Yeah but so would a cluster of Durons. Then again, C3s make 40 watts heat dissipation... I think my next UT server will be a C3 then. They're cheap as hell too! They have low response times, but the real bottleneck is the bandwidth.

Oh yeah, and the A64 does have PCI-X and the socket 939 for Opteron only will have BTX.
The newest thing: take a VIA Epox and build it into a box the size of a wallet. There are people at Metku.net that have fit them into desktop speakers and even pictureframes.
Newegg doesn't carry the VIA C3 mobo/proc combo anymore... They were $41 bundled...
They need to stop going for power and try to go for smallest form factor as possible. I'm talking the size of a PSU.

The VIA C3 looks like a nice processor... get in sync at http://www.dansdata.com/c3.htm

It would be interesting to know WHY it runs cooler but I suspect that it is because it is 2.4 that has been throttled down.

Now I'm NOT against clustering a bunch of full blown P4's or Socket A's but that could cost you a bundle.

What I think of when I think of clustering are PICs. (sync up at http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/pic/)

They cost less than $2 each and a large cluster can grow legs, sit down at the dinner table and discuss Plato.

The VIA C3 looks like a nice processor... get in sync at http://www.dansdata.com/c3.htm

It would be interesting to know WHY it runs cooler but I suspect that it is because it is 2.4 that has been throttled down.

Now I'm NOT against clustering a bunch of full blown P4's or Socket A's but that could cost you a bundle.

What I think of when I think of clustering are PICs. (sync up at http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/pic/)

They cost less than $2 each and a large cluster can grow legs, sit down at the dinner table and discuss Plato.

Durons require cooling, C3's don't... even though Via recommends it.
There's also a difference in availablility for the C3s compared to the Durons.

And the C3 outperforms the Duron anyways....

PIC's aren't a good way to go for x86 platforming, you'll end up working hard to get them to perform up to par.

The reason that the C3 runs so cool is that it only uses 20 watts at 1.4ghz, which is the maximum clock speed they offer.

They use a smaller L2 cache, but offer a 16 stage pipeline, AMDs have 8 stages and Intels have 10.



Wanna go crazy with clusters? Check this out: http://www.via.com.tw/en/Products/eden_n.jsp


They require absolutely no cooling at all! The motherboard is smaller than a dollar bill (as you can see on that site).

Not to mention the output wattage for 1ghz is only 7w!

The processor is less than half the size of the chipset.... my god.

I'm considering buying 30 of these and making a nice little render farm that fits entirely inside a 6" x 1.5' x 6" case.

I think these suckers could easily pump out half an hour worth of high def animation (roughly 1,800 frames) in a day and a half.

This is good considering it takes large Xeon based render farms 7hrs to do the same amount of rendering.... but they spend about $6000 per system and I could buy 150 Eden systems for that price.


Oh, and AMD has no plans of releasing a PCI-X supporting chipset for the Athlon 64. Check it for yourself.
They currently don't have PCI-X featured motherboards.... and none of the motherboard manufacturers are backing the concept for one. Not until they're sure AMD is the leader anyways....

Because for all anyone knows AMD might be running themselves into a dead end here and taking a lot of followers with them.
I mean you're always going to be able to run a 64bit Linux kernel with an Athlon 64, but Microsoft isn't releasing a 64bit version of Longhorn, so most Athlon 64 consumers might be screwed with tech they'll never get to use. Blackcomb was supposed to be Microsoft's next 64bit venture platform, but that turned into Windows Server 2k3.

So I think 64bit processing is going to be held back until late 2006, early 2007. After PCI-X and new form factors are released, computing will start being focused on components besides the processor.

DDR2 is going to be out soon, which will boost ram bandwidth to equate with the processor, and possibly go higher.


One direction nobody's ever headed was to making the bus speed equal the processor speed..... that would be awesome.

The best clustering chip?

Microchip PIC 16F84
$6.50
16F84 A PIC
The versatile 16F84 A FLASH/EEPROM microcontroller with its easy-to-learn instruction set (only 35 single word instructions) allows the same device package to be used for prototyping and production. In addition, with In-Circuit-Serial Programming™, the designer can update code without the device being removed from the end application circuit board. PIC 16F84 A contains 1024x14 word of FLASH program memory, 64 data memory bytes, and 68 bytes of user RAM. The device also features an 8-bit timer/counter with 8-bit programmable prescaler, Watchdog timer with its own on-chip RC oscillator for reliable operation, Power-On-Reset (POR) Power-up Timer (PWRT), Oscillator Start-up timer (OST) and a maximum speed of 10MHz. 16F84 fits perfectly in applications ranging from high-speed automotive and appliance motor control to low-power remote sensors, electronic locks, security devices and smart cards. PIC 16F84 A has 13 I/O pins and is available in the following package options: 18 PDIP(P), 18 SOIC(SO), and 20 SSOP(SS).

PIC 16F84 Features
18-pin Enhanced FLASH / EEPROM
8-bit Microcontroller
High Performance RISC CPU Features:
• Only 35 single word instructions to learn
• All instructions single-cycle except for program branches which are two-cycle
• Operating speed: DC - 20 MHz clock input DC - 200 ns instruction cycle
• 1024 words of program memory
• 68 bytes of Data RAM
• 64 bytes of Data EEPROM
• 14-bit wide instruction words
• 8-bit wide data bytes
• 15 Special Function Hardware registers
• Eight-level deep hardware stack
• Direct, indirect and relative addressing modes
• Four interrupt sources:
- External RB0/INT pin
- TMR0 timer overflow
- PORTB<7:4> interrupt-on-change
- Data EEPROM write complete
• 10,000 erase/write cycles Enhanced FLASH Program memory typical
• 10,000,000 typical erase/write cycles EEPROM Data memory typical
• EEPROM Data Retention > 40 years
• In-Circuit Serial Programming™ (ICSP™) - via two pins
• Power-on Reset (POR), Power-up Timer (PWRT), Oscillator Start-up Timer (OST)
• Watchdog Timer (WDT) with its own On-Chip RC Oscillator for reliable operation
• Code protection
• Power saving SLEEP mode
• Selectable oscillator options

You don't need a 64-bit OS for 64-bit apps. Not if you can download a new or updated 64-bit XP kernel interface. It would be small (about 5 megs after looking at the NT source code demo). The actual DLLs and stuff dont have references to hardware mainframes, only software buffers. The only thing you'd have to worry about from there would be OCXs. Other than that it would be 64-bit optimized. I'm sure Microsoft has already addressed this issue.
And yes, ASUS has PCI-X for A64 on S754. I heard it was at tech expo in L.A.

Oh, I'm seriously thinking about buying that VIA Eden-n. The only thing is you have to buy a special PSU which is probably gonna add some size. Then there's hard-drives (but laptop HDDs work too).

You guys have heard of Virtual Memory and Multiple CPU's, what about a Virtual CPU?

The 80386 used a 32bit bus to interface with system memory. The big deal with the 80386, however, was that it could run multiple copies of real mode. This meant that the 80386 could run several virtual 8088s. The 80386 used paging to remap memory so that each virtual 8088 got recognized about 60 times a second. This is how we got multitasking and in Windows 95 the chop length dropped to 20 ns.

The Pentium - Back to the Future - Multiple on die CPU's

After adding a cache and offering some other refinements the 80486 gave way to an idea the Prescott could expand on today under pressure of its thermal limitations. The Pentium improved upon the 80486 by running two 80486s in parallel. Typically two instructions could be executed at once. The advantage was obvious but required software that would take advantage of it.There were separate 8K caches, for instructions and data, split into banks, which could be accessed alternately. For all you Itanium and Athlon 64 fans it also had a 64-bit bus to allow both 32-bit CPU's to run in parallel.

The Prescott Deluxe?

Nope, its not a vacuum cleaner. With all that space .09 provides on the die... well I think you see where I'm headed... Why not quad CPU's?

you guys have some serious technical issues going on here...


First of all... to the Vapochil guy... according to they're site the vapochil can transfer 130 watts at -5 celsius... and it can only hold room temperature when the processor's at idle? so your trying to say what? that the processor is making what... 180-200 watts? at idle? sure... we believe you....

Second... Intel never said to expect great things from prescott...but, if you care to look at the profiles, as the prescott and northwood get higher clocks, by 5 Ghz, the prescott will be faster than the northwood, a tribute to it's better branch prediction and improved hyperthreading

Third... The prescott is a stepping stone... when it gets released on the next upped platform, likly with a 1066 or 1200 Mhz quad pumped bus, and has more bandwitdth and much high clock speeds, it will be a an amazing performance machine. other things to watch out for is the introduction of hyperthreding optimized compilers which will create helper thread to prime caches during memory fetches, making the most possible use of computer resources to execute a single thread. this will result in approximately a 20% increase clock for clock. (if you want proof, think of it this way... a single memory fetch takes about 220 clock cycles... what if during those clock cycles, you fetched everything you were gonna need, and just put it on the back burner in that nice expanded cache right close by... that would save you thousands of clock cycles!!... all during just one memory fetch...)

Forth... The prescott may be slower, but it's by how much... 5%? the northwood has reached the end... by the end of the year once the 90nm tech is better perfected, and the prescott is refined, and it's hitting 4.5Ghz... it'll be kicking ass... AMD's ass to be exact... cuz your Fx-53 is only a tiny overclock of the same chip, suck it up...! Intel is the market leader, and will remain so unless AMD pulls some R&D out of it's ass and get some tech that it didn't steal from IBM

Fith.. 64 bits helps you in a few main ways... it allows you to address a great deal of memory without using slower virtual memory addressing, it allows you to perform 64 bit mathematical ops as a single instruction, etc... lets see what 64 bits does NOT help you do... it does not run twice as fast as a similarly clocked 32 bit maching... it does NOT perform two 32 bit operations in parallel

Sixth..gammers do not drive the computer processor market... what a joke!! extreme gamers that have to have the lastest and greatest have about a ten million dollar market share... intel and AMD do pay attention to those, but for the most part those processors are essentially just crown bearers not money makers. Big business drives the computer market together with normal home users...

I have an Evil Inside System now, AMD Athalon XP 3200+, MSI K7N2 Delta-L motherboard, Only thing i need to get is Corsair XMS 3200 or higher speed TwinX ram, Thermaltake Volcano 12 or their new huge heatsink, NOW WHOS GOT THE EVIL INSIDE? Oh ya forgot i can adjust the Multiplier

well I see that Nvidia and Intel are back in the sack with eachother again, u can see it on Nvidias Website, besides ATI is practically back with AMD.