Got apps? Software solutions coming for 64-bit applications, AMD says - Semiconductors - AMD Opteron, AMD Hammer, AMD Athlon

Electronic News, July 29, 2002 by Tom Murphy

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) has lately taken fire about a dearth of software to support its next-generation processor. AMD says it is working feverishly on the issue, and announcements during the second half of the year will back up its efforts.

AMD is set to launch its Opteron and next-generation Athlon processors in Q4, but because the architecture is designed to execute both x86 and 64-bit instruction sets, the company is under pressure to show the benefits the new processors will bring.

Although Microsoft Corp. has announced it will support the x86-64 processors, code-named Hammer, with its XP operating systems, there has been just a trickle of announced support from applications vendors, admitted Wayne Meretsky, AMD's senior manager of software research and development.

That will change soon as AMD expects a "steady stream of press and support with software products," to emerge toward the end of the year, Meretsky said.

While the launch of Hammer appears imminent, the lack of ISVs who want to take advantage of 64-bit extensions to a 32-bit processor at this late stage doesn't seem to alarm AMD. Meretsky said he believes the initial thrust of the Hammer processors -- Opteron for enterprise and Athlon for consumer desktops--will be to deliver top performance in the 32-bit realm.

The launch of the processor may not come soon enough as Intel is starting to take a substantial lead in terms of clock cycles. The company's Pentium 4 processors are expected to reach 3GHz by Q3, as Intel reaps the benefits of 0.13-micron manufacturing on 300mm wafers, a capability that AMD does not yet have. AMD maintains that clock cycles don't matter as much as they used to and that AMD processors perform more work per clock cycle than their Intel counterparts.

Intel President Paul Otellini recently told investors that Intel picked up two to three percentage points in processor market share, essentially erasing market-share gains that AMD picked up in 2001. What's even more dire for AMD is that Intel's Celeron line of processors targeted for the value segment is starting to catch up with AMD's premium line in terms of clock speed.

But AMD is determined to stay the course with Hammer, even though the software rollouts that will take advantage of the 64-bit extensions will take time. Meretsky said AMD stands by its core strength, which is to deliver low-cost solutions that foster innovation within the PC standards.

As an example, Meretsky cited AMD's ability to bring a platform to market that took advantage of DDR SDRAM. AMD was able to do this before Intel, he said, and the solution sparked a groundswell of support for DDR platforms.

Getting developers to create software applications specifically for AMD products is not something traditionally seen as a company cornerstone. But Meretsky said AMD has a track record for doing so. For example, the company convinced game developers to produce applications that specifically reaped the benefits of AMD's 3D Now technology, he said.

But Meretsky believes consumers will scream for 64-bit capabilities as more make the switch to broadband connections. As the rate of broadband connections double, so does a PC user's demand for more memory.

AMD hopes to enable access to more gigabits for memory with its Hammer processors by Q4, Meretsky said. Ultimately, 64-bit extensions will enable access to vastly larger memory addresses than any 32-bit architectures, he said.

"When you upgrade your applications, you want to be able to access more memory," Meretsky said. "The 32-bit architectures are limited to 2Gbytes. There has been no slowdown in demand for memory capacity."

In the enterprise market where AMD is still trying to gain momentum, 32-bit application suites such as those by SAP and others still analyze data by accessing disk storage, Meretsky said. With a switch over to 64-bit processor-based systems, enterprises can start aggregating data and performing analysis in real-time, Meretsky said.