Comparing AMD and Intel Processors - Steve's Experience

[graphic7]

Genesi has some very affordable (http://www.genesippc.com/) PowerPC systems. Most new SPARC systems aren't exactly affordable (the new Sun Ultra 25 is the low-end SPARC workstation sold by Sun and it starts at ~ $2,500); however, many that are in the 7- to -10-year-old range can be had for pennies:

Ultra 2 ~ $50 - $200
Ultra 60 ~ $100-$300
Ultra 80 ~ $200-$400
Blade 1000 ~ $300 - $1,500

These prices vary per configuration. For example, my Blade 1000 /w 2x750MHz UltraSPARC-III processors (8MB of L2 cache/proc), 2GB of memory, and a single 36.6GB internal fibre-channel disk would run around $400 now, but a config with 2x1.2GHz UltraSPARC-III CU procs would run close to $1,500.

The fact that SPARC systems are generally more expensive doesn't mean that SPARC is better than PowerPC (in some regard, it *may* be, but this is irrelevant). All this implies is that the current set of SPARC manufacturers (Fujitsu and Sun) aren't producing economical SPARCv9-compliant systems, whereas, vendors like Genesi are producing such PowerPC-based systems. IBM, on the hand, while a PowerPC vendor uses PowerPC-based processors in their high-end graphics workstations and servers, but these are far from economical (similar to SPARC in terms of cost).

The market for SPARC workstations has gotten much better. One may shudder at the starting price of $2,500 for the Ultra 25; however, my Blade 1000 in the year 2000 would've run around $30,000.

 

[Anttech]

And what's even more interesting (paradox) is what is inside the Xbox 360 (built by M$) and it aint x86
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#Central_processing_unit

 

[graphic7]

And what's even more interesting (paradox) is what is inside the Xbox 360 (built by M$) and it aint x86
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#Central_processing_unit

I'm sure Intel wasn't happy about this, but then again, not many vendors have multi-cored CPUs that are built for floating-point calculations. At the time Microsoft made their decision to go with the PowerPC, there was the UltraSPARC-T1, which has a shared FPU unit across all of its 8 cores (this implies floating-point performance is not stellar; however, the UltraSPARC-T1 is excellent for integer workloads), and the IBM POWER4/POWER5, which certainly aren't consumer chips.

Its far more economical for these multi-cored CPU vendors to share the FPU across all the cores and/or share the external cache across all the cores, and many of them do. The UltraSPARC-T2 (the upcoming replacement for the -T1) will give each core its own FPU.

 

[Smurf]

how do you pronounce "x86"? Do you say the 'x' like
"ex-eighty six" or what?