From: Jens-Uwe Rumstich <rumstich AT informatik DOT hu-berlin DOT de>
Message-Id: <199907071122.NAA11702@hiphop.informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Subject: Re: K7 potentials
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19990706153354.01228dd0@pop.xs4all.nl> from Vincent Diepeveen at "Jul 6, 1999 03:33:59 pm"
To: pgcc AT delorie DOT com
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 13:22:44 +0200 (MET DST)
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Hi!

> >No, IMHO AMD just added new instructions to 3DNow, not new registers,
> >therefore no new cpu state was needed.
> >And the Specs are sadly not available, because the K7 is only shipped
> >to OEMs and not available in stores to the end user :-(
> 
> K7 is fast and cheap. a real winner. It's nearly as fast as the
> Xeon at same speed

Its faster than a Xeon at the same speed. The only advantage of the Xeon
is its proven stability and the availability of 4way SMP-Boards. Once
these boards are available for the K7 too, it should be better here too
because the K7 should scale much better.

> It seems to me that no new instructions are added to it, but

There were new instructions added to the 3DNow instruction set. It
also includes new instructons for Cache prefetching and some DSP-stuff.
Sadly there is not more know today. You might want to download the speech
of Dirk Meyer from one of the places mentioned at
http://www.jc-news.com/pc/article.cgi?AMD/Curtain_Call_K7-01

> Also unknown is in how far it's 64 bits

Its a normal 32bit cpu.

> For me the K7 at 550Mhz was a big surprise (L2 cache at processor speed,
> and 512kb of it). 

The level2 cache runs only at half the speed of the CPU, just like the
cache on P2/P3 machines.

cu	
	Jens-Uwe