Intel EMT64 Xeon vs AMD Opteron

[Astrodog]

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 14:18:08 -0800, David O'Brien <obrien at freebsd.org> wrote:
> [ Please don't cross post! ]
> 
> On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 09:25:19PM -0700, Scott Long wrote:
> > Astrodog wrote:
> > >From what I understand, EM64T is essentally an extention to x86, so
> > >it will understand the AMD64 instructions, much the same way an
> > >Athlon64 does. Opteron, once again, from what I've read on the topic
> > >is "Actual" 64-bit, not an emulated version.
> ..
> > Both the AMD and Intel offering are just extensions to the ia32 design.
> > Opteron is no more 'true' 64-bit than Nacona is.
> 
> Just as the i386 was just extensions to the 80286 design, which was just
> extensions to the original 8086 design. ;-)
> 
> And just as the UltraSparc (Sparc v9) is just extensions to the 32-bit
> Sparc v8.
> 
> Astrodog, I'm courous, what is the definition of a True 64-bit CPU?
> 
> --
> -- David  (obrien at FreeBSD.org)
> 

Fair question. One I can't answer particularly well. I must admit
thats more AMD's marketing-speak than my own. I have noticed some
performance benifits on Opteron/AMD64, over Athlon64 processors, which
seemed to match what they said, and be unrelated to Hypertransport,
and cache. *shrug*

--- Harrison Grundy