The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#31

Post by amelius » Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #17

It's easy to underestimate just how difficult processor design is and just how quickly it has advanced over the last few decades. First you have to design an incredibly complex custom hardware processor to implement your ISA of choice with various speed optimisations. Then you have to convert it to a gate-level model and simulate it to make sure it's reliable. Then you have to produce a physical/electromagnetic model…

There is software for the synthesis and verification parts.

For the fabrication, you contact your fab of choice.

Yes, this is expensive, but designing a processor is not unlike designing a large distributed software system. It's all software, and the rest is already taken care of mostly.

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#32

Post by jordanthoms » Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

ohazi wrote: post #25

Does anyone know if AMD has any sort of strategy around Thunderbolt for their mobile chips? Are they stuck because of Intel IP issues? Their desktop lines are basically the best you can get (assuming you can find anything in stock), but even the latest 5000 series laptops conspicuously lack Thunderbolt. This makes them a tough sell for some, as Thunderbolt has become the defacto standard for modern docking stations..…

USB4 is essentially a more open Thunderbolt, so I think their strategy will be to implement that instead.

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#33

Post by timw4mail » Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

grey4228 wrote: post #6

Offtopic: Most might be thinking fully FLOSS is something that's only happened in software, or powerless hardware. But the thing is server and desktop grade powerful and fully FLOSS hardware with PCIe 4.0 and DDR4 ECC memory are available right now to customers and businesses. Not as powerful as AMD. AMD will never be open though. It's not x86. POWER9. FSF RYF certified. https://www.raptorcs.com/ #talos-workstation o…

As much as I enjoy the idea, I can not justify the price, especially considering the huge breadth of software NOT available.

While it would work for my purposes as a server or a dev workstation, you still have to deal with a fairly niche processor architecture.

Ironically, though, the development of software for more modern POWER systems has kept some of the Apple PowerPC systems more up to date (assuming they are running linux, like Void).

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#34

Post by deckard1 » Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

> the top-end version of the Am386DX launched in 1989 at 40 MHz.

I had this CPU. 386dx 40Mhz. What a beast. It was my first PC that I purchased myself. It was also my first online purchase. I bought it off of FidoNet through a BBS. I'm still amazed that worked. Cash-on-delivery (COD). $50. Probably took an entire month getting to me via UPS.

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#35

Post by dlevine » Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

I was always intrigued by AMD processors in the 90s, although pretty much stuck with Intel.

I built an Athlon 64 PC in 2004 - it was the first 64-bit consumer processor. Intel was going down the Itanium path, and AMD just added 64-bit extensions to X86, which ended up being the winning strategy. I remember writing an article about it for my job at the time.

That served me well until I upgraded to a Phenom II X6 in 2010. I was super excited by the prospect of having 6 cores, even though I had no real use for that many. That PC lasted me for over 10 years, although I did upgrade the RAM, added an SSD, and upgraded the GPU twice. Was still a competent PC at the end for both gaming and software development, and managed to part it out for a decent amount of money.

Late last year I finally succumbed the the Ryzen itch and upgraded to a Ryzen 5600x. It's a fantastic platform, and hopefully that PC will last me another 10 years with only minor upgrades.

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#36

Post by ncmncm » Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #8

ncmncm wrote: post #3

It is hard to understand today, but back then every manufacturer of a chip design needed a "second source", a fully independent competitor who could supply a compatible chip. Otherwise it would be far too risky to design their chip into your product. What if they folded? AMD, by cloning the 8080 and other chips, gave Intel what it had to have to be a serious supplier for serious products. The 6502 succeeded by being…

Second sourcing was a requirement imposed by the DoD.

The DoD requirement enabled commercial customers to specify it, too. The supply-chain nightmares experienced by makers of modern equipment, with microcontrollers only just designed in dropping out of production, generates nostalgia for the power to require a second source.

Portability of embedded-code source, standardized ISAs, and ability to turn around a new circuit board design in a week, and FPGAs all help make lack of second sources survivable.

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#37

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

greggyb wrote: post #23

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of FSF-certified hardware, but aren't POWER9 machines ten times the price of the average desktop?

Doing a quick spec out of a Talos II that is similar[0] to my Threadripper 3970x workstation puts the price at ~2x.

And a typical TR workstation is 2x the price of an "average desktop" so maybe a 4x multiplier?

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#38

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, Mar 19, 2021, 11:09 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #3

It is hard to understand today, but back then every manufacturer of a chip design needed a "second source", a fully independent competitor who could supply a compatible chip. Otherwise it would be far too risky to design their chip into your product. What if they folded? AMD, by cloning the 8080 and other chips, gave Intel what it had to have to be a serious supplier for serious products. The 6502 succeeded by being…

At what point were 6502 clones everywhere? Long after the Apple II and C64 selected it?

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#39

Post by Cyder » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 12:16 AM UTC

Article makes me want to fire up my k6.

My new ryzen 2700 isn't as fast as my 8350... because pcie lanes. My m2 drives are more than 500MB/s slower on the 450 motherboard onboard m2 slots. Should have gone with a threadripper. Still, I'm always a underdog fan and don't like paying the tariff for owning the most popular hardware. I compare specs and teviews. But availability is another issue...

Re: The Rise, Fall and Revival of AMD (2020)

#40

Post by hakfoo » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 6:41 AM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #38

ncmncm wrote: post #3

It is hard to understand today, but back then every manufacturer of a chip design needed a "second source", a fully independent competitor who could supply a compatible chip. Otherwise it would be far too risky to design their chip into your product. What if they folded? AMD, by cloning the 8080 and other chips, gave Intel what it had to have to be a serious supplier for serious products. The 6502 succeeded by being…

At what point were 6502 clones everywhere? Long after the Apple II and C64 selected it?

Probably the most famous one would be the Ricoh CPU in the NES, supposedly as close to a 6502 as they could get without patent infringement, so it's missing a few odd instructions.

I suspect second-sourcing must have been going on fairly early in the 6502's lifecycle though. Commodore OWNED MOS by the time the 6502 was a shipping, finished product, so they're obviously going to dogfood it on the PET/CBM/VIC series.

A 1977 design like the Apple II had a bit of plausible deniability-- they may not have known that Commodore was going to be a major player in the small-computer market when they did their design, and then they were stuck with the 6502 and derivatives for backwards compatibility for the rest of the series.

But then you have machines like the 1979-release Atari 400/800. By then it was obvious you're buying from a potential hostile competitor. There must have been enough confidence in their business practices or the availability of second-sourcing that they weren't afraid of being cut out of the market.

CPU-World shows a bunch of 6502s from different manufacturers with date codes in the 1980s, but I can't comment much more about if they were clones, or license-built second sources, or what.

Aside from the NES, I can't think of any major greenfield 6502 products much after 1981, but that's likely less about second sourcing and more about a deluge of cheap Z80s and 8088s making the 6502's low price less compelling.