Itanium 2: Intel and the megahertz myth
Well, Intel announced the Itanium 2 today.
<a href="http://intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020708comp.htm"; target="_blank">http://intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020708comp.htm</a>;
They're offering two clock speeds, 900MHz or 1GHz, and models with either 1.5MB or 3MB of integrated L3 cache.
Itanium is obviously architecturally very different than the Pentium 4. While the Pentium 4 was designed to be a standalone processor and run at high clock speeds, Itanium is a low clock speed; high bandwidth processor designed for multiple CPU environments. It is very similar to AMD?s Opteron and IBM?s POWER4 in this respect.
So, what will Intel do once they decided to start pushing IA-64 for the desktop? After spending millions of dollars to convince the world that megahertz is the only thing that matters, will Intel be forced to begin educating its customers about the megahertz myth?
Or will they just continue lying and replace megahertz with meaningless performance ratings as AMD did?
Either way, Apple will undoubtedly benefit from the whole mess. I personally think the PC industry is setting itself up to take a huge fall, but I also want to know what you guys think?
What are your insights?
<a href="http://intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020708comp.htm"; target="_blank">http://intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020708comp.htm</a>;
They're offering two clock speeds, 900MHz or 1GHz, and models with either 1.5MB or 3MB of integrated L3 cache.
Itanium is obviously architecturally very different than the Pentium 4. While the Pentium 4 was designed to be a standalone processor and run at high clock speeds, Itanium is a low clock speed; high bandwidth processor designed for multiple CPU environments. It is very similar to AMD?s Opteron and IBM?s POWER4 in this respect.
So, what will Intel do once they decided to start pushing IA-64 for the desktop? After spending millions of dollars to convince the world that megahertz is the only thing that matters, will Intel be forced to begin educating its customers about the megahertz myth?
Or will they just continue lying and replace megahertz with meaningless performance ratings as AMD did?
Either way, Apple will undoubtedly benefit from the whole mess. I personally think the PC industry is setting itself up to take a huge fall, but I also want to know what you guys think?
What are your insights?
Comments
If we get the 64bit G5 (or more likely a enhanced G4) at 1.5Ghz while the IA64 is at 800-1Ghz... WE'RE AWAY!
<strong>Well, Intel announced the Itanium 2 today.
<a href="http://intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020708comp.htm"; target="_blank">http://intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020708comp.htm</a>;
They're offering two clock speeds, 900MHz or 1GHz, and models with either 1.5MB or 3MB of integrated L3 cache.
Itanium is obviously architecturally very different than the Pentium 4. While the Pentium 4 was designed to be a standalone processor and run at high clock speeds, Itanium is a low clock speed; high bandwidth processor designed for multiple CPU environments. It is very similar to AMD?s Opteron and IBM?s POWER4 in this respect.
So, what will Intel do once they decided to start pushing IA-64 for the desktop? After spending millions of dollars to convince the world that megahertz is the only thing that matters, will Intel be forced to begin educating its customers about the megahertz myth?
Or will they just continue lying and replace megahertz with meaningless performance ratings as AMD did?
Either way, Apple will undoubtedly benefit from the whole mess. I personally think the PC industry is setting itself up to take a huge fall, but I also want to know what you guys think?
What are your insights?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The clients that this processor targets could care less about Mhz. This type of client understands processor performance and the simple reality that faster Mhz != faster processing performance.
I just ordered a machine to replace a dual PIII 933 machine. The machine has PIV Xeon's running at 2.4Ghz with DDR. Believe it or not, this machine is a stepping stone to an 8 way PIII Xeon machine...probably PIII 900's.
Apple has been VERY smart in trying to educate people about ease of use. Ease of use is much more important than faster processors 99% of the time.
Intel will definitely abuse this by telling people that a 64-bit processor is twice as fast as any 32-bit processor. That would solve the problem about the 32-bit Pentium V (or whatever) having more megahertz.
Educated people will not be deceived, but unfortunately most PC users aren't nerds.
We know 64-bit isn't twice as fast a 32-bit simply because 64 is equal to 2 X 32. What makes 64-bit processors powerful is their ability to manage large volumes of memory (we're talking terabytes) and work with very large integers/floats.
I'll stop here and let someone more knowledgeable explain the 64-bit?s advantages in greater detail.
One reason I?d want a 64-bit desktop processor is so I could have a small hard drive?s worth of RAM in my system and not have all my apps slow down because of paging.
<strong>
The clients that this processor targets could care less about Mhz. This type of client understands processor performance and the simple reality that faster Mhz != faster processing performance.
I just ordered a machine to replace a dual PIII 933 machine. The machine has PIV Xeon's running at 2.4Ghz with DDR. Believe it or not, this machine is a stepping stone to an 8 way PIII Xeon machine...probably PIII 900's.
Apple has been VERY smart in trying to educate people about ease of use. Ease of use is much more important than faster processors 99% of the time.</strong><hr></blockquote>
IA-64 may be target for Enterprise now, but do you think Intel will really let AMD brag for long about having the only 64-bit desktop processor or let x86-64 win acceptance over IA-64?
<strong>So, what will Intel do once they decided to start pushing IA-64 for the desktop? After spending millions of dollars to convince the world that megahertz is the only thing that matters, will Intel be forced to begin educating its customers about the megahertz myth?
Or will they just continue lying and replace megahertz with meaningless performance ratings as AMD did?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
They somehow managed to avoid even discussing this when they changed to the Pentium IVs. I think they just managed to get away with it by running the IVs clock speeds up so quickly, that no one noticed they were slower clock-for-clock than Pentium IIIs.
Let's say I have a dual PIII 933 database server that can only safely handle an average of 100 queries per second. A dual PIV Xeon 2.4 could probably handle an average of 600 queries per second. However, these queries would not see a 6x increase in speed...the machine can just handle more and you would probably see only a 2.5 to 3x speed improvment per query.
I honestly believe that we are close to maximum machines needed for desktop use. Most home users won't load the machine like you would a database server.
Also, the move to 64 bit is a HUGE move. Unless the OS is doing some behind the scenes magic most applications will need to be re-written.
"Prices will range from about $1,300 for the 900MHz version to $4,200 for the 1GHz version with the 3MB cache, according to sources close to the company."
[/Reality Check]
<strong>[Reality Check]
"Prices will range from about $1,300 for the 900MHz version to $4,200 for the 1GHz version with the 3MB cache, according to sources close to the company."
[/Reality Check]</strong><hr></blockquote>
Target customers will be glad to spend that much money and more. For large corporations, to whom they are targeted, that's pocket change.
In a couple years most games and creative application will require more memory than a 32-bit processor can handle.
64-bit processors will be necessary if you want more than 4GB of RAM in a desktop. That may seem like a lot today, but I'm telling you it's not far off.
Many people already have 512MB or even a 1GB of RAM installed on their machines. For people who use Maya, 512MB of RAM is a minimum, and more demanding apps are on the way. By 2005, 4GB of RAM will not sound outrageous on a desktop.
64-bit processors will allow us to keep adding memory to our systems well into the terabytes. This is real reason why Intel and AMD are all moving to 64-bits. We're going to need more memory someday.
[ 07-09-2002: Message edited by: Kecksy ]</p>
I mean, sure, their engineers made a design decision and went with a hyper-pipelined architecture, and so far it seems to have worked for them. Pentium 4s are currently the fastest desktop processors.
It seems to me that, just because Intel's processors have high clockspeeds, people are upset at them for trying to fool the innocent public into thinking that megahertz means everything. Sure, I haven't seen Intel's marketing people trying to educate people, going "look, our new processors have lower IPC then the previous ones so a 2 Ghz P4 isn't necessarily twice as fast a 1 Ghz Pentium III", but who would do that? I know Apple wouldn't, that I know...
Maybe some marketing droid or two might have said something stupid in an interview somewhere, I don't know, but I certainly haven't seen Intel abuse this anything like Apple would have if it were in the same situation.
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
<strong>
Target customers will be glad to spend that much money and more. For large corporations, to whom they are targeted, that's pocket change.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah but I was responding to those who say that because of the Itanium2 we must have the 64-bit G5 PowerMacs at MWNY or else. These people are comparing a $3500 PowerMac computer with a chip that costs $1000 more alone. Totally different markets.
<strong>
Yeah but I was responding to those who say that because of the Itanium2 we must have the 64-bit G5 PowerMacs at MWNY or else. These people are comparing a $3500 PowerMac computer with a chip that costs $1000 more alone. Totally different markets.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well both target markets have way too much money to spend. 64bit compatability is not something Apple shoudl be focusing on. Apple doesn't even have a hook in the market that needs it.
A lot of the performance increase in the hammer series in fact comes from exactly that improvement (apparently).
[quote]Originally posted by cowofwar:
<strong>64bit compatability is not something Apple shoudl be focusing on. Apple doesn't even have a hook in the market that needs it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Every PC manufacturer should be interested in 64-bit architectures, especially Apple considering they do have some say in their chips. Graphic artists use huge amounts of RAM compared to a great many areas.
The major two areas that would exceed them in memory usage are the scientific community, which is a perfect target market for Apple right now, and large database servers.
Apple should have a very careful timeline about now for when it is going to introduce it's 64-bit support.
<strong>
Yeah but I was responding to those who say that because of the Itanium2 we must have the 64-bit G5 PowerMacs at MWNY or else. These people are comparing a $3500 PowerMac computer with a chip that costs $1000 more alone. Totally different markets.</strong><hr></blockquote>
well for 3.5k i'd pc able to get an it2 pc....wouldnt i?