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AMD Buys Pre-VIA Cyrix Media-GX Division
An anonymous reader writes "A long time ago, in what feels like a different universe, Cyrix created the first sub-$1000 PC based on a 2 chip solution called the Media-GX. Soon after National Semiconductor bought Cyrix, keeping the Media-GX team and selling the 686MX team to VIA.
In the meantime, the Media-GX team have created the a series of single chip PCs, and a totally new CPU, the GX2. Now National Semiconductor is
selling the division to AMD, which should give it a higher profile and better fab technology again."
Reader jlouderb reminds us of National Semiconductor's Device Girls promotion, "a lame take-off on the Spice Girls," and points to coverage at eWeek of the purchase.
It even has a picture of the Media-GX in there.
Ugh, can't anyone appeal to common sense instead of sex drive? Make way for bad hardware related puns.
Typically Cyrix have made very poor CPUs, I doubt there top of the range chips would be able to beat a top of the range celeron, why would anyone want to buy them?
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
They certainly looked better than the Spice Girls. I bet they sounded better, too, though who cares about that. :)
Am I the only one who thought of "Device Girls" as those unenlightened females who prefer various mechanical devices over us virile geeks?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Section 1 - Trolling techniques
There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking /.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining
how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll
can break any or all of these and still be successful...
* Timing
Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since /. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar
stories.
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway :)
* Exposure
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies - /.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large
thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds
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your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated
up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
* Accounts
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a troll account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though :)
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on /. and watch the karma
roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in
terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold
of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent,
and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the
+1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
* Layout
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
* Size
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
* Spelling
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken seriously, key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated /. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks
dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an acronym as
being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even when it isn't.
* Subject
Perhaps what AMD wants is not their CPU, but the stuff that they've integrated in with it to create a single-chip PC. In a year or so, we might see a single-chip system based on one of the AMD processors.
Please, do not revive the old jokes about mount and devices.
We've all read the sigs about the subject.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
What does this mean for National Semiconductor's analog processing business?
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
This story reminded me of an article from the Register about how some analysts think IBM will eventually buy AMD. Didn't IBM used to sell Cyrix chips or something?
You are either, gay or one of the uglier than hell femenists that can't get laid and decides to whine constantly about "femenist issues"..
Am I right? Which one?
a chipset company, and/or a motherboard company, and someone to clarify the cpu naming mombo-jumbo! Confusion is not the way to compete!
(offtopic, I know, just venting)
I'd go online with them any day! Reeeeoow!
I bought a montherboard with a 166+ 686 CPU from Cyrix. It worked better and lasted longer than the Gateway pentium 166 boxes we had at work. Alas, my rommate spilled a pot of coffee on the bugger and it died with a POP, a SNAP and a SIZZLE. From what I learned, there were two versions of that chip. Version 1 overheated a lot, but if you kept it cool it was fine. Verion 2 didn't overheat, but flaked and flaked and flaked until you wanted to beat it with a bat. My sis wanted a box and I got her a $199 PC with a Cyrix MII 333 chip a few years later. Mistake. 'nuf said. End of my Cyrix experience.
that's the funniest troll I've seen in years
For what it's worth, Google is your friend
AMD will not use the 80x86 division of NSM to create a 80x86 embedded processor. 80x86 chips fare poorly in the embedded market, which is dominated by ARM.
The trollers are out in force today it seems.
but boobies are boobies.
that with a few changes, it would be as if somebody forgot to turn caps lock off.
In that article National mentions the sub-$1000 PC business as one of their main areas of further interest. With this sale of the Geode, etc... I wonder how many more could be laid off and where National is looking for the future?
Where the Music Matters
Let's see: AC posts goatse link and gets modded +2 Informative!!! Now one must ask, are the trolls the problem with Slashdot or is it moderators that don't even read the comment befpre moderating?
ya gotta be compatible
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Does AMD's purchase of low-power technology have anything to do with this?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
What was National Semiconductor trying to tell us? That the Device Girls had some "powerful hardware?" No thanks, I think I'll pass. It would have made me feel bad about my own puny hardware.
I'm actually a male geek..... I disapprove of the objectification of women in modern society....
You sorta exposed yourself there, swifty.
... his homosexuality.
Who the hell complains about a handful of cute chicks at a trade show?
There's always the Apple booth and your local LUG.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
... And we have a WINNER!!
There is no tubgirl. Worry not.
You say
I still have one configured as a simple dialout box. It works well and shares dialup service with an ethernet card.
The other, I may have fried. The new XFree86-4 stuff pumped it's video to 90 Hz! This is far in excess of the orignial specs. I put in antoher cooling fan for the second chipset, but shorted 12 while it was running. I have not fooled with it since, but it did not come back. It may be that I fried the board, it may be that I fried the power supply. One day, I'll check it out again. Today, I don't really need it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Mod parent up. It's not a troll!
That link was quite informative. I don't know why anyone would mod you down.
This looks like it could directly compete with the EPIA Mini-ITX. I don't know what the fastest media gx core is, but it would be cool if AMD released a Mini-ITX board based around it. Especially if it could be done cheaper than the VIA board.
I remember Alan Cox stating that he was using a Media-GX based system to write and test the soundblaster layer for linux because the media-GX was a better fit to the SB standard then any of Creatives then current chips. He reasoned that if he could get closer to the origional standard then most clones would work, and aparantly he was right =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Cheney seeks asylum in France by Nov. 2004 120.00 +2.30
Blair hosts Do You Want To Be A Millionaire by Jan. 2004 98.65 -3.05
G. W. Bush indicted for tax fraud by Oct. 2003 111.45 +0.34
Saddam Hussein disovered in Cheney's bunker by Sept. 2004 99.00 +0.89
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Rumsfeld plays Dr. Strangelove in Dr. Strangelove II 100.00 -0.93
My company uses the Geode in a shipping, and important, product. And we have had nothing but trouble with this chip (it has made my life hell on and off for most of two years now). The biggest complaint is that it has no background debug capability. There is no way to debug this chip. How do they (Cyrix/Via/Nat'l/AMD) debug it? They don't, effectively. They just run some programs on it, and it seems to run OK. It does NOT run OK. From experience.
Oh, and just disbelieve the specs. They lie like a cheap rug. For example, when it says it runs at 1.8v core volage, what they really mean is that it runs at a 2v core voltage- or maybe 2.1v. Something like that, they're not real sure. And they claim to match a 266Mhz Pentium- another lie. I strongly suspect this sucker is a 486 with the Pentium instructions added (no MMX). Certainly judge performance accordingly.
IMHO, AMD screwed up buying this chip. They would have been better off taking the K5 or K6 cores, shrinking them onto 130nm process, tossing the north and south bridges on chip as well (plus a background debug module, please!), and saved themselves the money.
Is an AMD K6-III (not K6-III+) 400 MHz 2.0 v processor, on an FIC VA-503+ mother board, which runs a VIA chip set, of course.
In terms of uptimes on my samba file server and NAT box, in terms of working with whatever card I shoved in it (BIOS upgrades for the newer stuff, of course), in terms of working with cheap shitty memory (after slowing the PC-100 RAM to 95 MHz), it just works. I have a stacks of junk Intel shit that works great until I actually wanted to put a Promise RAID card in it, works great until except you can't put a PCI video card in the first PCI slot, it has to be the second, works great except that it doesn't work great. It sucks.
The ABIT KT7 with an Athlon or Duron approached the VA-503 / K6 combo in flexibility. I like those. Above that, getting into the 2 GHz and up boards and chips, nothing stands up to my standard of "working". Anytime you try to do something slightly weird (plug in several USB cards, and use the built-in, to load dozens of USB key chains at once with demo crap to be passed out as doorprizes at a conference, for example) something just doesn't work, you start fiddling, and next thing you know it is 7 pm and you are calling you wife telling her not to expect you in before midnight.
People at work make fun of my bench with 4 VA-503+'s in their ancient AT cases, and my stack of spare 503 boards in cardboard boxes. But they don't complain when I get shit done on time.
I'm looking forward to the next really reliable setup. What I would like to do is discover a cheap mini-ITX with that slow-ass VIA C3 chip on it that was cheap and low powered enough that I could just have dozens of them, esentially haveing a separate computer for each little task. I doubt it however. It just shifts a lot of problematic issues over to the network configuration.
Where are the world's Fabs?
Da Blog
But there's more! it's not just video on the CPU, it's the north AND south bridges! The CPU, GPU, memory controller, PCI controller, and who-knows-what-else are on this bad-boy! I've been wanting this sort of thing for a long time!
I understand that the price will be longer development cycles and raw performance, but there are a LOT of uses for machines based on this type of thinking. Imagine how inexpensive PCs based on this type of thing could get, and how little power they would require! If managers get their heads around the idea of centralized computing again (as they should in the office) we're going to see huge demand for inexpensive fast-enough graphical terminals.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
uh... AMD, VIA, Cyrix and "whatever else" as you call it, they've all been making processors that work right out of the box for 1/2 to 3/4 the price of the main brands for a long while. AMD's have been reliably better than cyrix's, but thats why nobody uses cyrix's in the mainstream.
Maybe now they can prepare for when prescott comes out, because the opteron is just barely beating the p4-c, imagine when the p5 comes out, gonna be hell for amd
This just in...!!!
You're either a moron or a troll.
On second thought your post is so utterly stupid you're probably both!
the first machine i bought with my own money was a 486dx2/66 with a cyrix chip.....ah the memories....
the last i saw it it was still working as a proxy server at my last job.
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
AMD is capable of making their own motherboards and chipsets, and usualy does when they come out with new CPUs. But they don't ship them for very long, figuring that it's better to have the taiwanese board and chipset makers on their side, as allies.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
crazy on-crack moderators, why... well... actually that was kind of off topic. oh well. Topicality is the bane of human existence. We aren't little robots who live only to discuss narrowly defined fields at the appropriate time. Humans need to laugh, to joke, and to love, and promote products in inappropriate venues.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"A long time ago, in what feels like a different universe, Cyrix created the first sub-$1000 PC based on a 2 chip solution called the Media-GX."
and we're still waiting for a sub-$1000 Mac (or at least a sub-$999 Mac).
The p4 is designed for a insane clock speeds, but CMOS chips dissipate no power until the clock changes. The faster the clock speed, the more energy it uses. Designing with a low clock speed/performance ratio could probably yield lower power use. Hmm...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Via already does this with their EIPA chips, built in video and everything, IIRC.
I wouldn't be suprised if NVida comes out with a high performance system though, with their expansion into chipsets.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Just what the fuck is the deal with FAKE PORN? (Warning: this link is to porn, sort of. And sort of not.)
Why is this type of porn made? Is it some kind of legal trick?
I will remain malnourised, thank you.
It's made for non 'hardcore' mags like penthouse or something, which are sold at gas stations and the like. If they have really hardcore stuff they might loose the ability to sell in lots of locations. I think a lot of times porn like that is scanned from old magazines or something, because I have no idea why you would ever make porn like that for the 'net.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
AMD has been gaining some ground against Intel for quite a while now, it is good to note that from a business point of view, this integration of the two companies will produce products even cheaper than they are now.
----- Friends, l33tists, l4m3z0rs! Lend me thy keyboards.
Where is Ginger Device?
There are imitations of Baby, Scarry, Sporty, and Posh. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. I want Ginger Device!!!!!!!
I sure would like those ladies to give me a little personal demonstration on I/O, packets, mounting, and of course FSCK!!!!!
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Don't AMD me, you silly bastards. AMD my Cyrix MediaGX 150MHz processor back to life!
I suspect many here are reading far too much into this news. Nat. Semi. was trying to sell this unit to shed costs, i.e. it probably wasn't (very) profitable. Thus, the asking price probably wasn't for very much cash. Who knows, they might even have gotten stock instead. Details weren't disclosed today, so there's no way to prove this either way, yet.
In contrast, with Geode under AMD's control, there's a reasonable amount of overlap with AMD's Alchemy unit. They will be able to shed a lot of overhead in salaries and facilities. So maybe the Geode group breaks even or makes a small profit for AMD.
Overall though, it's probably not an earth shattering development. Now if it had been Transmeta, it might be a different story... fast-tracked ultra-low power x86-64 laptops and blades... hmmmm.
does anyone know how hot these all-in-one chips are going to get?
;)
what are the over-clocking rates (percent possible befor fry)?
would be cool to see a chip with built in coolers instead of adding one externally