AMD64 X2

[Peter Wemm]

On Friday 01 July 2005 09:27 am, JM wrote:
> Jia-Shiun Li wrote:
> >On 7/1/05, Guy Dawson <guy at crossflight.co.uk> wrote:
> >>David O'Brien wrote:
> >>>It really should be that simple.  All the external interfaces and
> >>> pins are the same for Athlon64-939 and Athlon64 X2.  They have
> >>> the same thermal specifications, etc...
> >>
> >>It's the only way AMD could reasonably do it. To require a
> >> different motherboard for X1 (?) and X2 chips would have the mobo
> >> makers rioting!
> >
> >That's what Intel did. Requiring a new i945/i955-based board for
> > their rushed dual-core CPUs. Only use the same socket but varied
> > pin definition. If you put the new CPU on an i915 board, it will
> > shutdown automatically to 'protect'. In contrast Athlon64 claimed
> > to be designed with dual-core capability in mind from the
> > beginning.
> >
> >Jia-Shiun.
> >_______________________________________________
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>
> first of all, Intel claims to have had the original idea of dual core
> which any educated hardware expert knows to be false.  AMD touted
> support for multiple cores months ahead of intel and it's apparent by
> the hyper transport technology white paper that AMD was planning this
> route when the Athlon XP was released long ago.  Intel only recently
> scrapped their processor roadmap.  rather than attempt to hit the
> 4GHz mark they re-wrote the roadmap, fabbed up a quick and dirty dual
> core solution and released it before AMD claiming that the idea was
> theirs... i hate that company...

Also, if you look at the original silicon specs, including the 
bios/kernel writers guide from the late 2001/early 2002 era, you'll see 
bit and register definitions for 'core 0' and 'core 1' on the 
sledgehammer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hopteron/athlon64 docs.

-- 
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5