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Subject: Re: Oooh Aaron..........

Author: Matt Taylor

Date: 19:03:40 02/22/03

Go up one level in this thread


On February 22, 2003 at 20:42:41, Jeremiah Penery wrote:

>On February 22, 2003 at 02:21:52, Charles Worthington wrote:
>
>>On February 22, 2003 at 01:08:15, Jeremiah Penery wrote:
>>
>>>On February 22, 2003 at 00:31:38, Charles Worthington wrote:
>>>
>>>>Oh and i also believe that if AMD had the technology or the research funds to
>>>>have invented hyperthreading technology...they would have. it doesnt take a
>>>
>>>You're making some statements out of absolute ignorance here.
>>>
>>>First of all, Intel didn't invent "hyperthreading" technology.  Nor do they own
>>>exclusive rights to such technology - there's no legal issue preventing AMD from
>>>implementing something like it in their processors.  Second, for the past
>>>several years, AMD has produced more patents than Intel has, despite a R&D
>>>budget several times lower than Intel's.  What does that say about Intel's
>>>"technology or research funds"?
>>>
>>>The P4 has notoriously bad IPC compared to other recent x86 processors.  You
>>>could say that a big reason for adding hyperthreading is to ameliorate this
>>>condition.  I.e., the addition of hyperthreading brings the IPC up to a more
>>>respectable level, though it's still somewhat lower than that of the Athlon.
>>>Without hyperthreading, all the P4 has going for it is a high clockrate.  The P4
>>>_needs_ hyperthreading to keep its performance advantage.
>>>
>>>>rocket scientist to see that two threads are better than one for multiple
>>>>applications.
>>>
>>>And 4 threads are better than 2...What's your point?
>>
>>Actually the point is really simple...hyperthreading produces a boost in speed
>>and an extra thread to run background applications faster. If AMD has the
>>know-how to incorporate hyperthreading technology into their processors they
>>would be foolish not to economically and performance-wise....The truth of the
>
>Please explain why Intel didn't make Hyperthreading run 4 threads, instead of
>just 2.  Use the same reasoning to explain why AMD doesn't use Hyperthreading at
>all.  The most likely explanation is that AMD doesn't think their current
>processors will benefit very much from hyperthreading, so it's not worth it.
>The P4 does, however, benefit a lot from it, so it's used.

Athlon would benefit. AMD's focus has not been on HyperThreading. Their
attention has been turned toward a means of eliminating bottlenecks. Their
attention has also been turned toward restructuring and becoming profitable.
They have been losing lots of money.

>>matter is....they cant do it and maintain a bargain basement price for their
>>products...and in all reality...I'm not 100% sure they have the know how or else
>>they could be marketing a high end hyperthreading chip to compete with the
>>xeon...or maybe they just don't want that extra money?
>
>AMD is, and has been for quite some time, concentrating almost all their
>resources on Opteron.  If it had anything to do with lack of 'know-how', Intel
>would already be leading by a huge margin in performance, given their
>near-infinite resources relative to AMD.  Being able to keep up with Intel in
>the performace race for so long with so much less in the way or resources speaks
>volumes about the excellence of AMD's engineering and R&D processes.

Or DEC's engineering process since AMD has borrowed so much from Alpha. That
doesn't discredit them, though. Perhaps that makes them even smarter -- borrow
something that is -known- to work well vs. designing your own.

-Matt



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