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Intel's Answer to AMD's Hammer - Yamhill
bdolan writes: "Today's San Jose Mercury News is reporting that Intel is going to put a 64 bit architecture extension in upcoming Pentiums if it turns out the Itanium doesn't take off. Hmm. Apparently they intend to only turn this on if AMD's 64 bit processor make major inroads against the Itanium architecture. Aren't we glad that competition is keeping everyone on their toes."
AMD Guy: Hehe..check out my incredible new processor. It's called the Hammer! What do you have in your box?
Intel Guy: Oh..er..I have a *unintelligible*
AMD Guy: What is that? Mumblican? Speak up!
Intel Guy: *coughYamhill*
AMD Guy: YAMHILL? Buwhahahahaha! Intel marketing loves you!
Intel Guy: *cry*
And to think, even as recently as a year or two ago, Intel was being called a monopoly by the FTC and anti-capitalist socialist greens.
If this isn't proof that all "big businesses" can be affected by smaller ones, and to let consumers make and break businesses, rather than regulations, I don't know what is...
Innovation IS CRITICAL to progress. Consumers also want a good product at a price they can afford. While I personally haven't had much luck with AMD products, I know a lot of people who have, and I commend AMD on doing something by themselves that many socialist (democrat) Americans wanted the government to do -- make Intel realize they're not the only fish in the sea.
Or Yams, as the case may be.
It's almost a miracle that in the i86 space we have two competing vendors. Actually it IS a miracle.
The benefits of the competition are too lengthy to get into here, but I would STRONGLY encourage the folks who benefit from it to put their money where their thanks are, and support AMD by buying their products to insure their continued success.
When they say that they will make this but hope never to turn it on, I can't believe they mean they will put it into the chips but disable it, but that's what it sounds like.
Presumably they mean that they would have the design ready to add to the chips very quickly should it prove commercially necessary.
It's nice to hear they have a backup plan. I've always liked intel chips better than AMD for some reason. (Yes I know I'm probably the only one, and I know there isn't any good reason to so don't flame me for that).
Sig is taking a break!
This has been the focus of some stories at the Inquirer as well.
Personally, I thought that Intel would have been in a good position to just relabel the Alpha 21364 as IA64 and be done with it.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I wonder if Intel is seeing what AMD saw over a year ago. Many people are looking at the latest greatest operating system and going... oh. That's nice. Does it run my old program? It doesn't? How do I get my Win98 back on there so it will?
Non-backwards compatibility was supposed to be a *benefit* for their new chip.
And now they're suddenly looking at backwards compatibility? Give it ten years *after* and they'll probably be able to *use* a non-backwards compatible chip.
Score one for AMD's clear thinking. No wonder they're breathing down Intel's neck.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
what's with intel's names? celery.. err.. celeron, now YAMhill... where's the beef?
Pentium.
Itanium.
Thunderbird.
Windows $YEAR.
Duron.
Celeron.
Boso..err, wrong field.
Okay guys, I don't know about you, but, holding with my "ooh, blinkenlights" philosophy, I miss the days when you could properly identify your processor as an [80]486DX266, and not be overtly pedantic.
I mean, we've even taken a step further in the wrong direction - now AMD doesn't even specify processor Mhz! *WAH!*
Isn't the Itanium (being a completely new core) really seeking to push code to 64-bit like the Pentium Pro did with 32-bit code on the server end? Sure the Pentium Pro had 16-bit backwards compatibility but it suffered horrible performance penalties when forced to run it. From what I understand the current benchmarks for 32-bit code executing on the Itanium aren't all that impressive. Has Intel had time to rationally design a decent set of extensions for the current P6 based processors that won't affect current 32-bit performance?
AMD's new chip OTOH seems to be designed with the goal of executing both 64-bit and 32-bit code with few performance penalties... seems like a no-brainer to me for who is going to capture the lowend and home user market at the very least.
http://www.aislagos.com/Photos/LifeInLagos/Yams350 .jpg
Too bad it's not a paying job.
You know what those are, right?
Haven't they heard of pipelining and superscalar architecture? Is that statement a result of:
- Intel's marketing folks having no clue
- SJMN reporter not doing his homework
It's quite possible that this processor family makes more advanced use of superscalar architecture and multiple pipelines, but statements like his portray a false idea. I bet we won't see a retraction."What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I always wondered why they didn't just put three or four processors on a single chip and have instance multiprocessing. I'm sure they would be able to share some of the components that way and reduce the transistor count below what several separate cpus would costs.
And interprocessor communication and cache coherency control would all be on the same chip and so probably easier than normal multiprocessor design.
There is probably a good reason I don't know about so it's a good thing I don't design cpus for a living.
Sig is taking a break!
Yes, we ARE glad that competition is keeping everyone on their toes. Imagine what, say, the browser market would be like if there were competition there? For one thing, I'd imagine every browser out there would have the option to shut off pop-ups, not just the odd Konqueror or Opera browser here and there.
Yes, competition is good.
put a 64 bit architecture extension in upcoming Pentiums if it turns out the Itanium doesn't take off.
You know, the more I've heard about Intel's exciting new architecture over the last few years, the more I think someone's been embezzling the R and D funds, and they don't have a goddamned thing to show for it.
"Johnson, did you finish designing that processor yet?"
"Johnson's not here, sir. He's on a research trip to Barbados with Jan from marketing."
--saint
Wasn't Yamhill one of the hobbit names in The Shire?!
The article does not say how much this Yamhill cost to develop... Wonder how much of a plan B it really is.
A nice way to extend the x86 lifespan though. I can just see server PrescottHill chips with the yamhill turned on and the lower end Prescotteron without.
I just don't really see them pouring this research and tech down the line.
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
If it doesn't take off? It takes years to develop that kind of new architecture. By then AMD will have it swept.
Don't follow AMD. X86-64 is a follow on architecture, and whatever Intel comes up with wouldn't be much better even if it was different. Computers need to move away from that old decrepid IA32 instruction set eventually.
Intel has a new road and it is not entirely stupid. They are facing the same problem that everyone trying to compete with them has been facing for a long time: compatibility with the installed software base. Either you're compatible and can run IA32 or you're not and you have to come up with lots of other software (enter open source).
Eventually, CPUs needs to move to better architecture. backwards compatability is good during transition, but shouldn't hold you back too much. Go forth Intel and do what everyone else has had to do for a long time, (gasp) struggle for market share.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Well I have developed on ITANIUM, (IA64) It leaves some to be desired, it is a first gen 64 for intel in the consumer market though. I ported BOCHS to the
Itanium, the result can be seen here This may sound loopy at firt but when you look at the backward IA32 incompatibilities, I need a way to test those from within the SAME enviromet.
The IA64 is a pretty lame first attempt from Intel, In my opion, I actually unlike others who will comment have direct experience, I should be getting access to a Hammer shortly, I have heard VERY good things, AMD's effort is much more likley to be a success for several reasons,
But the point I am trying to make is it looks like intel has really dragged its feet here, it cant decide if this is a market to be in or not, If AMD come through as I expect they will Intel will have a HELL of a time playing catchup.
AMD will play to a MUCH broader market than intel can envision, YES I WANT ONE ON MY DESKTOP, And Intel dosent see that market exists YET, then again Intel has never pushed bit copmputing capability, it has almost always lagged at LEAST 2 generations (16 bit when 32 and 64 were availabe) Some of this is vendor support, some of it lack of commitment to it, look at the clock speeds on the Itanium's and tell me, do they really expect this 64 bit pig to fly ?
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Does anyone know how this new architecture would compare with Itanium? I know AMD doesn't really have a dedicated 64-bit architecture. I'd appreciate it if someone could provide some info.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
For those who care, Yamhill is a small town WSW of Portland (the little red star at the lower left).
Fascinating info can be found at cityofyamhill.com, naturally.
Since the 64bit architecture so far is only on the server side, this should be interesting to see how amd is going to be embarassed byt the enterprise level server community. In due time 64 bit apps will make their way to the consumer market, but people don't really need them now. Doesn't mean I don't like to see a nice mud slinging battle between Intel and AMD though. I just want to see who Intel's exciting and new mascot will be for the new release which I'm sure will get a very original name like Pentium 5?!?! maybe.
Technology's a battle between companies producing more idiot-proof systems and nature producing bigger and better idiots
I don't believe M$ is a monopoly. The only monopolies we've had historically are ones where the government either mandated a private corporation (telcom, energy, etc), or the government subsidized one corporation and tariffed, penalized, or regulated its competition (Standard Oil, etc).
Microsoft has many MANY MANY competitors -- the varieties of Unix, the Apple O/S's, etc. The fact of the matter is, the market and the businesses and the consumers PREFER Microsoft's products. I've tried for years to find a product that runs better, faster, and is easier to use than Office, and I have yet to find one. Netscape over IE? Netscape was a P.O.S., on ANY OS I ran it under.
If your competitors make crappy products, its their own fault. Eventually, M$ WILL HAVE THEIR DAY. They will get hurt, just like Chrysler did without Government intervention, just like many others. Look at MS Network, what a (billion dollar) failure that was.
OTOH M$ keeps the Computer Consulting industry in business. If everything ran well, do you think the industry many of you is in would be as healthy? Thank God for Nimda I say! Job security for geeks.
This anything like "turning on" DX?
What a dirty trick that was.
So they have the technology just waiting, but they like to disable it and use it as a weapon when then need to kill their competition.
God bless America... and all that.
I am laughing at there choice of the yamhill river for the naming. I live about 3/4 of a mile from the river. They find two headed fish in it, I don't even want to know what will be found in the intel processor.
Yeah congratulations, maybe some day they can grow up to be Macs. How long have Macs had 64 bit processors? On the website for the new Imacs it claims 128 bit processing. Is that just a buffering register trick of the hand thing? Not to trigger another big Mac thread but can someone answer that for me? I don't think it's true 128 bit processing. But what do I know... don't answer that.
Are you saying Athlon XPs are not backwards fully X86 compatable!?
That's a rather extrodinary claim, and one I'd never heard anything about before. Do you have any sources you could refrence? The only thing google turns up is info on Athlon XP mobos with backwards compatable PCI slots that work with non-ECC DRAM.
Or are you trying to say Intel's chips are not backwards compatable? I find that equaly unbeliaveable
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Without AMD's FP unit, Intel wouldn't have a reason to keep developing. Even the playing field by open-sourcing all chip designs, and we'll see many of these "best-of-breed" designs making their way into the physical chips. It would double Moore's Law's predictions.
First, Itanium. Then Hammer. Now this. As a grad student who uses Alphas everyday to do quantum calculations, I really want a new 64-bit chip out there, especially since Compaq killed the Alpha. My dream is Hammer(great FP, no doubt) + RDRAM/1200. Before the flames kill me, right now the best workstation for Gaussian is P4+RDRAM. Why? The RDRAM. That amazing architecture is beautiful for the large calcs Gaussian can do.
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
Why do people insist on wasting their moderation points on "funny" comments?!
The chip is code named Prescott. From the article:
The Yamhill features are being built into the next version of Intel's Pentium chip, code-named Prescott, with an option to turn the features on or off. In 2003 or 2004, when the Prescott chip is expected to be available, Intel will evaluate AMD's offerings and the success of the Itanium and then decide whether to activate the Yamhill code.
There you have it.
I'm a 2000 man.
It's a good thing that Apple made the switch from 68k architecture to PowerPC architecture years ago. This enabled them to have an advanced architecture with a lot of breathing room. For example, since these chips aren't backwards compatible (the PowerPC is) it's going take a lot of time before people begin to catch on to the new architecture. As for the PowerPC it has a lot of room to still grow. Additions like alti-vec, etc Are mearly extensions and not any program I know of yet REQUIRES alti-vec to run. It's about time Intel and AMD starts to deviate from the old x86 architecture.
duh
What's the point of adding more bits?
That's just 32 more address/data lines to suffer from clock-skew and synchronization problems.
Seems like a wintel marketting trick to keep us wanting more, faster, better. Who cares? If you don't play games or do numerical processing, then what's the point? Linux already takes 0.5 sec to boot, what's 0.1s?
"Dang, I can't take all this waiting, that extra 0.1s is killing me, I gotta drop another $5000 this week to upgrade and throw away my 'old' hardware!"
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Yamhill is a name only a marketroid could love, but "Hammer" isn't exactly a a good name either:
Hey George, how's your Hammer hanging? All the time, stupid AMD!
Hey George, can't get a good frame rate? Get a bigger Hammer!
www.eFax.com are spammers
Secondly, this article makes such moronic claims as:
"RISC chips not only process multiple instructions at the same time but also run at 64 bits, meaning they can simultaneously process twice as much data as the standard 32-bit Intel chips."
Correct me if I'm wrong... but none of those things really = RISC . Just extra goodies. CISC doesn't necessarily mean slower than RISC at all. It's all about the implementation I assume.
or just the Pentium version, 63.99999999 bits?
John 17:20
I've tried for years to find a product that runs better, faster, and is easier to use than Office
Try Cetus Wordpad.
It's been a long time.
Yeah MicroSoft is so fast and easy, accept when it gives you the blue screen of death, forceing you to do a hard reboot ½ the time and lose all the data that you have been working on! I really liked Netscape when it was 4.0 it was actually stable! Internet explorer just blew up over and over. Windows is such a falty program its pathetic, they are finaly getting it more stable on what there 7 edition??? but even that had a major bug! woohoo "time for me to stop ranting"
> ones where the government either mandated a private corporation
.. in fact, it's pretty much the other way around. Companies are successfully changing the laws in our countries, with very little public knowedge.
You display your ignorance here. You're not honouring the reality that since we, the people, have been more than happy to chip away at our goverments' ability and legal powers to mandate, regulate and punish (an idea that seems to make most rabid free-markerers piss thier pants in fear). Even a passing knowledge of the changes in trade laws and treaties over the past 40 years would allow you to comprehend that companies have more legal rights and powers on the international market scenes than governments themselves. It's real. People don't want to believe it, but it's real. Read up on NAFTA. Read up on any of the recent lawsuits being launched against governments world wide by private corperations, both domestic and abroad. The point is, it's harder than ever for a government to actually regulate the market or a company, due to the enormous size of corperations (and thus their economic leverage), and their successful con of the public at large in convincing Joe Blow that the government is a corrupt, antiquated insitution that does nothing but collects taxes and wastes money. In short, there is neither public support nor legal support for governments to control the markets much, even if they wanted to. The MS case is a good example of this. Another good example is of a Canadian company suing Santa Monica for 1.3 billion dollars in punative damanges, because Santa Monica was forced to buy 80 of their drinking water at a cost of 3 million dollars per year becuase this company's unsafe product contaminated dozens of free water wells. The State of California (along with 9 other states) has banned their product, and thus, is being sued for it. See? It's way beyond governments regulating anything right now
"Old man yells at systemd"
Last I recalled, intels 80/86 cpu was based on amd technology.
- The early worm gets eaten by the bird.
I don't believe M$ is a monopoly.
Legally, they are. Common sense also says that they are a monolpoly.
The only monopolies we've had historically are ones where the government either mandated a private corporation (telcom, energy, etc), or the government subsidized one corporation and tariffed, penalized, or regulated its competition (Standard Oil, etc).
Huh? Pray tell, where was the Government Mandate or Government Subsidy in the United Shoe Machinery case (to pick one past monopoly)?
United Shoe Machinery (USM) had between 75% and 85% of the shoe machinery market. USM refused to sell it's machinery but only leased, on ten year leases. It also compelled leasees to agree that if they required an additional machines they must lease from USM. USM also provided free maintenance to their machines (or, alternatively, the lease cost included maintenance). The court found that the restictive lease and the free maintenance were barriers to entry by other companies, and removed them from the agreements.
Not a hint of mandate or subsidy here, yet USM were clearly a monopoly (which is quite legal), and were using that monopoly position to quench competition (which is quite illegal).
IBM's power4 chip has 4 processing cores on a chip. Intel and Sun have plans in the works. Intel will do this to follow up with the IA-32 Xeon processor. Here is a story on this
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
AMD got ahead of Intel on 64-bit with backward compatibility to IA32.
So when Intel releases Prescott and turns on the Yamhill features, AMD's 64-bit system will suddenly be incompatible with Intel's 64-bit system.
There is no chicken and egg, here. Intel will still sell more chips than AMD regardless of compatibility design; then those interested in compatibility will choose Intel to get the larger market to sell their SW into. This will also happen if Itanium prevails, though AMD will have the backward compatibility to help it a little with some markets.
Intel will win, no matter how many people say on message boards they want AMD.
The apt comparison is Microsoft and Apple. Enthusiasm and commitment are not the dominant forces of economics.
--Blair
The diffrence between the pentium and the p-pro are rather minute when compared with the diffrence betwee any pentium/486/386/etc chip and the Itanium. To really answer your question, though you kind of have to look at the history of the whole thing.
:P)
To start things off, intel releases the 8086, and the cheaper 8088 (8086 with a 8, rather then 16 bit bus interface). And thus begins the x86 era.
A little later intel decides they need a 32 bit CPU, but rather then design a totaly new chip, they just add a bunch of extensions to the 16 bit one. They call this new chip the 386, and it's supposed to revolutionize everything. The chip is totaly backwards compatable with the old 8086's and 286s (so the old register AX becomes EAX, but you can still access the first half as AX).
for a long time (windows 3.1) most software still ran in 16 bit mode, not really utilizing the software. IIRC It wasn't untill windows95 and NT started getting used that people really started to take the full potential of their machines in every day tasks.
Now, this is also around the time of the Pentium and the Pentium pro. The pentium ran both 32 and 16 bit software quickly, but the ppro ran 32 bit software faster, and 16 bit software more slowly (of course, the p-pro core became the pentium II, then the pentium III and ran at much higher clockspeeds, so it eventualy became a non issue, a 1.3ghz pIII is going to crunch 16 code faster then a pentium233mmx no mater what
Now, when you look at what AMD is doing and I guess intel now with their rather odly named Yamhill is taking the orgional design and adding 64bit extensions the way they added 32 bit extensions to the 286. EAX becomes RAX, and you can get at the first half by calling it EAX and the first quarter by calling AX, etc.
Itanium is a totaly diffrent thing, it's a whole new system with x86 support tacked on extra, rather then tacking on 64 bit support to an aging archetecture.
Hrm, I hope that explains things.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I don't know what does. If you're a consumer who's pro intel and you've been waiting for YEARS for itanium to be released. Now, Only for it to be usurped by a stop gap processor to compete with a rival. My god. It's better than the nothing these guys have been waiting for and it will be ESPECIALLY painfull to those software houses who have been porting their flagship product to Itanium for some time now... If this chip yama..whatever is made it won't be a dog because they HAVE to compete not only with the marketshare in the 64 bit arena but more important is the MINDSHARE. AMD delievers and Intel doesnt and they both run Windows. We could see some real interesting things come out of Intel. It would also confirm the rumors I've been hearing for some time now that Itanium is dead after Mickenly.
Peter
www.alphalinux.org
In Tracy Kidder's classic book The Soul of the new Machine he discusses the creation of a new computer at Data General, to succeed their 16-bit Eclipses to a new 32-bit architecture. It was shockingly reminiscent of this case, Intel's transition from 32 to 64 bit machines.
In the book, Data General starts to design a fabulous new machine, breaking new ground in a lot of areas, when going to 32 bits. This new effort was called 'The Fountainhead Project', and had all of the best and brightest engineers working on it. At the same time, the hero of the book, Tom West, instituted a new project to do a simple extension of the Eclipse architecture, in parallel.
There was massive infighting between the two camps, and West had to fight tooth and nail for every scrap of resources to build the 32-bit Eclipses; to the point that the machine was almost entirely designed and built by kids fresh out of college because that's all he could afford.
Needless to say, the FHP failed, and Data General released West's machine to reasonable success.
The similarities here are almost eerie, except that, of course, Itanium actually made it out the door.
If you haven't read Kidder's book, it's definitely a great one. Beautifully written, and while the technology has changed dramatically over the last
fifteen years, the social and business rules are still the same.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
They are facing the same problem that everyone trying to compete with them has been facing for a long time: compatibility with the installed software base
I was also saying to go with it anyway because long term it is a better solution even if it is not a short term profit center.
I also correctly specified X86-64 as (AMD's)64 bit extension to IA32. IA64 is the Itanium instruction set.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Apple isn't a true competetor. You have to have Apple's proprietary hardware to run the OS, so Joe Sixpack doesn't have the option of installing OS X on his 6-month-old Dell.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
ERrrm no Mac PPCs are still 32-bit cpus really. even the current pentium SSE2 instructions can handle more than 32bits.. (possibly 128 I'm not sure). But that's not exactly the same thing
How is what you're suggesting different from Hyper-Threading or "Jackson" technology?
My favorite part was where they said the Yamhill guys are working to ensure compatibility with AMD's 64-bit vision!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I don't understand why anyone else didn't make a machine that could compete with theirs?
The realities are that they had between 75% and 85% of the market BECAUSE THEIR PRODUCT WAS BETTER. Mises Institute actually mentions them in a decent "Barriers to Entry" article that denounces most of the "monopolistic practices" that the government has put down in error, in this article.
Another article that briefly talks about how many "monopolies" fell apart on their own even before government lawsuits ran their course. It's obvious that the reason some of these companies exist is because they make a damn good product at a damn good price. Exclusionary practices are a farce -- people who are too lazy to compete are usually the complainers. It's easy to complain, especially if you don't have the brain cells needed to comprehend competing rather than complaing.
So that means they will.
I wonder how they'll announce to the world that they're going to be the last manufacturer to bring a 64 CPU to desktop machines for the masses. Couldn't be any worse than those alien commercials -- they can zip around in flying saucers from planet to planet, and can drop a chip into a puddle of clear liquid to connect it, but they don't have anything as sophisticated as a P4. Or is it that they just decode the patterns in silicon and it turns out to be disco?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Given AMD's market position, and Intel's market saturation, if Intel supports AMD's x64 instructions it would only sever to force software vendors to release x64 based products instead of EPIC (ia64) based ones. Though from a technological standpoint I'm not sure if this is a good thing, but it's wonderful from a competitive open market one.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
I don't believe M$ is a monopoly.
Your opinion doesn't count for squat. Judge Jackson, and then the Circuit Court agreed that MS is a de jure monopoly.
Stop overclocking your 3 year old generic motherboard, and maybe you won't blue screen or have problems. I blame the hardware manufacturers for writing bad drivers before I blame M$ for writing bad software. Its bloated, but it runs fast enough and stable enough for me. I haven't lost a project or work time in probably 6 years since 95 came out.
One of my companies maintains about 600 computers within 15 different organizations, all running different, badly written software. We get maybe 1 call a month about a BSOD, and even that's overstating it...
In a press conference earlier today, an Intel spokeman confirmed rumors that their latest processor, the 64-bit "Yamhill" is manufactured not from traditional silicon, but is made entirely from yams.
It cuts both ways, you know:
Ethyl Corp in the US successfully sued the Canadian gov't because the Canadian gov't declared a certain fuel additive harmful to the environment; Ethyl sued for "loss of revenue" or some nonsense.
Chapter 11 is bad news for both countries. I'd hazard that NAFTA is very bad for both countries in general.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
SMT/Hyperthreading has been enabled on Willamette/Northwood, iirc, under Linux 2.4.
...Provided you find apps that take advantage of large integers and high memory space.
Paying for a 32bit chip and getting a 64bit chip could be quite a bargain.
One of my companies maintains about 600 computers within 15 different organizations, all running different, badly written software. We get maybe 1 call a month about a BSOD, and even that's overstating it...
People don't call tech support as much anymore about BSODs. 5-10 years ago, they were a new thing, now everyone knows to just reboot, even the idiot newbie in the mail room.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Intel is doomed to be a one-architecture company. Anyone here remember their last attempt to be new and different, and what a stunning failure it was? (Hint: Search Google for "IAPX-432".)
I don't understand why anyone else didn't make a machine that could compete with theirs?
You clearly did not read the comment to which you are replying.
No one else _could_ make a competing machine and succeed, because the other company's contract prohibited people from buying a competing machine.
This is (drum roll) against the law!
He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity will change the face of the world. -BFranklin
That's the *PRINCIPLES* of Xtianity... You know, "Judge not, let ye be judged", "Love thy neighbor", etc... Not the religion itself.
I really love the quotes from the article....Like I should be worried about who is going to "push the button" and create a Yamhill......
"a small team of Intel engineers has been quietly working on a chip technology that the giant semiconductor maker hopes will never see the light of day."
This all sounds so very dangerous....kinda like Intel execs are hidden in a room deep in Cheyene Mountain....sitting on top of some springs!
"should we launch?"
...
"I don't think we have a choice..."
...
"They used the Hammer in a first-strike! We MUST respond with the Yamhill!"
Yeah...right.....just bring it out and let us decide!
"That's the genius of capitalism"
Actually, this one might surprise people:
The WTO has the legal powers in place to enforce foreign investor state dispute judgements, (read: governements being sued by companies) and do so. A company can get their case heard and settled in under a year.
The UN can judge on human rights violations, but hasn't one single way of attempting to enforce their judgements. There are simply no international treaties in place to ensure the enforcement of human rights violations. They nailed Peru on wrongfully jailing a woman under terrible conditions for 10 years. They told Peru to let her out last year. She's still in jail.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I've tried for years to find a product that runs better, faster, and is easier to use than Office, and I have yet to find one.
It just keeps getting worse though... Word 6.0 was better than 97, which was better than 2000, etc...
Netscape over IE? Netscape was a P.O.S., on ANY OS I ran it under.
I'd argue that, until Netscape was forced (by MS) to offer Netscape for free, Netscape was better. After that, the company went into free fall.
Obviously we should fire all those black-robed slackers on the judiciary, since you, a slashdot reader, know so much more about it.
Seriously, the question at this point is not whether they are or they aren't. The question now is what remedies should be applied.
government subsidized one corporation and tariffed, penalized, or regulated its competition (Standard Oil, etc).
This would be the same government that broke the company up? I'm sure there are cases where Standard Oil bribed elected officials to get its' way, particularly after it had already become powerful, but saying that the gov't effectively created their monopoly is just plain wrong.
You're right, I reread it, and I must have blurred my eyes a bit. Thanks :)
And if someone made a competing machine that was better, faster, and cheaper, do you think people would re-sign into a stringent contract with these guys?
Not my fault that you signed a faulty agreement. Think twice before your greed gets the best of you. Don't go crying to the daddy-state when you want out of a bad deal you signed into. Contracts are binding, and contracts do not create monopolies. Accepting a BAD contract just give a company more power over the person who signed it.
not to start a flame war, but i have been reading your posts and feel a need to speak up. also, i am probably way off topic.
i am all for competition and think people should try to make a better product. but it seems that the only reason you are willing to accept for why a monopoly might exist is that they make better stuff. companies have made products that were as good as or better than windows.
take Be. they made BeOS, which people still use even though it is dead. microsoft crushed it as it was just getting off the ground. they didn't just out-design Be, they told their vendors that they were not allowed to sell computers that did not also contain windows. microsoft also required them to diable BeOS by default. i fail to see how that makes windows a superior product. maybe it didn't have all of the features of windows, but operating systems to take time to develop. if they are stamped out in their infancy all of the innovation they might have had is lost. things like this also serve as a warning to others who would enter microsoft's turf. apple and the smorgasbord of *nixes survive because they are in different markets.
they innovate to the extent that you will be enticed into upgrading. make it cheaper in the short run to win in the long run.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
IBM has just started to do this with the Power4 but
until recently it has not been practical. The die
size would be too big which would lead to low
yields and less profit. Also the heat dissipation
would be a big problem having multiple cpus
in a die would throw off a lot more heat.
Sorry, had to be said.
Constitutionally Correct
Why are we only going to 64 bit when its actually getting old, why are we not moving to 128 bit? Why the small increment? Wouldn't this be a good time to just move up to a whole new level? Well, Im not all that familiar with this stuff so maybe there are technical reasons I dont know about.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
"I don't believe M$ is a monopoly. ... Nice Troll"
Troll? Then the statement "I believe that M$ is a monopoly" must also be a troll.
"Obviously we should fire all those black-robed slackers on the judiciary, since you, a slashdot reader, know so much more about it."
So if a court in the future reverses some of the findings or if MS ends up with a light punishment you'll be 100% in support since the judges are so much more knowlegeable than a slashdot reader like yourself?
What about policies that I would consider monopolistic, for example, MS' past practice of charging OEMs for one copy of Windows per computer sold, even if all those machines didn't have windows on them? If the OEMs complained, there was the ever-present threat of MS not selling them Windows at all. Thus, the OEMs were encouraged to stop carrying other OSes.
How could a smaller company compete in a situation like that? If an OEM wanted to offer an alternative os, such as OS/2, it would have to pay for both OS/2 and Windows! Smells like a monopoly to me.
They haven't been up to as much mischief lately, but remeber the mid-nineties, man? Every week, almost, they were doing some insanely sketchy business move. I don't really blame them, though... If I was in their shoes, I'd be trying to do the same things to manipulate the market, but that's why there are a certain amount of rules in place.
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of
>there's the Willamette (a major river, incidentally one of only a handful in the world that run south to north)
Literally thousands of rivers, big and small, run south to north in Siberia. In Arctic Canada, probably, too.
Loks like your definition of the world is USA.
That link takes you straight to CPU's for dummies.
Notice the cool words: 32bit, 64bit and cowboys.
The Supreme Court have been a bunch of "traitorous" slackers for the past 50 years. The Constitution is very clear on issues like copyright (7+7 years), Social Security (not a federal issue, to be left to the people), welfare (not a federal issue, to be left to the people), the drug war (same), foreign intervention (same), etc, etc. So yeah, I do think we should fire all those black-robed slackers...
For example, there's the Willamette (a major river, incidentally one of only a handful in the world that run south to north)...
2 -17-97.htm:
Actually, that's a commonly-held misconception. Many rivers flow from south to north.
Excerpts from http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/educ/science/1997/0
"An argument can be made that there could be more north-flowing rivers than there are rivers flowing in other directions..."
"So, there are indeed big rivers that flow to the north, as well as to the east, west and south. Why is it then that we think that few rivers flow to the north? Part of the answer is probably related to our geographic chauvinism and our lack of curiosity - we don't know much or care about distant places. In the contiguous U.S., since there are no major rivers that flow northward, we're convinced that this must be the way it is elsewhere. In Europe, where rivers such as the Rhine flow north from the Alps through densely populated areas of Germany, France and the Netherlands and then to the North Sea, the question of whether or not there are many north flowing rivers would be less likely to arise.
"Perhaps a more important reason that it seems that few rivers flow towards the north is our that experience in everyday encounters tells us that things move from up to down and from top to bottom. It just feels right that things should also move from north to south, like the Mississippi, and not the other way around. Maybe this is because we're used to looking at maps in two-dimensional projections."
Extending from 32bit to 64bit costs practically nothing in terms of development time. It's just a matter widening registers and rejigging the instruction decoder.
You don't get an immediate speed-up from going to 32 to 64 bit. Rememeber we've had 64bit memory busses since the original pentium.
The great irony here is the following:
When AMD released the specifications of its upcoming 64-bit chips in the summer of 2000, these ``cowboy'' engineers decided that Intel needed to match its rival. They began developing their own 64-bit extensions to the Pentium line, making sure the code was compatible with AMD's design.
This is Intel imitating AMD, the very same company Intel execs have derided as immitators, recognizing the threat of the upcoming AMD Claw and Sledge Hammers. Another post suggests this compatibility is Innovation. What's innovative, as you noted, is selling something with the big feature turned off. How long before the enlightened OCP weasels figure out how to turn it on and spoild Intel's party?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Uh... you mean the government is not a corrupt, antiquated institution that does nothing but collect taxes and waste money?
Have the people really been happily chipping away the governments legal powers? Did "Joe Blow" really make that decision, that we should deregulate everything as soon as possible? I thought it was the government, following the suggestions of industrial lobby groups and economic pundits (not exactly "Joe Blow").
In most of the world, at least, it's not "Joe Blow" who decided that. He's typically promised more government intervention, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. Foreign investors are promised deregulation, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. Government does whatever means more short-term benefits and less responsability.
I don't know. Maybe it is different in the US (I'm not an American), but from what I have seen it doesn't seem so different.
The government (of any country) apparently IS a useless institution. So useless, it chips away its own powers to do anything besides collecting taxes and wasting money. As a matter of fact, most of its current job is passing legislation protecting itself from having (or being able) to do anything else. It makes everything easier.
For the record, I happen to be against government regulation. I have seen way too much of that, and it just doesn't work.
I also think that when for any particular industry the term "government" is replaced by "Microsoft", or any "X Company" that effectively regulates the market as a government (with an electorate of shareholders) it's just as bad.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
AMD has a history of making good processors really cheap, while Intel is the opposite. But still, most servers still run Xeons because they're the cheaper of the "high end" processors. If AMD released a 64bit processor that didn't cost ~2500 (that the Itanium costs) there wouldn't be much Intel could do to regain the market they'd lose.
:)
I suppose AMD's Hammer would cost around the price of a P5
Everyone remember the "Intel Inside" marketing campaign? Anyone remember "Authentic AMD"? The Intel Inside campaign was based mainly on FUD and Intel's control over the x86 processor. Since the x86 was a "defacto standard" defined by Intel, only Intel could gaurentee that it followed the standard. If you used other people's CPUs, they might work, but they might not. Better safe than sorry, right?
If Intel publically implements the x86-64 architecture, while more-or-less simultaneously dropping the IA64 architecture, it will be diaster. It would be publically admitting, in deed if not in word, that AMD controls the future evolution of the x86, not Intel. The best Intel could hope for would be for AMD to gain an incredible amount of credibility- which translates as sales in the lucrative but conservative buisness markets. Even worse, the current positions of AMD and Intel might even be reversed, with AMD being perceived as the flagship processor company and Intel the clone maker.
Going to 64-bit is rapidly becoming not an option. Many desktop systems are having a gigabyte of memory installed. Even x86 servers often have three gigabytes of ram installed. The server market is even worse off than the desktop market, as all the ram is generally given over to a single application (Exchange, or a database, for example)- and a 32-bit processor simply can not access more than about 2-3 gig of memory in a single application. The big-iron Unix cpus (Sun's SPARC, HP's PA-RISC, IBM's Power-4, etc) all went 64-bit years ago. It's not unusual to see even "moderate" servers of 4-, 8-, and 16- CPUs having tens of gigabytes of RAM already. The only market that still supports 32-bit CPUs is the embedded market- not a market Intel has ever displayed much interest in.
I figure that the x86 has maybe 3 years to go 64-bit across the board, or we'll be facing another 640K like situation. 3 years is two Moore's Law generations- meaning the people with 1G of memory today will be wanting 4G in 3 years, and the people only getting 256M today will be getting 1G. They'll continue to be hurt in the server market, but they won't lose much in the desktop. Unfortunately, to be 64-bit across the board means the high end needs to be 64-bit within about 18 months (allowing for a Moore's Law generation to push the 64-bit CPUs down the price scale).
Hammer is in a position to do that. McKinnley is the succeed or die point for the IA64. To use an analogy, Intel will have run out of runway- either it flies, or it'll hit the trees.
The successors don't matter- if McKinnley doesn't succeed, Hammer will be there to take the sales. If Intel stays in denial and doesn't offer a viable 64-bit path, they'll be in worse shape than simply admitting that they lost.
At that point, the best thing Intel could do is roll out a Hammer of their own, and plan on less than 50% market share.
Brian
I wasn't saying that the public has been responsible for chipping away at governments, but for the most part, they've stood by and let it happen (or just been to disinterested in existance to care).
> I also think that when for any particular industry the term "government" is replaced by "Microsoft", or any "X Company" that effectively regulates the market as a government (with an electorate of shareholders) it's just as bad.
Agreed, and thats what I'm most interested in avoiding (although I am fully prepared to say that certain countries are very near this situation, if not in it.)
However, I have faith in government (I'm in Canada). I have seen it do many stupid things, but also many good things, which is pretty much no worse or better off than even my 'favorite' companies. And if I ever run out of money, at least I still have a way of expressing my confiendece in the current captains of that boat with my vote, as opposed to the private-interest authority who can and will only listen to those members of scociety who are already in a position of personal security.
The government is my firewall. It may slow things down and cause me problems once in awhile, but I value a last line of defence over unfettered technological advancement and trade any day of the week.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Wouldn't be the first time in this industry (but I won't mention the example that comes to my mind: too many Microsoft cenobites roaming these fora).
I mean, come on!
Itanium - Titanic
Yamhill - Yawnhill (Yawn, Bill!)
Willamette - Gilette
Coppermine - got nothing to do with copper!!!
After the Pentium, they managed to skip the sexiu, which would have made for a very sexy name, indeed.
Sigged!
damnit. nothing irritates me more than dipshits who capitalize letters in the middle of words. Examples: MicroSoft, WebMaster, and MacIntosh. Jesus H. Christ, people! pull your heads out!
oh, and it is "except" not "accept" in your ignorant post.
i know this will get modded as a troll (hence, AC), but i needed to vent.
And have those Intel suit guys do the hammer dance. It would be awesome. I'm tellin' ya.
- Justin
Despite all the resources put into the itanium, it simply cannot win. The fact is the x86 architecture is inferior to RISC and ALPHA architectures, which are much more effiecent. Not many comanies will be willing to buy into a new player in a game, because with the price of the chip it probably not going to to be worth the investment for most companies. No matter how good the chip is, it will fail because of
1). New hardware == dangerouse
2). Unstable software (most of the time)
This is more than enough to convince businesses to go with sun or hp, etc.
No, I didn't think we have met before either.
The itanium does not support X86, instead rather it supports a new instruction set, dubbed IA-64 (intel archicture 64). AMD's up and coming 64 bit processors, on the other hand, are backward compatible with X86.
The most interesting thing I got out of this article was near the end. They mention that the 8086 was Intel's "backup plan" twenty years ago and that it was designed in THREE WEEKS! I think we finally have an explanation for why the instruction set is such a pain to work with.
I think you meant to respond to the post above mine which I was quoting from.
Do you realize that your 136-node processor would draw 4-6 kilowatts of power (and so have to dissapate the same amount of heat!), depending on what processor architecture was used?
Would you name all the popular programs you can that scale well onto even 2 processors, and then define the word "parallelizable"?
Would you calculate the amount of time (expressed in trillions of years, exponential notation, or however you prefer) it would take to brute force a mainstream 128-bit encryption algorithm on this cluster?
Are you aware that current sound cards use 16 or 24-bit, 2, 4, or 5 channel, 44.1 (not 144) Khz technology? (I'm probably missing lots of combinations myself).
Would you please do a Google search for "Nyquist", and then explain to us exactly why you want "920 KHz" sound output?
Do you understand now why nobody is willing to "give you a chip plant"?
Do you mind if I use your post as an example, the next time someone else with a 4 or 5 digit UID complains that all the more recent Slashdot accounts are driving the quality of discussion downhill?
but what would the the impact on the structure of the binaries? could you make a processor like this and have it actually function 136 times faster with binaries compiled for a single or dual processor chip? wouldn't compilers have to be massively re-written to take advantage of this type of architectural change?
Please add YHBT to the above post.
Remember when AMD launched the K5, Cyrix and IBM had the 6x86? they developed a naming scheme to better compare their processors' performance with Intel's, since they were touted as being more powerful at any given MHz that an equivalent Intel processor at that same speed.
Hence we had beauties like the IBM/Cyrix 6x86-PR150+, a performance rating equivalent or better than a 150-MHz Intel Pentium.
yet all these processors died a horrible death (AMD's were just superseded by the K6 series) and everyone went back to MHz.
Maybe when AMD is established in everybody's mind as the performance leader, they'll start giving MHz again, and Intel will have to devise an "AR" or AMD Rating, so that they can specify to the public that their 2 GHz processors have an AR of 1500, meaning they're as fast (ONLY as fast) as a 1.5 GHz AMD processor.
Pay attention -- MS signed a consent decree years ago stopping the per CPU thing.
R and D and R and A and M.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
There are alternatives to the old IA32, and these so called "extensions" to it (Hammer, Yamhill). The UltraSparc architecture is much better in terms of design, performance and scalability. Solaris is also an excellent operating system for development and business (web server, oracle, etc) work.
If a comment is a troll, it's negation must also be a troll? I think a troll is pretty much defined by context. The true measure of a troll is how many exasperated, furious, overly-serious responses (like mine) it engenders ... (which goes a long way toward explaining why trolls are so much fun).
So if a court in the future reverses some of the findings or if MS ends up with a light punishment you'll be 100% in support since the judges are so much more knowlegeable than a slashdot reader like yourself?
If the court (pretty much have to be the Supremes at this point), decide that MS is not a monopoly, then they're not a monopoly. It's within their authority. I'll accept that the judicial process has run it's course and that we all have to accept the results even though we might not personally agree with them, just the same way everyone from Al Gore on has accepted Dubya as President.
I think we are probably using the term "monopoly" in two senses here; the strictly legalistic sense and a more common sense usage. Let's substitute the name "OJ" for Microsoft and the term "murder" for monopoly. If I say "OJ is guilty of murder", that's false; he was acquitted. Our opinions may differ, but it doesn't change the fact that he's in Miami instead of San Quentin. No matter how much you believe that he's guilty, he's not. So my take on the original post is that when it says "I don't believe M$ is a monopoly", it's actually flying in the face of the facts, and is therefore either a) a troll, or b) egregiously incorrect. MS is clearly, legally, a monopoly. Just ask Netscape's lawyers. Maybe what the poster meant is something like "I think the monopoly finding is unfair/inaccurate/wrong".
Personally, if the monopoly finding is reversed, I'll mutter some bad words about it ... and perhaps rethink my voting preferences and campaign contributions, since I would strongly disagree, but I'm not going to insist that they don't know what they're doing or that they don't have the jurisdiction.
and i agree with this post which agrees with that post.
A reflective surface radiates far less heat than a non-reflective surface - basically speaking, it radiates at the same rate that it absorbs.
As for your other arguments . . . Well, I'm afraid you really don't seem to understand what you're talking about - that simple bit of physics is a convenient example.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
A huge percentage of what the federal government does has no justification at all in the Constitution. And it only grows. Lincoln instituted the draft, which, IIRC, was of dubious constitutionality. And with that precedent we still have Selective Service today.
FDR packed the Supreme Court in order to keep it from striking down the various social and economic programs he wanted. This is a fabulously dangerous precedent, IMHO, regardless of whether you agree with his agenda. "Want to change the very fabric of the republic? Just add a few hundred more Supreme Court justices!"
The trust-busting of last century, which the whole MS thing is based on, was a major intrusion by the gov't into private industry.
But in general, I'm glad we have Social Security to help keep the old folks from freezing on the streets, and the draft (since an unwilling army is the best protector of our liberties :), and that when companies get too rapacious there's a mechanism to keep them in check.
Actualy I belive most processors can switch between modes, so you can use big or little endian. I think thats the way itanium will work
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Or look at Dell. It could be argued that Dell is more important than Intel in the current market. Selling AMD systems would actually provide Dell with considerable leverage over Intel, yet Dell doesn't want to touch AMD system with a 10' pole because they know any savings due to AMD would be eaten by postsales support.
This is not an Intel FUD post, it is a call for AMD to take seriously the MB situation.
but with 1.9999999328974392 heads.
No doubt.
for my .02, almost every AMD system i've seen has been rock-solid stable. Better than the intel's i've used/seen. The (AMD) ones that weren't stable were flawed not in processors, but in via/misc chipsets. bad motherboards. Intel has had trouble with bad mobo's, too - but what about that pentium bug? Oh well, give them time - I just like the competition. As much fun as i've had being on the AMD side of things, i'd switch if Intel's products were faster, cheaper, and as easily overclocked.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
The problem with the Alpha's was that they didn't provide enough of an advantage over the Intel alternative. In a job long ago I inherited a couple of DEC/Compaq Alpha Servers as a result of a merger. Nice machines, no real complaints, however what was the point of spending money maintaining the Alpha servers when my Compaq Proliant servers had all of the functionality (ie hot-swap drives, NIC and RAID.) at a fraction of the price?
I hate the attitude that seeps through the commentary on this article. "Big Bad Intel actually waits until market forces indicates it would be profitable to do something different." Like it is Intel's duty to charge ahead in the processor industry tossing out new technologies as fast as they can produce them. This would be folly for any business. To do that would be akin to bitching about Ford not producing a flying car... it is possible, but the market probably does not support it now. I get the overwhelming sense that alot of posters (by far not the majority, but alot) think that taking a profit from one's labors is morally corrupt!
Chuck
"I think a troll is pretty much defined by context. The true measure of a troll is how many exasperated, furious, overly-serious responses (like mine) it engenders ... (which goes a long way toward explaining why trolls are so much fun)."
... I don't believe M$ is a monopoly", it's actually flying in the face of the facts, and is therefore either a) a troll, or b) egregiously incorrect."
... and perhaps rethink my voting preferences and campaign contributions, since I would strongly disagree, but I'm not going to insist that they don't know what they're doing or that they don't have the jurisdiction."
So, in other words a troll is a minority opinion. If the same statement was made in a pro-microsoft environment, it would not be a troll. You might just as well say the poster is ugly for all the intellectual value "troll" brings to the discussion.
"I think we are probably using the term "monopoly" in two senses here; the strictly legalistic sense and a more common sense usage
So first you state that there may be a lack of agreement about the term "monopoly" and then you go on to choose the definition that supports your position as if the other poster had agreed to it.
Of course, the statement "I don't believe M$ is a monopoly" is not the same as "MS is not a monopoly". You can't disprove the first statement unless you can read minds and have determined that the poster is lying.
"Personally, if the monopoly finding is reversed, I'll mutter some bad words about it
Well, this is a change in your position. If the court is supposed to be wiser than slashdot readers, why would you consider changing your voting preferences? It suggests that you (like the original poster and everyone else) are willing to cite the court when it agrees with you but would like to see them replaced if they do not.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
The Itanium has a 128-bit instruction set architecture (3 43-bit instructions plus an overall 5-bit opcode). Why isn't it considered a 128-bit chip? I know it has 64 bit addressability, but the length of the instruction word is what matters isn't it?
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
I think this article is another example of how slow massive companies have become at meeting market demand.
In fact this site has a good explanation. I'll quote a small bit here:
Cheers!
In the state of washington as you round the olympic peninsula:
;)
The US101 North becomes the US101 South
The US101 South becomes the US101 North
If you don't pay attention, it can screw you up
AMD will put out the Hammer ? we will show them !!! we will put out V ice!!! That is Vanilla Ice...or is it Variable Intergrated CPU Environment ? it beats me!!!!
AMD will play to a MUCH broader market than intel can envision, YES I WANT ONE ON MY DESKTOP, And Intel dosent see that market exists YET, then again Intel has never pushed bit copmputing capability, it has almost always lagged at LEAST 2 generations (16 bit when 32 and 64 were availabe) Some of this is vendor support, some of it lack of commitment to it, look at the clock speeds on the Itanium's and tell me, do they really expect this 64 bit pig to fly ?
Huh?
There is absolutely no market for desktop 64-bit CPUs today. There is a market for workstation 64-bit CPUs, true, but that's hardly that large.
You're acting like a jump from 32 to 64-bit boosts gaming performance, while that's not necessarily the case.
The only time desktop users will need > 4GB of RAM will be in a couple years, and by then a mature IA64 will be available for the desktop. If all goes as planned.
What may happen is Intel may use this "Yamhill" in the meantime to get a cut out of the desktop CPU process, and once the IA64 is mature and ready for the mainstream, will start pushing people over to it. It'll be considerably nicer than x86 once the compilers catch up, and probably run that 64-bit code quite a bit faster since it's native instead of a kludge.
80% of the people who died during firestone equipped suv roll-overs were NOT wearing seatbelts.
the reason the trucks rolled over was because the idiot behind the wheel NOT wearing his seatbelt also did not know that you do not slam your brakes on hard and start sawing at the steering wheel when a blowout or tread separation occurs.
tests showed most of the tread separated tires did not deflate, but the noise of the tread slamming on the inside of the fender well caused the drive to panic and slam on his brakes...
finally most of these people had never checked their tire pressure for 3 years and did not realize that 800 pounds of passengers and cargo in the ford suv put it over its max gross weight where handling and control become more difficult.
think 4 big guys over 200 pounds each and a shitload of camping and hunting gear in the back AND on the roof rack, driving 80 mph for hours on worn and badly underinflated firestones AND NOW THE TIRE COMPANY IS THE BAD GUY???
puh-leeze get a clue...
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
coz dey drops da voltage as well?
but d00d, how big would the socket have to be to hold a 12" round wafer chip?
and it would not fit on a microATX mobo, either...
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
Maybe because MS didn't have XP-64 out at the launch of Itanium. Right now your only choices are Linux and NetBSD maybe OBSD.
The other option is write a emulator that allows the 2 GHZ Pentium 4 to run 64bit code as fast as the 700 Mhz Itanium.
Actually its never been a better time to start investing in Transmeta. They just throw programmers at a problem since their chips are so versitile.
that sounds suspiciously like the bootloader situation with MS, but now Be has gone (and I can't see Palm taking on the responsibility) we actually HAVE TO rely on AOL to fight the good fight on our behalf. The US govt. has abdicated it's legal and moral responsibilites. Blame the crook in the White House, his father, his brother and all their Texan pals. P L U T O C R A C Y - Americans should look this word up if they can't define it.
That was classic intercourse!
I've been troubled by this too - how did God go from being mean and nasty in the old testament to being loving, kind, and merciful in the new?
Well...what i finally came up with, is that if you read more than just the dramatic "sunday school" parts of the bible, that God was merciful and kind and loving at times in the OT, he heard peoples prayers and answered them - the punishments were only for disobedience. And if you look, Jesus didn't pull too many punches when he was here. Jesus had a job to do (provide a way for men to get to God, and not just the Jews, either) and he did die, if the Bible is to be believed.
I find it interesting to compare the old testament's ignoring God => punishment scenarios to today's society. If God really exists...why did Sept. 11th happen to America, the country whose money says, "in God we trust?"
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
There have been far more lawsuits the other way, with US companies suing the governemtns of Canada & Mexico with the most bizarre being the one where the government of Canada was sued for a law that restricts the export of toxic waste for disposal purposes (the waste was to be shipped to a facility in the US) but oddly enough, it was at the same time illegal to import toxic waste into the US.
The US company won.
Let me guess - you are a former Oregonian from near the Willamette?
"Apparently there is a widely held belief that there are only two rivers in the world that flow northward. Those two rivers are the Nile and whatever nearby river flows north."
RiverNorth gives a nice list of 41 significant rivers that would have to be included in that handful.
I was amused to note that the list includes the Deschutes, also used as an Intel codename...
Disable BeOS by default?
I was not aware that Be actually was able to get any OEM contracts in the first place.
Learn to read better. Note the phrase "MS' past practice'.
It's not a miracle, I believe AMD pays Intel a royalty or two.
Hammer - Yamhill
Hammer - Anvil...
Nearly pronounced the same?
Ok, could be my accent, but I think it is.
Kinda ironic. AMD makes the hammer, Intel makes the anvil. In any case, Intel takes a beating.
--|--
Tino Didriksen
As another former Oregonian, I will add a little more here.
The Intel CPU code-names are not based upon placenames in Oregon.
They are all *names of rivers* in western North America, primarily Oregon and Northern California (where Intel has most of their employees). The fact that some of them are *also* the names of cities, counties, forests, etc is quite beside the point.
Klamath River (in OR/CA)
Deschutes River (in OR)
Yamhill River (in OR)
Mendocino River (in CA)
Coppermine River (in Canada)
Merced River (in CA)
Tillamook River (in OR)
Katmai River (in AK)
Well, that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
are you completely insane to respin silicon its VERY expensive
lets think about this in terms of actual cost
for intel to actually put this in means that it would have to have 64 bit registers, cache lines for 64 bit + lots of other glue logic this adds to the number of gates and so to the COST you dont put it in unless you have to !
they might tell the marketing droids that its a turn off and on feature but really its not
anyway if Transmeta pull their fingers out they can have the first x86-64 "silicon" out the door as they just have to tweak the software layer
regards
john jones
done 1GHz dual MIPS chip used in network boxs
HP did it with their PA-RISC =descendant of MIPS arch
IBM did it for POWER
SUN dabbled with it for SPARC but the memory coherency beat them they gave up
inetl engineers suck at these things beacuse they are limited by the x86 arch
regards
john jones
"AMD has a history of making good processors really cheap"
No. AMD has a history of making adequate processors at a reasonable price. Only recently with the Athlon has AMD had a processor that is very good and cheap. Previously Intel processors were superior. Consumers are incredibly stupid, and most of them will buy Intel for years to come just because either
1. it was just in the system they bought. Intel has superior influence in this business and gets their chips in everything. (Go try to buy a Dell with an Athlon in it...)
2. the consumer had actually heard the name Intel at some point on some random commercial and so decided to buy Intel.
Now you are making fun of Yamhill. Not only a river, but a city as well, and a major east-west running street in Portland. If you ever come to Portland, check out Yamhill street. Lots of cool stuff, nice place to get drunk.
Would everyone please lay the fuck off already. We're proud of Intel around here and we're proud of our rivers, cities, and streets. I don't make fun of people who live in New York, even if "York" is a pretty stupid sounding word.
Grow up, assholes.
By Intel and MS at least. On Intel chips it's called PAE (Physical Address Extension). Modern Intel chips support 36-bit memory addressing, if the OS and applictions support it. You can actually buy Intel based servers from Dell with 4-8 processors and over 4GB of RAM. Now the solutions is below average, you have to do windowing like was done with EMS back in the day. But, it does allow for larger amounts of RAM on a 32-bit chip. It's a stopgap until 64-bit stuff hits the mainstream (soon hopefully).
It's already in current Intel chips. They have a modes called PAE (Physical Address Extension) which is a 36-bit addressing mode. Windows 2000 advanced server and datacentre then support this through AWE (Address Windowing Extension). What hapens is an application creates a windows of arbitrary size in it's memory space. It can then instruct the processor to point that window at various parts of the memory using the MapUserPhysicalPages call.
This is a limited measure because:
--It only supports 64GB of ram as opposed to the 2PB 64-bit affords.
--Apps have to be specifically written to use it, as does the OS (2k Advanced server and Data Centre are the only two I'm aware of).
--PAges can't be shared between processes
--A physical page can only be mapped to one virtual address within a process.
--There are security limits on the physical pages.
None the less, it is a temporary workaround, though not one you're going to see a public patch for since app level support is needed.
the G4 processor has had a 128bit processing archatecture since 1999 and has always been faster than any of the competition.
What annoys me is average joe user looks at something and thinks if the number is bigger, that it must be better, when clearly the G4 vs. AMD/Intel is like comparing a wide straw and a swizzle stick:
when you drink out of a wide straw, you tend to drink slower, but take in more water
when you drink out of a swizzle stick you drink REALLY REALLY fast but barely any water gets into your mouth
Speed of water = mhz
actually processing "speed" = how much water you get in your mouth
So what is IBM using them for?
A Beowulf cluster of yams !
.. better me than u.
It had to be said
I'm glad you corrected the previous poster's mistake about pal code.
> (IA-64's instructions are, as I remember, 41 bits or so, with 3 of them packed in a 128-bit bundle.)
Speaking of instruction sizes, I think packing three instructions in 128 bit was a very bad design decision for Itanium. Given identical CPU-memory bandwidth, what is the advantage over packing four 32-bit instructions in 128 bit?
The answer is "none." VLIW touts high IPC but once you have the 4 instructions into the CPU, you can have as many instruction decoders and execution units as you wanted to, and there is nothing you can't do with superscalar machine that VLIW does. In fact, tightly coupling instructions is (1) a hindrance for oo and
(2) cause for code bloat.
(1) The problem with a company taking 7+ years for designing a chip is that by that time they FRS, the name of the game has changed. In early 90's, people were interested in solving the problem of executing highly linear single-thread code fast. In the 2000's, the people are interested in things like how fast a CPU can process multiple web requests and TPC. Which is why SMT is being looked at as the next natural step in the evolution of CPU's. Ironically VLIW makes oo and SMT very difficult to implement.
(2) A badly designed IA64 compiler can produce code that has over 50% nops. And if your code has short runs between branches, even a good compiler will need to stuff the edges with nops. And one must remember that each nops that a cpu fetches is taking away from bandwidth.
I have very little knowledge of Yamhill but insofar as it is unencumbered by VLIW, it seems a more promising architecture than Itanium.
Download Mazes and Puzzles from www.puz.com
By pushing their already-obsolete itanic platform (shoving would be more appropriate) by killing anything else that is better (alpha, Mips on NT gone, probably a good conspiracy theory, and any processors that I might forget) and saying how perfect the Itanic is for YEARS, and saying that AMD's road is not a good look at the future and [insert any marketting hype] [insert anything meaning AMD won't cut it with this approach] [insert both point #1 and #2 which means the same thing but change a few words], Announcing this processor simply goes against ALL what they fought for in the last 2+ years. This gives a huge tap in the back of AMD, but at the same time, it's scary because if they don't both use the same extensions, it will segment the market even more. SSE2 is nice, even if I do a lot of 3d, buying a P4 over a dual AthlonMP system won't give me much of a boost, primarely because the rest of the Floating poiont engine in the P4 is terrible when not optimized, and because SSE2 optimization, when implemented fully, will be when the P4 will be obsolete.
Where I am getting at is I don't want to see 2 separate x86-64bits extensions or I'll be really pissed.
Anyways, good for AMD, if they've flexed intel into doing such a move, it shows that they did their homework correctly and Intel probably sat on their cashcow until they had to get their act together.
Too bad the press is all "Intel inside" sold-out... they won't remember how intel pushed against that so hard, now they'll think only present and say "look here's a new processor, wow!!" and be amazed at nothing.
Itanium sucks, what were the last specs? 120W per processor? a pound heatsink? god someone put that puppy out of misery.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The current top-ot-the -line in audio A/D converters are 24-bit, 192kHz, which can be played back on currently available DVD-A players. If you want hi-fidelity audio, buy a DVD-A player, or any one of dozens of multichannel sound cards sold for recording applications.
-Ma'at
Creative aint so creative any more...
they could for $1 more make cool audio card with 96khz or 192khz optional for 16/20/24bit samples.
ANd not for $400 retail but $80 retail
We need an NVIDIA of audio makers... perhaps NVIDIA should make audio in all geforce4 chipsets.
I agree completely.
You might just as well say the poster is ugly for all the intellectual value "troll" brings to the discussion.
I suppose if I made the "Nice troll" comment in some sort of neutral context, this would be true, however you may have noticed that I made this comment in /. The term "troll" has definite, highly polarized meaning here, and the phrase (both words of it) that I used is thus both positively drenched in intellectual value and ever-so-delicately nuanced with a snide sense of drollery.
So first you state that there may be a lack of agreement about the term "monopoly" and then you go on to choose the definition that supports your position as if the other poster had agreed to it.
So you manufacture a requirement that the other poster must agree with my analysis before I can post it?
Ahhh, no. First I state that there is a legal definition of a "monopoly", as contrasted with a common term that is bandied about with no such clear definition. I then illustrate this with an ingenious "OJ" analogy, which I'm really quite taken with. All to make the point that the original poster is in error in his belief, according to the law as laid down by the district court and upheld on appeal.
"I don't believe M$ is a monopoly" is not the same as "MS is not a monopoly"
Syntactically, sure they're different. If we really want to split hairs, I would say that the second statement has an implied assertion of belief, so that:
"MS is not a monopoly" is semantically equivalent to "(I believe) MS is not a monopoly", which in turn is equivalent to "I don't believe M$ is a monopoly". At this point I'm willing to pick nits in just about anything :).
Granted, I don't know what the poster truly believes or doesn't believe. Of course, you don't know if I truly believe what I'm saying here either ... maybe you can tell me.
Well, this is a change in your position.
No. Nice try, though.
If the court is supposed to be wiser than slashdot readers, why would you consider changing your voting preferences?
I have not made the assertion that "the court" is "wiser" than slashdot readers. I noted that the original poster was self-evidently a /. reader. (Yes, yes, I know, very low "intellectual value" on this one, BWTF). No comparison was made between the relative capacities of /. readers as contrasted with, say, appellate judges (perhaps because no comparison really needs to be made).
The astute reader will have noticed that my comment was somewhat, err, "sarcastic". Let me be the first to point out that I do not really consider the judiciary to be a collection of "black-robed slackers". In the future, I shall go to every effort to ascertain that my comments have no humorous component whatsoever, in order to avoid any possible confusion on your part.
It suggests that you (like the original poster and everyone else) are willing to cite the court when it agrees with you but would like to see them replaced if they do not.
One does not "replace" Supreme court justices, and I have made no such suggestion.
If I disagree with the direction of the court, I may choose to vote for a candidate who reflects my own views and who might tend to appoint to vacancies justices who share those views as well. Or maybe I decide to run for President. But whether I agree with the court or not, their judgments are the law of the land.
Answer a yes or no question for me, friend. Is Microsoft a monopoly?
Regards,
VILW is an old idea. It's been obsoleted by superscalar processors. It turns out to be better to find parallelism at run-time in hardware than to find it at compile time.
The real reason for the Itanium was to have something that had some intellectual property that AMD couldn't clone, allowing Intel to crank up the price and get their margins back up.
As for the AMD 64-bit machine, it's entirely vanilla. It's very x86 like, with the same instruction set, a few more registers (yay!), and of course the registers are longer. It has all the obvious backwards compatibility stuff. It comes up emulating a 32-bit x86 machine, so old OSs will run, but can be put into 64-bit mode. In 64-bit mode, it can simulate multiple virtual 32-bit machines, so you can have a 64-bit OS running both 64-bit and 32-bit processes. (Run 32-bit Windows under 64-bit Linux!)
Wierdly, the x86 instruction set isn't viewed as that bad today. The variable-length instructions aren't that much of a problem to decode any more. Speculative decode takes care of that. One big advantage of RISC architectures was that making all the instructions the same length simplified decode and allowed more look ahead. That's a dead issue. Making the instructions all the same length causes about a 2x code bloat, which is now unnecessary.
The other big RISC advantage was having lots of registers. Register renaming and caches have killed that advantage. Today, a register is just a short name for a recently referenced variable. There are far more registers inside a Pentium Pro and later than the few explicit ones you can mention in x86 code. In fact, one advantage to not having too many registers is that it shortens subroutine calls and context switches. The machines with huge numbers of explicit registers, like SPARC machines, put a lot of effort into saving and restoring them.
I like that...^^^^!! /. crowd, it's desparately needed for certain!
Thanks for posting something HUMOROUS to the
Thanks again for the post!
206.39.38.2, DDN-BLK-36, DOD NET INFO CENTER. 800.365.3642 206.36.0.0-206.39.255.255 NET RANGE.
The pre-runtime optimizing, done by a compiler/linker combo can be hard, true, but that's now. Within 10 years, it will be devastatingly good. To start THEN with a VLIW machine, like the EPIC architecture, would be too late.
Furthermore, using a JIT in hardware to optimize the code at runtime (which is what you want, since you can decide what to optimize better and also in what way) is the way to go, Transmeta already uses such a setup in the crusoe.
So: an EPIC based proc, combined with a JIT chip would be ok. When the compiler techniques are better (it's a new area, give them a couple of years, optimizing techniques were focussed on optimizing for a pipeline processor), the EPIC instructionset and the VLIW technique will turn out the technique of the future. Give it some time.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
The last time i used windows on one of my own computers, when `98 was new, I was running an Intel VX chipset/motherboard with a p166/MMX, 64mb ram, Western Digital HD, S3 Virge displaycard, Soundblaster AWE32 sound, and even a microsoft mouse, I still suffered incredible intollerable instability problems, And this using all reputable brand hardware which is claimed to be well supported.When i switched this computer over to linux, Redhat 5.1 at the time, it served well as a workstation for several months, no crashes, but no great uptime either.. due to me trying to keep the kernel up to date. Later I bought a replacement machine, and turned the original into a server, Where it ran for 446 days before being moved around, and is now going strong in it`s new location at 85 days.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Yeah, let's take Be -- A OS that utterly failed in it's target markets ("Media OS" and embedded), so in an act of desperation, the company positioned it directly against Windows.
The fucking thing didn't even have a good browser or mailer, and they were pawning it off as a consumer OS? Real smart.
Of course you Be Advocate Morons fail to see any possibility that Be was not destined to take over the world's desktops, so it must be Microsoft's chicanary that killed it. Right -- they couldn't even sell the thing to the video and audio editing markets, and that's where it really kicked ass. As a consumer OS, it solved zero problems and offered absolutely nothing -- that's why it failed.
You are asking why somebody didn't do something about these past practices. I'm telling you they did do something.
Since most shoe companies already had these machines and the provider only leased them, they could take them away if the companies bought a competing machine.
Say your factory has 30 USM machines it's gathered over the years. USM was the first company to make shoe machines. A new company, Company X, has just come out with a great new machine. You want one. But USM will take away the 30 you already have if you buy the one from CX. This doesn't sound sketchy to you?
It'd be impossible for you to buy the machine from CX, because you'd lose everything you have. If you could afford to get 30 new machines you don't need from CX, it would still stop your production for the year or so it would take to totally refit your factory to put the new machines it... Not to mention retraining all your employees on the new machines, changing your product line to fit the new machines... Killing your business, pretty much. A year without revenue, without product would kill almost any business.
Not even touching on the maintenence, you don't think that is an "artificial barrier to entry"?
No, I was not. I don't understand the problem you are having comprehending this thread.
The poster stated that the only way to counter a company with control of a market is by offering competition. He also implied that he thought the concept of a monopoly is spurious and that goverments need not interceed, ever- the market will take care of it. That monopolies ONLY exist because they have better products than the other companies.
I replied with a list of actions MS took to hinder competition, actions that made it almost impossible for competitors to compete, and asked him if he thought this was still fair competition, best-product wins. I never said "why doesn't something do something about Microsoft". I wanted to know if the poster thought that any action by a company should be permissable, even if it hindered competition.
"The term "troll" has definite, highly polarized meaning here"
/. readers as contrasted with, say, appellate judges (perhaps because no comparison really needs to be made)."
... maybe you can tell me."
Yes, it's an insult and as I said adds nothing useful to the discussion.
"So you manufacture a requirement that the other poster must agree with my analysis before I can post it?"
I didn't say that the poster had to agree with you. I said that after his post you chose a particular definition and then concluded he was in error. As for your conclusion that a non-legal definition is not clear, you're just plain wrong. The Merriam-Webster Collegiate dictionary's first defintion of monopoly is "exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action" there are three other definitions listed none of which mention legal proceedings. Why don't you post an actual legal definiton of monopoly and cite a source for it?
"No comparison was made between the relative capacities of
You have a short memory: "Obviously we should fire all those black-robed slackers on the judiciary, since you, a slashdot reader, know so much more about it." Obviously the point you were trying to make is that as a slashdot reader he was not qualified to question judges.
"At this point I'm willing to pick nits in just about anything"
Grasping at straws is what I'd call it.
"Of course, you don't know if I truly believe what I'm saying here either
What? You were the one denying someone's claim of a belief, not me.
"The astute reader will have noticed that my comment was somewhat, err, "sarcastic". Let me be the first to point out that I do not really consider the judiciary to be a collection of "black-robed slackers". In the future, I shall go to every effort to ascertain that my comments have no humorous component whatsoever, in order to avoid any possible confusion on your part."
Well, you do a nice job of making it sound like I misunderstood you, but I did not. As I stated above, you were trying to discredit the poster on the basis that he wasn't as qualified as judges.
"If I disagree with the direction of the court, I may choose to vote for a candidate who reflects my own views and who might tend to appoint to vacancies justices who share those views as well."
Exactly my point. There's nothing wrong with that but again you shouldn't try to discredit other posters by comparing them to judges unless you're willing to agree with all judgements equally.
I'm talking about heat that is /radiated away/ from a body - this is typically how heat is removed from a CPU or the like, even when there's a fan.
Take a chunk of metal, paint it matt black, heat it to 100C, then sit it in air at 25C for 20 minutes. Do the same with an equal mass and density chunk of the same metal that has a mirrored finish. You'll find that the matt black chunk has cooled down a lot more than the mirrored one. The matt black surface radiates more energy than the mirrored one.
Look in any first-year university physics textbook for a discussion of black body radiation and related stuff . . .
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
I'm curious - if Itanium flounders where does that leave HP which supposedly was going to give up on its PA-RISC chip design and replace it with Intel processors? There was a lot of hype from HP about how economical for them this was going to be in the long run by adopting a 64-bit commodity processor. Of course, with all of the delays HP has kept having to extend its PA-RISC line of processors. Might HP insist that Intel keep developing Itanium even if it flops in the consumer market so Intel might have to develop two versions of a 64-bit processor? Maybe SUN didn't screw up after all by not porting Solaris to the Itanium line :-)
I don't know the whole in's and out's of their deal, but I heard HP was into the design with Intel early on. I'd bet that HP has certain IP rights guarenteed even if Intel decides not to continue with the architecture. HP could probably pick it up and go with it anyway.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Here's a link to an article about the Hammer, and AMD's proposed server strategy, as explained at LinuxWorld Expo in NYC 2002.
http://www.edgereport.com/article.php?sid=133
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