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Yes, it's a marketing piece, but the statement that AMD is never going to add threads to their CPUs is surprising. Given the trend in memory vs. CPU performance
by ssp 17y ago
Yes, it's a marketing piece, but the statement that AMD is never going to add threads to their CPUs is surprising. Given the trend in memory vs. CPU performance, adding threads to hide latency seems like a complete no-brainer.
I'd really like to see a detailed technical justification for it.
- nvoorhies 17y agoMost likely the technical justification is a lack of manpower and schedule constraints. I wouldn't be surprised if things that make long term sense but give incremental benefits at the cost of significant increases in verification work look pretty unsavory to a company in sore financial shape, as they've been for a while now.
- carterschonwald 17y agoYou're more right than you realize. I've heard from a number of senior folks in CS who have ties to industry that in many cases decisions by Intel in terms of choice of CPU features have been in large part motivated by making it impossible for competitors to achieve feature parity without risking or perhaps certainly dealing with bankruptcy.
- JF-AMD 17y agoNo, it has more to do with the inconsistency of SMT in an x86 environment. If we were always getting consistent performance gains and expected stability it would be a consideration. That might change in the future, but the technology needs to refine first.
- AlisdairO 17y agoIf you take a look at page 29 of this doc, it gives a pretty good rundown of hyperthreading pros and cons. http://people.redhat.com/drepper/cpumemory.pdf http://people.redhat.com/drepper/cpumemory.pdf