EMT64 not 64???

S

sypher822

New Member
i have read on a handful of websites that the Intel EMT64 is in fact not a 64Bit processor, could this be true or just bogus info...

does anyone have any information about capabilities of the CPU and when it is supposed to be available in NA...
 
its EM64T and it is 64bit bit. It is not emulated 64bit or anything silly like that, it is essentially the same 64bit technology that Intel has been using in server grade CPUs (not the Itaniums though). Availability: soon :) last I heard it was Q1 or Q2 2005 for desktops (its already available and has been for some time in the server and workstation market)
 
Cromewell said:
its EM64T and it is 64bit bit. It is not emulated 64bit or anything silly like that, it is essentially the same 64bit technology that Intel has been using in server grade CPUs (not the Itaniums though). Availability: soon :) last I heard it was Q1 or Q2 2005 for desktops (its already available and has been for some time in the server and workstation market)
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Not sure that I agree with you. the "EM" in "EM64T" means Extended Memory. This means that it has 64-bit memory addressing and which means you can have heaps more RAM and hard disk space. I think that they also have 64-bit registers - so that they can do more precise calculations - or more powerful processing. But I believe that the instruction set for both EM64T and AMD64 only has a handful of 64-bit instructions and is not the full-blown 64-bit solution that you may find on a Sun server for example.
 
1. I know what 'EM' stands for, as well as the rest of it, Extended Memory 64 Technology
2. who said anything about a Sun system? I was talking about Intel server CPUs, Xeons not Itaniums and certainly not UltraSPARCs, I don't know enough about Sun's stuff to make any comments about it.

Obviously a 64bit processor must have 64bit registers, otherwise it is simply 64bit emulation. I don't know the extent of the 64bit extensions off hand and I don't feel like delving through the developer guides to find them all but I'm sure there are more than enough to satisfy all your 64bit computing needs :P
Intel said:
Intel's IA-32 processors with Intel® EM64T have 16 General Purpose Registers (GPR's) and 16 XMM registers. The GPR's and XMM registers are 64-bits and 128-bits in width, respectively, in processors with Intel® EM64T. The additional registers are only used by applications running in 64-bit mode. IA-32 processors without Intel® EM64T have 8 GPR's and 8 XMM registers. The GPR's and XMM registers are 32-bits and 128-bits in width, respectively, in processors without Intel® EM64T
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Not sure that I agree with you. the "EM" in "EM64T" means Extended Memory. This means that it has 64-bit memory addressing and which means you can have heaps more RAM and hard disk space
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Well the only way to support 64bit memory addressing is to have a 64bit internal (which has been present since the days of the Pentium2) and a 64bit external (since memory is outside of the CPU) setup. According to common defintiion, 64bit_internal+64bit_external =64bit CPU

Naturally, like Cromewells explaination this does not extend to the datacenter-grade systems (IA64s et al)
 
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