Intel's Itanium Will Get x86 Emulation

pissoncutler writes "Intel has announced that they will be releasing a software emulation product to allow 32-bit x86 apps to run on Itanium Processors. According to these stories (story 1, story 2), the emulator is capable of the x86 performance of a 1.5Ghz Xeon (when run on a similar speed Itanium.) Who said that no one cared about x86 anymore?"

Comments

i object !

[ibbie]

I haven't seen enough info on the new IBM PowerPC 970 CPU expected shorty.

watch who you're calling shorty, farm boy.

Re:i object !

[FroMan]

This is an apple.slashdot.org post, that should be iObject, not i object.

Stolen, but insightful.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.macslash.org/comments.pl?sid=03/04/23/1 82250&cid=3

First off, the disclaimer: this is my pet theory, i.e., a total, wild, pulled-of-out-my-*ss speculation, okay. I have no inside info or contact with people who might know this, but here is my speculation of why this AMD thing keeps coming up despite the fact that the use of the IBM 970 is almost a certainty.

Put this AMD thing into a bigger context of recent events.

We've heard that 10.3 will include a more integrated Classic environment where Classic Mac OS apps will be given many of the benefits of Aqua.

Apple quietly releases their implementation of XWindows system, X11. Despite the fact that this news set Slashdot buzzing for days on end and probably should have had some mention from Steve Jobs in the keynote he'd given a few days prior, it was released very quietly. Interesting.

Next, the somewhat unexpected news that Microsoft was buying Virtual PC. What on earth could Microsoft want with VPC? We can speculate that they want greater control over emulation of Windows on the Mac, but that sounds weak. They still control the operating system that gets installed on VPC so from that perspective they've gained nothing by buying out VPC.

And then these weird, peristent, inexplicable rumors that Apple is in talks with AMD about something or other. Who knows what. It's very doubtful that it's about a chip that would replace the PPC since we've read many, many well-informed examinations of such a move and the technical hurdles would likely ruin Apple.

So what could all this possibly point to? Apple has given us a system that can basically run software from three different operating systems: the classic Mac OS, Mas OS X (the Next OS), and Unix. They recently brought the Unix world closer with the release of X11. Wouldn't it be amazing if hardware in the near-future included an "add-on" chip (something like Altivec that works in conjuction with the PPC processor) that emulated the x86 hardware? Maybe it would give Mac users the ability to run Windows and PC software, not via software emulation, but with hardware assistance. Imagine the interest Apple could draw if they presented the world with a machine that runs the Classic, OS X, Unix and Windows applications... all in one environment and almost seamlessly.

Now does Microsoft buying VPC make sense? Maybe? Maybe not. Maybe MS Mac Business Unit caught wind of this and wants to one-up Apple somehow. Any thoughts?

AMD would be a likely partner is such a move since one could imagine the problems with Intel assisting Apple with this. If it was popular, Intel would be killing their own business. AMD, on the other hand, wouldn't, if I understand the situation correctly.

Anyway... like I said... wild speculation, but that's what all this says to me.

Re:Stolen, but insightful.

[Anonymous Coward]

These same thoughts wandered through my mind and then out again, simply because apple have Been There Done That over and over before. there were PC compatibility cards for Pluses, for the Mac II, for the Quadras, and for PCI PPC macs... none of which were particularly succesful

Then again the fact they've done it so many times before could mean they're likely to bash their head against this particular wall one more time

Re:Stolen, but insightful.

[Surak]

So what could all this possibly point to? Apple has given us a system that can basically run software from three different operating systems: the classic Mac OS, Mas OS X (the Next OS), and Unix. They recently brought the Unix world closer with the release of X11. Wouldn't it be amazing if hardware in the near-future included an "add-on" chip (something like Altivec that works in conjuction with the PPC processor) that emulated the x86 hardware? Maybe it would give Mac users the ability to run Windows and PC software, not via software emulation, but with hardware assistance. Imagine the interest Apple could draw if they presented the world with a machine that runs the Classic, OS X, Unix and Windows applications... all in one environment and almost seamlessly.

Ummm...I'm pretty sure Apple already tried this once. They sold some PowerMacs with cards that had 486 processors on them so you could write Windows on it. Wasn't that thing a dismal failure?

Re:Stolen, but insightful.

[shotfeel]

I'd think more along the line of the PPC processor IBM was rumored to have in the works back in the 601 days that included an X86 compatible core on die (was that the 610?).

That would be cool.

Re:Stolen, but insightful.

[tmasssey]

It was the 615, and it never saw the light of day.

The early days of PPC were wild. Apple and IBM working together on hardware and software (Taligent and Pink, some of which got rolled into OS/2's System Object Model). The possibility of running OS/2, Windows *and* MacOS all on the same computer all at the same time via Microkernel... Cool stuff.

A lot of things were attempted but never worked. The 615 is an example: a PPC with a 486 core (IBM has rights to Intel CPU's second only to Intel themselves). The 620 was another: an Itanium-like (without the VLIW) CPU with tons of pipelines and multiprocessor capabilities that never made it into production. Then there's PREP, CHRP, OS/2 for the PowerPC...

1994 was a wild time for vaporware...

Re:Stolen, but insightful.

[GlassHeart]

[Apple's] (poor in my mind) current business model.

Niche marketing can be counter-intuitive, but it's also the classic question of whether you want to be a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond. Apple chose the former, exerts great influence in its chosen market, and makes a profit in probably some of the worst years ever in the industry.

There are far worse business models, and technically it's nearly impossible to provide the kind of hardware-software integration that Apple currently sells without controlling the hardware. It's not so much they like being a hardware and software company as that they can only distinguish themselves in the market by also selling hardware.

Let's examine your business plan, where:

Apple could make a very nice transition to Opteron/Athlon64. [...] I also feel Apple should stick with PPC on the notebook side.

which in effect nearly triples the development effort for a Mac software vendor. First, you need to build and test an Athlon version (which is not going to be compatible with the Windows version), build and test a PPC version, and then test the PPC emulation version. Thereby making Apple's already small marketshare even more fragmented, when the obvious sensible thing to do is to get a new high end PPC CPU, drop the G3, and improve G4 compiler optimizations.

If PPC 980 (or whatever) turns out to be a big win over Opteron2, it's not that big of a deal to switch back.

That would be plainly insane. Apple's third party software vendors tend to be smaller, and would have a very hard time hopping from platform to platform. Even some big ones have not completed the OS X transition, and you're talking about going to x86 and back?

Re:Stolen, but insightful.

[jcr]

I think Cocoa programmers must be masochists, or perhaps Apple are sadists.

Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

If you can't make the shift to OO concepts in programming, then yes: Cocoa's not going to be any fun for you. For those of us who don't like doing the same work over and over again for each app we write, Cocoa is a godsend.

-jcr

If...

[dreamchaser]

If Apple starts producing AMD based systems, which I doubt will happen, don't expect an open architecture. You can bet that there will be proprietary elements to the platform and OS/X won't run on commodity x86 hardware.

Maybe for a while...

[ruiner13]

"Will we see Mac OS X running on two different platforms/CPUs?"

If we do, I think it would probably be only for a brief transition period, like when they switched from the 68K line of processors to PPC. But who knows. I really hope they don't switch to AMD, that would make people less inclined to write software that is still compatible with the PPC architecture I own (assuming they don't make binaries compatible with both... i don't think they can, can they?).

Re:Maybe for a while...

[ivan256]

If we do, I think it would probably be only for a brief transition period, like when they switched from the 68K line of processors to PPC. But who knows. I really hope they don't switch to AMD, that would make people less inclined to write software that is still compatible with the PPC architecture I own (assuming they don't make binaries compatible with both... i don't think they can, can they?).

This is the biggest reason I've doubted the Apple/Opteron rumors from the start. When Apple switched from 68k to PPC they chose a processor that was capable of emulating the old platform at full speed to ensure a seamless transition from the user perspective. I doubt Apple would be interested in anything but a seamless transition this time as well. Opteron, however, doesn't have enough registers (among other problems) to do a good job at emulation the PPC architecture. I would guess that there would have to be AMD chips that are 10x faster than PPC chips (they're getting there, but PPC isn't that far behind yet) or Apple would not be satisfied with the PPC emulation experience. I would believe the use of Itanium more that the use of Opteron, just because Itanium is much better suited to PPC emulation. Unfortunatly a single Itanium CPU costs more than most complete Apple systems right now, so that's probably unrealistic as well.

As for all the people that say the 970 is vaporware because of the lack of hype, well there's always been much less hype from IBM and Motorola about their new CPUs than from Intel, AMD, and (formerly) Digital (remember the old Digital Alpha CPU ads back in the late 80s/early 90s? "We're on our third generation 64bit architecture. Our compitition hasn't even started designing their first." It was the first CPU specific TV ad I remember seeing. Classic). IBM markets to manufacturers, not to end users, so unless you're a developer you don't see the hype. IBM and Apple are well suited for each other because IBM has a history of licensing portions of their CPU cores and using them to put together custom processors for the customers. Apple would love to have that kind of control, and they won't get it anywhere else.

More info from IBM

[daveschroeder]

The story missed a major source of information about the 970 directly from IBM:

PowerPC 970 2002 Microprocessor Forum presentation

This contains a link to IBM Senior PowerPC Architect Peter Sandon's detailed presentation in PDF format.

Eh?

[The Bungi]

but feel Linux is still not ready for the desktop yet

Please mod story as (-1, Flamebait).

Re:Eh?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Not to mention:

"Could we be that lucky?"

Approx. 8 million (+5, Insightful) comments in stories past have pointed out that:

NO, MORON, WE WILL NOT BE THAT LUCKY.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

An obvious explaination....

[Chmarr]

Me and a few friends have long held the belief that Apple releasing OS/X for the x86 platform would KILL Apple. Unlike Microsoft, Apple's 'coin' is their hardware platform, rather than software. The software is just there to sell the hardware. If they released OS/X for x86, then their hardware sales would plummet.

Yes, they could make some money off selling OS/X. However, they would then have to become MUCH more interested in ensuring their software is not being pirated, and that means some kind of DRM. A lot of folk love Apple because of their anti-DRM stance, and a lot of that love would disappeaer if Apple went down this route. As it is, Apple don't seem THAT concerned about piracy of their software, instead relying on those that want to 'do the Right Thing' with Apple, which is a fair percentage of their user base.

Instead, this is my theory on the Apple/AMD relationship, if there is one.

- It would be STUPID of Apple to rely on a single-source for their new processors, so, who better than to ask as a 'second source' than AMD? Yes, I'm sure Apple/IBM will get a leetle percentage out of all the chips that AMD make, but I'd bet my dollars that's what's going on.

Of course, the other possiblity is that AMD HAD talks with Apple, and they consisted of "Hey, lets go do lunch." "No." :) But... that's still 'talks', isn't it? :)

Re:An obvious explaination....

[TheAwfulTruth]

Actually I believe that the complete opposite is true. Apples market share could go up 10x overnight if they released Mac OSX for x86. Hardware is a tough place to make money, the hardware COSTS money. Lost of it, profit margins are slim.

And even if Apple made the OS free-standing for any x86 machine, that would not stop Apple from being able to build ultra-stylish, high-priced, boutique x86 machines and put their own OS on it now would it? They'd probably sell exactly the same # of machines that way as the die hard Apple aficinados would probably still prefer to buy apple branded machines, AND it would grow their OS market share tremendously, maybe even driving their branded machine sales higher in the future.

Frankly I think not porting OSX to x86 was a huge blunder that will hold the company back another 5 years till the next actual achetecture change is forced upon them.

Re:An obvious explaination....

[scrotch]

Actually I believe that the complete opposite is true. Apples market share could go up 10x overnight if they released Mac OSX for x86. Hardware is a tough place to make money, the hardware COSTS money. Lost of it, profit margins are slim.

Market share != Profit;
10 * $129 < $1500; // 10* OSX cost < average Mac price

Hardware is a tough place for Windows PC makers to make money. Apple has been doing pretty well there. Dell and Gateway have problems and losses because they're in competition with each other and with your cousin who makes PCs in his garage. Your suggestion that Apple would make more money by competing with Dell and your cousin is strange.

Re:PPC 970 == Vaporware

[Capt'n Hector]

Vaporware? If I'm not mistaken, the PPC 970 is ahead of schedule. In fact, it's hitting the market a good deal faster than many other chips out there, so i wonder why you're calling it vaporware. IBM is not dragging their feet. On the contrary, they're moving extremely fast.

What's more, the PPC 970 is not shrouded in secret, (at least from an apple hardware point of view) If you think the 970 is shrouded in secret and is vaporware, I wonder what you think of the Moto G5.

PowerPC 7400 was "vaporware" too

[daveschroeder]

Remember, Motorola didn't even release the PowerPC 7400 (G4), much less any information about it, until apple introduced the Power Mac G4. Does that mean it didn't exist?

Apple probably can't play those same kind of "keep it secret until we announce our product" games with IBM, but keep in mind the only thing IBM has really done was introduce the concept for the processor at MPF. Judging from how Apple has rolled out new processors in the past, it wouldn't be surprising to find if further information about the 970 is being withheld at Apple's request (Apple being a potentially huge customer for this chip).

Also, remember that before CeBIT, IBM posted press releases on its German site talking about 970, the fact that it featured AltiVec, and how IBM was going to be demoing several 970-based blade servers at CeBIT. The press release suddenly got pulled and there was no further information about the 970 from IBM.

One way this could be interpreted is that the 970 is vaporware.

The more likely scenario, however, based on how apple has done releases of new processors in the past, including several iterations of the 7400 family, is that more information is being withheld until Apple releases a system featuring this processor. Then the floodgates will open.

The only reason we may know anything of it at all is that IBM felt it fundamentally important enough to present at MPF - we haven't heard a peep since.

Stop it. AMD + Apple == Hypertransport

[wazzzup]

So Apple says this is the year of the laptop, right? If I'm not mistaken, AMD chips run hotter than just about anything out there. So who wants a laptop with 15 minutes of laptop life and the capability of burning your wang to a small, blackened stump of carbon (or for the ladies a sizzling fajita)?

Besides, are they or any of the Mac software vendors going to support two versions of their Mac products? No.

Re:Missed an option:

[__aaaaxm1522]

Yup, that's right. Keep perpetuating the myth. Have you looked at the Apple Store lately? iBooks are <$1K ... compare to a Dell or similar notebook and you'll find that Apple matches or beats their pricing.

True - the desktops are still somewhat pricey. $1000 more? No. Not if we're talking iMacs, and if you're comparing them to a machine purchased from a major manufacturer like Dell or Compaq - If you're talking beige-boxes, well then yes. Apple computers are $1000 more than a beige box ... as are the Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM and Gateway machines.

But keep in mind, Apple is really focusing on the portable market segment this year, so that's where most of the value is going to be.

Hypertransport

[vanced]

Does nobody remember that both AMD and Apple sit on the consortium for Hypertransport? If you look at Apples current lagging hardware specs you'll see a need for two things. A faster Bus and a faster CPU.

AMD == Hypertransport && IBM == P970

Re:Move away from Linux?

[tmark]

Not everyone wants to roll up their sleeves and start coding just to use "desktop" software. There *are* people out there who just need to write documents/work on spreadsheets/balance their checkbook, and not all of them share the Open Source agenda: do you really think they all ought to participate in Open Source, instead of just switching to some OS they feel suits them better ?

Something It Seems Everyone's Forgetting

[Farley Mullet]

Apple has heavily optimized OS X and the so-called iLife apps (iTunes, iPhoto, etc.) for AltiVec, the special vector instruction set that the G4 has. That's why OS X runs much more nicely on G4's (which have AltiVec) than on G3's (which don't). The reason all the buzz started about Apple migrating new Macs to the 64-bit IBM chips in the first place was that IBM introduced AltiVec workalike instructions for their new chips, so Apple could move up without sacrificing the AltiVec optimizations. Moving to x86-ish hardware would mean that they'd lose all the AltiVec optimizations they've made, so it seems unlikely to me.

Apple will not use two platforms

[stilwebm]

For Apple to run OS X (or it's descendants) on Apple branded computers, they would have to create serious confusion and frustration among Apple users. Apple users don't want to think about "what processor version installer should I run." Sure there are so-called fat binaries that include binary code for multiple platforms, just as Apple used when transitioning between Motorola 680x0 (aka 68K) processors and PowerPC processors. However, that was a one way transition. People knew that PPC was the future or all Apple as well as an upgrade. PowerPC processors could run 680x0 code through emulation quite well with no user intervention. With a transition to x86, however, Apple would have a huge problem with backwards compatability for existing applications. PowerPC emulators are in the works for x86 (actually, at least one will work on most modern architectures), but believe me, they are not an acceptable solution for production use - especially among most Mac users.

Using two simultaneous platforms is a big problem for sales and developer relations. Which is better? Why even bother with the other platform then? Or, why is the new platform so much better yet it has little available software? Why bother porting to the second platform when sales are sluggish on that platform? Then existing customers get angry. Why is my platform being abandonned? New customers feel the same if the gamble doesn't pay off and gets killed. The only partial exception is if one platform does not substitute for the other, say appliances vs. desktops and servers. Think Sun's purchase of Cobalt.

AMD thing in bigger context

[daveschroeder]

Or, instead a bunch of wild speculation, why not realize that Apple and AMD are both a part of the HyperTransport consortium and are (presumably) both very interested in 64-bit computing on the desktop, and that:

1. One of HyperTransport's most commonly supported speeds is 6.4GB/sec;

2. Apple is desperately in need of a revamp of the entire desktop architecture, especially memory and system bus (aside from processor itself);

3. The IBM PowerPC 970 cooincidentally supports a system bus speed of 6.4GB/sec.

Doesn't the HyperTransport relationship seem a bit more logical than all this off-the-wall stuff about Marklar, Apple switching/adding processors, etc.?

Re:AMD thing in bigger context

[bnenning]

Doesn't the HyperTransport relationship seem a bit more logical

Exactly. A year ago it might have made sense for Apple to switch to x86, but with the impending 970 release it would be silly. It would substantially reduce the currently huge demand for the 970, as buyers would fear the machines being obsoleted if Apple abandoned the PowerPC entirely. But HyperTransport is win-win for everybody (well, not MS and Intel, darn).

Re: That would mean the end of Mac apps

[DavidinAla]

If Macs could suddenly run Windows applications (without something like VPC), why would anyone write anything except Windows apps? The big companies that now target both platforms could just drop their Mac software and tell Mac users to buy the Windows version. Companies that now specialize in the Mac market could start making Windows apps and sell to both platforms. Apple would totally lose control of the integration that has made the Mac experience what it is today. I just can't see any other reasonable result of what the poster suggests.

Let's pull it all together...

[stienman]

Will we see Mac OS X running on two different platforms/CPUs? Could we be that lucky?

In short, NO.

Firstly, as everyone knows, Apple makes money off one thing, and one thing only - HARDWARE. They make great software only to sell their hardware.

The benefits of controlling the hardware are

1. A better user experience
2. Lower tech support costs
3. Better quality control
4. Specialized/customized designs with an eye toward aesthetics

They CANNOT allow others to create hardware upon which their software will run. This means that they have to use a special BIOS, and manufacture their own boards. IF they switch to an OS that can be run on an x86 processor (and custom mothboard/bios/etc), you will find, the very next day, a crack for the software which will allow it to run on any generic motherboard, and further down the line a BIOS image which will allow an unmodified software to run on a non-custom motherboard.

Right now they can control it because a 'commodity' PPC motherboard costs more than the same apple motherboard. It would surprise me if Apple wasn't applying some pressure to various suppliers to prevent the widespread availability of commodity PPC equipment which is very similar to Apple's own. This is common in the industry. Furthermore, they may even have a slightly altered/customized version of the various PPC chips they use.

The only way for Apple to play against WINTEL is to not compete - not competing means selling essentially different products. Apple would die if they had to sell their OS and try to make a profit at it - the company is simply not designed to compete against MS. (Although if they did Windows would improve dramatically)

Put another way, Apple is a whole user experience company. They don't want the user to go to a generic theatre, sit in seats made by some strange company, eat food purchased from GFS, and watch a movie made by three different movie studios. They want you in their theater, their seats eating their food, and watching their entirely controlled movie.

This is good for those who only want to deal with one company, and are willing to pay for it. They know their market. They may be trying to expand it a little towards the geek segment that play with software but don't care about hardware (we run unix!). It is unlikely that they will ever capture the imagination of the hardware geek, they know it, and they aren't courting us.

So stop posting freaking stories about OS X on any commodity hardware, ok?

-Adam

Why do we need x86?

[jceaser]

Could someone please explain to me why there is such a "need" to have Mac OS X on an x86 processor? Why is it a good thing to run on a processer with 4 registers (8 if you use the address registers for non address calculations) and an outdated asm languages when 32 registers and risc is just so much fun? Their are a lot of different processors out there and I really don't think x86 is the best in the world. Why would anyone what to run any code on anything made by intel. I'm not trying to start a flame here, I just want to know why so many people want x86 over anything else (mips, sparc, hp-risc, power-pc).

Re:Why do we need x86?

[ocelotbob]

Because X86-64 doesn't have just 4+4 registers. They've added 8 more general purpose registers, plus 8 more registers for working on SIMD code like SSE and SSE2, bringing the total of general purpose and special registers to 16 64 bit registers and 16 128 bit registers. While 8-32bit x86 assembly is ugly, x86-64 has provided a good number of features that make it more like a good RISC processor. Same goes for Itanium, where technically it has 128 registers, with 32 of them being visible through "traditional" means, and the others being visible through a register stack mechanism.

Re:success (or lack thereof) of PC cards in Macs

[King_TJ]

The biggest reason those cards weren't "wildly successful" was their price, if I recall correctly.

In the heyday of these offerings, it was about the same price to buy a complete, seperate PC system. Many folks said "Where's the logic in adding PC support to my Mac when I can own a full PC system for the same money?"

The only market they really captured was the niche of people wanting to run both PC and Mac applications, but not willing to give up any more space in their home or workplace for another computer.

Also, these devices were still add-on cards, which always lack some of the integration of having the compatibility truly "built in" to the system. The beauty of a PC, in many ways, is the "box of slots" nature of the thing. You have thousands of possibilities in the way of PCI, AGP (or in the past, ISA or EISA) cards. Want a special purpose graphics card? Just buy it and drop it in! Special high-speed serial ports for a multi-line BBS system, perhaps? Just buy a "Digiboard" and get 8 or more ports. With a PC on a card, you're limited to what's actually on the card itself, or what it's able to use on the Mac's own board.

While I'm not so sure Apple has any interest in going the "PC compatibility" route again - I do think it would be a much different story if the compatibility was truly on the motherboard.

You do not have enough info on the Chip.....

[williamyf]

ArsTechnica to the Rescue:

* Inside the IBM PowerPC 970 Part I: Design Philosophy and Front End
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/02q2/ppc970/ppc970 -1.ht ml

* Ars Technica Newsdesk A Brief Look at the PowerPC 970
http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/103475624 5.htm l

* Ars Technica - CPU and Chipset Guide
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/

Hope it helps fill that Gap.

two suppliers

[gtmac]

Surely the answer to the AMD rumors is obvious. Apple can not be dependent on a single processor supplier. Motorola are rapidly removing themselves from the game. When the IBM 970 comes out the G3 and G4 will be dead within a year. Motorola have no processors to complete and are heading deep into embeded land.

Apple need another supplier so they limit their risk. They maybe getting AMD to fab a PowerPC type chip.

Alternatively....

Maybe they are just going to use AMD64 chips to build 8 and 4 way XServes?

NeXT used to have fat binaries compatibility across NeXT Black hardware, Intel, Sun, HP and Alpha.

Anthony

Re:two suppliers

[Frodo2002]

I don't think you are entirely correct. First of all, IBM manufactures the G3 as far as I know. Secondly rumour has it that the G3 can go much much faster than it currently does. Apple does not buy faster G3's from IBM because it would look rather silly if your G3 had a higher clock-rate than your G4. (This is ignoring of course that the G4 has that altivec unit which means that it would still beat a faster G3 on altivec optimized apps. But your average consumer probably does not understand these things.) Advantage of getting everything from IBM? You keep your G3 line going, but ramp up the speed considerably. The G3 goes into low end laptops. You drop Motorola completely and put a powered down version of the 970 into your high end laptops. (Rumour again is that at 1.4 GHz the 970 consumes energy at the same rate as the current G4's). The downside? As you correctly observed, Apple then has all its eggs in one (IBM) basket. But the situation does not seem to be as bleak as you make out.

Re:two suppliers

[Datafage]

I was under the impression that fat binaries worked by having specific code for all supported architectures, not by being very high level, and thus could be as optimized as the programmers cared to make it.

Re:two suppliers

[evilviper]

Linux, the cousin of BSD (the parent of OS X) runs on many processors, as do many of the other *nix varients

There are several big differences though.

1. Most people using Unix on non-i386 platforms (or just Linux at all), are far more advanced than your average Windows/Mac users.
2. Most applications used on Unix are open source... That means the CPU hardly matters at all.

For Windows/Mac OS X, most software is binary-only, and companies are going to decide that it's not worth the effort of supporting processor X, when it only has a fraction of the users. So, which ever gains popularity will be the defacto only system to use, and users of the other will be out of luck.

Microsoft and VPC

[jbolden]

Actually I think there is a very good reason for Microsoft to buy VPC that has nothing to do with Apple. Intel has indicated they are switching focus over to the Itanium line, and over the next 5+ years the limits of the x86 platform are going to become more troublesome (things like 64 gig limit of addressable memory...).

The Itanium's x86 emulation is only so-so. VPC makes a product which allows an entirely alien architecture to run x86 apps almost perfectly providing you have an x86 OS. It would be possible for the VPC guys to take their PPC code and recreate it for Itanium to create the same level of compatability for Itanium architectures. That would be functionality that Microsoft would want to offer their customer base.

Re:Microsoft and VPC

[joeykiller]

Microsofts wants the Virtual PC technology as a means for customers to run older operating systems such as Windows NT 4.0 on newer versions of Windows.

As strange as this may seem at first, it makes sense: Microsoft is now in the process of stopping support for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. But some customers still have to run applications that requires these operating systems, and VPC will allow them to do just that:

Quote from an article in Server Watch:

Part of Microsoft's attraction to Connectix's technology may be because it adds depth to its forthcoming Windows Server 2003 family by allowing existing NT 4 customers to keep their NT 4 applications running as virtual machines. This makes the technology a ready-made ramp to migrate customers from NT 4 to the new Windows platform.

There is NO conspiracy theory, AMD isn't just x86

[MarcQuadra]

I have a better reason: AMD can fab those CPUS easily and IBM has better things to do than fab chips for Macs. Apple needs to make sure it doesn't have to stop the assembly line for IBM to fab more CPUs. My guess is that Apple will have AMD produce IBM 970 chips alongside IBM. IBM probably doesn't want to be the first in line for Macintosh CPUs, there's not enough money in it for a multi-faceted operation like IBM. AMD can produce ample chips and they might be able to make a profit doing it.

This has nothing to do with Macs and x86, AMD produces a LOT more than just athlon chips, they'll be pumping out AMD-970s with their extra capacity.

970 info at Ars Technica

[cygnus]

if you're looking for 970 info, Hannibal has a decent article over at Ars Technica, and a followup is on the way. also there's a +1 thread of deth in Ars' forums.

Re:apple hardware is dead

[MacDaffy]

The truth is, Apple as a proprietary processor company is dead.

The PowerPC isn't a proprietary processor. If you'd like to design a motherboard that uses it, go ahead. No one's stopping you (unless it infringes on an Apple design, that is). The hard part would be selling it...

Apple will not destroy its PPC customer- and developer-bases by tossing them aside after all the time, money, and effort expended on Mac OS X. Apple will adopt the PPC 970, take Motorola out of the CPU development loop, and provide Mac OS X for a tightly proscribed x86 configuration (including its own branded boxes--almost everything but the CPU in a Mac is now commodity parts, so that perceived barrier is long gone).

Steve Jobs is a patient man when it comes to the world-at-large. He knows that Apple probably won't ever replace Microsoft as the dominant player in the x86 market, but he also knows that this is probably the perfect time to give them some competition. Microsoft faces a number of challenges to its dominance: its attitude toward DRM, its "trusted computing" initiative, the quiet debacle it's weathering vis-a-vis virtual weekly security updates to XP and other critical software, the growing popularity of open source software, its enterprise licensing scheme, and the increased scrutiny it's under after losing the anti-trust case (like IBM before it, the loss itself will prove more damaging than the punishment).

Apple will continue to produce Mac OS X for PPC. The x86 version would be--in the beginning--a loss-leader. It would get noses into the tent from every market segment. That interest would fuel developer interest (notice how quickly the "there's no software for the Mac" discussion abated in the flood of Open Source offerings it now enjoys).

Once that interest is cultivated, Apple has a whole slew of products/ideas "on the shelf" that would benefit from this renewed interest. There's an advantage to being ahead of your time if you survive long enough.

Re:There is NO conspiracy theory, AMD isn't just x

[olePigeon (Wik)]

I have a better reason: AMD can fab those CPUS easily and IBM has better things to do than fab chips for Macs. Apple needs to make sure it doesn't have to stop the assembly line for IBM to fab more CPUs. My guess is that Apple will have AMD produce IBM 970 chips alongside IBM. IBM probably doesn't want to be the first in line for Macintosh CPUs, there's not enough money in it for a multi-faceted operation like IBM. AMD can produce ample chips and they might be able to make a profit doing it

I think you have this backwards. AMD just recently signed up to use IBM's new manufacturing plant to increase production yield on chips and allow for higher process manufacturing (.09 micron.) IBM wouldn't be disrupting anything to "just" manufacture chips for Apple. Since AMD will be booming in the embedded business when/if HyperTransport takes off, they'll need the extra manufacturing space to produce their chipsets.

You're also overlooking a very obvious clue to the PowerPC 970 being the chip of choice for Apple: the fact that IBM has included an AltiVec engine (and by that name, too.) IBM has stated before and stated again that they will not be using AltiVec, that it's simply there for 2nd and 3rd party vendors to take advantage of.

Can you name one practical vendor that utilizes AltiVec other than Apple? I highly doubt IBM is catering to Amiga.

The whole thing about Apple being in talks with AMD is more plausible if it's put in terms of HyperTransport chipsets and software compatability, and not switching their entire platform over to AMD64. As noted before, IBM and Apple are both on the HyperTransport consortium, it's only reasonable that they need to talk to each other now and again regarding HyperTransport issues. If you see on The Register or some other place about Apple being a purchaser for chips from AMD, please keep in mind that it's most likely HyperTransport chipsets and not Opterons.

How Does a Cheaper CPU = Less Profit for Apple?

[neildiamond]

Okay, regardless of whether or not Apple ever designs X86 computers, if they did it wouldn't lower their profits. Why? They can still charge more their computers if the OS only runs on their version of x86 hardware! If it runs faster, the Mac faithful will be pleased. Sure someone is likely to hack it to work on a white box PC, but as far as average end users are concerned, it is not a big issue and any piracy issues would be easily offset by the number of new people buying slightly cheaper Windows compatible Macs. (Heck, I might even consider it.)

I also suspect that OSX (if written properly for a small set of sound/video cards) would be faster than Windows on the same machine. Even if it isn't, people crave the Mac experience. Mac users have never minded paying more. They don't even care that Macs are the slowest on the block right now. It's about the user experience folks. Plain and simple.

Fun

[inertia187]

Fun. So now they realize after they create the chip that they want 20 years of backwards compatibility. The PowerPC knew they wanted this, according to this slashdot article.

Mirrors:
story 1
story 2

Re:Fun

[jbs0902]

Actually, when we created Merced (1st Itanic) it was designed to be able to be FULLY backwards compatible (i.e. boot MS-Dos 1.0). 25%-33% of the chip was actually a HARDWARE ia32 to ia64 translation engine.
You could put the chip is EPIC (ia64) mode and everything would run though the normal pipeline or ia32 mode and things 1st ran through the ia32 translator then most of the normal pipline. Yeah, you took a performance hit in ia32 mode, but it was the price you paid for "100%" backwards compatibility.

So, I am not sure why the change to a software emulator, unless:
1) they ditched the hardware emulator to get back some real estate of the die, or
2) they didn't like the switching the chip between ia32 & ia64 bit modes.

Also, you can tell I've been out of the Itanic design loop for 5 years now. So, some information is out-of-date or lost in the fog of memory. And, I'd like to say that Merced was such a horribly managed project I left engineering.

Re:Fun

[karlm]

Maybe they just wanted a second option. Hardware emulation probably runs some apps faster and software emulation probably runs others faster.

IMHO, the software emulator is a better long-term solution. A hardware emulator uses some power even if you're not using it and drives up the cost of the chips by taking up realestate and increasing the defect rate. Your design-test cycle is also much faster for a software solution. There's also the marketing point of "we're doing this well so far, and will give you an even better version when it comes out, for free". They can't easily upgrade hardware for free at a later date. The software emulator probably has a lot of overlap with the compiler group, so you might get compiler research almost for free.

Also, I assume most of the guys writing the software emulator aren't experts in hardware design and vice-versa. The two projects are completely independent and likely don't steal personell from eachother.

Re:Fun

[khuber]

DEC Alpha tried something similiar with their x86 emulation.

I think that's a different situation. For starters, Itanium already does IA32 in hardware (it's just really crappy apparently).

DEC wasn't in the x86 market to start with so FX!32 extended their market by making NT/Alpha more attractive. With the 21164, Alpha introduced data handling functionality in hardware that was intended to accelerate x86 emulation. It was probably too late by then.

There must still be major management/direction problems with the Itanium project for them to resort to this kind of hack. It's embarassing that they can outperform their hardware implementation in software.

The only software emulation I can think of that was successful was Apple's 68k emulation for PPC, but their approach was brilliant and well thought out IMO (smooth transition, fat binaries including code for both chips). At the time, PPC was compelling. I don't think Itanium performance is as compelling even though Itanium 2 is pretty decent from what I've seen. I think for a straight 64 bit Linux system, Itanium 2 is a much better chip.

I suspect Intel and friends (oops almost typed fiends!) will be back with improved hardware support for IA32 because people won't be satisfied with the emulation performance. AMD has to feel pretty good about having Intel/HP in this position.

-Kevin

Re:Fun

[drinkypoo]

A hardware emulator uses some power even if you're not using it and drives up the cost of the chips by taking up realestate and increasing the defect rate.

If you make the emulator separate enough from the core of your new architecture, you can switch the power off when you're not using it. A number of big pieces of silicon in our lives do this, including mobile video solutions (I think the latest mobile radeons, and maybe some of the desktop chips as well?) and some CPUs.]

The only really good thing about a software solution is that you could have a microcode update, as you say, and of course it takes up space, that's always a bummer.

Re:Fun

[atam]

From I read in the article, I think it is not an emulator per se. It is more like a just-in-time compiler/translator. Probably it is something similar to what the Transmeta Crusoe or Alpha FX!32 does. Both of these products already proved that you could do it in software implementation pretty efficiently.

Opteron

[whig]

Sounds like a defensive reaction to the release of the Opteron. If AMD is offering a 64-bit chip with support for full-speed 32-bit x86 software, then Intel has to have a competitive answer *before* industry adopts the AMD64 over IA-64 for future migration.

Re:Opteron

[LBArrettAnderson]

no - Intel has been planning for emulation the whole time. AMD still has the advantage with full compatability at full speed. But you're right; it sure does sound like it.

And industry won't really adopt a certain chip - I'm sure it'll be just like the x86's today; you can go back and forth between Intel and AMD pretty easily with each new computer you buy - unless you're anti-Intel because they have that agreement with microsoft.

Re:Opteron

[ocelotbob]

And industry won't really adopt a certain chip - I'm sure it'll be just like the x86's today; you can go back and forth between Intel and AMD pretty easily with each new computer you buy

Actually, this is a pretty major fork between AMD and Intel. Unless there's a new processor made by one of them, the two competing 64 bit "x86" systems are mutually incompatible with each other. People are going to have to commit to one or the other, because the instruction set, hell the coding style, is markedly different in the two architectures. AMD's offering, x86-64, is very much a cleanup of the x86 instruction set, with a few features that should have gone into the architecture long ago. IA-64, on the other hand, is essentially a complete abandonment of x86, which, as others mentioned, is something that really hasn't happened with intel since they made the 8080 decades ago.

While I feel that eventually there's probably going to be in-processor emulation of the competetor's code, that's not the case now. This is perhaps where the AMD-Intel war gets truly ugly. Since the days of the 286, the rivalry has been essentially tit for tat, a few added features by one side gets picked up by the other. This is a lot different -- there is no easy migration back and forth.

Better C|Net story

[Webmonger]

Here's a more detailed C|Net story.

(Yes, it's linked from the posted C|Net story).

Duh..

[OmniVector]

The Itanium had a lot of good ideas, but no matter how much you want to drop an old architecture and start over from scratch like the goal of that project was, you've got to provide a transition period. Athlon's doing this with the Opteron, Apple is doing this with OS X using the Carbon Toolkit, etc etc. The *key* to getting a user base to switch from an older architecture to a newer one has to be a compatability layer.
Perhaps that is what doomed Itanium 1 to failure form the start. (Well that combined with the horrible heat output and power consuption of the Itanium 1).

Emulation

[whig]

Also, it's worth noting that Itanium has always supported running x86 software without emulation. It just turns out their hardware implementation is slower than emulating the same thing in 64-bit IA-64 mode.

The way I see it

[blitzoid]

This is great and all, but it's still EMULATION. x86 support in the Itanium seems very 'tacked on', unlike AMD's idea of simply extending the regular x86 instruction set to the realm of 64 bit. The way I see it, AMD chips will always be faster than Intel at x86 stuff. And when everyone is changing over, that's CRITICAL.

Re:The way I see it

[hendridm]

> And when everyone is changing over, that's CRITICAL.

Pffft. If you want to run 32-bit, get a P4 or Xeon. If you want to run 64-bit, you're most important application(s) is/are 64-bit anyway, right?

What uses would a company have to go 64-bit? Big ass database? High performance workstation perhaps? In the database scenario, you'd probably be running a 64-bit database anyway (or you'd be wasting your time and money). It is likely this would be your only, or at least most important, service running on the box.

How about a high performance workstation, like CAD or something. Well, that CAD engineer will probably have 64-bit CAD, which is what he/she will use most of the day. Who cares if MS Outlook or WordPerfect run at only the speed of a 1GHz processor (or whatever the actual emulation speed equivalent is)?

I don't see what the big deal is, but I know the average Slashdotter has a "AMD inside" bumper sticker on his modded chassis.

Re:The way I see it

[Junta]

It's not as simple as that. The people wanting to run 64-bit appas for big things don't have a problem. In essence, Itanium was made to solve a problem already solved. PA-RISC, Sparc, PPC, MIPS, and others already have 64-bit variants. Companies that need the 64-bit address space and such already have solutions, and don't care a bit about MS offerings on their servers. This is evidenced by MS withdrawing their unpopular ports of WnNT to non-x86 platforms years back.

Itanium may be a true server class chipd and capable of pulling off the same stuff PA-RISC and Sparc can. But if there is *any* performance advantage, it is so slight that it is overshadowed by pathetic industry and software support. Sure you will soon be able to run Windows, and have been able to run linux, but ultimately there isn't much to run on those systems.

AMD has struck a cord here. A lot of large environments (especially clusters) have been getting by on 32-bit architecture because of the great applications support and price/performance ratios. The Opteron falls into the same price/performance league as those 32-bit systems in use, can equal or best those processors in 32 bit tasks, and as the software matures and gets recompiled, smoothly migrate to 64-bit operation without a hiccup. When these huge clusters are running software packages that costs millions to develop, there is a vested interest in continueing to use them while simultaneously ironing out the kinks in their 64-bit versions.

There is a damn good reason why IBM and others are finally acknowledging AMD as worthy of building servers around. Itanium sales have been pathetic, and there has been much more customer interest in the possibility of upcoming Opteron products than the reality of existing Itanium systems.

Do you know what this means???????

[peculiarmethod]

Wow, I mean WOW.
NOOOOW I can watch my old dos demos from Unreal and The Humble Crew in less time than my brain can percieve them. Just what topped last years christmas list.

pm

Re:1.5ghz Xeon?

[afidel]

It's probably a bit of both, it is probably very similar to FX!32 for the Dec Alpha version of NT4. What this did was emulated many x86 functions, but if something was getting called a lot it was dynamically recompiled to native Alpha code. Worked pretty well overall.

And I thought it was just going to be ...

[craigeyb]

And I thought it was just going to be a space heater.

Emulator, converter?

[Trillan]

Ultimately, all an emulator does is convert instructions from one architecture to another. It's almost always more efficient to translate instructions in blocks

To come up with a really primitive, simple example, imagine a simple instruction set with a load, add, and branch if zero-set.

Code might look like this:

lda avar
add bvar
bre label

Now imagine we were translating to an instruction set that had mostly the same instructions, but needed a compare instruction to set our conditional flag

Instruction-by-instruction conversion might turn out like this:

lda avar tstz
add bvar
tstz
bre label

Now if the conversion was done on the entire block, we might end up with this:

lda avar
add bvar
tstz
bre label

Granted, this is a pretty simple example, but I hope it makes my point. Block conversions allow a great deal more optimization than instruction conversions.

This optimization might sound like a lot of work for the host processor, but if the block in question is a tight loop you more than make that up.

Sounds familiar.

[Grenamier]

This actually reminds me of when Apple's emulation strategy back when they migrated from the old 680x0 series to PowerPC. It was well orchestrated and was actually something of a triumph for them. I hope that bodes well for Intel's attempt.

For Intel to have a long term future without the embarassment of junking the whole architecture, they need Itanium x to run IA32 credibly. Advances in x86 performance keep coming at such increasing development costs that I think they would have to be able to migrate the market to IA64 within 5-10 years from now.

I would like for both the IA64 and the Hammer architectures to flourish, but Intel's taken an extremely bold step with EPIC, and I don't want to see them get punished in the market for that alone. I like the spirit of aiming higher.

Re:Sounds familiar.

[Animats]

This actually reminds me of when Apple's emulation strategy back when they migrated from the old 680x0 series to PowerPC. It was well orchestrated and was actually something of a triumph for them.

Well, no.

Actually, it was a painful transition. Horrible hacks were required to make it work, and Apple lost considerable market share.

From the user perspective, all the applications that used the FPU stopped working. Worse, the PPC only had (has?) a 64-bit FPU, while the 68K and x86 have 80-bit FPUs. So a simple recompile often wasn't enough. Most of the engineering applications (CAD, EDA) were never ported to the PPC at all. There were unsupported 3rd party FPU emulators for the 68K FPU, but they were really slow, since they had to emulate a wider FPU.

Most of the OS ran in 68K emulation mode for years after the "transition". The PPC interrupt model was mainframe-like, assuming that you didn't do much in an interrupt routine except activate some process. The 68K interrupt model was minicomputer-like, with multiple interrupt levels used as the main locking primitive. Hammering those two together was painful. There were some things you just couldn't do in PPC mode; you had to drop into 68K emulation to prevent interrupts.

The old MacOS had what was euphemistically called "cooperative multiprogramming". That didn't mean you had threads without time-slicing, like a real-time OS. It meant you didn't have real context switching at all. You plugged your code into callbacks at different levels of processing, like "system tasks", "VBI tasks", "timer tasks", "interrupt tasks", etc., none of which could block. No mutexes. No locking. Only interrupt prevention. Trying to do anything in the background was very tough. (I know; I wrote a PPP protocol module for the 68K Mac. I had the only one that could dial the phone in the background without locking up the whole machine, and it wasn't easy.)

Worse, the 68K emulator depended on a jump table with 65536 entries, one for each of the first 16 bits an instruction could have. Early PPCs didn't have enough cache to keep that entire table in the cache all the time. But if it wasn't all in the cache, 68K emulation performance was terrible.

Amusingly, much of the perceived performance advantage of the early PPC machines came from the miserable 68K code generators used on the Mac. The Apple and Zortech compilers were clueless about 68K register allocation, preferring to do all arithmetic in register A0. The PPC code generators were much better. Some high-end apps used to be cross-compiled on Sun 68K machines because the Mac code generators were so bad.

Most of these problems were papered over using the Jobs Reality Distortion Field. But this was the period when Apple started losing market share big-time. Arguably, the PPC transition cost Apple its preeminence.

What Apple really needed was faster 68K CPUs, not a new architecture. Technically, that was quite possible. The Motorola 68060, (never used by Apple, but in the last 68K Amiga), was faster than the PPC of the same vintage. But Jobs had cut a deal with IBM under which IBM was supposed to make MacOS compatible machines (!), and that was the motivation for the PPC.

Re:Sounds familiar.

[SewersOfRivendell]

Actually, it was a painful transition. Horrible hacks were required to make it work, and Apple lost considerable market share.

Well, no. Interestingly, you are technically correct on a couple of complex points, but you seem clueless on others. Perhaps your memory has faded. Think C 5's code generator was far better than MPW (Apple's) C or Symantec C++, but Metrowerks C was ultimately much, much better. MPW C tended to frequently do shit like (actual example from disassembling the 7.1-era Finder, IIRC):

mov.l a0, a5
mov.l a5, a0

Note lack of peepholing.

What you call "cooperative multiprogramming" is actually called "interrupt time." All documentation of which I'm aware refers to it as "interrupt time." No euphemism required.

Jobs had been fired for over seven years when John Sculley cut the PowerPC CPU deal, and It had nothing to do with PowerMac clones.

Most of these problems were papered over using the Jobs Reality Distortion Field. But this was the period when Apple started losing market share big-time. Arguably, the PPC transition cost Apple its preeminence.

No, dude. I was there. Apple never had "preeminence" or much market share. Apple was always struggling under the "Apple is dying" myth (and still does in some quarters today). In the mid-nineties, Apple had a series of crises caused by Sculley and his successor's ineptitude. Worse, Apple stopped playing to it's traditional strengths (industrial design and hardware/software) under Spindler, a problem that, combined with vigorous and useless penny-pinching in all the wrong places -- Apple's hardware & software quality hit the lowest point they'd ever reach at the end of Spindler's reign -- ultimately led to the ouster of Spindler. Amelio failed to recognize this (or much of anything else about Apple), which ultimately led him to buy his own doom in NeXT and the return of Jobs.

FX32! for Itanium

[msgmonkey]

I'd wager that this is FX32! (allowed you to do the same on Alpha) reworked for the Itanium. Considering Intel purchased all Alpha related technology I would n't be surprised. This is not really that bad a thing since FX32 was quite good at what it did (within its limits).

Re:Lets see how well it runs java or .net code

[lkaos]

The epic architecture is flawed in the sense that it can not run anything not in parrallel without having optimizations lost.

I don't think you really mean parrallel :-) I think what you're referring to is interleaving.

Compilers that support interleaving can achieve parrallelism up to the number of stages on the pipeline (something ridiculus ia64 like 13 or something).

Now of course, if a compiler can optimize for interleaving without programmer intervention, a JIT can optimize for interleaving.

Re:Lets see how well it runs java or .net code

[msgmonkey]

Actually Java and .NET bytecode style applications are likely to beable to be better optimized than their C and C++ equivelants with a decent virtual machine when running on Itanium.

A VM bytecode program contains alot more structural information of how the original program looked than C or C++ programs. On the Itanium the compiler has to take a "best guess" or some profile data to compile for the most common program-flow, this is one of the largest factors that limit Itanium peformance since alot of the run-time hardware optimisations are n't and cant be there.

A VM could analyse program-flow and compile different versions of the same function, dynamically changing which is used for example.

Of course this does n't help the vast majority of C/C++ code out there, but your assertion is hardly correct.

Re:Good work. sort of...

[afidel]

Yep that's the difference between CS and the real world. The x86 ISA may not be the most elegant or clean but it is kicking the snot out of everything except maybe Power. Sure it can be seen as kludge on kludge but yet no one seems to be able to come out with something that beats it for perfomance without costing many times more.

Re:Clean Design

[afidel]

Actually the RISC crowd was primarily right, they were just targeting the wrong area. All x86 cpus since the Pentium have been RISC internally with CISC externals. This works well because the larger words work well to minimize cache latencies (if you can fit more into each fetch then the impact waiting for it to arrive is minimized) and the RISC internals make it easier to ramp up the speed of the actual execution units. As you pointed out the PPC is seen as a "RISCish" cpu yet it shares many traits with the "CISCish" x86 cpu's. Pure RISC cpu's are a thing of the past, but it did have quite an impact on the overall design of CPU's.

Intel: Back to its roots

[satch89450]

Fun. So now they realize after they create the chip that they want 20 years of backwards compatibility.

Back before Bill Gates and IBM's Entry System Division thrust Intel microprocessors into every other home on the planet, electronic systems designers were actively courted by Intel by their claim to developing products that won't invalidate all existing design work in one swell foop. And, for the most part, they held up on their end of that promise, which is why the Pentium 4 still has a little bit of the 8080 in it.

Now, when the i432 came out, it was a completely different beast -- and the i432 died a justified death. The i860 didn't fare that well, either. The i960 has seen quite a number of design-ins, because the solution base the i960 was geared to was sufficiently different from the 80x86 that designers didn't try to replace 80x86 chips with the RISC-based i960.

Intel, that was a clue.

What Intel didn't foresee, but should have, is the great technological bust of 1999 put a number of companies under. Source code has flown to the four winds, in some cases the foreclosures also nailed every single backup. In short, the migration path via recompilation was no longer an option. (Not to mention that there were no dollars to make even the most trivial changes to the source to deal with 64-bit processors.)

So this announcement is surprising only in that it comes so late in the product development cycle, as Intel is coming out with its second generation of IA64 chips.

Competition. It's a good thing.

Motives...

[mraymer]

I really have to wonder if Intel is doing this because of customer demand, or simply because they don't want AMD to have the upper hand.

From what I've seen, I would argue that their motive is the latter. Intel has show on several occasions that, these days, they simply don't give a damn about the end user. They care about market share, profits, and their precious stock price. Let's not forget the fact that "Pentium" was coined because Intel wasn't allowed to trademark the number 586.

Remember when they released an overclocked Pentium III to the public, and Tom's Hardware had that nice little article exposing it for the failure it was? It choked on GCC, among other things, while Intel steadfastly denied the problem. Then they actually recalled the processors. Competition at the expense of the end user... wonderful!

It is clear AMD is still going to come out on top in performance on this one, unless "software emulation" doesn't mean what I think it means. It is also clear to me that Intel has to do a lot more than throw some software emulation at an issue before I ever buy another Intel processor.