MSI T

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Presentation
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The Game Goes On 2003 Industry Update

• Anand Lal Shimpi
• Editor in Chief CEO
• www.anandtech.com

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What is AnandTech?

• Established in April 1997
• Worlds largest PC Technology Website
• Approaching 4 million cookied monthly readers
• 60 million monthly page views
• In-depth product reviews technology analysis
• Up-to-date coverage of news tradeshows
• Catering to the Enthusiast user

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Todays Topic The Game Goes On

• AMD Where are you?
• NVIDIA Becomes a Credible Chipset Manufacturer
• Intels Newest Chipsets What they Mean
• Centrino
• The 64-bit question still remains

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AMDs Quiet Front

• Athlon 64 1 Year Later
• Demonstrated at Spring IDF in 2001 at
• Still waiting for introduction
• High clock speeds will be necessary to compete
  with Prescott later this year
  
• 2GHz necessary to compete with 3.2 3.4GHz
  Prescott
  
• Benefits of larger cache are reduced by presence
  of on-die memory controller (and vice versa)
  

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AMDs Quiet Front gets Louder

• Opteron is Upon us
• Strange naming system
• Model xyz
• x number of processors supported in SMP
• yz relative performance (dependent on
  frequency, cache size, etc..)
  
• Allows AMD to remove focus from clock speed while
  distance the Opteron from desktop model numbers
  
• Pro Desktop apps no longer influence server
  model numbers
  
• Con The confusion continues
• Hints of unusually low motherboard availability
  until Summer
  

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NVIDIA Now a Credible Threat

• nForce2 is the best Athlon XP chipset currently
  available
  
• Stable
• Solid Drivers
• High Performance
• Finally seeing a threat from VIA (KT400A)

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Intels New Chipsets

• Springdale (865) Canterwood (875)
• Bring 850E-class performance to the mainstream
• 800MHz FSB Support
• Key to enabling higher frequency CPUs
• Bandwidth balanced with 128-bit DDR400 interface
• Very high pincounts
• Very nForce2-like ball-layout
• Serial ATA now mainstream
• as well as RAID

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Intels New Chipsets

• Canterwood is it worth it?
• Performance data not yet public
• Basically a hand picked Springdale
• Will replace the 850E
• 850E 875 upgrade wont be as dramatic as 845
  865 upgrade
  
• Just like 850E, performance will be offered at a
  premium
  
• Canterwood first, then Springdale
• Enable new CPUs first
• then go mainstream
• Will support first revisions of Prescott
• Prescott will eventually transition to new
  Socket
  
• Whats next? Tejas 1.2GHz FSB

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Centrino

• Redefining the way mobile CPUs are designed
• e.g. if something is too fast, slow it down
• Very power efficient cache
• Power optimized 855 MCH
• Some very impressive initial offerings
• IBMs Thinkpad T40/X31 series
• Designs already under way for Dothan (2MB L2!)

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The 64-bit Question still remains

• We know AMDs 64-bit strategy Top to Bottom
• Opteron on the server side
• Athlon 64 for desktops
• Mobile Athlon 64
• but what about Intel?
• Itanium for high-end 64-bit market
• IA-32 processors for everything else
• Deerfield in between?

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One possibility Yamhill

• Similar strategy to x86-64
• Take very strong IA-32 core and make minimal
  changes to add 64-bit support
  
• Most likely wouldnt use AMDs branded x86-64
• Likelihood?
• If Athlon 64 is successful then very likely
• Otherwise

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Something more far fetched

• High clock speed Itanium for the
  desktop/workstation
  
• 5 10 years out
• Rethinking conventional microprocessor
  architecture/design
  
• Still decode x86 instructions into IA-64
  operations
  
• But what if the decoder is efficient enough
• and clock speeds are high enough?

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Making Itanium Fast

• Two Approaches to µprocessor design
• Wide Low clock speed, incredibly parallel, lots
  of execution units (e.g. Itanium)
  
• Narrow Higher clock speed, simpler core, fewer
  execution units (e.g. Pentium 4)

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Whats wrong with Wide?

• Wider is only better if you take advantage of it
• Feeding a very hungry child

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Whats wrong with Narrow?

• Which is faster?
• ADD 22, then, MULT 4 x 4, or
• ADD 22 and MULT 4 x 4 at the same time
• The key is parallelism
• Case in point Intels Hyper-Threading AMDs
  Multicore K8
  
• Both AMD and Intel recognize this, but how do we
  make something very parallel and very high
  frequency?
  

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The Dream High Freq Wide CPU

• First ask, why cant wide CPUs run at high
  frequencies?
  
• How do we feed a wide CPU? By giving it as many
  instructions in parallel as possible.
  
• Problem 1 Data dependencies between
  instructions
  
• Can we execute the following simultaneously (in
  parallel)?
  
• A B 5
• C A 6
• Nope! Instruction 2 is dependent on the outcome
  of Instruction 1.
  

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High Freq Wide CPU (continued)

• How do we get around unavoidable data
  dependencies?
  
• Techniques already in place to overcome a good
  deal of data dependencies
  
• Solution for very wide processors very large
  scheduling windows
  

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Problem with Large Windows?

• Whats wrong with large scheduling windows?
• Very slow
• Limit clock speed potential there goes our
  dream of a 10GHz wide CPU
  
• Cant move to a small scheduling window
• Well hit high clock speeds, but
• cant fill those execution units
• Back to square one, is it impossible to build a
  high frequency, wide CPU?

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Hierarchical Scheduling Windows

• One potential solution in the research phase
• Hierarchical Scheduling Windows (HSW)
• Instead of having one scheduling window, lets
  have two
  
• 1 small, fast scheduling window
• 1 large, slow scheduling window
• Each window gets its own cluster of execution
  units

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How HSW Works

• Small, Fast window gets instructions that arent
  latency tolerant
  
• i.e. impatient instructions that must be executed
  immediately
  
• Allows for the characteristics of a high
  frequency core to be maintained
  
• Large, Slow window gets instructions that are
  latency tolerant
  
• Allows for the benefits of a large window to be
  had without hampering clock speed
  
• Feeds hungry execution units

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The end result?

• HSW is one step in enabling
• Very wide,
• Incredibly parallel,
• High Frequency microprocessors (10 GHz)
• But thats only part of the story
• Manufacturing processes
• Packaging
• Branch Prediction Algorithms
• Multicore technology
• And much more
• Will this enable Itanium on the desktop?

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Thank you for your time

• Check us out on the web at www.anandtech.com
• For more about HSW read E. Brekelbaum, J. Rupley
  II, C. Wilkerson and B. Black, Hierarchical
  Scheduling Windows