Intel to Take Online Suggestions for New Chips 152
hhavensteincw writes "Intel has quietly launched a new online community that it plans to use to take feedback and suggestions from OEMs and end users for new features in its vPro chips and management software. Intel envisions that the community will grow to allow users to get answers from other community members faster than Intel's support group can answer questions."
Faster support? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
All they are trying to do is get the general public to do their work for them. The same way MS releases shit incomplete software and gets suckers/users to pay money to beta-test it for them.
Re: (Score:2)
mmmmm cake... they have it, they want to eat it too.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You're basically asking for a system that is guaranteed to be slower that what could be delivered, and preventing access to a large amount of intellectual firepower. RTFA - it even mentions that fact that is approach is *not*
The most important part: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
- Scott
New chips (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
US would raise taxes from the people and be the ONLY to be able to buy it, and use it for 'defense'. Like processing encrypted internet traffic and shit. You feel me?
Re:New chips (Score:5, Funny)
Let me say "wow", what an insightful advice ! None of our top-notch engineers had
thought about that before. Would you consider joining one of our engineering teams ?
We feel you could be a precious asset to the company.
Thanks,
Intel.
PS: Please don't tell AMD about this extraordinary good idea.
I Might be Able to Wait for Those (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sort of off-topic... (Score:5, Insightful)
AMD/Intel should stand as a primary example of why honest competition is great for a market.
- Scott
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of the old adage: "A fair trade is a trade in which neither party walks away satisfied." Competition is great for customers. Not so much for the corporations in competition.
Not that I'm complaining. I'm just saying.
--Rob
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, a company in a monopoly position will charge whatever they want. And in an immediate sense, this definitely means higher profits.
But in the long term, I think competition can be good for the companies involved, too. (Not in all cases, of course, but in some sectors of the economy.) I think semiconductors is a pretty good example. Imagine if for the last 10 years we had only a single vendor of chips (Intel, AMD, IBM
Re: (Score:2)
So, in short, they actual sell less volume, even if they keep all the volume for themselves, and can charge higher prices.
Ah, but as Apple Computer so eloquently shows, profit = price * volume. If Intel had a monopoly on integrated circuits, they wouldn't care that they sold fewer computers, so long as they got to charge higher prices.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think competition is such a big deal, look at what 3Dfx did to the video card industry, it practically CREATED A NEW INDUSTRY realizing that ther
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
We're stuck with basically the same CPU we had 20 years ago, only faster. It's an ugly instruction set that makes writing compilers unnecessarily difficult. It didn't meet (until recently?) the Popek/Goldberg criteria so it sucked at virtualization. The ISA doesn't really matter (I know!) -- so it might as well be one that makes sense, that people will learn about in school, no?
The machine architecture hasn't improved. We've still got the CPU in this corner
Re:Sort of off-topic... (Score:4, Interesting)
Proprietary software a non-issue ... (Score:2)
Proprietary is largely a non-issue. The Windows NT 4 retail CD contained x86, MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC binaries. Customers who wanted p
What I'd like (Score:2)
A better timekeeping feature than TSC and HPET. TSC isn't necessarily synced between cores, and HPET isn't fast enough or ubiquitous enough (it needs to be on a mandatory chip).
And also stuff that'll help make-
synchronization easier (and across cluster nodes too)- mutex, locks, semaphores etc
doing things atomically easier.
Things like epoll/select more efficient (or allow the creation of something even better?).
"Wait for Event
AMD is no friend, kills the arch ecosystem ... (Score:2)
AMD is no friend in the sense that they relegated us to the x86 architecture, hampering the periodic move from one CPU architecture to another. Intel tried to drop x86 and move on to something new. Under Intel's "plan" if you wanted 64-bit you were supposed to go to Itanium. It was AMD that relegated us to x86 by introd
Re: (Score:2)
Proprietary is largely a non-issue. The Windows NT 4 retail CD contained x86, MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC binaries. Customers who wanted performance, very few, went Alpha. Customers who wanted price, nearly all, went ix86. Vendors of proprietary software that catered to these two markets developed accordingly.
It doesn't matter if Windows works on Alpha or MIPS when there's no applications for it. What are you going to do with an Alpha workstation running Windows?
Re: (Score:2)
However, I disagree with the previous poster's assertion that there was anything "wrong" with AMD introducing x86-64. Compared to the silliness that was the Itanium and its flawed architecture, a continuation of the x86 line was definitely the right choice, especially when 32-bit compatibility was and still is very important for Windows compatibility, unfortunately. Although 32-
If I were to have a hand in development. (Score:5, Funny)
Then, when I boot up Chippy, I'd hear "How may I serve you master?" I'd then boot Windows, open Word and begin typing. I suppose Chippy may interrupt and say "Do you really need me to handle this? It's rather simple." I'd then open seventy five applications and begin decoding the genome.
Chippy would interject "This is a lot for me to handle master. Can you not have me work so hard? It's getting hot in here!"
I'd then open up the interface and change it's name to "Pinky". Sure, Pinky may protest, but unless he kept quiet, I'd open 30 pages of Flash.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
x = 1;
while (x == 1) {
echo "I will work harder";
}
Chippy: No Master! Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!
altivec (Score:3, Interesting)
Two words (Score:1, Offtopic)
And be quick about it!
Excuse me (Score:1)
Nachos (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:2)
I have a keyboard you might find interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like a chip... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
TPM (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though Intel is not going to do this in the foreseable future, at least not in a non-EU release (there's a chance our legislators may wisen up... oh well, whom am I kidding?), yelling loud enough and often enough may at least give Intel a hint that they're doing something wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Repeat after me. TPM isn't DRM! TPM isn't DRM! Got it? Good!
TPM which is controlled by anyone else than the machine's owner is quite related to DRM -- except, instead of restricting what you can do with a piece of software it restricts hardware instead. One of key uses for restricting hardware at the moment is making sure DRM is not being circumvented.
TPM does have a lot of potential beneficial uses, but they all require the owner to have control over the key.
On-die interpreter (Score:4, Funny)
Important suggestion - be truly open (Score:5, Interesting)
It is quite sad that despite their chips being 100s of times faster than a few years ago, so-called 'partners' and OEMs like Microsoft have given the x86 series a bad name - resulting in little or no incremental performance gains for the user community.
Like HP made winprinters and some vendors made winmodems to the customer's ire... and the perennial problems faced by video and audio device mfrs. including big names like Creative... it is clear that the biggest OEM, namely Microsoft determines what customers get to see of "Intel Inside".
The recent thrust towards Open Source drivers for wireless cards from Intel is a very small and incomplete step. Recently at my firm, we talked to Intel for sourcing a 1000 laptops for students joining our colleges. Intel said they would share roadmaps and plans under NDA!!
This is a far cry from 20 years ago when Intel gave out the complete instruction sets and architecture layouts for their 8080; I sort-of remember the Zilog Z-80 did a better job of implementing them. Unless Intel come clean in favour of the truly Open source model, they risk small time players making it big in niche segments - including the biggest niche of them all - the PC market. If not Negroponte, someone else will come out with a non-Intel platform for under $100 and Intel will go down pulling others like Microsoft behind them.
Re:Important suggestion - be truly open (Score:4, Informative)
You mean like here [intel.com] or here [intel.com]???
They have such a big brand name - it doesn't really matter if their designs became public.
Now there you're wrong: Hasn't the competition between AMD and Intel convinced you that, at various times, one of them knew something about processor design that the other hadn't yet implemented?
A tech company giving up its core IP means giving up any edge, which translates to lower profits as competitors overtake the company.
Re: (Score:2)
Incidentally, Zilog still make the Z80 both in its 'classic' form and several newer microcontroller versions.
Potatoes (Score:1, Redundant)
Or how about a chip out of paint?
Perhaps a chip from someone's shoulder...
Re: (Score:2)
I believe that's the approach Buffalo is taking on their new design.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Faster Please (Score:4, Interesting)
I've read that the reason Intel / AMD are going parallel rather than increasing clock rate is due to the problem of heat dissipation. Multi-core is great for some apps (web-server farms, simulation), but is not going to speed up most (single-threaded) apps. Dual core is nice. About the time the industry is going from 16 to 32 cores, I doubt most users will care - or bother to upgrade. And if the heat problem is not solvable - that may be a serious marketing problem for chip makers and computer manufacturers.
Re:Faster Please (Score:5, Interesting)
Amen to that. On the bright side though, if chip growth stagnates for too long, software developers will have to start optimizing and writing streamlined code. That's never a bad thing.
I think we're long overdue for an architecture change, by the way. Can't we just start transitioning out of x86? It's well past its limits -- a Core 2 Duo generates a TON of heat, compared to an equivalent POWER chip. I mean, sure, it's way better than a Pentium 4, but it's still a kW hungry beast. Its FP performance is great -- compared to other x86 chips. Compared to other architectures though, it needs work.
POWER's not that alien either -- it's got a lot of the "improvements" that Intel/AMD have been trying to bolt onto the x86 architecture. Difference is, these improvements already exist, are well tested, and well-performing. Want multi-core? SPARC and POWER have got it. Want high-speed multithreading? Look to the Niagra II. Want virtualization? Look to POWER.
Geek fantasy: IBM open-sources the POWER architecture, Intel licenses it and starts producing a high-end chip, AMD competes. Intel and AMD start to use the improvements on their x86 chips, and, in an effort to one-up one another, start producing high-end desktop POWER-based chips. This trickles down, and soon, the x86 and POWER architectures are in competition. POWER, being a better, more modern design, eventually overtakes x86 (starting with high-end desktop usage, and trickling down to the lower-end.) Multi-core POWER chips (or SPARC, depending on the fantasy) often run with one or two cores dedicated to x86 emulation for backwards compatibility. Microsoft, having just released Blackcomb, finds their target chip slowly relegated to emulation, concurrent with the development of their next OS. Unable to use the existing codebase (which is, by this time, highly x86-centric), Microsoft is forced to roll out a new OS, built from scratch. Using some of the lessons learned from Microsoft Research, a new OS is built, embracing the core values of security, modularity, and portability. While the OS is good, the lost development time provides the boost that *nix needed. Linux takes marketshare, as does Mac OS X. During Microsoft's transition period, Apple seizes the opportunity, and releases Mac OS X for all x86 boxes. The driver situation is a little rocky at first, but open source helps ease the pain. By wholeheartedly supporting open source development, Apple leverages their work, soon gaining support across the board. Already having years of experience with the POWER chips, their dual-platform OS development allows them to provide compatible OS's for POWER and x86 computers -- and translation software (already written) helps unify the two.
Well... that's my dream anyways.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, many competitors have tried and failed: the weight of the installed codebase is too much.
> Can't we just start transitioning out of x86? It's well past its limits -- a Core 2 Duo generates a TON of heat, compared to an equivalent POWER chip.
Proof? Remember that Apple moved from PPC to x86 because IBM wasn't able to make a good CPU for laptops.
I don't like x86 ISA either, but it killed every other ISA in the PC and small server do
Re: (Score:2)
CMOS uses power when it switches states (when it's quiescent, it uses nothing but a very tiny leakage current). The faster you make CMOS switch, the more heat it generates. You can't get away from that. You can mitigate it with lower voltages, but you then run into other significant engineering problems, and the CPU cores are already running
Hey Intel... the CPU is a commodity! (Score:2, Funny)
ROFL!!!
More registers please. (Score:2)
Screw silicon and metal (Score:2)
UFO Tech (Score:1)
Payment for used suggestions? (Score:1)
Add a FPGA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Only problem is, to run the FPGA portion at speeds even remotely close enough to be of use would eat up a lot of power.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
but thats not what you do, you program them to do lots and LOTS of operations simultaneously in that one clock cycle.
so where as your general purpose cpu might have done one multiply, your fpga could have done an entire convolution matrix, or
This is why a section of fpga, if it had enough gates, would be really cool in a cpu. or at least as a standardised co-pro in some manner, so that you could rely o
That'll be productive... (Score:2)
There's the rants from the green party I suppose - and the "stop acting like a monopolist" crowd.
Real innovation... (Score:3, Funny)
I have a few (Score:3, Interesting)
Open up the xeon cpu to chipset links so you have more choice in chipsets like AMD systems do.
Dump FB-DIMMS from xeon systems or make the same chipset with FB-DIMMS or DDR 2/3 ECC. The new xeno chipset with 2 pci-e 2.0 x16 slots should be FB-DIMM or DDR ECC.
Make the new chipsets with all pci-e 2.0 slots not some 2.0 and the rest 1.1 yes the new xeon chip with pci-e 2.0 will only have 2 slots with pci-e 2.0.
Go to true quad-core not 2 dual's linked by FSB.
Dump the FSB and go to the HT bus.
Re: (Score:2)
My Mother-in-Law has a suggestion: (Score:1, Funny)
The summary fails. (Score:2)
Intel has quietly launched a new online community that it plans to use to take feedback and suggestions from OEMs and end users for new features in its vPro chips and management software.
The article does not mention anything about this. In fact:
Intel envisions that the community will grow to allow users to get answers from other community members faster than Intel's support group can answer questions.
is more like it. It's an attempt to connect people who know about Intel processors with people who want to know about them. Lets face it, if Intel wanted feedback or information about how best to proceed with chip design, there are plenty of places they could go and listen. No, Intel are NOT interested in listening to your ideas on optimising their chips, though I understand how such a skew might generate public interest.
I want a Six Million Dollar CPU ... (Score:2)
Oh, and use less power too.
type checking, etc for dynamic languages (Score:2)
Like LISP machines Intel could throw in some dynamic type instructions, reference counting/garbage collection, or even hash/dictionary mechanisms. Then our dynamic languages could fly, assuming someone wrote a compiler to support all that...
Re: (Score:2)
essentially some kind of a write barrier (a way to mark some pages write-only and catch the write-protect exception in user space on the fast path, both preferably without any CPU pipeline flushes)
You can do this by using mprotect() and then catching the SegV signal, but it's only page granularity (segment granularity on some older chip / OS combinations).
Then again, garbage collectors could be most effectively improved if the OS kernel co-operated by letting the GC know which pages are swapped out and which aren't. You can use mlock() to prevent swapping, although there are generally limits on the amount of memory you can protect like this.
The system call you are looking for is mincore(), which has been around since 4.4BSD.
My wishlist for a CPU:
top suggestions for new chips from end users (Score:2)
2. BBQ
3. Salt & Vinegar
4. Nacho cheese
5. Ridges!
Bad idea (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be quiet about this too if I were Intel. This is a stupid idea. Half your end users (including me) couldn't care less about what chip they have in their computer as long at works. The other half of your end users want the chips in pink or with an integrated LED. Either way a forum like this will just piss people off, because even the good suggestions aren't going to mesh with their five-year development schedule.
All I ask for is a chip (Score:3, Funny)
Programmable TPM (Score:5, Interesting)
Can I suggest, erm, (heh) power? (Score:2, Funny)
How about DS-UWB?
No, I'm not surprised about that, either.
They're taking advantage of a new trend (Score:3, Insightful)
Then some corporate drones looked at what was happening and though "how can we take advantage?" So they got the "each contribute a small amount" part but overlooked the "everyone takes advantage" part. The corporate version is more like "everyone contributes a small amount and the corporation takes advantage". Many corporations have tried this plan and they've been left wondering "what went wrong?"
So here comes Intel - they're asking the people to contribute ideas and then they'll take advantage of them. We've seen this play out before and the result is always the same. Hey, Intel - if you really want people to do your work for you, you need to include some way to compensate them in your plan. You didn't really expect them to do this for you for free, did you?
I suspect they did - and when this plan fails miserably they'll pick some unfortunate person in their corporation to take the blame for the failure. They'll never for a moment think that their plan was flawed and doomed to failure from the start...
I have a suggestion... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't mean the current minor onboard garbage they're putting out now. I mean real, high end chips to combat the GeForce 8800 series or the Radeon x2900 series. With their own GPU development department, and their open drivers, they could really blow open the market.
Why not?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And do you really want a single company controlling not only the CPU market but also the GPU, wireless, and what else markets? Doesn't this sound like giving too much power to a single manufacturer?
I think AMD-ATI will soon satisfy GNU/Linux and BSD users. But even if they don't you can always support projects that seek to produce open graphics hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that's what happens when I slashdot while SQLing a DB just after I wake up...
Re: (Score:2)
Regardless, as far as low end graphics are concerned, Intel's GMA 950 has actually proved that they don't completely suck. Now if they attempted to enter the high end market, I think they could provide some valuable competition to get rid of the semi-stagnation that has sort of appeared,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"quietly lauched"? (Score:3, Funny)
one suggestion I would make is bring down the cost of mainstream CPUs to a more affordable price, like $10 or so. That would be nice. Thanks Intel.
Easy (Score:2)
Eh... they require registration (+ my wish list) (Score:2)
I doubt anything interesting would come out of it. But ... let them try.
My personal wish-list was always made of improved string operations:
- support more operations (or rather allow any operation - add, sub, mul to stringified),
- support source and destination increments to allow string operations to work on structures,
- handle all the alignment idiotism internally: when possible source and destination pointers should be aligned internally to get most out of string operations on plain arrays,
-
Re:Eh... they require registration (+ my wish list (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not saying to remove default.
Think about it. Now you can use only one register set as input/output to string operations. Let's call it default. But why to limit ops only to one set of registers?
Main problem of IA-32/64 optimization was always lack of registers. And this is also what contributes to sparse use of advanced CPU commands - that they often require special set of registers. And at the point where particular op might be useful, other optimization could have been already made and required
Computing Appliance (Score:4, Interesting)
I want a small, fanless computing appliance that is going to last 20 years or more with zero maintenance other than software. No dust, no noise, no ticking time bomb spinning parts and electrolytic capacitors. Something that will not require me buying a huge solar panel if I want to go that route. If I have data storage needs, USB, firewire or eSATA external hard drive enclosures will suffice.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How to tap into open resources for the benefit ... (Score:2)
Does anyone keep a prior art log of the suggestions?
GPL Their whole E5345 processor. (Score:2)
We should all request a GPL implementation of their latest processors..
Identification for hardware (Score:2)
Each piece of hardware should carry:
1) a link to a website where drivers can be found
2) a unique ID so that if the website if offline (company broke or domain hijacked) you can still search in an easy way on driver sites like drivershq.
3
well... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
*(Cores are process-shrinked versions of the Intel 8088)
Captain Marvell and the Super-Duper-Threading (Score:4, Interesting)
*(Cores are process-shrinked versions of the Intel 8088)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Anecdotally, the company is like 70% asian according to a friend of mine who works there.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, but you will get a free Intel coffee mug with a picture of your billion-dollar CPU on it.