Dissecting the Athlon 64 Architecture.

AMD's Athlon 64 taken appart to see what is it made of.

- AMD64 architecture - X86-64
(64-Bit CPU is compatible to 32-Bit Technology)
- AMD Enhanced Virus Protection
- AMD HyperTransport? Technology
(One 16-bit link up to 2000MHz
Up to 8 GB/s HyperTransport? I/O bandwidth
Up to 14.4 GB/s total delivered processor-to-system bandwidth)

AMD is only using One 16-Bit High Speed Link for the current A64's, then the Dual Core CPU's will be using 3 High Speed Links @ CPU core frequency. Well, in that case, AMD's Dual Core CPU's should be extremely fast.

- Double Data Rate(DDR)SDRAM
- AMD Cool?n?Quiet? Technology
- Large high performance on-chip cache
(64KB Level 1 instruction cache, 64KB Level 1 data cache,
Up to 1MB Level 2 cache
Improved branch prediction for greater accuracy in anticipating instruction calls Enhanced TLB structures for better memory management of complex workloads)

- 3DNow!? Professional Technology + SSE2 Instructions
- Process Technology @ 90nm
- Number of Transistors (for 130nm) @ 105.9 Million
- Integrated DDR Memory Controller (MCT)
(128-bit + 16-bit ECC unbuffered PC3200, PC 2700, PC 2100, or PC1600)
- Integrated Northbridge w/128-bit data path @ CPU core frequency

You forgot to add these Instruction Sets as well:

MMX(+), SSE, x86-64

Last edited by Super XP on Fri Jan 21, 2005 1:23 am; edited 1 time in total

Great, just keep adding.

Thank you. :)

Here are more!

To take full advantage of 64-Bit technology, you need to write code for 64-Bit.

A 32-Bit system needs 32-Bit wide registers,
A 64-Bit system needs 64-Bit wide registers.
The wider the better, more efficient & more data throughput. And this is just a small part of this 64-Bit revolution.

For AMD's case they needed to design an architecture which to accommodate both 32-Bit & 64-Bit technologies. And they have successfully done so with there Athlon 64 architecture. And the best part of this is that this architecture is fully expandable, so Socket 939 will be around for a wile.

AMD 64-Bit 100% Expandable 90 nm Architecture in a brief!

64-Bit Integer Registers
48-Bit Virtual Addresses
40-Bit Physical Addresses
Eight New 64-Bit Integer Registers (16 Total)
Eight New 128-Bit SSE/SSE2 Registers (16 Total) w/ SSE3 coming in 2005.

JW...how does the virus protection works? Thanks AMD RULES...I HAVE NOW 2 AMD CPU and 1 old and lazy intel celeron!

Edit: how is that so that amd 64 bit architechure requires that programs for it 64 architechture need to be programed specifically for the processor?!

Understanding Data Execution PreventionData Execution Prevention (DEP) helps prevent damage from viruses and other security threats that attack by running (executing) malicious code from memory locations that only Windows and other programs should use. This type of threat causes damage by taking over one or more memory locations in use by a program. Then it spreads and harms other programs, files, and even your e-mail contacts.

Unlike a firewall or antivirus program, DEP does not help prevent harmful programs from being installed on your computer. Instead, it monitors your programs to determine if they use system memory safely. To do this, DEP software works alone or with compatible microprocessors to mark some memory locations as \"non-executable\". If a program tries to run code?malicious or not?from a protected location, DEP closes the program and notifies you.

DEP can take advantage of software and hardware support. To use DEP, your computer must be running Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later, or Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or later. DEP software alone helps protect against certain types of malicious code attacks but to take full advantage of the protection that DEP can offer, your processor must support \"execution protection\". This is a hardware-based technology designed to mark memory locations as non-executable. If your processor does not support hardware-based DEP, it's a good idea to upgrade to a processor that offers execution protection features.