

IMHO most games devs aren't as sharp as the ones they parade at press events like the Mantle one, and stable threaded applications are a bit hard, so single thread it is.

As an aside, I notice Ebuyer have a compact quad core Jaguar box on sale today for £150.

http://www.ebuyer.com/daily-deals?ut...=b2c_wednesday

Try as I might, I can't find any way of justifying buying one though

Could do with a guest PC for when the kids have friends around wanting to play Minecraft, but I don't think that will have the grunt for a badly written game in a poor choice of programming language.

[DanceswithUnix]

Wouldn't he be under some NDA?

I guess he isn't under a non gloat agreement

[scaryjim]

Try as I might, I can't find any way of justifying buying one though

Ooooh, it *is* pretty, isn't it.