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AMD has deployed a team of folks to charm enterprise server users ahead of the debut of its Zen designed-from-scratch x86 processor microarchitecture and the message they're sending is that the new silicon represents a chance to supersize servers.
As explained to The Register by Vinay Sinha, AMD's senior director for enterprise in Asia Pacific and Japan, the company's plan is first and foremost to convince enterprise that Zen will be stonking x86 CPUs. Beyond that, the company will point out that its significantly-lower-than-Xeon prices mean a chance to supersize servers with other nice-to-haves, perhaps more RAM or some lovely AMD GPUs.
AMD's tried this play in the PC market, where its newly-hired enterprise sales folks have had some success in price-sensitive markets like government and education where buyers want maximum bang for buck and don't see challenger brands as a risk. Big PC-makers also enjoy the company's pricing, as it gives them different price points. Speaking to The Reg at the Canalys Channels Forum in Macau, Sinha takes great heart from the fact that the likes of HP Inc. now offer AMD-powered premium notebooks. HPE, he said, will offer enterprise servers based on Zen. He feels other top-tier manufacturers won't be shy about practicing Zen and the art of server design so they too can show Chipzilla it can't take their business for granted.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday October 28 2016, @11:50PM
Why do we still support 16 and 32 bits on 64 bit processors?
The x86 architecture has some instructions that stall the pipeline. Your code runs faster if you don't use them, rather one uses the "RISC-like" instructions. Remove the instructions that stall the pipeline.
This would need some compiler support but then modifying the compilers is much easier than designing a whole new chip.
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(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday October 29 2016, @02:46AM
Some of us run 32 bit and even 16 bit programs on processors that are capable of doing 64 bit.
When in 64 bit mode, those 16 bit instructions do not run.
There is probably no reason that the compiler can't avoid those instructions that stall the pipeline.
Intel (and/or AMD) could introduce a new architecture that is based on X64 and lose all the customers with legacy programs etc. Perhaps third time would be lucky, but I doubt it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:50AM
I've been running a 32bit version of Linux Mint lately because WebEx refuses to allow me to use audio on the 64bit version. Considering that the Linux client is Java, there's really no excuse for that bug being there, but it is and Cisco doesn't seem to care about it.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:46AM
Because not all programs benefit from running in 64bit mode to the point where it's worth compiling them with support. Compiling it in 32bit mode allows it to run on pretty much anything whereas compiling with 64 bits requires a 64bit OS and the rest of it.
For many programs modern 32bit mode is more than enough for what they're needing to accomplish.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @04:15AM
Almost nobody compiles their own software, and nobody wants to buy hardware that can't run their current software.