When do you think AMD will jump to 128bit?

[Sorrow]

I'm hoping pretty soon, I hear from people (no reliable sources though :() that pentium might skip 64 bit and go straight to 128bit, if so, I wonder if AMD will skip 128bit to stay ahead of the game, not financially, but processor-wise.

[$n][pErMan]

Mac CPUs are already 128bit are they not?

[Sorrow]

Yea but mac is insignificant, they could go to 512bit and no one would care

[Nutty]

Any URL's to back this up? I've never heard of any mainstream 128bit cpu's. Personally I think it would be rather pointless. 64bit is easily enuff for many years.

[Hallowed]

Mac just went to 64 bit on their IBM ppc-architecture chips.

There are no 128-bit desktop CPU's, and wont be for quite some time.

However, if one were talking GPU's...

[JoKeRr]

128bit sounds a bit overkill right now, since u can already address something like XX gig of ram with 64bit instead of only 4 gig with 32bit

[oldsk00l]

the performance increases from this sort of thing aren't as significant as say, how deep the pipe is, clockspeed, etc etc

64-bit CPU's are going to be around for possibly an entire decade before anyone tries to push a 128-bit desktop CPU.

This sort of thing is more about how much RAM you can address than any significant performance increase. Not that you wouldn't get a good boost, but the software just wouldn't be there to take advantage of it.

Mac's are 64-bit on the G5 only, from the 601e processor to the G4 it's been 32-bit for Mac. Even the 68030-68040 CPU's for Mac's back in the 90's were 32-bit. PC's have had 32-bit since the 386 and are still 32-bit up until the Prescott Pentium4. Even these CPU's have 64-bit technology licensed from AMD.

lol

[$n][pErMan]

64-bit CPU's are going to be around for possibly an entire decade before anyone tries to push a 128-bit desktop CPU. naw... id say more like 5 years. Someone will push it just because bigger is better. its not like we truely need SLi yet and look how that took off.... we also dont yet need duel core CPU's for gaming yet thats goign to take hold also.

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Games will see a definitive benefit with dual core CPUs in about two years from now, which coincidently is about the time that dual core CPUs will hit the mainstream market.

If you don't believe me, look at the next generation of game consoles. It is possible to make games run faster on multiple CPUs, just conventional multithreading has to change first, which it will.

[superklye]

Yea but mac is insignificant, they could go to 512bit and no one would care
HAHAHAHAHA

[Ninja Prime]

Didn't rating things by "bitage" go out of style after Nintendo 64?

[retsam]

the first place you will see a 128 bit cpu is in ibm mainframes... this is always were the ultra high end starts out at... and i can tell you there is no talk of 128 bit cpu's its just not practical.. more cores ...yes .... multi cores and multi-cpu's on die...yes ... im not sure why they will not go 128 bit i think then the registers and addressing is just rediculs to manage. ill talk to one of my ibm buddies at work to ask the reasons why.

[Lezmaka]

Main benefit of 32 bit -> 64 bit is accessing huge amounts of RAM. Since they were messing with the x86 instruction set anyway, AMD took the opportunity to add more registers and other internal tweaks.

[Remi]

Indeed!

I'll try to explain and clear up a bit the issue in plain english... :)

More bits doesn't mean more powerfull.

It used to, when we were limited by the range of numbers which can be represented by those bits. 8 bits gives integers from 0 to 255. Each time you double the number of bits, you square the range:
8 bits = 0..255
16 bits = 0..65 535
32 bits = 0..4 294 967 295
64 bits = 0..18 446 744 073 709 551 615
128 bits = 0..340 282 366 920 938 463 463 374 607 431 770 000 000
(rounded)

One can classify the range of the numbers used in programs in, let's say four categories (I've added a very rought indication of how much they're used in programs, in general):
- common: 32 bits or less (90 %)
- rare: 64 bits (< 10%)
- serious precision: 80 bits (1 %)
- extreme: more than 80 bits (< 1%)

A pair of remarks:
1. 32 bits is enough for most things (and that probably will stay - how many quantities in everydays life exceed 4 billions?),
2. most computations nowadays are done with the SIMD units inside the CPU (SSE/SSE2/SSE3/3Dnow...), and their range and precision is independant of the number of bits of the processor!

Hence... A 32 bits processor is enough for practically everything.

Why do we need 64 bits processors then? Well, we don't. Which is why AMD64s (and the 64 bits P4s) aren't 64 bits processors, they're 32 bits processors with 64 bits extensions named EMT-64.

Those extensions adds more SIMD units and 64 bits addressing; the later being needed mainly for big database servers which holds gigabytes of database in RAM. Those servers do exceed the capacity of 32 bits number to count and identify a precise byte in memory (which limits to 4 GB RAM, after which you need special mechanisms to address the memory).

I don't see a reason now why we would ever need 128 bits processors, but hey, never say never... ;)

[MUYA]

MARKETING


whoops caps locks off now :p

[shabby]

Speaking of marketing, what are the odd's that intel will say its new dual core emt64 pentium 4 is a 128bit cpu? You know, 64bit cpu + 64bit cpu = 128bit cpu?

[retsam]

Speaking of marketing, what are the odd's that intel will say its new dual core emt64 pentium 4 is a 128bit cpu? You know, 64bit cpu + 64bit cpu = 128bit cpu?

please dont give them any idea's :thumbdwn: .... i dont think there marketing department is that stupid. but they would name it something like duallyhypersuperdupernetburst and then procede to tell us it will cook, clean and do our laundry all while saving the world from global warming :p

[nutball]

I'm hoping pretty soon, I hear from people (no reliable sources though :() that pentium might skip 64 bit and go straight to 128bit,

Who did you hear this from, and more importantly why did you believe them? Even the very high-end CPUs (Itanium, POWER5) are still 64-bit. These will go 128-bit long before the desktop stuff. They show no signs of going 128-bit any time in the near future (ie. before 2010).

So... 128-bit desktops... fifteen years at the earliest.

[sytaylor]

Didn't rating things by "bitage" go out of style after Nintendo 64?

For Joe moron who hasn't played his PS2 in a while but was a big gamer at high school it hasn't. I still get people asking me if "the PS3 is gonna be 256bit". :eek:

[Viral]

Didn't rating things by "bitage" go out of style after Nintendo 64?

It seems not. :(

128bit sounds a bit overkill right now, since u can already address something like XX gig of ram with 64bit instead of only 4 gig with 32bit

Try 18Exabytes. Of course todays desktop 64-bit CPU's only have 40-bit physical memory addressing. That's still 1Terabyte, more than you'll be seeing for a few decades most likely.

[nIghtorius]

Indeed!

I'll try to explain and clear up a bit the issue in plain english... :)

More bits doesn't mean more powerfull.

It used to, when we were limited by the range of numbers which can be represented by those bits. 8 bits gives integers from 0 to 255. Each time you double the number of bits, you square the range:
8 bits = 0..255
16 bits = 0..65 535
32 bits = 0..4 294 967 295
64 bits = 0..18 446 744 073 709 551 615
128 bits = 0..340 282 366 920 938 463 463 374 607 431 770 000 000
(rounded)


You were almost right about that integer story. but you forget that the last bit of an integer is a sign bit.

with a 8-bit integer, bit-7 means -128 instead of +128

thus the correct ranges would be:
8 bits = -128..127
16 bits = -32 768..32 767
32 bits = -2 147 483 648..2 147 483 647
64 bits = -9 223 372 036 854 775 808..9 223 372 036 854 775 807
128 bits = -huge number..+huge number (really rounded)

your story is right about byte/words/dwords/qwords though or unsigned integers.

[Remi]

Yup, my goal is to explain it as simply as possible rather than to explore the subtelties of arithmetic... such as 2-complements for instance ;)

[ToxicTaZ]

For Joe moron who hasn't played his PS2 in a while but was a big gamer at high school it hasn't. I still get people asking me if "the PS3 is gonna be 256bit". :eek:

The Sony PS3 in bits looks like this:

64-bit Cell CPU 65nm ...IBM (There mite be up to four cell chips to one PS3? to give 1 Terraflop of CPU power) :eek:
512-bit GPU 65nm ...Nvidia (GeForce 7) tech :cool:
1024-bit IO Bus 65nm ...Rambus ;)

From what I here is there mite be up to 4 64-bit cell CPU chips to one PS3 system so its like a 256-bit system :p

And for all of you AMD fan boys & girls if you did not know that AMD 64-bit tech did not come from AMD :eek: AMD got there 64-bit tech from MIPS :confused: Here just look your self :D

http://www.mips.com/content/PressRoom/PressReleases/2002-04-29

AMD pay's intel and MIPS alot of money to Licensee use there tech lol ...to me this is funny :D
They pay intel to use there:
x86
MMX
SSE
SSE2
SSE3
AMD pay's MIPS also to use there 64-bit tech!

http://www.mips.com/content/PressRoom/PressReleases/2002-02-05

[bkswaney]

The Sony PS3 in bits looks like this:

64-bit Cell CPU 65nm ...IBM (There mite be up to four cell chips to one PS3? to give 1 Terraflop of CPU power) :eek:
512-bit GPU 65nm ...Nvidia (GeForce 7) tech :cool:
1024-bit IO Bus 65nm ...Rambus ;)

From what I here is there mite be up to 4 64-bit cell CPU chips to one PS3 system so its like a 256-bit system :p

And for all of you AMD fan boys & girls if you did not know that AMD 64-bit tech did not come from AMD :eek: AMD got there 64-bit tech from MIPS :confused: Here just look your self :D

http://www.mips.com/content/PressRoom/PressReleases/2002-04-29

AMD pay's intel and MIPS alot of money to Licensee use there tech lol ...to me this is funny :D
They pay intel to use there:
x86
MMX
SSE
SSE2
SSE3
AMD pay's MIPS also to use there 64-bit tech!

http://www.mips.com/content/PressRoom/PressReleases/2002-02-05



"LOL" I've always got a laugh out of
some of these big's companies "aka AMD or Intel"
when they start up about there tech is better
than company B's tech.. bla bla bla.

9 out of 10 times it's just like above.
They use someone else's stuff.

[nutball]

:confused: You do know who MIPS are, and what they do, don't you? :confused:

I mean, well...

AMD today announced the acquisition of Alchemy Semiconductor, an Austin-based startup that has been spearheading the development of the MIPS32™ architecture for the high performance, low-power microprocessor market. Personal connectivity devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), web tablets, gateways and portable Internet access devices require increased performance and lower power consumption over current technology offerings to provide consumers the features associated with "next-generation" applications. Alchemy's MIPS32-based products are designed to address these types of market requirements.

...they're in the embedded market (ignoring SGI supercomputers that is). I don't know where MIPS tech appears in AMD products, I'd be *very* surprised if it's anywhere near AMD64.