Slashdot Mirror
CEE2003: A One-Vendor Trade Show
Billy Stephens writes "Few people knew about the CEE2003 event put on by Chaintech this year. They flew some of the top media analysts and resellers out to Spain to show off their new K8 motherboards and Nvidia Geforce FX based video cards. Unfortunately there was a lot of bad news to be had as well. AMD pushed back their Athlon 64 CPU until September so there were no motherboards based on it to show off, and Nvidia announced they would only release around 4,000 of their Geforce FX GPUs, primarily for preorders only. It looks like ATI has rattled Nvidia more than what people thought. Monkey Review has a great summary of this event with plenty of pictures. Overall I am impressed with the quality Chaintech has put into their products from an aesthetic point of view, it's a shame that both Nvidia and AMD are having product issues."
Half of me wants to say that AMD and Nvidia must be insane for not keeping their timetables in better order, and the other half of me is glad that they are not releasing (or are releasing only on a minor scale) incomplete or inferior products. All of me is frustrated at the irony of these situations. I recall reading a tour of Nvidia's headquarters, which included a ton of expensive Sun hardware going to work at the design phase of the Nvidia's GPUs. The guys giving the tour said that they couldn't wait until AMD released their new 64 bit chips so they could replace those farms with Linux-powered machines on AMD hardware. Now with AMD pushing back the Athlon 64 to September, that delays Nvidia's ability to make and design chips on the hardware and software they really want to use.
Think about this, though:
IF AMD released a desktop version of their hammer, the "Athlon 64", and...
... there wasn't an Athlon 64 version of MS-Windows, .. which OS do you think would push sales?
AMD's suppressing Athlon 64 is partly because the margins are better on the Opteron-class's market, and ..
.. because if they put 'em out, then they'll be moving the market-share boundaries to reduce MS and grow Linux, and MS won't allow anyone, anywhere ( who's a 'partner' ), to do that ( see the latest bit where they *coded* broken style-sheets to make Opera users non-able to work well with msn, and remember how they pressured IBM so suppress OS/2 ( if what I'd read about the evidence presented in the pre-Bush prosecution of MS was correct )... )
Messages to/for me ( in me journal )
As much as I don't want to beleive it, I am now thinking that we could be seeing the end of nVidia, just like we saw the end of 3DFX a few years back now. The GeForceFX is just so huge and noisy comapred to ATI's offering, it is not even funny.
:P
I guess there are not as many companies (especially computer/IT/internet companies) that can survive long these days - we are seeing more and more "infallible" companies failing nowadays.
As soon as ATI makes better drivers for Windows/Linux and other OSes, then they will sell even more than they do now.
I wonder if this will apply to companies such as Google and Microsoft....
Arc
Microsoft HAS a 64-bit operating system. They have a 64-bit version of Windows XP. Runs only on the Itanium at present. That was actually one of the reasons Intel pushed out the Itainum 1. I mean face it, the chip was pretty worthless for a production environment what with the expense. Basically it was only good for R&D.
Well, that gave companies, like MS, time to recompile their stuff for it. Now the Itainum 2 actually ahs software and platforms it can run.
Despite the fact that you can mess with a chip simlator, you really can't code and test until you have actual silicon. If MS is going to make a version fo 64-bit Windows for AMD chips, it won't happen till the processor happens. They may do some work on it with simulators and get it ready, but they aren't going to ship it till they've tested it on the real deal.
I think it's silly that some people expect software makers to support a chip before it comes out.
"there simply isn't a strong need ..."
I would argue there isn't a strong demand.
I see a strong need for 64 bit. I put it in the same group as dual procs and Ipv6. People don't know what it brings to the table, so there to ignorant to demand it.
How much of a need was there for the first Apple computer?
It's supply and demand, need doesn't enter into it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The thing is, when 3dfx died, Nvidia was the one going for speed; the big feature being pushed on the Voodoo4/5 was FSAA and it's higher image quality. Nvidia's card at the time was the Geforce2 which was totally about speed. ATI's last couple of generations have been pushing FSAA and usually outperform Nvidia once you turn it on.
Give a man a fire he'll be warm for a night. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
The fact that 64-bit XP exists does NOT mean
I'm sure they could spare a few extra systems ;-)
that it will work on ALL 64-bit processors!
Clearly, IA-64 (Itanium) is NOT the same as
x86-64 (Opteron) and XP for Opteron needs
quite a lot of different low level code.
It is a different processor!
However, AMD has released working silicon
(and complete specifications, AND an emulator)
to partners a long time ago. Please check http://www.x86-64.org.
The reason Opteron has taken quite a long time
to release to the public is that it has
to be competitive with an already fast processor
(Athlon 3000+, P4 3.06 etc) so it has to reach
a very high clock rating AND it has to be
widely available.
I believe the first "unofficial" benchmarks had
been available a few months ago. Also note that
according to AMD, test systems are available
(www.amd.com).I'm sure you can read about
working systems presented during the last
year.
Anyway, to sum this up, I'm sure that if this
was an issue, MS would have had BETA (or
ALPHA!) silicon a VERY long time ago for
developement. Hell, even UT2003 has been
recompiled for x86-64 and linux/arch/x86-64/
is already 35000 lines of C and assembler
code!
P.
P.S. I just found out that Tom's hardware
had seen x86-64 silicon from 27 February
2002. Go check
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20020227/
for MS