Intel says to offer emulation software for Itanium ( Surprise?)

Lycos Financial - Reuters Financial ^ | 24 Apr 2003, 8:51pm ET | Reuters

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

SAN FRANCISCO, April 24 (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) is developing new emulation software designed to speed the way its Itanium processor runs certain applications on server computers, an Intel spokeswoman said on Thursday.

Intel has spent heavily to develop the Itanium chip in order to meet the needs of faster and more powerful software. The microchip allows servers to run both 32-bit applications, which crunch 32 bits of data at a time and comprise most of the software in use today, and newer 64-bit applications, which are faster because they process more bits of data at a time.

However, industry analysts say 32-bit applications don't perform as well on the Itanium chip as they do on 32-bit processors like Intel's Pentium and Xeon.

Intel is working with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Linux developers to include a software emulator, called IA-32 Execution Layer, in their operating system software, said Intel spokeswoman Barbara Grimes.

The emulator works by taking the 32-bit application code and converting it into native 64-bit code that the Itanium processor can run, she explained.

"It boosts the performance of Itanium running 32-bit applications and it allows us to incorporate support for new 32-bit instructions faster," Grimes said.

Intel expects the software to boost the performance of 32-bit code running on Itanium to roughly equivalent to that of a 1.5 gigahertz Xeon processor, she said.

The software will be rolling out in products beginning in the second half of this year, according to Grimes.

The news comes two days after rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD) unveiled its new microprocessor, Opteron, for servers that run both 64-bit and 32-bit software fast.

The Opteron servers are much less expensive than Itanium machines and at the time of the Opteron announcement, analysts wondered how Intel would solve the 32-bit performance issue with Itanium.

One analyst praised Intel's software emulation plan.

"This certainly does blunt AMD's argument that if you need to do both 32-bit and 64-bit, Opteron is the only answer," said Nathan Brookwood of Insight 64. "It makes the transition to Itanium easier, and that can't hurt."

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC)LIST

[Jeff Chandler]

Intel's solution sounds like a hack.

Does anyone know how the Opteron performs? I'm no programmer, but it just seems to me that a processor which will run the 32 bit applications natively will be more stable and efficient than an emulator.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

There are a lot of reviews on the web, here is a place to start:

Opteron Review

Opteron Review
Reported by: Chris Tom      At: 12:17 PM	Source: e-mail
Anandtech has posted part 1 and part 2 of their Opteron review. Without even touching the 64-bit capabilities of Opteron, and without exploring the performance benefits of a NUMA-aware OS, AMD has an extremely capable enterprise microprocessor on their hands with Opteron. The CPU is not only highly scalable, but also offers extremely high performance as is evident by our real-world database and web serving tests. Although Intel's 3.06GHz Xeon DP with a 1MB L2 cache will definitely eat into the Opteron's performance lead (especially on the DB side of things), it looks like AMD has done their job well in terms of threatening Xeon's throne.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the link in the previous post :

___________________

Friday, April 25, 2003
Feel The Pressure?
Reported by: Rob Squires      At: 12:52 AM	Source:
Intel is developing new emulation software designed to speed the way its Itanium processor runs certain applications on server computers stated an Intel spokeswoman said on Thursday. Intel has spent heavily to develop the Itanium chip in order to meet the needs of faster and more powerful software. They are now working with Microsoft and Linux developers to include a software emulator called the IA-32 Execution Layer. Looks like they are feeling the pressure from AMD with the Opteron launch.

[HAL9000]

They are now working with Microsoft and Linux developers to include a software emulator called the IA-32 Execution Layer.

This may explain why Microsoft acquired the "Virtual PC" software product from Connectix a couple of months ago.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Well, AMD must look like a real challenger to Intel then!

It is going to get very interesting!

[George W. Bush]

They're adopting a code-morphing strategy in software, very similar to what Transmeta does in hardware. Hopefully, Transmeta will be in a position to sue them for code-morphing copyright violations.

[RightOnline]

"Does anyone know how the Opteron performs?"

Yes, I do.

Like a fart in a windstorm.

[chilepepper]

I'd say the Itanium is in trouble -- for two reasons.

Obviously, the Claw/Sledgehammer hardware 32bit compatability paradigm is going to run rings around this software emulation scheme.

But another consideration is that the 32bit AMD Multiprocessing also seems to be superior to the Pentium's SMP, so you can get more effective performance with less cycles (and stay at 32bit). So 32bit, particularly with AMD's SMP and Intel's 3GHz+ CPUS, has quite a bit longer to run before the economic case for pure 64bit makes sense...

Interesting to see how this plays out...

[Jeff Chandler]

>>Like a fart in a windstorm.<<

I'm not familiar with that expression and not sure what it means.

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

Got root?

[HamiltonJay]

. "It makes the transition to Itanium easier, and that can't hurt."

Believe me if you have MS writing the emulator... it will hurt and hurt a lot.

[Southack]

Ouch. Since *when* did Intel start fighting AMD by announcing vapor-ware?!

[catpuppy]

Well, AMD must look like a real challenger to Intel then!

You may be right but this has been claimed every year for a couple of decades and AMD has yet to be "a real challenger to Intel." As mentioned on an earlier thread, Intel nets in 6 weeks what AMD has netted in the past 16 years, a comparison evidenced by the value of Intel stock having risen 5000% while the value of AMD's stock has risen 0% over that period.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for "the real challenge."

[chilepepper]

Believe me if you have MS writing the emulator... it will hurt and hurt a lot.

not if you pay their daily licensing fee...

[mikegi]

They're adopting a code-morphing strategy in software, very similar to what Transmeta does in hardware.

If you get into the details you'll find that all modern x86 processors use code morphing. They translate the x86 instructions into an internal RISC-like format (where one x86 instruction can become several uOps).

IMHO, the move to 64 bits is way overblown. Most apps don't need it. I'd prefer processor makers continue to enhance their app-specific instruction sets (eg. MMX, SSEn, etc.). How about adding DCT and iDCT instructions??? Intel's SSEn is maddening for me since it forces you into a structure-of-arrays format where the norm is an array-of-structures format. It also has the idiotic separation of aligned and unaligned instructions for loading data. The processor should handle that transparently with a performance hit in the case of non-aligned accesses. Arggggg...

[George W. Bush]

You're exaggerating the yearly claims that AMD was going to dominate. No one has made those claims more than in about 5 years out of the 30 that AMD has existed.

I think your statement of AMD's market position is not entirely accurate. And I'd say that Opteron is their last hope to carve out a true AMD market instead of making clones of Intel CPUs for lower-priced markets, a product line that will always leave them vulnerable to deep-pockets Intel. Their threat a few years back to take over the desktop on consumer-level machines came close to working but Intel headed it off, using the typical Microsoft strategies with OEM partners like Dell and Gateway. The OEMs use AMD as a whipping boy for Intel's predatory pricing. But since that predatory pricing on Intel's top-end CPU's also benefits the OEM makers, they're generally willing to take their cut and be quiet unless Intel gets too greedy and won't share the wealth with them. Currently, they're satisfied with their cut of Intel's profits so they leave AMD for the smaller OEM people and the hobbyist builders who want very custom machines.

[George W. Bush]

If you get into the details you'll find that all modern x86 processors use code morphing. They translate the x86 instructions into an internal RISC-like format (where one x86 instruction can become several uOps).

I would say this is far far more true of AMD CPUs than of Intel's those there is some convergence. However, I'll stand by my claim that Intel is doing something very similar to what Transmeta has done, at least judging by this article.

Your comments on assembly are well-founded but really sail past most people. Very few people even get to a compiler let alone an assembler. What a shame that the claims by that assembly is unworkable for modern OSes and unnecessary due to modern optimizing compilers are so uncritically accepted. Look at some of the nice programs made in a few hundred K for Palm devices or programs like dvd2One or the Opera browser to see what truly lean code and/or assembly can accomplish.

[jimt]

Your comments on assembly are well-founded but really sail past most people. Very few people even get to a compiler let alone an assembler. What a shame that the claims by that assembly is unworkable for modern OSes and unnecessary due to modern optimizing compilers are so uncritically accepted. Look at some of the nice programs made in a few hundred K for Palm devices or programs like dvd2One or the Opera browser to see what truly lean code and/or assembly can accomplish.

You've said a mouthful there !

In casual conversation with a recent computer science graduate I asked if he liked assembly language. "What's assembly language?" he replied. I was dumbfounded.

There's simply no way I'll believe an optimizing compiler can can produce code that'll run as fast or be as compact as good hand coding in assembler. I guess that's why we now need gigs of hard drive space, megs of ram and gigahertz processors. But what if those resources were actually optimally utilized ?