F
flekso
How hard would it be to modify the north bridge for dual processing ?
Y
Yousuf Khan
flekso said:
Pretty difficult, considering that only AMD makes dual-processing chipsets
for the Athlon MP family.
Yousuf Khan
F
flekso
Yousuf Khan said:
I don't understand, does AMD have a license on SMP ?
I was wondering more about the kind of electronic mischief they'd run into ?
Wasn't it true in the early PC days, that there was only one bus line that
was used for SMP, like #LOCK or something ?
How hard ($) would it be to only double the FSB lines, and use the dual ram
controller from there ?
It would be a real nice transitional platform for workstation people (how
many threads are you running now), coupled with two mobile bartons at
2.6GHz.
http://www.tweakpc.de/tweaking/athlon_xpm_oc/athlon_oc.htm
W
Will Dormann
flekso said:
Get a nice fine-tipped soldering iron, some aluminum foil, and let us
know how it goes!
-WD
Y
Yousuf Khan
flekso said:
No-no, there just wasn't any interest by anybody else to make a chipset for
the Athlon MPs. AMD wouldn't have minded a bit if somebody else had made a
dual-processor chipset for the MPs, but most of the chipset houses decided
the money was in making chipsets for desktops and laptops running Athlon
XPs.
Probably not that hard, in fact it would've been a perfect use for the
Athlon MPs, but Nvidia just never bothered.
There's no chance it's going to happen now. AMD is concentrating on Opterons
from now on, they're not going to bother with Athlon MPs anymore, and
neither is anybody else.
Yousuf Khan
F
flekso
Yousuf Khan said:
m-kay then :\
N
nobody
Why bother? K7 is obsolete ever since K8 got out the door. MSI dual
board (the cheapest) is around $200, Opteron 242 is getting close to
that - and Barton will never run Win64. If you have money to burn,
get yourself Tyan K8W Thunder and a couple of 248 - and this combo
will beat any Barton (or Xeon or anything for that matter) in most any
benchmark. By the way, MSI board is VIA based. Have not heard about
dual Nvidia board though.
N
Nate Edel
At least anything halfway affordable. If nothing else, you can always go
with the Tyan 4-way server board and some 848s.
F
flekso
[email protected] said:
There's also the n*? issue. Opteron 240 is 314$. I'm reffering to Opteron
prices in Croatia; on the other hand dual Durons that can easily be modifed
to dual XPs(and then MPs), now that is affordable.
My single Duron @ 2330 can beat P4 3.0 in some scenarios, and that's 45 vs
277$ in a country where average sallary weighs in at about 2/3 K$.
We people don't have bukco$ enough to go the Opteron route just yet but we
sure like some other shiny chips...
Y
Yousuf Khan
flekso said:
Maybe, but modifying Durons to become Athlon MPs is only a solution for now.
Eventually the Opteron prices will plummet. AMD has already discontinued the
Opteron x40 series, their lowest performing Opteron family. Maybe if a
dual-CPU market starts flourishing in places like Croatia, AMD can be
convinced to start up a special line of older Opterons for sale only within
these countries like they did with the Durons last year? There has to be big
enough demand for dual-processing for it to be worth their time.
I don't think you can get cheap dual-processing Xeons either as it now
stands.
Yousuf Khan
N
Nate Edel
Yousuf Khan said:
Nope. Cheap older P3s on eBay is as close as you come... in the retail
market for dual-processor Intels, it's either Xeon(P4-based) or the 512K
cache Tualatins, which while still available, are highway robbery (as
expensive as the P4-based Xeons last I checked... and while Mhz-for-Mhz
they're faster, not enough so to make up for twice the megahertz until power
comes in as a factor...)
K
KR Williams
Get a nice fine-tipped soldering iron, some aluminum foil, and let us
know how it goes!
You can't solder to aluminum foil, silly! ;-)
R
Rob Stow
KR said:
No, but if you lay the foil on a surface you can use
the soldering iron to deposit traces on that surface.
I've seen it done with gold foil, but not aluminum.
Should work OK for wrecking motherboards, etc.
K
KR Williams
One *can* solder to gold. I've done it, more often by accident
than on purpose though. :-( Aluminum is another kettle of stinky
fish though.
Sure. I noticed that that was the plan. ;-)
R
Richard Krehbiel
flekso said:
It would be completely impossible unless you're nVidia and can
dramatically redesign the inner chip workings.
The Athlon fronstside bus (EV6 bus) isn't a "bus," it's a point-to-point
connection. One "point" is the CPU, and the other "point" is the
Northbridge. It's the Northbridge chip's job to provide interconnect
with any other busses (AGP, memory, PCI/V-link/HT/etc).
The AMD 760MP SMP Northbridge provides *two* EV6 endpoints, and routes
traffic between those two and other provided busses.
The 760MP and 760MPX are the only two SMP-supporting Athlon chip sets
that exist - or ever will exist for K7s, since newer AMD chips have
moved on to Hypertransport and embedded memory controllers.
R
Rob Stow
KR said:
The reason I saw it being done with gold was because I
had wrecked the very first motherboard I had bought for
myself about 17 or 18 years ago and was watching a friend
repair it. I had been using the tip of a screwdriver to
force something into a socket or pry loose a locking clip
- can't remember exactly anymore - and the tip slipped off
of whatever I was pushing/prying and scraped a trench across
some traces. I wonder if the circuitry on modern motherboards
is robust enough to tolerate that kind of repair job ?
Y
Yousuf Khan
Richard Krehbiel said:
Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of sharing of resources between Alpha
and Athlon because of their common bus standard? What were the
multiprocessor solutions available for Alpha?
Yousuf Khan
K
KR Williams
Oops! I *HATE* it when that happens.
No. The technology hasn't changed much, if not gotten worse with
multi-layer boards. The only thing inbetween the screwdriver and
the traces is the solder-mask. ...little more than paint. One
learns not to force things (or at least direct the force in a
direction not compromising several $hundred).
K
KR Williams
@twister01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>, news.tally.bbbl67
@spamgourmet.com says...
ISTR that that was all about the electrical design, rather than
physical. Alpha had different requirements, so I never expected
much cross-pollination.
@spamgourmet.com says...
ISTR that that was all about the electrical design, rather than
physical. Alpha had different requirements, so I never expected
much cross-pollination.
R
Rob Stow
KR said:
Yup. Kinda like getting it on with your girlfriend
and then her father's voice comes on through the
answering machine. "Honey, you might as well answer
the damned phone ... "
Well, like I said it was my first mobo and I had yet to learn better.
As well, it is less of an issue with current motherboards because
things seem to pop in and out of their sockets much better than they
did way back when. Either that or building a systems regularly for
more than a decade eventually gave me a knack for managing dimm socket
clips.