AMD Announces August Release Date for Barcelona

An anonymous reader writes "Rumors said the release wouldn't be until late Q4 but an August ship date is now promised for AMD's quad-core chips. They're only releasing up to 2.0 GHz processors at first, with the top speed devices coming out later in the year. 'AMD's Barcelona puts four cores on a single slice of silicon, an approach AMD calls native quad-core, and the company has argued that Barcelona will outperform the Xeon 5300. The only problem: that comparison soon will become obsolete. Intel's second-generation quad-core server processors, Harpertown a server member of Intel's Penryn family, will arrive this year, too, with the promise of better performance, lower power consumption and lower manufacturing costs by virtue of a manufacturing process with 45-nanometer features. AMD is only just now moving to a 65-nanometer process.'"

65nm?

[beavis88 (25983)]

AMD is only just now moving to a 65-nanometer process

That's a nice thought, except it's totally wrong. All their Brisbane core X2 chips are on 65nm now, and have been for quite awhile.

Re:65nm?

[samkass (174571)]

AMD has been shipping 65nm CPUs of one kind or another for about 6 months now. However, the Athlon X2 line still has many 90nm parts in its lineup-- they're still in the process of moving to a 65nm process, as the comment notes. So "totally wrong" is probably less correct than the original statement.

Re:

[zensonic (82242)]

True. But that is most likely a production volume issue. AMD can not afford to turn out new FABs at the same rate as Intel can. Sad but true. They can only win this game by thinking smarter not harder!

Re:

[John Jamieson (890438)]

Huh? Intel still sell processors fab'd at larger sizes as well ... Does that mean Intel is also still in the process of moving to 65nm???

Nope, "totally wrong" is probably more correct than the original statement.

Not ruling AMD out

[tjstork (137384)]

Moving to native quad core has a lot of advantages and I'm actually excited to see how well this CPU will perform. Critics that claim that AMD lags behind in the process size would do well to note that AMD has ALWAYS lagged behind Intel in that category, and, yet, has managed to not only survive, but prosper.

Re:

[2nd Post! (213333)]

Releasing a product in a timely also has a lot of advantages
Releasing a performance commanding product also has a lot of advantages

Currently Intel is king of the hill on both counts. If AMD has a 2GHz quad core, Intel could match with a 4GHz quad core ON THE SAME DAY.

It is very hard to believe that AMD will be able to field a 2GHz part with 2x the performance of Intel's chip... that is what would be required to show a 40% performance advantage.

Re:

[Anarke_Incarnate (733529)]

You are erroneously assuming that clock frequency matters across different designs. If I were to tell you I could sell you a working chip at 10Ghz would you want it? What if I told you all it had was an And gate and an OR gate and nothing else? How would that help you? IPC (instruction per clock), Bandwidth, Interprocessor latency, Thermal efficiency and Power draw all matter in the enterprise space.

Re:

[2nd Post! (213333)]

Unfortunately for AMD I think Intel currently has the crown in IPC, thermal efficiency, and power draw :)

Re:

[QuoteMstr (55051)]

Okay, for the sake of argument, assume the OP meant a CPU with one instruction, the mythical decrement-and-branch-if-zero. I'd rather have a 2ghz x86 chip than a 10ghz single-instruction processor. :-)

Re:Not ruling AMD out

[cartman (18204)]

Moving to native quad core has a lot of advantages and I'm actually excited to see how well this CPU will perform. Critics that claim that AMD lags behind in the process size would do well to note that AMD has ALWAYS lagged behind Intel in that category, and, yet, has managed to not only survive, but prosper.

AMD has always lagged behind in process technology, however they've usually only lagged behind by a few months. Now, however, the lag is more significant since Intel is moving to 45nm soon, while AMD is still in the transition to 65nm. I can't remember a time when AMD was nearly a full process generation behind.

..AMD has survived, true, but it hasn't prospered. AMD's split-adjusted stock price is about the same as it was in 1985. And AMD has taken significant losses in a great many of the intervening years.

When AMD has prospered, it usually was because Intel management had made some colossal strategic mistake and AMD exploited it. For example, Intel management decided not to design a successor core to the PPro/PII/PIII until AMD had released the Athlon, because of their confidence in Itanium. And Intel strenuously resisted going to 64 bit on x86, again to protect Itanium. And Intel delayed multicore processors. In all of those areas, AMD was able to beat Intel to the punch, not for technical reasons, but because the people who run Intel made strategic mistakes in direction, over and over again.

However Intel can bring colossal resources to bear, which matters because making CPUs is the most capital-intensive industry in the world. Intel has tremendous innate advantages because of their economy of scale and easy access to capital. Whenever AMD gains an advantage, Intel stops doing whatever stupid thing they were doing and re-commits themselves to beating AMD at the x86 game. When Intel isn't on the wrong path and isn't making silly mistakes in strategy, they almost always beat AMD and force AMD into heavy losses.

This time, Intel doesn't appear to be making any silly mistakes, which is terrible for AMD. Not that I think AMD will go bankrupt anytime soon, but I suspect AMD will have a few "lean" years, like they did when they were selling K6's.

I hope...

[Mad_Rain (674268)]

I hope they manage to avoid the problems that hit Intel's Core 2 Duo [slashdot.org], and squash some of their own bugs while they're at it. Or is it too late to handle those problems at this stage in the manufacturing process?

Re:

[Bacon Bits (926911)]

Of course it won't be. Do people honestly think this Core 2 Duo thing is new and unique to Intel?

What the heck do people think BIOS updates are?

Not for everybody

[Tribbin (565963)]

Games can be specialized to use 4 or more cores.
Servers will really use it.

Mr. PC enthousiast who likes to rip DVDs and do other things in the meanwhile can do with 2 cores.

I'm a multitasker who converts audio and video and downloads a lot while intensively browsing the internet. I see no need for me to go more than dualcore. If you are like me; better yet use the money on more happy HD-space, quiet cooling and memory.

Re:

[Slack3r78 (596506)]

Is this a joke? Video encoding is a task that's relatively trivial to parallelize and is one of the more common tasks that receives pretty massive speed ups from it.

The average DVD ripping guy is going to see more benefit from a quad core at this point in time.

Re:

[TheRealMindChild (743925)]

Quake 3 was multi-threaded a lot, but in games such as it, I am not so sure that having enemy's and crates and whatever else on their own thread is such a good idea. A primitive, yet effective way to approach such a game can be illustrated with such:

void Gameloop()
{<br>
...
Tick(); //Game engine moves in time one increment

for (Index0 = 0; Index0 < World.Objects.Count; Index+=1)
{
World.Objects(Index0).React(); //Each object reacts to happenings in the previous moment
}
...
}

To put it

Re:

[wall0159 (881759)]

Um... ripping video and audio is ideally suited to multi threading, and hence multi-core.

It's just a matter of parallelising software, and once it's done, the more cores the better.

Re:

[Tribbin (565963)]

The new flight simulator by Microsoft will support multicore for scenery rendering and stuff.

Nothing but downhill for AMD

[PlugPlover (963236)]

It is unfortunate, because the only reason Intel killed off the poorly designed Pentium 4 was the strong competition, and the only reason you can buy a Core 2 Duo for under $150 is the competition from AMD. AMD is showing that it costs them more to make worse chips than Intel - since they have no choice, they are selling them at price points that often make them a great value, especially if you don't need the best performance per watt. But AMD isn't making enough profit to do the development they need to c

Re:

[Martin Blank (154261)]

Also, Intel can't buy AMD (I think they actually tried once, many years ago) due to anti-trust legislation.

PlugPlover never said anything about Intel buying AMD. He suggested that IBM buy AMD, which would be more natural as IBM has collaborated with AMD on numerous aspects that advanced the CPU world, such as SOI and copper interconnects.

Re:

[5pp000 (873881)]

While AMD has excellent architects, Intel has a commanding process-technology lead, and has some good architects itself. It was only because Intel got complacent and made some stupid strategic decisions (Itanic) that they let AMD back in the game. We all owe AMD thanks for forcing Intel to wake up... but now that they have, I don't know how much chance AMD has of keeping up.

Also, read again. The GP was proposing the IBM buy AMD, not Intel. I think it would be a good thing too. Well, except that the c

Barcelona? Phenom? What's the diff?

[Thagg (9904)]

I can understand that there would be a difference between chips designed for multiprocessing, but if I wanted to have a single-chip workstation, would there be any difference between the Barcelona and the Phenom?

I'm interested in building new workstations for my company, and the Phenom chips look great except that they don't exist, and won't, for at least six months. Why not build Barcelona workstations, though?

Thad Beier

Re:

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

The early Barcelonas will be designed for dual socket servers, and they'll be released at reasonably low clock speeds. If you want to make an 8 core workstation that isn't super fast on single threaded tasks, then they'll be a great deal. If you want a single socket system, you'll be spending more money for lower speeds than if you waited for the Phenom processors.

NPT

[Natales (182136)]

I don't think the battle is only on the 45 vs. 65nm arena. There are other interesting technologies in the package that deserve some consideration. Barcelona will include Nested Page Tables (NPT) technology, which could potentially give a significant performance boost to memory intensive applications running on virtual machines once the hypervisors start supporting it.

Intel will also be coming out with a similar technology called Extended Page Tables or EPT, but AFAIK their timeframe is early 2008.

Not as simple as 65 v 45 nm.

[Junta (36770)]

AMD is using SOI, which as I understand, produces some benefit over Intels process at a given process size. If the benefit offsets 65 v 45, or comes close, I don't know.

I do know that AMD sales have persisted in high-performance applications, simply because AMD's memory and IO architecture remain *much* metter than Intel's. Intel with Core 2 finally seriously had a competitor in terms of performance (i.e. very good floating point), but it will be interesting if Barcelona essentially matches the performanc

Re:Marketing and hubris may have done AMD in.

[suv4x4 (956391)]

Now they're paying the price - they can't manufacture it. All indications I've heard are that they're having production problems. Compare this with the alternative of just gluing a few dual cores together. AMD can mock this approach all they want, we'll see who's laughing when they're "next gen" chip underperforms (in many benchmarks, I'm betting) a previous gen competitor's chip and falls quite a way behind the competitor's "next gen" chip.

Looks like you're mocking the outcome of a future event that has not happened yet.

IT is a funny place to be: sometimes when it seems you're a total loser, you are, but sometimes, you come on top and kill the competition.

It's all about the details, details which you don't know.

Re:Marketing and hubris may have done AMD in.

[Kohath (38547)]

Marketing hype is not relevant. It's not relevant when it's true. It's not relevant when it's false. It's not relevant when your marketing predicts a win and you win. It's not relevant when your marketing predicts a win and you lose.

All the fanboyism and taunting and one-upsmanship and told-you-sos are worth exactly zero dollars.

The chips will perform the way they perform. There will be benchmarks. People will buy based on cost vs. performance decision-making, not cost vs. hype decision-making.

Re:

[NateE (247273)]

Marketing hype matters when you have ill informed, non-technical people making purchasing decisions.

Re:

[Kohath (38547)]

Those people will buy a Dell or an HP. The guys at Dell and HP are not ill-informed.

Re:

[jcgf (688310)]

The guys at Dell and HP are not ill-informed.

Working on their machines often makes one think otherwise.

Re:

[geekoid (135745)]

hahahahaa...

Marketing sells lots, and lots of crap. Many very good products cease to exist because of poor marketing(usually do to attitudes like yours) or a competitor out marketing you.

Re:

[2ms (232331)]

If your theory that marketing is irrelevant were true then there wouldn't be maketing. The companies spend billions on marketing because it works. Most people who buy computers do not know squat so they buy based on image or reputation, obviously. Marketing and hype, obviously, affect people's perceptions of products.

So, I really do not know what the hell you are talking about.

Of course, all the hype everywhere these days is revolting. That has nothing to do with whether or not it works. How else do yo

Re:

[niceone (992278)]

The chips will perform the way they perform. There will be benchmarks. People will buy based on cost vs. performance decision-making, not cost vs. hype decision-making.

I have noticed in the audio world (and I'm guessing in other areas too) it only works like this when Intel is ahead. When AMD is ahead a large number of people carry on buying Intel because it is Intel. It sucks to be AMD.

Re:

[Kohath (38547)]

When the products are essentially the same, then the marketing matters.

But not like the original poster meant -- he was saying AMD would be proven wrong about some hype-full marketing assertion and somehow "lose face" or something. It doesn't work that way. Hype is forgotten. If you remember it, you don't understand it.

Re:Marketing and hubris may have done AMD in.

[semiotec (948062)]

I really hope that AMD can pull themselves out of the current slump.

Their technology have always been competitive with Intel, regardless of whether they are holding the performance crown of the moment, and thus they provide the only true competition to Intel in the mainstream PC market. Unlike Via or the defunct Transmeta and others, which only managed to compete in some niche markets.

we'll see who's laughing when they're "next gen" chip underperforms (in many benchmarks, I'm betting)

Should AMD go down, even Intel fanboys are going to feel the pain when Intel starts ignoring the cheap segments and prices CPU whatever way they feel like. In a way, it'd be a worse monopoly than Microsoft, since it's much easier to create software from scratch than it is to create hardware from scratch. If the unthinkable happens, we can only hope that IBM (or maybe Sun) becomes interested in making x86 chips enough to provide an alternative, or provide cheap Power processors for desktops...

Personally, I don't care who's got the highest performing CPU, as long as I can get cheap CPUs that will do the job adequately.

Re:

[Kjella (173770)]

I think that without AMD, Intel itself will actually go down in a slump. For most consumers faster CPUs are now "nice to have". Throw in the cheapest dual-core processor you can find and 2GB RAM (which has also come down a lot in price) and you got a very cheap yet powerful and responsive machine that'll run pretty much everything for a non-gamer. Throw in a video card like the GF8500 with full H.264 acceleration if you want 1080p HDDVD/Blu-Ray playback. Sure, it'll gradually creep upwards but I think the g

Re:

[SacredByte (1122105)]

You assume that Technologically superior products are always more successful than their inferiors, and that AMD's multiple core solution is in fact, inferior.

for my first point, I would remind you of BetaMax, and Windows; BetaMax had technological superiority than its competition, but lost (Largely because of cost & capacity) To VHS; whereas Windows was vastly inferior to its competitors yet somehow managed to end up with the largest market share.

As to my second point, AMD's design seems to have some ad

Re:

[Adult film producer (866485)]

Hey, come on mods, that was funny, admit it :)

Re:

[Vancorps (746090)]

So you're saying AMD shouldn't mentioned the only reason Intel beat them to it is the fact that Intel cut stupid corners to produce a product for the sake of being first?

Stability of AMD server chips certainly shows that AMD has an idea about SMP while Intel is still scratching their collective balls. When things go to 64 bit you really start to see AMD's strengths as their current offerings are more than competitive. The desktop arena is a tough market that Intel current has the crown for but only becaus

Re:

[Joe The Dragon (967727)]

Intel maxes out at 4 cpus and there plan to have 4 FSB in there upcoming 4 wat xeon chip set and CSI has been pushed back to 2008

Re:

[afidel (530433)]

Intel doesn't max out at 4 CPU's, at least not for systems you can actually buy. Since the memory bandwidth isn't there the most you can buy is dual quad core (this is from IBM, HP and Dell). Oh and they max out at 32GB of ram whereas you can get a DL585g2 which can economically go to 64GB and maxes at 128GB with 4GB chips. HP and AMD have committed to supporting Barcelona on the DL585g2 so I expect I will have some 16core 64Gb machines by the end of the year =) Oh and if you are into Sun the x4600 will be

Re:

[Wavicle (181176)]

Oh and they max out at 32GB of ram whereas you can get a DL585g2 which can economically go to 64GB

Gosh, I sure wish HP would put an Intel processor in the DL580g4 [hp.com]. That way there'd be a platform that would max out at 64GB of ram. Oh, wait...

Re:

[afidel (530433)]

Wow, and the DL580 doesn't support the 5300, so no quad core with large memory support. So unless you are doing one of the small subset of HPC problems that needs pure CPU performance there's very little need. The fact is the Intel systems run out of ram before they run out of CPU power for most real world datacenter needs.

Re:

[MojoStan (776183)]

Intel maxes out at 4 cpus and there plan to have 4 FSB in there upcoming 4 wat xeon chip set and CSI has been pushed back to 2008

DigiTimes reported yesterday [digitimes.com] that Tigerton (along with the quad-independent-bus Clarksboro chipset) is scheduled to launch in September (according to sources at server makers). Clarksboro will have four independent point-to-point connections to the CPUs. These new chipset-to-CPU connections are not CSI, but they are supposedly more efficient than the front side bus connections Intel currently uses. The Tech Report has an interesting photo of a Tigerton/Clarksboro demo from October [techreport.com] that shows four Tigerton

Re:

[edwdig (47888)]

Lowering the manufacturing cost doesn't make a huge difference on the price marketing sets, but it makes a huge difference on what the engineering team does.

The engineering team is given target transistor count based on expected manufacturing costs, which affects the cache size and feature set.

Re:Cores and process are nice, but what about SSE(

[tknd (979052)]

The problem is that Intel will not implement anything AMD comes up with unless AMD can convince enough software companies to switch their products to the AMD developed standards. For example way back, they created 3dnow! instructions and had minimal success even though there were some obvious performance benefits. Intel never implemented 3dnow and instead went with SSE. It's pretty obvious who won that battle. Now AMD did have a win with AMD64/x86-64, but progress there has been slow and Intel still doesn'

Re:Cores and process are nice, but what about SSE(

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

When have you ever seen a game benchmark changed by the difference between SSE2 support and SSE3 support? From what I've seen, most game developers don't even consider using the new SSE instructions for a couple years - both waiting for AMD to support them and waiting for people to replace the vast majority of older Intel machines that don't support them.

Even when chips do support SSE type instructions, they rarely produce as drastic a performance improvement as the chip manufacturers hype would imply. Wri

Re:

[ChrisMaple (607946)]

I've written video processing code using SSE, and it makes a substantial speed difference. I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but my recollection is about a 30% reduction in run time. Beyond having to learn more assembly language instructions, writing for SIMD is not terribly difficult. Writing for a multicore processor requires learning about threads and paying attention to data timing, which I find quite difficult.

Re:

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

Yea, video processing code is the poster child for SIMD - a 30% runtime improvement there over no SIMD is quite reasonable. On the other hand, the difference between SSE2 and SSE3 for the same code is probably somewhat smaller. In other areas, SIMD doesn't help at all, or only helps if you use techniques that are much more complex than multi-threading code.

Another interesting development is GPUs as general purpose SIMD processors...

Actually, yes, Intel does create these randomly.

[WoTG (610710)]

AMD and Intel have cross-licensing deals that handle the instructions that each company creates... these deals go way back to the mists of x86 time. So, for AMD to implement SSEn there is no legal problem. Ditto for the reverse. Except, the "problem" is that Intel w/80% of the market can pretty much dictate what instructions will survive in the market -- with the big exception of x86-64, and potentially some of the new virtualization stuff.

Now, about releasing chips in a timely manner... the trick is Int

Re:

[Wdomburg (141264)]

8 hyperthreading cores running 8 threads each, with each core having 2 ALUs and 1 FPU.

That's 64 concurrent threads, 16 ALUs, and 8 FPUs. And probably only needs a 150- or 200-watt power supply. There's a reason why Sun is getting something like $20K per UltraSPARC T1000 or T2000 rack-mount systems and can't keep up with demand...

Um, if you're talking about T1000 and T2000, that's 32 concurrent threads, 8 ALUs and 1 FPU. And the T1000 and T2000 start at $3995 and $9995, respectively. And lead time isn't an