Intel Drops Tejas, Xeon To Focus On Dual-Core Chips 329
PunkerTFC writes "Reuters has an article about Intel dropping the fourth-generation P4 chip (codenamed "Tejas") and the Xeon server processor. Intel says they want to concentrate on their new 'dual-core' technology for desktop and notebook systems. This is essentially putting two processors on one chip, allowing for a doubling of performance with less energy use. The introduction of this technology was not expected for another year and a half. Rival chip maker AMD says they have the capability to produce dual-core chips and will introduce the technology when they "feel there is a market need.""
It seems may seem obvious... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It seems may seem obvious... (Score:3, Insightful)
AMD's Opteron, with its onboard memory controller, has been a perfect candidate for a dual-core setup since it was released (and will be getting one later this year). The Athlon64 is very similiar to the Opteron and thus it will be very easy to transition it to dual-core. The P4, on the other hand, has already got its dual-core in the form of hyperthreading.
I'd think A
Re:It seems may seem obvious... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it has everything to do with Pentium M and AMD64 architectures kicking PIV's a$$.
Re:It seems may seem obvious... (Score:3, Interesting)
The one thing that irks me about this- AMD saying they would have dual-core cpus out when they feel the market is there. Intel said the same thing about 64bit and n
Re:It seems may seem obvious... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It seems may seem obvious... (Score:3, Insightful)
HMMM! conspiracy theorists unite! (Score:2, Funny)
doi you think this has anything to do with the fact that MS is shipping a database(traditionally considered able to leverage hyperthreading very well) on their desktop? HMMMM!
Dual processors are nice. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dual processors are nice. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dual processors are nice. (Score:2)
Re:Dual processors are nice. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dual processors are nice. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dual processors are nice. (Score:3, Insightful)
I ask because I run dual proc now, hate to live without it.
Re:Dual processors are nice. (Score:3, Informative)
Dual CPU chips is better - but much more expensive. Like anything else in this business, if you have got it out of the packaging, it is obsolete. When this chip comes to market, everybody will have what you paid good money for at $200 less.
Re:Dual processors are nice. (Score:4, Informative)
One of the hardest things to do in current multi-processor setups is keep memory and cache in coherence. Why is this important, you ask?
Well, just like in a database, you do not want to have 2 seperate accesses to a certain location for an "update". If processor 1 and processor 2 go for the jugular on a certain memory location, it's all over....
Now, with the 2 cores sharing a cache, the board logic will not have to deal with this problem. Hence board prices go down. And, if it's true, AMD should be able to produce these close to what the high end chips are today (pricewise).
I'd buy that!
Re:Dual processors are nice. (Score:2, Interesting)
The reason multi-CPU system sales are not high is because multi-CPU systems are high in price and much lower in supply than single-CPU alternatives. You don't see a lot of older chips in multi-CPU configurations for sale do you? Among other reasons, it's because chip makers would prefer you buy
Re:Dual processors are nice. (Score:3, Insightful)
The ABit BP6 and Intel Celerons "pioneered consumer market multi-processor machines".
Interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the penalties of this technology? Does anyone know?
Sounds too good to be true for a dual core cpu to act as a single core proc.
Re:Interesting. (Score:2)
What's the penalties of this technology? Does anyone know?
Sounds too good to be true for a dual core cpu to act as a single core proc."
Single-core cpu's already have multpile pipelines to support parallelism of single threads. Also, the p4 hyperthreading allows multiple threads to take advantage of multiple OS tasks simultaneously. A dual core seems like an expansion on the hyperthreading concept, allowi
Re:Interesting. (Score:5, Informative)
Whoa, deja vu (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whoa, deja vu (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Whoa, deja vu (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whoa, deja vu (Score:4, Funny)
It's a glitch in The Matrix. They happen alot.
you mean (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whoa, deja vu (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whoa, deja vu (Score:5, Funny)
Crap, slash software ruined the joke with this post stopper:
"This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original..."
I wish they had this for the fucking "editors" that can't be bothered to read or check their own site!
FP (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FP (Score:2, Funny)
And right after AMD.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And right after AMD.... (Score:2)
Interesting statistic, but you didn't cite the source. Where did this figure come from?
Re:And right after AMD.... (Score:4, Informative)
Four days ago from a completely unreliable source
Re:And right after AMD.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Realistically, long-term strategies are in the pipeline for months before they're ever announced to the public. Intel surely had several different plans, and decided that this one was more future-proof than the previous one. I doubt that a one-week trend had anything to do with their decision.
Thank You AMD (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks to AMD and their recent successes in the market, Intel it seems is finally focussing on their core business - manufacturing successively faster processors, not inventing new marketing schemes. Before this announcement I could only imagine chips like these being reserved for high-end xeons.
Competition is always a good thing.
Dupe Scoop... (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean this was interesting a couple days ago, but now it is old news...
Re:Dupe Scoop... (Score:2)
It's not really a dupe (Score:3, Funny)
Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I'm just happy that soon enough I'll be able to buy a duel core chip.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not so interesting (Score:3, Informative)
The author incorrectly states that Intel's dual core CPU is "more than a year ahead of schedule". Six months ago during the Intel fall analyst meeting Intel claimed (slide #40) [investorshub.com] dual core for the home computers would arrive in 2005.
This is a rather interesting bit of information from the article: "This strategy was not expected for at least a year-and-a-half, said Dean McCarron, the head of Mercury Research."
Well, how is this news? Intel is claiming that they
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
"With coherent HyperTransport, it is inevitable that we will have multiple cores on a single chip. This is a tremendous opportunity because with our architecture the scaling is far superior to anything else that's out there., The Register quoted Mr. Sanders."
Also, see this: AMD CEO: "Dual-Core Opteron Will Shock the Hell Out of Everyone" [xbitlabs.com]. Ruiz confirms dual core Opteron in 2005.
They say that Intel Tulsa (dual core Xeon) will arrive in about a year [xbitlabs.com] and Jonah (dual core Pentium M) is planned for 2005/2006 [xbitlabs.com].
So, nothing new here for AMD.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Funny)
Mmmmm. Me want some. (Score:2)
[quote]when they "feel there is a market need."[/quote]
Um, the market would be me. The time would be now.
Bring it on!
I see that the new dual core opterons are supposed to be pin compatible with existing boards. So that makes it possible to get an AMD server today, and in xx months time pop in a new chip and turn it from a single proc to a dual proc (dual -> quad?) server. Nice. Now if only memory prices would come down some more. So I can enjoy a 16GB quad proc server for under $3K.
ADV: VPS [rimuhosting.com]
Weren't these chips mentioned in an recent article (Score:2, Interesting)
Parallel? (Score:3, Informative)
Is this a parallel implementation then? In that case performance is only doubled for processes that can be performed in parallel.
I think this is more related to moving to the PM from the P4 architecture as the M series is more scaleable - taing P4 any further requires a lot more power and generates a lot more heat.
Re:Parallel? (Score:3, Troll)
The overall trend for desktop computers is "fast enough" and "cheaper" -- In a year or two, you could be looking at $250 Dell machines. Obviously in such a situation, the volume CPU has got to be cheap to build and not require a huge power supply and tons of cooling.
It's ironic that just as AMD has gone for the high-end with their big, complex, and presumably expensive Athlon-64 chips, Intel has jumped on t
Re:Parallel? (Score:3, Informative)
That's a big assumption. AMD has always tried to keep a per-die cost lead on Intel. They do this by keeping their die-size down so that they achieve higher yields. That's why most of AMD's future low-end Athlon 64s have 1/2 as much L2 cache as the Pentium-M or P4 Prescott.
"If Intel drive the cost of PCs down a couple hundred bucks, AMD will be marooned in the high end workstation market"
Huh? If the costs of PCs decreases by a couple of hundred bucks,
Re:Parallel? (Score:3, Informative)
Why not $50 computers? There's a lot of things in this world where the assembly cost is basically nothing, and you're paying for marketing, packaging and support. I think Bill Gates already predicted this. Not for everyone of course, but the people who need speed will pay for it.
That's a big assumption.
More like a small assumption. Compare the die sizes: K8 - 193mm^2, Northwood 127mm^2, Pentium-M - 83mm^2. Intel is repu
Re:Parallel? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this a parallel implementation then? In that case performance is only doubled for processes that can be performed in parallel.
This is only accurate if you're describing single-task performance. System-wide performance may be *more* than doubled, if you're dealing with loads that are causing a lot of switching overhead.
And I don't think it's just a server thing. When my old dual cpu system finally died, I replaced it with a single cpu setup that ran nearly twice as fast (by MHz) as the two chips in t
Re:Parallel? (Score:3, Interesting)
most can be performed in parallel (Score:2)
And you're right. The cores will be derived from the pentium M - not the 4.
Dual core opterons (Score:5, Informative)
This seems to be the new trend,
AMD will have dual core opterons next year: [arstechnica.com]
Re:Dual core opterons (Score:5, Interesting)
How many people remember this AMD Dual Core K8 Architecture [vr-zone.com] slide? AMD has been planning this for a long time.
They introduced the k8 on a .13micron process and it was 192mm with 1024k L2 cache. Moving to .09micron it will shrink to 114mm and a dual core version, with 1024k L2 per core, may come in at ~215mm, not much bigger than the current Athlon64!
AMD will claim the market is ready for dual core processors when they move to .09microns sometime next year. We've all read this quote [eweek.com] from AMD chairman and CEO (Hector Ruiz), right: "One of the most powerful things next year is going to be our dual-core product. To me, that's going to really shock the hell out of everyone, because it's going to be hardware-compatible, infrastructure-compatible, pin-compatible. I mean, people that have a 2-P system can slap in a dual-core product and end up with a 4-P system for the price of a 2-P. That's been the biggest drawback, everyone tells me. What keeps them from going from a 2-P to a 4-P system? It's price."
Paul DeMone had a great article [realworldtech.com] about the 64bit processors we'll see in 2005 and the k8 is looking pretty good!
Exactly.. Market Need. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Exactly.. Market Need. (Score:2)
Re:Exactly.. Market Need. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's exactly what they try to avoid. Each core in a multi-core processors is simpler than a single processor of the current generation, but they make it up by putting two or more of them on the same chip. Another way to look at it is that the parallel execution units of a current generation processor are made even more autonomous, and this is made explicit by declaring them to to be separate processor cores.
The point is to use the available transistors on a chip as effictively as possible. For a long time computer architects used the growning number of transistors to enlarge caches and pipelines, add execution units, and add other niceties (e.g. branch prediction, MMX), but the gains have gotten less and less (and were sometimes dubious to begin with).
Multicore processors are only useful if people have enough parallelism in their applications to make it worthwhile. Therefore, it won't help every application, but that's also true for many tricks in existing architectures.
Re:Exactly.. Market Need. (Score:3, Interesting)
They are rectangular boxes about 3"x3" square section, 5" long made of 1mm thick aluminium with lots of fins making an unobstructed tunnel for air flow.
With a fan in front and behind each of these heat sinks, my G5 stays cool and quiet.
The loudest fan in this box is the one up by the hard drives.
The PPC970s in this box draw 51 watts each. The ones in the G5 Xserve draw 24 watts each.
With careful design, the noise can be kept to a minimum. Sure, the he
Re:Exactly.. Market Need. (Score:3, Informative)
Are Intel... (Score:2, Interesting)
Real impact (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, people are going to find themselves having to pay higher licensing fees with regular desktop computers as well as servers. Small workgroup servers could be really hard hit by this from some vendors.
I wonder how this will play out with XP Home which only supports one CPU? AMD has the technology so they may well respond in kind when Intel does (dammit lead AMD, lead), which could have a fair impact in weaning the masses of XP Home. I dont think MS will let this go the route of hyperthreading with the "logical processor" support.
Re:Real impact (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead, with everyone doing these small multi-core chips, you'll probably see "Per MIPS" pricing like in the mainframe world.
Re:Real impact (Score:4, Informative)
XP home and win2k3 do correctly recognize xeon's with hyperthreading as only one processor for licensing.
Win2k thinks each logical processor in a HT xeon is a real processor. So if you want a quad-xeon box to run win2k, you have to get the win2k advanced or enterprise version. Regular win2k only supports 4 processors.
Re:Real impact (Score:3, Informative)
-Benjamin Meyer
Re:Real impact (Score:2)
Heard at AMD offices (Score:5, Funny)
"No... that's just what they'll be expecting us to do..."
Chip dies with one failed core... (Score:3, Funny)
Dual core explained (Score:3, Informative)
One way to look at dual-core is to view it as a dual-processor (MP) system with a very low communications cost, since both cores are on the same die. The disadvantage is similar; since the two units are not perfectly synchronized, such a system runs best with multithreaded code. A single-core CPU with the same number of transistors will run faster, while the dual-core is not quite "double the speed" of one of its cores.
Re:Dual core explained (Score:2)
You've got things quite a bit confused. The reason that engineers are going dual core is not because its appreciably easier to design a dual 4-way CPU than an 8-way CPU. The reason they are going dual core is because there is not enough inherent parallelism in code (3-way is about the limit for most code) to feed an 8-way core. The reason for going dual core rather than 8-way SMT is because bigger CPUs are harder to scale to higher clock speeds.
Synchronization has absolutely
Remember (Score:5, Insightful)
AMD, like Nokia, Apple and Nintendo, is not.
AMD's strategy (Opteron instead of dual-core?) will therefore be called "a significant risk given the current market reality" while Intel's strategy (dual-core instead of Itanium?) will be called "a savvy decision for the technology giant," even though the media wouldn't know an Opteron or a dual-core CPU if one jumped up on their desk and did the tap number from 42nd street.
All of the general stories will make repeated and redundant references to the effect of Intel's strategy on the "tech-heavy Nasdaq."
This is no different than the Sony vs. Nintendo console competition. The media doesn't like competition. Neither do the markets. (There is only room for three companies in any given market) It's so much easier to be a sycophant when your favored company has 80% of the market.
Re:Remember (Score:2)
When parents are considering what videogame console to buy for their little kids, do you think they even consider the other two?
Re:Remember (Score:2)
Re:Remember (Score:5, Informative)
"One of the most powerful things next year is going to be our dual-core product. To me, that's going to really shock the hell out of everyone, because it's going to be hardware-compatible, infrastructure-compatible, pin-compatible. I mean, people that have a 2-P system can slap in a dual-core product and end up with a 4-P system for the price of a 2-P. That's been the biggest drawback, everyone tells me. What keeps them from going from a 2-P to a 4-P system? It's price"
Where from? (Score:2)
It would be kind of funny if Intel cancelled its American chip designs in favor of continuing work on a design from India.
Re:Where from? (Score:2)
Re:Where from? (Score:2)
I wonder what the work distribution will be between Isreal and the US on the new processors. It sounds like the US designs are letting the company down.
Bloatware Reaching New Lows (Score:2, Flamebait)
Or maybe Longhorn is so bloated, it needs it's own CPU just to sustain the operating system, and another processor to run programs.
Mod parent up... (Score:2)
Wow, i've been in the sauce today, but this idea is worth more thought.
because it would be a waste of cpu time (Score:3, Informative)
Most of what the OS does is IO, which idles the chip while waiting for the IO to complete. Tthis is why all operating systems switch to the next task while waiting on IO. If your CPU is running at less than 100% usage its because every program is waiting for IO for most of the time.
Re:Bloatware Reaching New Lows (Score:2)
Thank goodness it's just Microsoft's stupidity, because switching to any other OS solves the problem...
Microsoft Said they have too (Score:2)
Deja vu...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Deja vu...? (Score:2)
"Multi-core" (Score:2)
Sun, IBM, other major vendors also going dual-core (Score:5, Informative)
The current IBM POWER4 and upcoming POWER5 chips are both dual-core chips. Here is a nice presentation [hotchips.org](PDF format) about the POWER5; you can see in the die photos where there are two cores. There have also been rumors of a dual-core PowerPC [theregister.co.uk] based on it, but nothing concrete yet.
Broadcom (which bought SiByte) markets a dual-core, 1GHz 64-bit MIPS chip called the BCM1250 [broadcom.com] which has a lot of integrated networking goodies.
Finally, it bears pointing out that on the other side of Intel's severed corpus callosum [disenchanted.com], they're also working on a dual-core chip [theinquirer.net].
A little retro? (Score:2)
Furthermore, the P3 is just a Pentium Pro with MMX, SSE and on-die L2 cache.
A little retro? Seems strange that the future is in a P6 architecture. Maybe when these get too hot we'll move to a massive array of 486s.
The Register has a good article on this (Score:2)
Intel says Adios to Tejas and Jayhawk chips [theregister.com]
Lower power? (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW: As someone who 'knows' people that work at Intel, this decision was a pretty huge one on the 'Richter scale'. 1000s of people found out in the last couple of weeks that they were being redeployed to different projects (or making major changs on current projects). This decision is having a huge effect inside of Intel. I suspect that this kind of shake up means that the higher ups at Intel were very afraid that AMD is making major inroads and they finally realized that they couldn't keep going in the direction they were headed in without disasterous effects on marketshare.
AMD: Yeah, well... (Score:2)
"When we feel there's a market need?"
These morons introduced 64-bit chips 5 years before anyone cared, and crippled the technology by making it straight IA32 with more bits.
The market needs dual-core CPUs to advance.
There's no way to get CPUs faster any more without reaching current levels that no power supply can reasonably handle in that space (hint: 100 Watts at 1.2 Volts is 83 Amps).
The only solution is to divide the computation among several processors and parallelize.
AMD's respo
Divergance (Score:2)
AMD is went with x86-64, and Intel said "we'll wait until there is a need."
Intel is now going dual-core, and AMD says "we'll wait until there is a need."
I think AMD has the upperhand, though. Intel has the 64 bit technology, but doesn't want to release it to the consumer market yet, more than likely because the 64 bit version of Windows sucks hardcore. AMD could double the core on an x86-64 proc and beat Intel yet again.
The why as to Intels dropping the Tejas (Score:5, Interesting)
According to Reuters [reuters.com] and the Wall Street Journal, Intel is supposed to officially announce today that they're not going to bother with the Tejas generation of PIVs/Xeons.
This ought not come as too much of a surprise to those of you who read this [slashdot.org] last March, and we openly wondered whether Tejas was going to see the light of day a little while back [slashdot.org].
Yes, this a major announcement that will effectively knock Intel out of the box in the cutting-edge overclocking world for at least something close to eighteen months. This essentially leaves us with whatever AMD chooses to offer.
Nonetheless, the biggest aspect to this story is not the "what," but the "why."
A few days ago, the chief technology officer at IBM, Bernie Meyerson, told an industry forum that the traditional and expected increase in speed just from shrinking the manufacturing process is dead [eetimes.com].
To quote:
"Somewhere between 130-nm and 90-nm the whole system fell apart. Things stopped working and nobody seemed to notice. . . . Scaling is already dead but nobody noticed it had stopped breathing and its lips had turned blue."
(This comes from the company that AMD paid $46 million dollars to help build 90nm chips, BTW. It also comes from the company that was supposed to have 3GHz 90nm PowerPC chips ready for Apple in a couple months, but is now talking about eventually getting to 2.5GHz.)
Meyerson said the biggest reason for the problem is power leakage, the same as what Intel has been saying. He also pointed out that the problem with power leakage is "nonlinear."
That's a fancy term for saying "it doesn't get slowly worse; you get past a certain point, and everything suddenly falls apart on you."
It's Not Quite Over
Mr. Meyerson is not saying "it's all over." What he is saying is that the era of easy, big gains from each new generation of processors is over. As he put it, "60 to 70 percent of the benefit of each new generation of manufacturing would have to come from innovation."
By that he means technologies like SOI and strained silicon, though he implied that these were not long-term fixes to the problem.
What is clear is that future technological advances are going to be a lot harder to do, cost a good deal more, and being a lot harder to work with than has been the case in the past. The old way of doing things is broken, and there's no mature alternative around at the moment.
Perhaps one will eventually show up, but the magic bag is empty at the moment, and it will probably take years to come up with some major new tricks.
In the meantime, progress will slow down.
Playing Noah's Ark
In all likelihood, Intel's short-term answer to this problem is to stop revving and start adding. Processors, that is. The son of Pentium-M which will become Intel's next generation will almost certainly be a two-headed beast. In short, a 6GHz processor won't be a 6GHz processor; it will be two 3s.
AMD plans to do exactly the same (which ought to tell you that SOI, good as it is, is no long-term fix to this problem).
This is hardly something either party would willingly want to do rather than increase speed, simply because the vast majority of current programming does not (or even cannot) work better with two-headed action.
It's certainly not something Microsoft want to deal with on the OS side, and probably is a big reason why Longhorn keeps getting pushed back, much less the armies of non-MS programmers out there.
It's going to happen because the hardware people don't have a choice in the matter.
Re:Meaning.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this a parallel implementation then? In that case performance is only doubled for processes that can be performed in parallel.
I think this is more related to moving to the PM from the P4 architecture as the M series is more scaleable - taing P4 any further requires a lot more power and generates a lot more heat..
Re:dual-core (Score:5, Informative)
Hyperthreading takes one physical processor and makes it appear to be two logical processors. There's still only one core and one execution engine. It appears to be two processors, but a 3.2GHz Pentium with HT will have nowhere near the performance of 2 3.2GHz Pentiums without HT.
Re:AMD's opinion... (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus AMD is running away with the market here in the UK - cheap end... cheapest AMD UKP22, cheapest Intel UKP72. AMD64 UKP138. Nearest equiv. Intel (P4EE 3.2) UKP559.
Haven't seen a new intel box in a while in these parts, except for laptops (Dell insist on using P4s for some reason).
Re:why not (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:CPU's becoming more like GPU's. (Score:5, Interesting)
ATi on the other hand, while they also make chipsets for Intel and AMD, they are much more concentrated on the Video market, and they really always have been (best 2d quality, bar none since a long time ago).
Intel on the other hand, is starting to shift gears to a more mobile computing based company. They know the future of computers is in having them everywhere we go. Now that computers are finally cheap enough to be everywhere, the next step is to have them WITH us everywhere we go. Intel's been focused on Mobile computing for a long time (StrongARM processors, and the -M series of all the pentiums, including the Pentium M itself). Their switch to having Pentium M on the desktop was really a have-to case, as AMD is really starting to encroach on their midrange server and high end desktop markets. They're simply not stupid enough to continue to sell a chip that nobody wanted in the first place. The Pentium 4 was nothing more than a time saver and a way to develop and test technologies that they would need in the future for their server markets. (Hyperthreading was existant on the OLDEST Pentium 4 hardware, though not enabled since it was still very primative). And as you've noticed, lots of the Pentium 4 technologies have already been ported over into other product lines.
AMD is more and more concentrated on taking the server room from Intel. Once they've done this, they'll trickle home just the same way as Intel processors did in ages ago. And they're willing to sacrifice it all on their gamble that the industry won't shift off of x86 simply because it's too deeply embedded. They're not willing to bet on Microsoft and other software giants NOT creating software for a different platform (since Microsoft is really the end-all, be-all for the software), and instead, they embraced this lockin and extended it. The OS doesn't have to be natively compiled and optimized for their platform, and that gives them a huge advantage over the Itanium iron that they were aiming for. When performance really failed to hit the spec of highly optimized Itanium 2 code, they simply shifted gears and aimed it at Xeon instead. This was smarter because they know if they can get businesses to optimize and recompile, Xeon hardware will have to be left behind.
IBM on the other hand, says "fuck everyone else, we're doing it our own way". Working with Apple they developed a platform and got it some market share quickly. Next step: get it more market share by pushing Linux (which is outside of the control of the corporate giant of Microsoft, although this is being challenged by SCO, who was evidently paid off by Microsoft to launch such attacks and alligations). Not that Linux is any faster than anything written in Windows, but that it's cheaper, open, endlessly flexible and faster to update than anything Microsoft can throw at it. This is a safe bet. They're also aiming for the Itanium giant, and have nailed it pretty well with the Virginia Tech terascale project. Many say this is a win for Apple, when really, it's a win for PPC, which is IBM's baby.
Microsoft is really the key card right now. If they port Windows to PPC, it could royally screw both Intel, and AMD out of business. Luckily, Microsoft would take a lot of flac for doing this because of the companies that are so entrenched in X86 optimized code, that moving over to PPC would cost them millions, and they could simply move to x86 Linux instead of the next version of Windows.
So really, CPU's are becoming a lot like CPU's, but the industry doesn't care, and is in a very intersting position with Microsoft at the head. What I'd love to see is nVidia release a chip on a
Re:not bad.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Computers took a depressing turn from what I thought they'd be though. It seems as with everything that companies like Intel, AMD, IBM and Sun all turned their backs to innovation and instead went headlong for scaling. But then again, this was actually the paradigm of the time: taking something and making the most use of it
Re:CPU's becoming more like GPU's. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:AMD f*ucking crazy? (Score:2)
If they've got the technology, they can quietly enjoy their current position and make money until Intel releases something competitive, and trump them a week later (like ATI just did to Nvidia).
Re:AMD vs Intel (Score:2)
Re:AMD vs Intel (Score:2)