The LambCutlet Disorganisation

Having staunchly avoided the Intel NetBurst Marchitecture in the form of the Pentium4 and PentiumD, where the former had dictated that “Megahurtz-madness” as the only true way since 2000 since the NetBurst line, which débuted on the 180nm process and used the “Willamette” codename… with successive die shrinks, would take Intel to the “magical” 10GHz milestone around about the 65nm/45nm transition in 2007.

History however, tells us that NetBurst was a great big lumbering and power guzzling elephant where back in late 2004, Intel were to change their tune and that from 2005 onwards CPUs from Intel (and AMD) were to be of the multicore (well, dualcore initially) variety. For 2006, Intel’s watchword was “Performance per Watt” by the way of the Core architecture, which would form the basis of CPUs in the mobile space, desktop space and commodity server space.

Pentium M’s (namely “Banias” on 130nm and “Dothan” on 90nm) introduced in early 2003 had already revamped the “dead” Pentium III line in producing a low-power, high IPC CPU in pretty much the form that the RWT guys speculated way back in 2001 in how to make x86 run cool. “Yonah”, fabricated in the 65nm semiconductor process node allowed Intel to bring two lower power high performance cores into one piece of silicon!

Of course, problem with “Yohan” was that it was a CPU purely for the mobile space (that is, laptops) as it lacked features such as EM64T, XD bit and more recently VT, as seen on the desktop Pentium4s/PentiumDs and server Xeon 50xx/70xx. That said, it didn’t stop Intel from releasing a Core based server processor under the Xeon LV brand, codenamed “Sossaman” since low power blade servers have seldom need for 64bit-ness.

Less one has been living under a rock, Intel are starting to push the new Core 2 architecture into servers with Xeon 51xx codenamed “Woodcrest” back in June, desktop with Core 2 Duo E6xxx/X6xxx codenamed “Conroe” and mobile Core 2 Duo T5xxx/T7xxx codenamed “Merom” (for both 2 MiB and 4 MiB L2 cache variants) to both officially launch on 27th July, i.e.: not that long to go now!

Personally, my 1.5GHz Celeron M (130nm “Banias” with just 512kiB instead of the usual 1MiB L2 cache) based laptop is getting rather long in the tooth with the dual Pentium-III 700E (Slot1 180nm “Coppermine” with 256kiB L2 cache) only useful for server tasks, so am in pretty dire need of something (read anything) faster and hopefully be a bit more productive in the computery things I do.

Whilst a new laptop would just be a brain-dead simple answer of anything “Merom” based, a new desktop/workstation is a little trickier. You see, back in the day when I built my dually, Pentium II/III Xeons for servers used the same SECC2/Slot1 package as desktop Pentium II/III CPUs. Also, desktop CPUs were able to work in dual processor mode when coupled with a suitable dual slot/socket motherboard.

Nowadays, if you want a dual-socket computer for some multiprocessing goodness, it has to be a Xeon which adds a little to the cost of things. Furthermore, even though dual-cored CPUs are now here, the lure of some 4-way (oh eer!) lovin’ is a bit too much to resist! ;) Still, I have in mind what I’d like to build (yes build… home-rolled computers beat anything off-the-shelf in terms of geek satifsaction :P) for a desktop/workstation.

A single-socket computer which would help satisfy my hardware craving would probably look like this:

Core 2 Duo desktop

Component	Item Cost	#	Collective Cost
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz, 4 MiB L2)	£250	1	£250
Intel D975XBX “Bad-Axe” ATX motherboard	£150	1	£150
nVidia Geforce 7900 GTX	£320	1	£320
Crucial CT2KIT12864AA80E (2×1 GiB DDR2-800)	£233	2	£466
Lian Li PC-V600 (ATX, Al mid-tower, silver)	£85	1	£85
Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP (1920×1200, 24″ widescreen)	£700	1	£700
Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe soundcard	£115	1	£115
Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 (SATA300, 7200rpm, 16MiB)	£150	4	£600
Antec Phantom 350 PSU (350W, fanless, ATX12V2.0)	£109	1	£109
LiteOn SHW-16H5S DVD ReWriter	£23	2	£46
Mitsumi FA404M 1.44″ FDD	£13	1	£13
Logitech Ultra-X Media Keyboard	£14	1	£14
Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000	£25	1	£25
Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX (CL-P0310)	£30	1	£30
Total Cost			£2923

Bucketloads of processing grunt for under £3k where the Conroe E6600 can comfortably overclock to 3.0GHz (1.333GHz FSB) right up to around 3.6GHz (1.6GHz FSB) on air-cooling without the need for exotic methods. On top of this is a display exceeding 1080p HDTV resolution, 4 GiB of RAM with 1.5 TB of RAID5 storage enough to store some 300 hours of DVD quality video!

On the dual-socket front, one can be restrained balancing cost with performance, or just go all out burning money like no tomorrow. For the former (sensible) option, I’d personally go for something like this:

Value Xeon 51xx “Woodcrest” desktop/workstation

Component	Item Cost	#	Collective Cost
Intel Xeon 5130 (2.0GHz, 4 MiB L2)	£254	2	£508
Supermicro X7DAE E-ATX motherboard	£350	1	£350
nVidia Geforce 7950 GX2	£450	1	£450
Crucial CT2KIT12872AF667 (2×1 GiB ECC FB-DIMM)	£220	2	£440
Lian Li PC-V1200plusII (E-ATX, Al mid-tower, silver)	£130	1	£130
Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP (2560×1600, 30″ widescreen)	£1450	1	£1450
Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe soundcard	£115	1	£115
Seagate 750 GB Barracuda (SATA300, 7200rpm, 16MiB)	£265	4	£1060
Tagan TG900-U95 PSU (900W, ESP12V, ATX12V2.0)	£165	1	£165
LiteOn SHW-16H5S DVD ReWriter	£23	2	£46
Mitsumi FA404M 1.44″ FDD	£13	1	£13
Logitech Ultra-X Media Keyboard	£14	1	£14
Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000	£25	1	£25
Total Cost			£4766

Works out not that much more than a Core 2 Duo E6600 based system considering the shift of a 24″ display to a 30″ one offering nearly 80% more screen real-estate, a beefy video card in the shape of an nVidia Geforce 7950 GX2 to drive such insanely high resolutions plus an extra 750 GB storage space with the vast 2.25 TB array! All off this is powered by 4 “Woodcrest” cores each clocked at 2.0GHz which should be more than plenty even for people that abuse computers like I do. ;)

Lastly, ultimate geekpr0n would be something in the shape of this “all out” Xeon system:

Extreme Xeon 51xx “Woodcrest” desktop/workstation

Component	Item Cost	#	Collective Cost
Intel Xeon 5160 (3.0GHz, 4 MiB L2)	£650	2	£1300
Supermicro X7DA3/i SAS E-ATX motherboard	~£500	1	~£500
nVidia Quadro FX 5500	£2080	2	£4160
Crucial CT2KIT25672AF667 (2×2 GiB ECC FB-DIMM)	£595	4	£2380
Lian Li PC-V2000plusII (E-ATX, Al full-tower, silver)	£152	1	£152
Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP (2560×1600, 30″ widescreen)	£1450	2	£2900
Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe soundcard	£115	1	£115
Terratec Phase 88 recording interface	£200	1	£200
Seagate 146 GB Cheetah 15K.4 (SAS, 15000rpm, 8MiB)	£532	4	£2128
Seagate 750 GB Barracuda (SATA300, 7200rpm, 16MiB)	£265	6	£1590
Supermicro All-in-One ZCR card (AOC-LPZCR2)	£270	1	£270
Tagan TG1100-U95 PSU (1100W, ESP12V, ATX12V2.0)	£235	1	£235
LiteOn SHW-16H5S DVD ReWriter	£23	2	£46
Mitsumi FA404M 1.44″ FDD	£13	1	£13
Logitech Ultra-X Media Keyboard	£14	1	£14
Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000	£25	1	£25
Total Cost			£16028

Yes that is a 5-digit sum you see there which if converted to American dollars is just a teeny bit shy of the 30 grand mark! Impressive eh? ;) Out goes the pair of “slow” Xeon 5130 and replaced by the top-end Xeon 5160 clocked an extra 50% faster. Everything hangs off a yet-to-be-released Supermicro board which supports SAS where the goodies include a pair of nVidia Quadro FX 5500 each driving a Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP giving a rediculous 5120×1600 pixels of screen real-estate.

The system is “only” half maxed out in terms of RAM sporting some 16 GiB, since going the whole hog for 32 GiB would require 4 GiB modules which roughly cost about £3200 each, 16 of these will then total an astonishing £25600 for just memory alone! :D Storage wise, this time we exceed 4 TB with the 4 ultra-fast SAS disks set up as a 292 GB RAID1+0 (stripped-mirror) array and the 6 SATA disks collated in RAID5 for an enormous 3.75 TB array. ;)

Silliness aside, all three systems are upgradeable to quad-cores when “Kentsfield” arrives as a Core 2 Extreme probably under the X7xxx designation and “Clovertown” most probably as a Xeon 7xxx of some sort. 8-cores in 2-sockets will obviously gain full marks on “e-penis” stakes! ;)

The watchword for 2005 on the CPU arms-race between AMD and Intel will for once not be about MegaHertz (well, GigaHertz really) but about multicore CPUs bringing to the mass market what us dually PC users have been known for ages… 2 are better than 1! The guys at X-bit labs have the lowdown on these new beasties from AMD, Intel and VIA.

In AMD’s case, this new technology will come to market in the 2nd half of 2005 via it’s server/workstation line of processors branded as “Opteron”, currently codenamed “Egypt”, “Italy” and “Denmark” and will arrive as the 800, 200 and 100 series respectively. Then filtering down to the desktop market, “Toledo” will probbaly be first marketted under the “Althon 64 FX” brandname. The mobile market isn’t left out in the cold either, and that segment should see “Roma” and “Albany”. The infrastructure is pretty much in place as the chips will use HyperTransport for inter-chip communications plus they will use exisiting sockets, with only a BIOS update required so that motherboards can detect the new CPUs correctly.

Intel’s is a little more interesting as it’s current Pentium4, previously codenamed “Prescott” is one very hot potato with it’s specification stating it consumes a stonking 115W, whilst just a little bit hotter than 72°C when clocked as 3.8GHz, falling way short of the 5GHz Intel had hoped for that generation. It’s initial successor, “Tejas” would ultimately suffer the same issues of monsterous power consumption and how to keep the damn thing cool, so the new Intel roadmap for 2005 brings a curious dualcored item under the codename “Smithfield”. It turns out that this desktop CPU would be based on the exisiting NetBurst architecture, as used with all current Pentium4’s albeit with extraneous transistors removed to save power and have HyperThreading disabled.

However, this still means that the new “Smithfield” processors will still have a total power envelop of about 130W, about 65W per core and will be branded as x20, x30 and x40 for 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz and 3.2GHz models respectively. Clockspeed is unlikely to go much higher till Intel moves these from their initial 90nm process, to the finer 65nm one as lower voltages and smaller transistors usually mean lower power consumption. What is interesting though, is that “Smithfield” will support Intel’s “Vanderpool” technology, which is a virtualisation technology and allows a single CPU to run more than one operating system as any given time. Intel’s own demonstration showed such a media PC where one instance of the operating system was being configured with setting changes, driver updates and finally a reboot all whilst the other instance of the operating system carried on humming along showing some digital video. Admittedly, this probably won’t be officially announced till Microsoft release their next version of Windows, codenamed “Longhorn”.

The x86 server/workstation front, the Intel Xeon brand, is rather bland with more or less the same type of thing what is to come on desktop. “Dempsey” will be the vanilla Xeon, targetted for 2-way configurations whilst “Paxville” will be the Xeon MP and targetted for 4-way or more. Virtualisation technology will again be supported, but will be called “Silvervale” and these cores, unlike their “Smithfield” desktop counterparts, will support HyperThreading which means “Dempsey” and “Paxville” will be able to execute 4 threads per core. Other differences include the support for FB-DIMM which allows server class systems to be configured with vast amounts of RAM (excess of 8GiB) without the need for motherboards to have masses of copper traces and/or many conductor layers, reducing cost and improving performance. The new memory type will also make the processors agnostic to exactly what type of memory they are using and thusly allows new types of memory to be used without the need to design a new memory controller, which currently resides on the core logic on the motherboards themselves. Dual Independant Bus will also be new for these future Xeon’s and is a point-to-point interconnect topology between the chipset “North Bridge” and each of the physical processors. This innovation alone could bring significant improvements to Intel’s multi-processor systems, as the current implimentation is a single shared bus which isn’t able to provide the bandwidth required by data hungry CPUs, hence the need to strap large amounts of expensive L2, and sometimes L3 cache.

Though for technological marvels, Intel have left the best two till last. First up is “Montecito”, the first dualcored processors of the Itanium 2 family and has an absolutely stupendous 24MiB of L3 cache which takes the transitor count of the core to an amazing 1.72 billion transitors, all packed into a space of 580mm². Even for it’s huge die size and clocked at a swift 1.7GHz, it still only consumes around about 100W making it a little less power hungry than the first generation of Itanium 2’s, yet increase performance by 2 to 3 times depending on the workload by virtue of a modest increase in clockspeed and having 2 cores where each one is able to execute 2 threads via a HyperThreading like technology. It all works as Intel have already showcased a 4-way “Montecito” system able to process 16 simultaeous threads!

The next ace up Intel’s sleeve would be of the mighty little Pentium-M family, a respin of the trusty Pentium3 core designed specifically for the low power consumption needs of the mobile market, yet not completely cripple performance whilst doing so. For example, the current signle-cored “Dothan” consumes at peak, 27W at a clockspeed of 2GHz giving similar performance to a Pentium4 clocked up to 50% higher. In the mobile market, only VIA has similar power consumption figures yet doesn’t have the performance and though AMD has similar performance clock-for-clock, those cores consume 35W which is some 30% more which in the real world means hours less battery run-time… Not cool! The dualcored Pentium-M codenamed “Yonah” by the looks of it will be quite a multimedia monster as it’ll be sporting massively improved SSE2 and SSE3 instruction units and it’s dual cores will only have a peak power consumption of less than 40W. During most of the time, one core will be disabled taking power consumption to below 20W yet clockspeed will exceed 2GHz. As the guys at The Inquirer say:

Other improvements, especially to IDIV will only add to this, you can probably encode a DVD on a flight, and still have battery life left over to watch the movie because this all will only consume 31W. Yonah, you go Grrl! Sorry about the lack of decorum, but it will be that good.

Now if only Intel would make say a 6-cored “Yonah” and market that as the ultimate desktop/workstation/server CPU… :D However, I’m sure some variant of “Yonah” will probably be used in single processor configurations as per “Dothan” now, in the blade server market.

Last of this processor roadmap crystal-ball gazing for what’s due to be released is VIA. It’s forthcoming Esther certainly isn’t going to win the performance crown as even when clocked at 2GHz, it would only be about the same as a Celeron 1.2GHz. However, it’s trump card is that it’ll only consume a tiny 15W peak. It also supports SSE2 and SSE3 though more curiously appears to use Intel’s 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, and theoretically could be “drop-in” compatible to the existing Pentium4 infrastructure. In any case, it certainly sounds like a good CPU for the embedded, low-cost blade or cluster market.

Roll on 2005! :D

It was literally only yesterday lunchtime when I ordered from Dabs some shiny new bits for my aging, yet trusty work horse of a computer as I finally caught up with my other fellow pimp geeks in getting a DVD+RW ATAPI drive and an A4 scanner. The bits I plumbed for were a Lite On SOHW-812S and a Canon CanoScan LiDE 30 respectively. Also got a box of 10 blank DVD+RW media plus an InnoVision EIO Combo IEEE 1394 + USB 2.0 PCI Adapter, the latter replacing my Belkin PoS card.

So later that evening around 8 o’clock, I get my order confirmation from Dabs saying that everything had been dispatched and I should expect it in “1 to 3 working days”, so I thought it’ll probably be Thursday if I’m lucky and more likely to be delivered Saturday. We are dealing with Royal Mail after all… whom after the fire at their Northampton sorting office in September last year, are still suffering as performance results recently published show Northampton has the worst service levels for all of Great Britain. Yaay!

You can imagine my surprise when I arrived home from work to find the parcel had already been delivered, packed with the goodies I ordered about 24 hours ago at the time of arrival. Certainly a heck of a lot faster than a certain 1st class letter my father received in about October 2003 sent just 3 miles from where we live but had taken over a month before it finally arrived… Now that’s Snail Mail™!

Can’t let exception work be gone unnoticed, so well done Dabs & Royal Mail, you’ve got one happy customer!

Anyhow, the new toys are installed and all seems to be working well. Certainly feeling rather smug with how good the kit is, so I can certainly recommend them to anyone who’s looking for such parts of that price category. :D

Project “Yamhill” is real… Straight from the horse’s mouth:

64-bit extension technology is one of a number of innovations being added to Intel’s IA-32 Server/Workstation platforms in 2004. It represents a natural addition to Intel’s IA-32 architecture, allowing platforms to access larger amounts of memory. Processors with 64-bit extension technology will support 64-bit extended operating systems from Microsoft, Red Hat and SuSE. Processors running in legacy* mode remain fully compatible with today’s existing 32-bit applications and operating systems.

*Legacy mode is where a 32-bit application is running under a 32-bit operating system.

Intel have put up a total of 684 pages of developer documentation spanning two volumes… Light bed time reading anyone? :P

64-Bit Extension Technology Software Developer’s Guide Volume 1 of 2

2.84 MiB - md5sum: f11336e43db496e9779b626ea3eaa5cd

64-Bit Extension Technology Software Developer’s Guide Volume 2 of 2

2.37 MiB - md5sum: 376b90529e9254d9a472f02dd1563e2c

So this is Intel’s two pronged attack of the 64-bit market… The high end being served with IA-64 in the form of Itanium which is an EPIC architecture. The current 32-bit x86 based processors also known as IA-32 will be extended to 64-bits under the banner of IA-32e and will first be commercially available as a server processor, namely Nocona (future 90nm Xeon DP) and Potomac (future 90nm Xeon MP).

Though the transistors are there in Prescott (current 90nm Pentium 4E) they are disabled and probably won’t be enabled till Tejas (future 90nm Pentium 4… may be marketed as Pentium 5 or Pentium 64?) which will also sport the new LGA775 packaging otherwise known as “Socket T”.

Intel’s new extensions are compatible with AMD64 as used in the Opteron, Athlon FX and Athlon 64 processors which AMD produces.

64 bit x86 “Intel style” looks to cease being myth and become reality…

Intel President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Otellini on Wednesday said the world’s largest chipmaker would likely give its 32-bit microprocessors an upgrade to 64 bits once supporting software becomes available.

You can be fairly confident that when there is software from an application and operating system standpoint that we’ll be there, Otellini said, responding to a question about 64-bit technology, in an interview with a Wall Street analyst that was broadcast over the Web.

If Intel do go this route, they’ll have two 64 bit architectures though in quite different market sectors. Itanium in the “Big Iron” arena with Yamhill (Intel hoping) crushing AMD in the desktop, workstation and commodity server markets.

The cat will be out the bag in just over two weeks at the 2004 Spring IDF! :D

It’s been speculated for some 9 months that Intel’s forthcoming 90nm processor using the NetBurst® architecture, codenamed “Prescott” was to feature 64 bit extensions to the x86 ISA under the codename “Yamhill” not once but twice.

X-Bit Labs have the following:

American Technology Research believes it is likely that Intel Corporation will unveil a 64-bit x86 chip in Q1 or Q2 of 2004, which would be a huge endorsement of 64-bit computing; however, the firm says it will take Intel close to one full year to build a support infrastructure of mainboards, chipsets, and graphics accelerators, leaving the 2004 playing field wide for Advanced Micro Devices who already has its 64-bit chips rapidly ramping up in production.

Obviously, this makes the whole Pentium V and Windows Elements thing and the news that Windows XP/Server 2003 for Extended Systems has been delayed all the more interesting.

Only time will tell as to how this particular conspiracy theory pans out… :D

Plasma and LCD displays never really tickled me as the former eats power and the latter suffers from poor colour fidelity and pixel response time in comparison to trusty old CRTs.

The two technologies I’m keen on getting my grubby mitts on are OLED/LEP displays and FED displays. SEDs are a form of FED, but rather than using the typical Carbon nanotubes, it’s a much simpler idea where there are two electrodes separated by a gap of just a few nanometers. Electrons tunnel through this gap via Quantum effects and some of those electrons are accelerated via an electric field to strike phosphor dots at one end, causing light to be emitted.

Canon and Toshiba will be showing a prototype in the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this January 2004.

Canon and Toshiba will start selling the large-sized flat TVs in 2005, according to a report in a local Japanese newspaper.

The SED display, which is based on field emission, is Canon’s proprietary technology that Canon has been working on since the mid 80s. The company showed a 10-inch prototype panel at SID in 1998. At that time, Canon had been working with Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC) to implement the SED technology into a TV set. JVC eventually pulled out of the venture.

Canon and Toshiba officially announced the partnership in SED development and business opportunities in June 1999 when it showing a 10-inch prototype. From the beginning both companies aimed the technology at TV applications and had planned to establish a joint venture production company. The two companies said then that they were going to develop panels of 30-inch to probably 50-inch diagonal size.

The SED is said to have advantages in productivity, performance and sizes vis-a-vis existing flat panels such as LCDs and plasma. SEDs can be fabricated mostly using ordinary printing methods. Because SEDs drive electrons at about 10kV — close to that of CRTs — they can use phosphors widely used in CRTs. This makes them CRT equivalent self-emitting displays and very thin: a 40-inch sized panel can be no thicker than 10 mm, weigh less than 20kg and consume around 60W.

… and the cool bit:

Electron emission by SEDs is achieved through the simple construction of a slit between the electrodes. Canon has paid particular attention to this point, and, thanks to a screen printing method that uses wiring linking the many electron emitters, we were able to make the construction more efficient and to enlarge screens at little cost.

Canon has also succeeded in applying ink jet printing technology to create ultrafine-particle film, and has developed a high-performance electron emitter. SEDs also consume low amounts of energy. They convert electrical energy to light with an emission efficiency of 5 lm/W or higher, resulting in energy consumption that is roughly one-half that of a large-screen CRT and about one-third that of a plasma display panel. Accordingly, it is possible to enjoy 42 inch screen images while consuming less power than that required to run a 36 inch CRT TV.

Yummy. :D

There’s been a whole torrent of interesting things over the last week or so of a geeky nature which gets the inner-geek all excited, so in no particular order:

Updated: 2004-02-28 19:01 UTC by Jonathan Stanley

As people seem to have been referencing through this post to one of the three segments… I’ve split them of into entries in their own right:

• Linux 2.6.0 released!
• Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Displays…
• Intel has consumer 64 bits?