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After seeing what Papermaster's doing recently, I'm actually getting enthusiastic on where AMD is going. Call me crazy, but given their CPU & GPU experience I t

After seeing what Papermaster's doing recently, I'm actually getting enthusiastic on where AMD is going. Call me crazy, but given their CPU & GPU experience I think they just might be able to turn this thing around -- and maybe move faster than Intel: http://www.amd.com/us/aboutamd/corporate-information/executives/Pages/mark-papermaster.aspx http://www.amd.com/us/aboutamd/corporate-information/executi...

throwaway2048 14y ago
I sincerely hope AMD can turn things around. With Intel already talking about stuff like soldered on CPUs (need 2 lan ports? that will be an extra $500, need IO virtualization? that will be even more, etc), the future of high powered laptops/workstations/servers looks bleak if Intel is allowed to be totally unopposed in this segment.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > With Intel already talking about stuff like soldered on CPUs (need 2 lan ports? that will be an extra $500, need IO virtualization? that will be even more, etc) They denied that, but even if they didn't why would soldered CPU -> death of non-intel motherboards? Third-party mobo designers already use plenty of soldered chips throughout the board (the chipsets, to start with — at least before most of them moved to the CPU) As far as I know, the chipset manufacturer doesn't even get to decide how many GigE ports there are, the chipset provides a bunch of PCIe lanes and some of them are used to connect to the GigE chipset, most chipsets don't build GigE support in.
  - throwaway2048 14y ago
    because now if you want premium chipset features, you will be forced to buy a premium processor along with it, and vise versa
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      You seem to be confused as to what functional roles represented on a motherboard are present in the chipset, the cpu and auxiliary chips. System-on-a-chip asics have been around for more than a decade (via makes quite nice ones), they're soldered on to the board just like every other chip and nobody cares. Chipsets serve many purposes, mostly to do with buses and memory. Yes you could integrate chipset, cpu and ethernet controllers all into the same package. But in the end if you want to expand your computer you will be interfacing with a bus, not with the cpu or any of its internal registers directly. So what you'll do to get more devices hooked up is to plug in some device into PCIx, USB or whatever the flavor of the day is. You're not upgrading your CPU today to get more ethernet ports either. And if it's soldered onto the motherboard then that won't change one bit. The reasons driving this are economical and practical, even if there are downsides too (such as shelf life and the amount of money invested in a component that exhibits severe price volatility). The major upsides from soldering the cpu onto the mb instead of plugging it in are: - shorter signal path - cheaper (no expensive socket) - increased reliability (bga alone vs bga -> socket -> cpu) - more compact - weight savings
      - throwaway2048 14y ago
        i was never claiming that somehow ethernet was "built into" the cpu, what im saying is, if you want the kind of features built into your motherboard usually associated with the high end, integrated CPUs will force you to buy a high end cpu aswell stuff like: dual built in nics, IO virtualization, FB-DIMMs, Multiple PCI-e 16x slots, SAS ports, SATA 3.0 ports (have been implemented with a separate controller) can be bought on boards that support cheaper CPUs, however as these are "premium" features, you can be certain they will be bundled with an expensive CPU only.

throwaway2048 14y ago

I sincerely hope AMD can turn things around. With Intel already talking about stuff like soldered on CPUs (need 2 lan ports? that will be an extra $500, need IO virtualization? that will be even more, etc), the future of high powered laptops/workstations/servers looks bleak if Intel is allowed to be totally unopposed in this segment.

masklinn 14y ago
> With Intel already talking about stuff like soldered on CPUs (need 2 lan ports? that will be an extra $500, need IO virtualization? that will be even more, etc) They denied that, but even if they didn't why would soldered CPU -> death of non-intel motherboards? Third-party mobo designers already use plenty of soldered chips throughout the board (the chipsets, to start with — at least before most of them moved to the CPU) As far as I know, the chipset manufacturer doesn't even get to decide how many GigE ports there are, the chipset provides a bunch of PCIe lanes and some of them are used to connect to the GigE chipset, most chipsets don't build GigE support in.
- throwaway2048 14y ago
  because now if you want premium chipset features, you will be forced to buy a premium processor along with it, and vise versa
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    You seem to be confused as to what functional roles represented on a motherboard are present in the chipset, the cpu and auxiliary chips. System-on-a-chip asics have been around for more than a decade (via makes quite nice ones), they're soldered on to the board just like every other chip and nobody cares. Chipsets serve many purposes, mostly to do with buses and memory. Yes you could integrate chipset, cpu and ethernet controllers all into the same package. But in the end if you want to expand your computer you will be interfacing with a bus, not with the cpu or any of its internal registers directly. So what you'll do to get more devices hooked up is to plug in some device into PCIx, USB or whatever the flavor of the day is. You're not upgrading your CPU today to get more ethernet ports either. And if it's soldered onto the motherboard then that won't change one bit. The reasons driving this are economical and practical, even if there are downsides too (such as shelf life and the amount of money invested in a component that exhibits severe price volatility). The major upsides from soldering the cpu onto the mb instead of plugging it in are: - shorter signal path - cheaper (no expensive socket) - increased reliability (bga alone vs bga -> socket -> cpu) - more compact - weight savings
    - throwaway2048 14y ago
      i was never claiming that somehow ethernet was "built into" the cpu, what im saying is, if you want the kind of features built into your motherboard usually associated with the high end, integrated CPUs will force you to buy a high end cpu aswell stuff like: dual built in nics, IO virtualization, FB-DIMMs, Multiple PCI-e 16x slots, SAS ports, SATA 3.0 ports (have been implemented with a separate controller) can be bought on boards that support cheaper CPUs, however as these are "premium" features, you can be certain they will be bundled with an expensive CPU only.