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I think that was the point made in this story. Microsoft has worked hard over the years to make its systems not interoperable with others', so that customers had to buy the whole collection of enterprise services from just them.

Now that their products are apparently a worse deal in some cases than competing products from other vendors and/or open source software, their all-or-nothing strategy is at risk of backfiring spectacularly.

The tragedy, if one can call it that when Microsoft is suffering, is that this appears to be almost a play-for-play repeat of IBM's mistakes in the 1980's and 1990's, if I recall correctly. Microsoft should have seen this coming miles and miles away.

After I read the summary and all the links, they could have just put up http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/14/microsoft-has-failed/ and a period!

Samsung announced they were terminating the LCD supply a few weeks ago:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/10/22/1757207/samsung-terminates-lcd-contract-with-apple

Now we have CPU price going up.

Some commentators have been predicting this for a while:
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/10/23/apple-vs-samsung-samsung-put-the-boot-in-hard/

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/10/31/microsoft-surface-can-not-compete-against-real-tablet/

I find it interesting that any comments on that "pre-release" article (that didn't even test an actual Surface device) are hidden and have been closed. "Semi-accurate" indeed.

The pure anti-MSFT sentiment is palpable and equally as misleading as the article claims MSFT to be; I'd call it a fountain of non-information.

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/10/31/microsoft-surface-can-not-compete-against-real-tablet/

Intel wants to be the only company that can meet your needs. That way, they can make you pay premium prices for their chips. This is perfectly understandable; that is what is best for Intel.

Apple wants to be vertically integrated. They want full control over everything they do. Partly this is so they can keep as much as possible of the money they collect; partly this is so that they can guarantee excellent quality and excellent availability. This is what is best for Apple, and it isn't bad for their customers either.

Intel does not want to become just another ARM source, competing on price with all the others. But Apple will never lock themselves in to depending on Intel for mobile chips, when ARM chips have been shown to be more than adequate. And Apple would not be investing in custom ARM chips if it was planning to adopt Intel mobile chips.

People keep pointing out that Intel's mobile x86 chips are competitive with ARM. That won't cut it. Intel's chips would have to be better, and so much better that the risk of depending on Intel is worth it.

That was the case for the PowerPC to x86 transition! Intel's chips were so much better than PowerPC for laptops that it was worth getting into an entangling relationship with Intel. AMD was not able to guarantee delivery of the massive quantities of chips Apple was planning to sell, and Intel was, so AMD wasn't really an option... but at least they served to keep Intel from trying to charge totally outrageous prices for their chips; there was always a credible threat of going to AMD.

Hmm. It's looking like AMD is going to crater in spectacular fashion soon. I wonder if Apple will make a serious attempt to buy what's left of the company. That would enable Apple to make its own x86 chips! Eh, probably not. AMD is behind Intel on process, so switching to AMD chips would mean taking a hit on performance, power use, or both.

The "SemiAccurate" web site thinks that Apple will transition to using ARM chips for laptops, not just for mobile devices, once ARM chips are good enough (which they will be soon). So, transitioning away from x86 and to, say, multi-core 64-bit ARM chips is another way Apple can untangle from Intel.

Apple may not be in a big hurry to actually complete the transition away from Intel chips; just a credible threat of switching to ARM chips might be enough to negotiate good prices on x86 chips. That would leave lower power consumption as the main reason to go to ARM, but a laptop's display is probably the worst power drain, especially with a Retina display.

steveha

I would be more impressed with your comments if you would provide specific examples. What has Charlie said that was inaccurate?

He probably heard that AMD is planning on licensing out its graphics cores, and misunderstood it as outsourcing.

Your thoughts on what he "probably" heard do not impress me. Please provide examples of past predictions that have been proven to be wrong.

Since you are raising doubts, I decided to do a check. I remembered that AMD had layoffs in 2011. Did Charlie accurately report on those?

2011-11-02 Semi-Accurate: Rumors of AMD Executive Layoff Pick Up Steam

2011-11-03 CNN Money: AMD cuts 10% of its workforce

So, chalk one up for Charlie.

I'm not, necessarily, saying you are wrong. I'm saying you need to give examples to back up what you are saying.

Rory Read has repeatedly said that he wants to restructure the company to use its strengths better. If they start outsourcing things, graphics will be the last one to go, when they sell of the company and shut the doors.

Charlie agrees with you that it would be insane to outsource the graphics. Quote:

Sources tell SemiAccurate that the one division of AMD that is making money, graphics, is going to have a lot of the engineering outsourced. The new crop of senior managers doesn't seem to like the Canadian outpost much, and the result is going to be seen in the layoffs. Far from their being any logic to this move, it seems to be more borne out of personal fiefdoms than sanity, and will sink the company. There are a lot of names bandied about with Emile Ianni being named more often than others. We shall see who gets the bonuses soon enough.

The date SemiAccurate hears is October 25th, conveniently after the company's quarterly conference call. If these layoffs happen as deeply as we hear, and more problematically where we hear, we can not see AMD surviving.

October 25? Less than a week away. I'll watch for AMD news.

By the way, Charlie posts on Slashdot sometimes. What you write here, he might see and even respond.

AMD management made some bad decisions, then got rid of all the people who argued against those decisions. Now they are going to cut costs by firing the engineers who could develop new products. It is now inevitable: AMD is doomed.

"Unless the entire board and their puppets are removed in the next week or two, the little chance AMD has now will vanish. There is no up side here."

AMD's layoffs target engineering -- Board incompetence dooms the company

"AMD senior management, or (mis)management, as we are now calling them, have delayed the roadmap past the critical point. Project Win was survivable, barely. The churn of technical talent made things worse, far worse, and put the company at the breaking point. Layoffs sapped confidence, and senior management was negligent in not messaging a damn thing to those who mattered internally and externally. The cuts that will follow ensure that the plans in place are not achievable, and SemiAccurate can not see AMD surviving at this point."

AMD is imploding because management doesn't understand semiconductors -- Analysis: You can't Win by ignoring fundamentals

AMD management made some bad decisions, then got rid of all the people who argued against those decisions. Now they are going to cut costs by firing the engineers who could develop new products. It is now inevitable: AMD is doomed.

"Unless the entire board and their puppets are removed in the next week or two, the little chance AMD has now will vanish. There is no up side here."

AMD's layoffs target engineering -- Board incompetence dooms the company

"AMD senior management, or (mis)management, as we are now calling them, have delayed the roadmap past the critical point. Project Win was survivable, barely. The churn of technical talent made things worse, far worse, and put the company at the breaking point. Layoffs sapped confidence, and senior management was negligent in not messaging a damn thing to those who mattered internally and externally. The cuts that will follow ensure that the plans in place are not achievable, and SemiAccurate can not see AMD surviving at this point."

AMD is imploding because management doesn't understand semiconductors -- Analysis: You can't Win by ignoring fundamentals

Hey Charlie, if you're on Slashdot, would you like to comment on your blistering excorication of Ultrabooks?

Yes, I know SA is basically a hardware tabloid, but they usually get at least some things right...

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/27/intels-clover-trail-is-a-bloated-nightmare/

I'm not going to comment on anything they wrote; make your own conclusions.

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/27/intels-clover-trail-is-a-bloated-nightmare/

The author of this makes no attempt to pretend to be impartial, but if his facts are correct I think his conclusions must be correct also.

My favorite comment:

You can buy a full Nexus 7 for $30 more than what Microsoft gets for the software on a Clover Trail tablet, and that is before the added hardware costs. The Nexus works better, has better battery life, and is not a security nightmare either.

steveha

All in all, this is a good thing for AMD, and not nearly so good for Apple. The litany of execs leaving AMD of late has caused SemiAccurate to say that nothing good can come of this far too often for our liking lately. This time, all we can say is that a lot of good can and will come of this. Jim Keller is one of the good ones, and you don't leave directorships at Apple without a damn good reason.

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/08/01/apples-cpu-architect-jim-keller-moves-back-to-amd/

P.S. I liked the subheading: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave AMD"

steveha

semiaccurate.com has a lot more information. Not just the USB 3.0 group, but the USB 2.0 group as well has adopted this approved this "power delivery" spec. There are USB 2.0 PD and USB 3.0 PD icons shown in the link. So it looks to me like instead of USB 3.1 and USB 2.1, with or without PD will continue to be an option so they'll probably be known as USB 2.0 PD and USB 3.0 PD.

Also, USB 3.0 by itself has increased power availability: 900mA instead of the USB 2.0 500mA. This alone obviates the need for dual USB connectors to power an external 2.5" hard drive.

I enjoy reading the articles posted on SemiAccurate.com about AMD, nVidia, Intel, etc. Most of the articles are by two writers, and the most entertainingly acerbic ones are by Charlie Demerjian (I'll call him "CD").

Five months ago, CD thought nVidia was going to crush AMD on the high end:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/01/19/nvidia-kepler-vs-amd-gcn-has-a-clear-winner/

However, nVidia seemingly can't produce their high-end chips in any useful quantity. So, CD snipes at nVidia about that in his comments about the new Radeon HD 7970:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/06/21/amd-launches-tahiti-2-aka-hd7970ghz-edition/

Executive summary (aka TL;DR): AMD has production of high-end chips running smoothly and they are now able to produce, in quantity, chips that are reliable at higher clock rates. AMD is actually shipping a graphics card that performs better than what nVidia is actually shipping.

steveha

I enjoy reading the articles posted on SemiAccurate.com about AMD, nVidia, Intel, etc. Most of the articles are by two writers, and the most entertainingly acerbic ones are by Charlie Demerjian (I'll call him "CD").

Five months ago, CD thought nVidia was going to crush AMD on the high end:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/01/19/nvidia-kepler-vs-amd-gcn-has-a-clear-winner/

However, nVidia seemingly can't produce their high-end chips in any useful quantity. So, CD snipes at nVidia about that in his comments about the new Radeon HD 7970:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/06/21/amd-launches-tahiti-2-aka-hd7970ghz-edition/

Executive summary (aka TL;DR): AMD has production of high-end chips running smoothly and they are now able to produce, in quantity, chips that are reliable at higher clock rates. AMD is actually shipping a graphics card that performs better than what nVidia is actually shipping.

steveha

I enjoy reading the articles posted on SemiAccurate.com about AMD, nVidia, Intel, etc. Most of the articles are by two writers, and the most entertainingly acerbic ones are by Charlie Demerjian (I'll call him "CD").

Five months ago, CD thought nVidia was going to crush AMD on the high end:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/01/19/nvidia-kepler-vs-amd-gcn-has-a-clear-winner/

However, nVidia seemingly can't produce their high-end chips in any useful quantity. So, CD snipes at nVidia about that in his comments about the new Radeon HD 7970:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/06/21/amd-launches-tahiti-2-aka-hd7970ghz-edition/

Executive summary (aka TL;DR): AMD has production of high-end chips running smoothly and they are now able to produce, in quantity, chips that are reliable at higher clock rates. AMD is actually shipping a graphics card that performs better than what nVidia is actually shipping.

steveha

The iPhone proved a hugely popular choice and the smartphone started to boom. Established players Palm, Nokia, RIM, Motorola Mobility, Samsung, HTC and LG faced a difficult choice as they clearly needed a new winner. Palm made the wrong choice to go their own way and imploded. Nokia went their own way and suffered but survived on momentum. RIM continued to go their own way, confident their customers were committed due to the nature of their offering. When Windows phone came out, almost all the survivors hedged their bets with it but RIM persisted in continuing to go their own way and imploded. When Windows Phone proved an unpopular choice most of the survivors kept it as a hedge but emphasized their alternative, but for some reason Nokia bet the farm on it and imploded.

- History of Smartphone Economics, 2009-2012.

"If you bet the farm often enough eventually you win a factory job."

- Anonymous

Have you seen any updates recently?

All I know is what Google knows. I don't know anything new.

Have you seen these? If this rumors site is to be believed, nVidia is slipping its schedule, which would explain why they are not talking much right now.

I don't know much about this rumors site, but this guy sure seems to like criticizing nVidia.

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/08/05/what-is-project-denver-based-on/

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/10/19/nvidia-tegra-roadmap-slips-a-year/

steveha

Have you seen any updates recently?

All I know is what Google knows. I don't know anything new.

Have you seen these? If this rumors site is to be believed, nVidia is slipping its schedule, which would explain why they are not talking much right now.

I don't know much about this rumors site, but this guy sure seems to like criticizing nVidia.

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/08/05/what-is-project-denver-based-on/

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/10/19/nvidia-tegra-roadmap-slips-a-year/

steveha

According to Semiaccurate there's a mask design flaw in the GK104, which has caused poor yields. Less than 10,000 GTX 680s shipped worldwide, even though it's been released a month ago.
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/05/01/why-cant-nvidia-supply-keplergk104gtx680/

Yes, Tegra is severely bandwidth restricted with only a 32-bit bus.
But the worst problem with Tegra 3 is the manufacturing costs are much higher than the competition because the 5th core uses expensive 40LPG process:
http://semiaccurate.com/2011/11/09/tegra-3-missed-performance-goals-by-wide-margins/

The irony in this is that this is coming from a company that presented chunks of wood as their next-gen graphics cards.

I had no idea what you were talking about but a quick search showed this:

http://semiaccurate.com/2009/10/01/nvidia-fakes-fermi-boards-gtc/

LOL... Nvidia faked a graphics board with a piece of PCB-looking plastic/wood that was screwed to the side of a PC with common hardware-store grade wood screws.

$15-20 bucks more than Intel's pricing would probably be too much?

People such as myself are able to observe how app store has been made extremely prominent in OS X, observe how Apple announced plans for ARM,

What sort of "plans for ARM"? Plans for the ARM architecture come from ARM Holdings, not from Apple. Plans for future An processors would come from Apple Inc., as would plans for use of ARM with OSes other than iOS; my suspicion is that you're referring to the last of those. If so, as you've used the word "announced", could you please give a URL for the Apple press release wherein they've announced that they plan to have a line of Mac OS X devices running ARM? (NOTE: something such as, for example, "Word has reached SemiAccurate that Apple (NASDAQ:APPL) is going to show Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) the door, at least as far as laptops are concerned. It won’t be really soon, but we are told it is a done deal." is not an "announcement" or a "press release", it's a "rumor".)

I'm sure developers will get supported in one way or another, probably by being required to develop on more expensive Intel Macs while they still exist.

And when they no longer exist?

Well it certainly helps GlobalFoundry to have more than one client. Apparently GF is still scaling up (and down) it's sub 32 nm processes and facilities and will be able to give TSMC some serious competition soon. AMD can only benefit from this competition.

For the future, I think This is what we are going to see from AMD. An integrated, heterogeneous MPSoC architecture with open (or at least standardized) on chip interfaces that might allow a mix and match CPU Core, GPU, PIO and Memory. Sort of taking Fusion one step further.

There are reports that Google has been testing servers using low-power many-core servers from Tilera and Quanta. Facebook is also test-driving Tilera chips and seeing promising results when using them on key-value pair apps like memcached. When you have 900,000 servers, you get plenty of attention from processor and server vendors.

Nvidia and Via quit too.

I give it 5 years tops. Lion is not only a step towards that direction, but also a test. If apps on macs start selling faster than expected, kiss the Mac as you know it goodbye and replaced with a desktop sized IPad.

What possible reason could they have to do any of that?

Every single person who says Apple is going to lock down the Macs *ALWAYS* cites one or more of the following:

1. That's "the direction" they are going.
2. iOS outsells Mac OS X.
3. They will replace Macs with iPads.

And yet not a SINGLE one of those "reasons" make a compelling case for Apple to lock down Mac OS X. Why would Apple make the Mac *WORSE*? It makes absolutely no sense.

Apple will do whatever they think makes Macs better. There is absolutely *ZERO* indication that they think locking down Mac OS X, or replacing it with iOS, will make Macs better.

As for them updating macs, yes they're upgrading them now. Now how about a year from now? Two Years? throughout their current presentations you keep hearing the "Post PC" era. What do you think that means to Apple.

It means exactly this:

People will want the "post PC" devices more and more, until eventually that's the default consumer choice. But people will still want PCs, and Apple will continue to sell them. Until Moore's Law and other technological advances completely obsolete the notion of a PC, Apple will sell PCs. Apple has absolutely *NO PLANS* to replace the Mac with iPads. Absolutely none.

They will stop selling Macs when people stop buying them.

Why do you think there's already rumors of Apple dumping Intel for their own in house Arm Chip?

Why do I think there are such rumors? Because some people are fucking idiots.

And as for Thunderbolt, there's talk that Thunderbolt is DOA

Yes, talk by said fucking idiots. I wouldn't throw your hat in with them. MS actually is porting Windows to ARM, do you think that means MS is going to lock down Windows and abandon Intel too?

It's mildly possible Apple would make a MacBook Air style computer based on ARM, if they can make a chip fast enough and with low enough power requirements to justify it, but they won't be abandoning Intel any time soon.

As for the people wanting Mac's, that easy. You get Steve Jobs on a stage and say that "OSX is dead" and "IDesk" is the future of Apple" and problem solved. The people want what Apple Tells them to want.

Rubbish. Apple makes things people want. If they didn't, people wouldn't buy them. The only thing Apple "tells" people is what *APPLE* will make. It's up to the consumer to decide whether Apple is right or not.

I give it 5 years tops. Lion is not only a step towards that direction, but also a test. If apps on macs start selling faster than expected, kiss the Mac as you know it goodbye and replaced with a desktop sized IPad. As for them updating macs, yes they're upgrading them now. Now how about a year from now? Two Years? throughout their current presentations you keep hearing the "Post PC" era. What do you think that means to Apple. Why do you think there's already rumors of Apple dumping Intel for their own in house Arm Chip? And as for Thunderbolt, there's talk that Thunderbolt is DOA

As for the people wanting Mac's, that easy. You get Steve Jobs on a stage and say that "OSX is dead" and "IDesk" is the future of Apple" and problem solved. The people want what Apple Tells them to want.

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/01/19/compulab-shows-embedded-amd-brazos-system/

1.6GHz dual-core, HD6310, no moving parts. Sure its Industrial-design, so it won't be as cheap as a bare board; but it should last a good long time. Add your choice of SSD or moving-parts 2.5" HDD, RAM, and 2 optional Mini Card PCI-E cards, and you're done. I'm hoping multiple companies come out with these, and I can pick one up for under $150 myself...

According to semiaccurate:

" If you try to use Sandy Bridge under Linux, it is simply broken. We tried to test an Intel DH67BL (Bearup Lake) with 2GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3, an Intel 32GB SLC SSD, and a ThermalTake Toughpower 550W PSU. At first we tried to install vanilla Ubuntu 10.10/AMD64 from a Kingston Datatraveler Ultimate 32GB USB3 stick. The idea was that it would speed things up significantly on install.
That's when the crippling bug surfaced. It seems the USB3 ports on the Intel DH67BL don't want to work. Ubuntu 10.10 installs fail during the install, no fix was found. Plug the same stick into a USB2 port, and it works fine. Alternately, install from a USB2 stick on a USB3 port, and things work fine."

source: http://semiaccurate.com/2011/01/02/sandy-bridge-biggest-disapointment-year/

Here is a semiaccurate article on this, with human-readable analysis: http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/08/04/intel-settles-ftc-and-nvidia-win-big/

Secondly, Intel doesn't need to be bastards, they can just continue with the bog-standard half-speed PCIe 2.0 link that they have on their Atoms. This doesn't provide enough bandwidth to run a retired analog cigarette vending machine let alone a modern GPU. If Intel doesn't want a GPU on their platforms, it is trivial to abide by the letter of the law and still screw Nvidia. Won't this be fun to watch?

Rumors have it that Intel was making changes to their chipsets that detected Nvidia GPUs and hamstrung performance on them. Having the GPU not work at all would be too obvious, but performance losses are a bit of a "he said, she said" argument. These changes broke the PCIe spec, but are basically impossible to prove without a lot of specialized equipment, trained engineers, and time. Given that it was Nvidia complaining, it is more likely that it was simply bad engineering by the GPU (formerly) giant. Either way, it is a moot point now.

"... if NVidia dies..."

What SemiAccurate article indicates that nVidia may die? This one?

Nvidia's Fermi GTX480 is broken and unfixable -- Hot, slow, late and unmanufacturable.

Quote: "Nvidia on the other hand did not do their homework at all. In its usual 'bull in a china shop' way, SemiAccurate was told several times that the officially blessed Nvidia solution to the problem was engineering by screaming at people. Needless to say, while cathartic, it does not change chip design or the laws of physics. It doesn't make you friends either."

If someone doesn't accept that it is strategically-pragmatic to invest in the ( work of ) only company who happens to be investing full-time coding teams into improving your lot WHILE REDUCING YOUR DEPENDENCY ON THEIR CLOSED-SOURCE FUTURE-DEVOTION, and has been doing-so FOR YEARS...

But instead invests in a company that could stonewall your future-use of their products ( if NVidia dies ( looking more & more likely, every day: see http://www.semiaccurate.com/ , their card won't work with kernel 2.8, unless the Nuveau, or whatever they're called, drivers work ), and they call that pragmatic?

lol

Tactics isn't strategy.

Neither is zealotry.

Strategy is LONG-term.

Tactics is SHORT-term.

Zealotry disregards evidence in BOTH time-scales: it is simple prejudice.

Captain Obvious!

And you thought it was an off-handed joke... :)

FWIW, it taped out a few weeks before I wrote this unworthy self link.

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/04/21/atis-southern-islands-tapes-out/

That would put hot lots back about, oh, a couple of weeks ago, so yeah, right on track.

              -Charlie

http://www.semiaccurate.com/
for examples of NVidia's authoritarian belligerance...

You assume that they will continue to code for Linux users/gamers, AND
you assume that NVidia won't use DMCA/ACTA to stop Nouveau coders permanently
( for unauthorizedly accessing/messing-with NVidia property ).

Look around you at the way the world is becoming more authoritarian...

You are *gambling*, and I'm not making the gamble you are.

As for AMD taking years to get Linux up to speed,
in 2009 it STILL wasn't possible to open a complex Office document
through either CrossOver Office *OR* OpenOffice.org
( embedded documents aren't always intact or accessible )
: it TAKES years to build that complex/involved a system & get it right.

4 more years, and a significant portion of the world will turn to FLOSS.

No sooner, though: too much more work to do...

Cheers,

You're going to love the Android slates then. Multitasking is a standard feature of course since Android is based on Linux. Preemptive multitasking (not the hopeless cooperative multitasking of Windows < W95) has been a feature of Linux since before Linus unleashed it on the public in 1991. Unix and other BSD based operating systems have had it since 1969 of course. You will probably be able to install a BSD based operating system on your Android slate before too long after it's introduced because those guys are legendary for getting their stuff to run on almost anything that executes instructions.

Anyway, the iPhone OS of the iPad has multitasking (it's based on Unix technologies too) - Apple just doesn't allow it for third party apps. That's one reason why the iPad will be my slate of last recourse. Getting Apple gear to work with a real OS is a pain. I would frankly rather Tuxify the HP slate that comes with W7 and the Intel Atom, even though the battery life won't be there, because my computers belong to me and they do what I tell them to or they get disassembled - sometimes in a most informal fashion. The Windows tax is a nuisance in that case, but I might be willing to pay it. By far I would prefer an Android slate with Snapdragon or equivalent (hardware video decode and >1GHz CPU).

BTW, we could have had this stuff nearly a year ago. Asus had an ARM (Snapdragon/Android) netbook nearly a year ago that was looking to be the darling of Computex but someone gave them a call and they "disappeared it" in the middle of the trade show. Keep your eye on this topic, as no doubt we'll be seeing an antitrust investigation one day that enlightens us about what happened here. I think ASUS is going to regret playing ball here - that thing was sweet, they had it, and they let it go - they caved. They probably got a one year discount on XP licenses in return. Sigh.

280W power drain, 550mm^2 chip size => no thanks, i'll pass.

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/01/17/nvidia-gf100-takes-280w-and-unmanufacturable

With NVidia unable to release something competitive and therefore creating a "new" 3xx series into being through renaming 2xx series cards, the gts360m as well, those with a clue will be buying ATI for the time being.

Sadly, the average consumer will only look at higher number and is likely to be conned.

With NVidia unable to release something competitive and therefore creating a "new" 3xx series into being through renaming 2xx series cards, the gts360m as well, those with a clue will be buying ATI for the time being.

Sadly, the average consumer will only look at higher number and is likely to be conned.

What? The scheduler for Larabee doesnt run on the host - it runs on the graphics chip (cite). Note, this is different from scheduling that happens in the traditional graphics driver (shader compiling etc). Even if it did run on the host, it would have its own scheduler, just like DirectX10 adapters do today with WDDM drivers, and just like OSX.

What is so special about Grand Central Dispatch? It is a decent thread pool implementation. NT has had one of those for a LONG time (cite). The .NET base class library supports it directly (cite). We have some really cool stuff in Parallel LINK (PLINK). C# 4.0 (and .NET4.0) provide a set of very sophisticated mechanisms for data and task level parallelism (cite, cite, cite) .

Said another way, Windows has supported task level parallelism for a long time and .NET makes it super-duper easy to use. (the Win32 stuff isn’t as clean as it could be..., but it works just fine and isn’t terribly difficult to use).

Regarding Snapdragon, the article you linked to on semiaccurate.com is the worst kind of yellow journalism. It is the inter-tubes after all - nobody realizes they are a dog... Windows Mobile has run on ARM forever. Its not exactly the dominant OS.

Talk about dominance, Qualcoms chip sets and software are way, way more proprietary and closed than anyting from MSFT. I have a friend who is a mobile developer (doesnt work for MSFT) and it just drives him batty how controlling and closed Qualcom is with their stuff.

-Foredecker

What? The scheduler for Larabee doesnt run on the host - it runs on the graphics chip (cite). Note, this is different from scheduling that happens in the traditional graphics driver (shader compiling etc). Even if it did run on the host, it would have its own scheduler, just like DirectX10 adapters do today with WDDM drivers, and just like OSX.

What is so special about Grand Central Dispatch? It is a decent thread pool implementation. NT has had one of those for a LONG time (cite). The .NET base class library supports it directly (cite). We have some really cool stuff in Parallel LINK (PLINK). C# 4.0 (and .NET4.0) provide a set of very sophisticated mechanisms for data and task level parallelism (cite, cite, cite) .

Said another way, Windows has supported task level parallelism for a long time and .NET makes it super-duper easy to use. (the Win32 stuff isn’t as clean as it could be..., but it works just fine and isn’t terribly difficult to use).

Regarding Snapdragon, the article you linked to on semiaccurate.com is the worst kind of yellow journalism. It is the inter-tubes after all - nobody realizes they are a dog... Windows Mobile has run on ARM forever. Its not exactly the dominant OS.

Talk about dominance, Qualcoms chip sets and software are way, way more proprietary and closed than anyting from MSFT. I have a friend who is a mobile developer (doesnt work for MSFT) and it just drives him batty how controlling and closed Qualcom is with their stuff.

-Foredecker

Well in that case... you're probably right about Larrabee. Microsoft's scheduler isn't ready for this hardware, but OS-X has Grand Central Dispatch so it would behoove Microsoft for it to not come out yet. But it does seem more likely that Intel's unable to get it to work or can't get the SDK ready than that someone convinced them it was a bad idea.

About Snapdragon I'm not so sure...

If the availability situation now is worse than it was at launch, that's distressing.

There may be a technical reason for the supply problems. Take with a pinch of salt, since this is Charlie Demerjian:

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/11/16/ati-58xx-parts-delayed-bit-more/

I suspect that if you're in the market for a high end video card now, you're still better off ordering a 58xx than waiting for Fermi.

I was trying not to pimp my own stuff, but since you asked.....

Short story #1, the G200b based cards are huge and need expensive PCBs. They cost more to make than the upcoming and likely faster ATI Juniper parts, so NV will have to wrap a $20 bill around each card to make them sell. Not a long term good business plan. I can't say more because I was prebriefed on the ATI cards and agreed not to talk about them. When you read this, keep in mind that I gave Nvidia a very generous benefit of the doubt. You will understand why a lot better next week or so.
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/06/nvidia-will-crater-gtx260-and-gtx275-prices-soon/

Short story #2, a short while after I finished the above story, I got a call detailing how the GTX260/275/285 and possibly 295 were being killed. I wrote it up here:
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/06/nvidia-kills-gtx285-gtx275-gtx260-abandons-mid-and-high-end-market/

If you go back and look, the Nvidia denials and attacks against me are personal and do not address the facts, just attack the messenger. Kyle posted one from Ken Brown at Nvidia here:
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2009/10/07/nvidia_abandons_market6363636363/
Note HOW they say it, and what they do NOT say. They did the EXACT same thing a year ago when they were denying the chipset knifings. You could almost take this as desperate spinning because their pants are so firmly around their ankles that they can't run, and they can't refute the facts because I am right.

Then again, what do I know.

            -Charlie

Note: Cue the Nvidia fanbois in 3.... 2.... 1.....

I was trying not to pimp my own stuff, but since you asked.....

Short story #1, the G200b based cards are huge and need expensive PCBs. They cost more to make than the upcoming and likely faster ATI Juniper parts, so NV will have to wrap a $20 bill around each card to make them sell. Not a long term good business plan. I can't say more because I was prebriefed on the ATI cards and agreed not to talk about them. When you read this, keep in mind that I gave Nvidia a very generous benefit of the doubt. You will understand why a lot better next week or so.
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/06/nvidia-will-crater-gtx260-and-gtx275-prices-soon/

Short story #2, a short while after I finished the above story, I got a call detailing how the GTX260/275/285 and possibly 295 were being killed. I wrote it up here:
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/06/nvidia-kills-gtx285-gtx275-gtx260-abandons-mid-and-high-end-market/

If you go back and look, the Nvidia denials and attacks against me are personal and do not address the facts, just attack the messenger. Kyle posted one from Ken Brown at Nvidia here:
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2009/10/07/nvidia_abandons_market6363636363/
Note HOW they say it, and what they do NOT say. They did the EXACT same thing a year ago when they were denying the chipset knifings. You could almost take this as desperate spinning because their pants are so firmly around their ankles that they can't run, and they can't refute the facts because I am right.

Then again, what do I know.

            -Charlie

Note: Cue the Nvidia fanbois in 3.... 2.... 1.....

Actually I do, but if you went to the site you'd notice that the advert images don't use Flash or JS and are hosted locally on the website's domain. For example:

http://www.semiaccurate.com/openx/www/images/4876678be06cd81266d0bd84b9794faa.jpg

How exactly have you configured ABP and NoScript so that they can automatically distinguish that image as an advertisement?

physx seemed nice until they tried to close source it. Does Nvidia have anything left this round? Bad Yields, physx being stupid and abusive when disabled (it only uses 1 cpu core when on AMD for example instead of even all threads). Not to mention their crippling of batman as well.

So what's left for Nvidia? I don't see a whole lot.

I screwed up, blame a week or so of no sleep. The second link should be.....
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/08/02/moron-tries-scamming-fake-atm-defcon/

Sorry.

                -Charlie