Intel quietly ships 64bit cpus for the desktop

[cristic]

In a surprising move (I do remember Intel saying that 64-bit wasn't yet ready for the desktop market), Intel will start offering Pentium 4 processors with EM64T support
Linky

I guesstimate that the performance will still be the same when dealing with 32bit apps for the new intel cores. I'm curious how much would each cpu gain (performance wise) when switching to the full 64bit path and making use of the extra registers...

If we didn't have AMD... things would look a lot less prettier today! 8)

 

[London Geezer]

So... How does this differ, if it does, from the 64bit offerings from AMD. And can i say.... better late than never! :?

 

[cristic]

Ahm, as for as I know Intel's 64 bit implementation is 99.9% identical to AMD's. I've read somewhere (can't remember where) there are some instructions that Intel has thrown into the mix. But since it seems that all x86-64 (i.e. Win64) software is developed for the AMD platform there shouldn't be no incompatibilities.

Anyhow, what I find funny is that, there is no PR campaign going on to educate the consumer that intel 64 bits are better than amd 64 bits!

But, yeah better late, than never, like in if you can't beat them, join them!

 

[epicstruggle]

Ahm, as for as I know Intel's 64 bit implementation is 99.9% identical to AMD's. I've read somewhere (can't remember where) there are some instructions that Intel has thrown into the mix. But since it seems that all x86-64 (i.e. Win64) software is developed for the AMD platform there shouldn't be no incompatibilities.

Anyhow, what I find funny is that, there is no PR campaign going on to educate the consumer that intel 64 bits are better than amd 64 bits!

But, yeah better late, than never, like in if you can't beat them, join them!

'
an interesting note, is that linus was pissed that intel renamed am64 to em64. He thought that intel should have given credit to amd.

epic

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Anyhow, what I find funny is that, there is no PR campaign going on to educate the consumer that intel 64 bits are better than amd 64 bits!

Right now, AMD has the lead and mindshare on 64-bit. If Intel were to start advertising how great 64-bit is, everyone would be thinking of AMD first. Not surprising as AMD have been shipping and plugging 64-bit for the last year and have a real lead on Intel in this field.

 

[cristic]

Yes, indeed.

But what about those consumers that never even heard of AMD (or refuse to acknowledge its existence i.e. fanboi), I think there are quite a few of those guys, so Intel could promote its 64 bits to these kind of customers with great ease.

Maybe, they don't have enough cpus yet or they are waiting for Win64 to be available in stores, maybe that's the reason there's no campaign.

 

[mczak]

Maybe, they don't have enough cpus yet or they are waiting for Win64 to be available in stores, maybe that's the reason there's no campaign.

I think this has more to do that it's a technology intel doesn't want to push, but is forced to implement for competitive reasons.
intel wants to sell ia64 workstations, not x86-64 (or whatever they call it) workstations! ia64 is the future they want, not x86-64. But of course, the market might decide otherwise - intel though has no reason to make a lot of noise about x86-64, that could only weaken ia64 future.

 

[3dilettante]

The ISA implementation of Intel's x86-64 is nearly identical to AMD's, but there are some implementation details that appear to be adding performance wrinkles to the intel chips.

Under 64 bit, some tests have shown that intel's processors might be bouncing memory data around from above and below the 4GB limit. This isn't so much an ISA issue as an implementation one, as AMD's implementation doesn't do that.

Perhaps Intel's implementation isn't quite as smooth as AMD's, not surprising as they weren't too gung-ho on going that route anyway.