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Thread: the future of CPUs

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    the future of CPUs

    now that we have gone into the 64bit era, does this spell the end of the 32bit era?

    That is, do you think that 'they' wil continue to develop any higher speeds for 32bit?

    eg anyone know if AMD are proposing to develop past XP3200, on 32bit.

    Or, another question: any ideas if it is planned for 64bit CPUs to be compatible with socket A.

    I just dont lkike the idea of having to get a new mobo and CPU at the same time to jump into 64 bit. Bit skint you see

    Finally, is there a real performance gain between 32bit and 64bit? Is it noticable?
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    HEXUS.social member Agent's Avatar
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    In short :

    AMD will not go past the 3200XP for 32bit according to several sources, which i belive to be true.
    64bit will NEVER be compatible with socket A. Where would the extra 32bits go ? . Socket A platform is only designed for 32bit processing.

    Performace gain is not huge at the moment.
    The gain that you can get is due to raw processing speed, and not the 64bit ability though. Its going to be a while before we truely start to see the gains of 64bit.
    It will be a slow take off, but they are going about it the rigtht way. ie. slowly phasing it in with 32bit software along side. Once most people are 64bit, im sure programers will start to make 64bit specific code, which should help the 64bit platform shine
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    So do you think it's worth buying a socket 939 board and a 64bit cpu at this moment in time?
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    the "current generation" 64 bit chips, such as the athlon 64's, won't be where we see the real benefits. how long did it take after the release of the 386 for a 32bit os and 32bit apps?

    but you don't want to be stuck on the 286 generation when the push to a 64-bit only os comes

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    You'll certainly get away with a 32bit machine for some time to come yet.
    Its not going to be an overnight thing, where you wake up, and they will no longer be making or updating 32bit apps.
    32bit machines are also so cheap at the moment, compared to their counterpart 64bit ones, its still a perfectly viable option to get one.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    I think I'll wait for another 12 months or so, and just monitor the prices of 64bit components
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    i aggree with starside....besides 32bit apps probs will still be avaliable when 64 are.as i expect there would be a huge loss in profit if not.

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    find me some 16bit apps

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    Quote Originally Posted by starside
    I think I'll wait for another 12 months or so, and just monitor the prices of 64bit components
    Wise, imo. I personally am going to wait for the big 64 Revolution.

    At work, I am using an (forced on me by the corporation and their wonderful puter/support/supplier/parasites) 800mhz integrated machine by one of the "leading" computer companies. YET I am still able to access the net and do all my stuff/work without getting too frustrated.

    I have recently built a 750Mhz, athlon, 512 sdram memory , 20gig hd pc, pap video card, for my auntie (yes, how sweet) from bits I had left over from my year 2000 machine plus win xp and a new dvd rom drive and it's fine for general stuff inc net/word/excel etc, etc.

    At home using 2500 o/c 1gig ram, 9700 pro, blah, blah, blah,+ and it's all fine, quick as can be.

    My reasoning with 64 bit is to wait and see. Will M$ bring out their OS64 this year? Will Intel bring out a 64 bit chip? Will we see a massive improvement? What is the cost?

    I think that there will be a similar time frame change between the 32bit-64 bit software change as the 16 bit -32bit,due to the need of large large corporations not requiring 64 bit in the near future.
    Last edited by iranu; 13-07-2004 at 01:13 AM. Reason: drunkeness

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    Quote Originally Posted by iranu
    Wise, imo. I personally am going to wait for the big 64 Revolution.

    At work, I am using an (forced on me by the corporation and their wonderful puter/support/supplier/parasites) 800mhz integrated machine by one of the "leading" computer companies. YET I am still able to access the net and do all my stuff/work without getting too frustrated.
    Ditto, mine's made by a 3-letter computer giant.

    Quote Originally Posted by iranu
    I think that there will be a similar time frame change between the 32bit-64 bit software change as the 16 bit -32bit,due to the need of large large corporations not requiring 64 bit in the near future.
    Maybe not true.

    Our world is such that we commonly work with numbers between positive and negative 2 billion. Everything from monetary amounts to the number of records in a database, from distance between places to weights and quantities - we generally work with numbers well within the 32-bit range.

    When 32-bit processing came around we had a general and common need to process numbers bigger than what could be handled by 16-bit CPU registers, e.g. numbers bigger than 65,000. But this need for large number processing have stayed the same over time, and so it will not assist to drive the development of 64-bit CPUs!

    There is also the ability of the CPU to do more accurate floating point mathematics. This, as well as the need to work with very big numbers, play a role only in engineering and science applications, and to a smaller degree in games.

    Therefore the need for 64-bit processing is driven more by the need for addressing more memory than by the need for faster processing of very big or very small numbers.

    We need 64-bit processing where the data width inherent in the problem exceeds the (32-bit) processor's registers' width. (Actually this is true for database memory requirements and for games' number crunching and engineering and scientific applications too ... these applications gain from 64-bit processing either because the problem lends itself to a very large data set, eg a large memory requirement or else because of a requirement to process numbers which are wider than the CPU's register width.)

    It is not generally possible to recompile or even rewrite an existing problem to "require" bigger registers or memory space. However if a problem already requires big numbers to be processed and had been "optimised" to fit into 32-bit world, then the program can be (un/re)"optimised" to utilise the full 64-bit processing capability by removing these initial optimisations, such as where 64-bit operations have been broken into multiple 32-bit operations.

    In fact, someone (Adrian Cockroft) very aptly said 64-bit CPUs increase application performance despite the 64-bit nature of these CPUs. 64-bit instructions and, in particular, 64-bit memory address pointers imposes a big additional load on memory, caching and the CPU, so if you're not using those extra bits, compiling to 64-bit actually makes the application execute slower!

    To test this, take your favourite compiler and compile your favourite utility program to both 32 and 64-bit executables and run both and compare the timings on your trust Althlon64 or Sun ULTRA 5 workstation. :-)

    Unless the program either processes lots of large numbers or utilise more than 4GB ram, the 32-bit version will run faster.

    A program which does not process huge numbers and which does not process numbers bigger than 32-bits will run faster when compiled to a 32-bit executable, even on a 64-bit CPU. There is also the bigger 64-bit executable to load and instructions to move between memory and CPU.

    Some references:
    Wikipedia on 64-bit
    The Role of caching
    Some program Benchmarks
    64-bit OS benchmarks running popular games

    In addition a search on why 64-bit is slower than 32-bit on google reveals much :-)

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    Sempron

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent
    In short :

    AMD will not go past the 3200XP for 32bit according to several sources, which i belive to be true.
    Seems AMD does have plans for another Socket A CPU - The Sempron - That is unless I am totally misreading this story!

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    Quote Originally Posted by hartz
    In addition a search on why 64-bit is slower than 32-bit on google reveals much :-)
    Hartz, one thing that i'll maybe add to your very good post is that all of what you say is true based on one single premise, and that is that that is based on existing architecture and concepts.

    We still mainly base our ideas on a single processor on the main part, yet i'm wondering whether 64bit system in the next few years will not lead to just one processor accessing a memory source but multiple sources.

    64Bit will completely take over, as we get more and more memory, i started computing with 4mb of Ram, I've now got 1024mb of ram, some increase of 256fold, this has been in approximately 10 years, even if we don't make the same sort of rapid move forward anyone fancy addressing 100gb of ram with 32bit technology?

    Can we imagine using this amount of ram at present?, no of course not only the latest and greatest enterprise level servers use this, but maybe you haven't imagined the processing needed for your 3d holographic graphics card for FULL real 3d processing

    I think this is the main reason i'm in computing, because nothing is slow, things move so quick its untrue. I hope that never stops...

    TiG
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    Quote Originally Posted by hartz
    Seems AMD does have plans for another Socket A CPU - The Sempron - That is unless I am totally misreading this story!
    Ah yes, i forgot about that little blighter
    Its starting off on socket A, then moving to 754, then to 939 iirc. Thats one heck of a span if it go's ahead !
    Ive not really read up on the Sempron, if it can work on the socket A platform, it must support 32-bit processing. What about when its being used on the other 64-bit based platforms ? Does it have 64-bit processing ability, or does it drop back into some kinda of 32bit mode ?

    Anyone know ?
    /me fires up google.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent
    Ah yes, i forgot about that little blighter
    Its starting off on socket A, then moving to 754, then to 939 iirc. Thats one heck of a span if it go's ahead !
    Ive not really read up on the Sempron, if it can work on the socket A platform, it must support 32-bit processing. What about when its being used on the other 64-bit based platforms ? Does it have 64-bit processing ability, or does it drop back into some kinda of 32bit mode ?

    Anyone know ?
    /me fires up google.
    It's a butchered A64 without the A64 extentions. So just a 32 bit version of it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mblaster
    It's a butchered A64 without the A64 extentions. So just a 32 bit version of it.
    So the core fully supports 64 bit, but can be made 32bit.
    Thats what i was thinking, but if this is the case, why dont they just carry on with the XP range ?
    The XP range is probably be good upto about ~XP4000, so why not just stick with whats known ?
    Unless its a matter of AMD wanting to drop the old cores, and just stick with the new ones which they can butcher back into 32bit for the sake of production costs....

    I wish AMD would tell us WHY they do these things, it would save me a lot of un-needed brain useage !
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Arrow Make the custommer pay

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent
    I wish AMD would tell us WHY they do these things, it would save me a lot of un-needed brain useage !
    I'm guessing 32-bit is hurting the 64-bit sales ... Most people doing "business computing" (spreadsheets, email, web browsing, file serving, print serving, and even the backoffice products) gain little or nothing from 64-bit, and will continue to do so untill machines with more than 4 GB ram become "mainstream" ...

    Intel and AMD put a lot of money into research [of 64-bit processors], and they need to start showing [their stock-holders] some return on investment ?

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