Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

theregister.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 43 posts

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#21

Post by binarycrusader »

rbanffy wrote: post #19
SkyMarshal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but I don't see how an architecture that deviates significantly from the x86 norm could gain traction in this Windows world." One possible way is that Linux quickly adapts to support it and gains a significant, un-ignorable performance advantage on the server side, forcing MS to step up and quickly support it as well. Basically, similar to happened with the transition to 64bit, must moreso.

With AMD's support for GPUs under open-source? Their lack of support in the past (to the point of not even properly documenting their hardware) is not very encouraging.

AMD properly documents their GPU hardware now, and has for at least the last three years.

The real issue at hand is that the open source drivers are incredibly horrid. It's hard to write drivers, surprise!

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#22

Post by daeken »

binarycrusader wrote: post #21
rbanffy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With AMD's support for GPUs under open-source? Their lack of support in the past (to the point of not even properly documenting their hardware) is not very encouraging.

AMD properly documents their GPU hardware now, and has for at least the last three years. The real issue at hand is that the open source drivers are incredibly horrid. It's hard to write drivers, surprise!

AMD only released docs on the 2d side of things. 3D is still undocumented, AFAIK.

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#23

Post by Kapelson »

tsotha wrote: post #20
drewvolpe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do: cloud computing and mobile. 5 years from now, it won't be a windows world. Consumers will be spending most of their time using iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile devices. On the server, a large % of apps will be written on a layer above the OS (GAE, Azure, Heroku, DjangoZoom, ...).

This can't possibly be true. It may be true for home users and hobbyists, but people running business applications need screen real estate and a keyboard on which you can touch type. That's the Achilles heel of mobile, and it's not going away.

The idea here though is that mobile devices will eventually become versatile enough to be used in these environments. My phone has an HDMI output and bluetooth capability, what, other than current usage patterns, is keeping Android/iOS from allowing you to plug in a monitor and hook up a keyboard to a phone? Hell, they are already doing it (albeit poorly): http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and...

The point is, I already carry around a phone in my pocket, and eventually, when I get into the office, I will hook it into my monitors/keyboard/mouse, and work away. The PC cannot keep up, and will eventually be replaced by this paradigm.

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#24

Post by wmf »

daeken wrote: post #22
binarycrusader wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD properly documents their GPU hardware now, and has for at least the last three years. The real issue at hand is that the open source drivers are incredibly horrid. It's hard to write drivers, surprise!

AMD only released docs on the 2d side of things. 3D is still undocumented, AFAIK.

3D is now documented.

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#25

Post by r00fus »

Create wrote: post #5

Strangely, AMD had almost always better technical talent/product in terms of architectural design, but always stumbled on intel's business practices (see computer history museum panel) and manufacturing weaknesses. For the better part, they made a better x86 for their time: 386, 486, K5 (core), 3DNow (all the SIMD intel lacked, and the MMX patch in response was a joke), 64bit (which intel was late by years) etc. come…

Intel wasn't just late to the game for 64bit, EMT64 == AMD64. The cross-licensing that Intel was bemoaning for years finally worked in their favor.

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#26

Post by r00fus »

rbanffy wrote: post #10
drewvolpe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do: cloud computing and mobile. 5 years from now, it won't be a windows world. Consumers will be spending most of their time using iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile devices. On the server, a large % of apps will be written on a layer above the OS (GAE, Azure, Heroku, DjangoZoom, ...).

I'd love to see that happen, but we have been predicting the demise of Windows since the last century but Windows is still going strong. Inertia is a powerful thing.

Everyone was thinking years ago that no one could displace IE as the dominant browser - that Microsoft could and would pull every dirty trick in the book to kneecap the competition and outcompete with mass developers.

Now look - Firefox is sitting comfy, Chrome is a rising star, and on mobile, webkit browsers owns the whole place.

Windows can and will fall. If Microsoft is smart, they'll be the ones that put it to rest (like Apple had the mock funeral for OS9) on their own terms.

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#27

Post by tsotha »

Kapelson wrote: post #23
tsotha wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can't possibly be true. It may be true for home users and hobbyists, but people running business applications need screen real estate and a keyboard on which you can touch type. That's the Achilles heel of mobile, and it's not going away.

The idea here though is that mobile devices will eventually become versatile enough to be used in these environments. My phone has an HDMI output and bluetooth capability, what, other than current usage patterns, is keeping Android/iOS from allowing you to plug in a monitor and hook up a keyboard to a phone? Hell, they are already doing it (albeit poorly): http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and.…

I'm skeptical. I don't see more than a tiny fraction of corporations allowing their employees connection to the corporate network with a personal device. And they're not going to give you something that easy to lose if it's a key to their data. Too many privacy and security headaches.

Then there's the question of computing power. Recent mobiles look powerful, but that's because you're comparing them to older mobiles and not to desktops/laptops. The MIPS you can squeeze into a mobile will always be constrained by heat, and you're just not going to get anything like the same snappy response you would from a dedicated machine.

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#28

Post by rkalla »

wlesieutre wrote: post #3

How about Bulldozer sometime soon? I've been putting off my upgrades to see how it compares to Sandy Bridge, but that Q2 2011 launch didn't exactly happen.

Same here. bulldozer got pushed out again, some folks are saying the silicon was underperforming by more than anticipated so they have to keep it I the lab and rev stuff NOW that they had planned for the refresh in 2012.

Then we have ivybridge at the end of this year promising just under 4ghz with 8 core desktop chips from intel.

I expect AMD to stay behind until 2013. They are rushing right now, and not hitting their marks BUT their tech and teams are strong. As that wobble evens our and this new platform (first redesign in like 7 or 8 years) settles down, they can shrink die, point forward and speed up.

I expect 2013-2015 to be a goddamn bloodbath between the big chip makers at the top (intel, amd) and Samsung, Qualcomm, nvidia and Apple shooting up from the bottom with ever faster and lower power multicore RISC chips.

I imagine by 2015 the landscape will be a hodgepodge of every kind of tech out there and then the acquisitions and shakeout will take us to 2020 where things get more homogenous again.

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#29

Post by sigil »

jallmann wrote: post #8
rbanffy wrote: post #2

I'd love to be able to go back to the diverse ecosystem we had in the 80's, but I don't see how an architecture that deviates significantly from the x86 norm could gain traction in this Windows world.

I don't think this is meant to replace the x86 ISA, but rather SIMD units like MMX/SSE and traditional GPU shaders. The article was a bit muddled -- I'm waiting for the Anandtech version. Successful adoption will be dependent on good tooling. Auto-vectorizing is really hard in compilers, mostly because current languages aren't really built for it. But if AMD were to introduce something purpose-built (eg, with a Matla…

> But if AMD were to introduce something purpose-built (eg, with a Matlab-like syntax), then that might compel devs who aren't assembly or GPU gurus to develop against this.

Does anyone know if it's possible to program GPUs today without using a new, special purpose programming language? That would be the killer app for GPUs.

I see your point about most languages not admitting auto-vectorization. But couldn't you take a compilable functional language like Gambit Scheme, Clojure, or Haskell and emit GPU code for constructs like map and fold on numeric vector types?

Re: AMD's master plan to topple Intel - Back to the top on a radical GPU

#30

Post by lyime »

Create wrote: post #5

Strangely, AMD had almost always better technical talent/product in terms of architectural design, but always stumbled on intel's business practices (see computer history museum panel) and manufacturing weaknesses. For the better part, they made a better x86 for their time: 386, 486, K5 (core), 3DNow (all the SIMD intel lacked, and the MMX patch in response was a joke), 64bit (which intel was late by years) etc. come…

Really? On what basis do you say AMD has always had better talent? 386 and 486 were Introduced by Intel, not AMD. Not to mention Core, USB and other history found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel
Post reply on HN