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Speculations Intel's Next Generation
An anonymous reader writes "The Inquirer speculates about the next generation Intel chip. It's low power, 64 bit, multi core (up to 16?) and the real reason for the Apple switch."
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Correction: 65 bits. Twice as fast as 64 bits.
How precisely intriguing...
Probably will feature an android, a Klingon, and a balding captain.
It sounds too cool (no pun intended) to be true. How will AMD react?
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I'll speculate that Intel is going to create a new 128-bit proc composed entirely of turtles. Does that make me slashdot-worthy?
Let the battle begin.
If they're announcing an archtecture this radical at next week's IDF, what are the chances that it will be available and running well in time for Apple's announced timeline for desktops?
Or is Apple going to sell a lesser version first, in which case why haven't they already switched over to selling it to early adopters already. Yes there really are people who buy systems and wait for the applications to arrive later.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Most of the sources of insane speculation on slashdot are fairly disreputable, but the inquirer? come on, slashdot. =( You make me cry.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
To me that sounds a lot like Sun's Niagara box. Huge CMT box (8 cores, 4 threads each, 32 way box). With power consumption around 65watts, but faster than 4way Xeon processors and probably more like an 8way depending on application. Intel probably is moving to something similar, maybe not quite that many cores and threads.
This is the same thing Intel did to HP who walked away from PA/RISC, and to SGI who walked away from MIPS, and to Compaq/DEC who walked away from Alpha --- so they turned from the leaders in 64-bit computing to resellers of wintel.
Hey, if it worked last time, let's try it again; and maybe the rest of the 64-bit competitors'll give up.
We'll know more when IDF arrives. Until then its just stuff written to try and hit a bullseye in the dark. Which seems to be everywhere nowadays, Dvorak, The Inq, even my fateful Ars is getting bit by the bug that says every action by anyone in the tech industry must be expounded on in a multipage article worth of /. and the ad revenue it brings..
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
it's 16th cores will execute infinite loop longer than AMD anyway.
Visit Tutorials & guides collection
...has lost the ability to use adjectives, indefinite articles, infinitive before their verbs and other various small bits and pieces of grammatical constructs. Is this the result of too much chat and text messaging on cellphones/pdas/etc???
Hey! What's new? Does this imply that they also do something other than speculating?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
If a VLIW X86 processor had a "native" mode, one would have to wonder if Apple's Rosetta technology could compile directly to it instead of X86. I mean, it would seem dumb to JIT-compile to X86, which in turn is translated to VLIW.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
How will I keep myself warm in the freezing cold Seattle winters without all that extra wattage?
... last time I tried that, putting the chips on top of the clock, they got kind of squishy from all the melting snow, and the avocado dip switches wouldn't work ...
Maybe I'll have to overclock it
---
on a serious note, sure it's speculation, but it isn't too surprising, especially given what some of the Chinese firms were saying previously.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...that we will see, eventually...
1. Four cores standard
2. Chips pluggable to the mobo like Atari cartridges to eight CPUs
3. Mobos as blades to passive backplanes
4. Home blade servers and thin clients.
I think in the end we'll see low-end, mid-range, and high-end blade everything in the future with modularity being the way of everything.
But that's just my speculation.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
The article switches over midway to saying that Intel will pretty much just copy transmeta, but with multiple cores, and an Itanium-stylu VLIW main processor. The argument is that software optimization as done in the Transmeta processor saves on branch prediction, and X86 decoding hardware, while extra cache and multiple cores gets rid of Transmeta's performance issue.
But it is all pure speculation.
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." -- Max Planck
He's been smoking some seriously strong weed to come up with the crazy ass ideas in that article.
Ian Ameline
this week.
That's good for sun, because they sell server stuff, but for other kinds of workloads this approach is very innefficient. See the Piranha research paper, by Barroso et al.
The Raven
This isn't why Apple switched over to Intel chips! If that was the case then why is it that when someone boots up MAC 0S X on a PC it says x86 everywhere?! (I've seen it with my own eyes) That's because they changed the MAC OS X to be run on x86 not some new EPIC or long word architecture... Otherwise Apple would be wasting their time trying to get it to run on x86 if they new of some new architecture coming out by Intel
And yes I know it said this new architecture would run old x86 stuff but if you are Apple you want your OS to be optimized for the latest and greatest.
Am I wrong?
I suspect Apple's switch wasn't because of any cool chip (it'd be ridiculous to think they are getting intel chips that no PC maker will have access to) but simply because it's one less defensive front - they don't have to worry about getting chips that are competitive anymore, which was getting a problem with PPC as well as the all important Notebook chips - IBM simply wasn't offering anymore competitive PPC solutions.
It's one less thing to defend.
Back when Apple first introduced PPC (1994?), they were hyping it throughout because that was one of the few real tangible differences they could tout - pre-OSX Mac was buggy and unstable single-threaded OS while Microsoft had at least NT technology.
Now OS X pretty much rocks and they still have their excellent hardware integration - they don't need a different chip to differentiate them - OSX is their added value.
...The Farmer's Almanac speculates on the next generation "Beefalo" chip: Running from Longhorns daily into a pasture near you, the new "Beefalo" chip (tm) will multi-thread faster spreading odor and increased fertilization rate. Cores have been increased to 8 semi-solid, virtually discrete units that may be tracked onto the North bridge (If you don't wipe your boot sectors before then). Video processing speed will see a marked increase, although cooling remains a concern for these new chips...
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
A return to punch cards, 9-track tape, do-nut core memory and teletype machines. At least, soon as the radioactivity dies down out on the surface.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Who told me? The mold that lives in the back of the fridge in the second snack room on the 7th floor of the 4th building at their 2nd site.
Bwhahahahahahahaha.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Chips supporting Intel microprocessors are much cheaper and more plentiful than chips supporting IBM microprocessors. Apple needs cheap chips in order to lower the cost of its hardware.
If this article is correct, and Apple still wanted to use PPC, on Intel processors, they could have Intel make a VLIW software translator for the PPC instruction set, and then not have to go to x86. No? I don't buy it. THAT wouldn't make sense. :) Running PPC (via Rosetta) on x86 on VLIW seems like it would be retarded.
http://www.intel.com.nyud.net:8090/pressroom/kits/ bios/barrett.htm
Now the only thing left is the klingon and the android.
Not a lot of people have thought about this but what if Apple is going for the server market and that is why they severed ties with IBM?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
NT technology is a tautology.
since the chips would be VLIW internally, they could have software x86-VLIW AND powerPC-VLIW translators! So that makes the transition easier as well!
Jeremy
FreeBSD is open source, tool. Best Wishes, Logged in Coward
I hate grammar Nazi's.
How about Star Wars star Natalie Pr0tman, she's bald now (or at least fuzzy.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Assuming that the article is generaly correct this upcoming processor will be able to morph to other architectures. Could this mean that we can have some sort of native (or at least semi-native) JVM or .Net processor? I am not certain whether implementing a java virtual machine on hardware is feasible but this would be an interesting possibility.
Or it could be that the software JVM of today produces good enough native code for any architecture (x86, ultrasparc, ppc) that it makes it pointless to try to implement a machine that interprets the classes directly?
Apple is not that spectacular in terms of choosing chips for performance, from their past history. M68k: good chip, but it was suffering from old age when they moved to PowerPC. (They could have moved to x86, arm, or other processor at that time.) Now, they announce they are moving to Intel, and suddenly Intel has some super-duper chip up their sleeve? I don't think so.
The article starts from that basis and works up to Intel has some super-killer CPU.
Despite the amount of hype surrounding dual-core, unless you massively change software (likely to happen eventually) to support SMP, things go slower on dual-cores than single core processors, if the dual-cores are clocked lower (Intel's current chips). What the article proposes is to duplicate the mistakes Intel has made with Itanium. (It was announced a decade ago. (If not, near enough to count.))
Itanium 1 stripped out all the branch prediction, and similar things, relying on the compilers to do it. The result was that it got soundly thrashed by other 64-bit archs.
So why does Itanium 2 not suck nearly as bad? HP's engineers mostly went back and put all that stuff back IN, because compilers, and code translators are still (with a very very few exceptions, I can think of 2 (one, FX!32, mentioned in the article)) very slow. Even FX!32's speed wasn't due to the speed of translation, it was due to the huge (at the time) performance of the underlying alphas. Sure, it may have been faster than the fastest x86 hardware implementation, but it was still quite slow compared to the native speed of the chip it was on.
So the article speculates that Intel is indeed going to repeat the mistakes of the past, mistakes that *only* came to market because a) Intel has money b)Intel has pride (oh and c)got others to wipe themselves out... except IBM.) I would think Intel would learn from it's mistakes. Right now they should notice that a)processors can't be fabbed right now to work at ~4GB reliably and they are really hot. b)Going the opposite route of improving IPC almost entirely (IA-64s are not low-powered, nor cheap). Instead they should work on the in-between, which they (again due to Intel having tons of money) have in the form of the Pentium M.
Intel's new generation will have BUZZ_WORD_0 with 4x the BUZZ_WORD_1. The new core will use BUZZ_WORD_2 and BUZZ_WORD_3 to run the newest BUZZ_WORD_4.
A: A bunch of slashdotters doing the same thing.
Read my blog: HansMast.com
What if you have one core for just old 32bit compatibility and one core for new 64bit. That way you do not have to worry about backwards compaitbility in the 64bit core?
What if it is powered by a 2mm drop of urine too?
This article was written by Nicholas Blachford, the same fool who tried to analyze the Cell processor of the PS3 and described it as a supercomputer on a desk while not understanding a single thing about it.
Seriously, it's worth a read for the laugh, but there's nothing worth believing in it, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
There's a better explanation of why the Inq article's speculation is bogus here:
i on=detail&PostNum=3655&Thread=3&entryID=55310&room ID=11
http://www.realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?act
Could someone please agree with me that this is definitely true - that way it can be confirmed and be duped next week.
Wow, this journalism thing is a lot easier than I thought it would be - perhaps I should podcast and be like Howard Stern?
Headline: "Speculations Intel's Next Generation"
Advertisement below: AMD
I love the irony.
Only time will tell....
Two options are available. You can either stop going on the internet or just enjoy the porn.
Yes, of course! Why didn't I think of that? Apple moved from a chip supplied by a member of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA) to a chip manufactured by a member of the TCPA because they wanted a chip that supported TCPA! It makes perfect sense.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Lame Megafuana died out....they couldn't compete Turtles are still here...the superior solution!
Blar.
I bet this new generation chip is a basically glorified Pentium M with 64-bit and multi-core as well as some additional DRM support. Nice but not really revolutionary.
I speculate that Intel's new chip will be nacho cheese!!!
It implements a new technology called vapour processing that gives it the edge on other CPUs!
First, most code is not parallelizable. So you end up being limited by Amdahl's law. Let's say that half the code can be parallelized, while the other half cannot. Even if you have infinite speedup on the parallelizable part, you still only made the program twice as fast. Cell is for games, where such parallelism is abundant. For most workloads though, it's very difficult to extract thread-level parallelism or SIMD parallelism.
Second, it's still much cheaper for Intel & others to make faster processors than for everybody else to change the software. Keep in mind that compatibility made Intel what it is now, and furthermore that most software is crap.
The Raven
Any speculation is good as any other..
;-)
While everyone is thinking that the processor will have very large instructions, I'll be betting on a risk approach. And the best risk approach I know is having only one instruction
This "One Instruction" is the movement of data from a target to a source. Allowing more bits in a n instruction to do more moves at once. Targets and sources are register-sets, memory-controllers, Arithmetic units.
The basic version does not need pipelining or parallel processing, because each unit or controller can operate in parallel.
Using a special controller can add predictions when a certain data-transport can be readied, or whether another move can be executed out of order.
The control is not very complex and can be very fast. Just unit-address and state of unit..
An upgrade of that same principle may include stack-register-set, virtual-table-cache, memory boundary checking, associative memory, whatever.. and use them mostly in parallel.
Well, that is my bet.. (and my re-invented idea)
Eventually stabilize a socket type (intel is swapping motherboards 5 times in the same generation cpu is terrible. A consumer true value was represented by socket A life's span)
Heavily rely on dual core and hyperthreading combinations (2x2=4 - 4x4=8, etc...). This one has got me interested when they start rewiring 7 & 3 & 8 for faster paths and potential optimizations (ie. priority, load, etc...also think server(s) utilization, true tri, parallel, or series process).
Some form of DRM integration with Longhorn (or whatever)
Larger L1 & L2 cache's, better utilization (see priority, load, etc...)
Power savings that make a difference without the user ever noticing.
Anybody hear anything about 128 bit yet? I have... (potential may also be represented through hyperthreading and dual core use with cache modification, one very attractive use is scalability--->5 gig or 30+ gig which may offer new pricing paths from an investors (the Nasdq/Dow type) POV),... heh, call it 3d processing (or something)
Much more for allies
Intel traditonally is pretty open about their future product lines. They don't tell you everything, but developers are told what direction things are going. It wouldn't be in their intrest to keep people in the dark and dump sudden changes on them. Hell, look at how long they spent talking up Itanium before it finally hit the market.
It would also be a moronic move business wise. Apple will be a major account for Intel, but not even close to the biggest. He'll I'd be supprised if they were even approach 10% of what Intel sells. Ok well you don't screw over your biggest accounts by not giving them the best technology. That would be an excellent way to get them to jump ship to AMD. It would probably even breach the contracts they have.
To me, it sounds like more MAcZealot wishful thinking. Most Mac users are comfortable with their system choice for OS and design reasons. However some seem to need to feel like they are getting a more powerful computer than normal users. Thus the mythology that the PPC line was so much faster than x86. Well now that Apple is moving to Intel, they just can't accept that it will be the same as what Dell uses, so they start speculating that Intel will give Apple a special super chip that will continue to allow Macs to be the best.
Looks like more of the same here. I imagine Intel will announce a new x86 line, probably somewhat rooted in the Pentium M, that's lower power consumption than the P4 but does more work, dual, maybe more core, and perhaps hyperthreaded cores so the processor handles more threads. Maybe other new things like an integrated memory controller ala AMD and so on. But I really doubt it'll be something totally new and never before seen.
Or, more specifically, the PS2's marketing in the period between the release of the dreamcast and the PS2.
Don't buy AMD's chips! Our next generation will be *so* much better than theirs! Ignore the last generation!
Look at these amazing specs!
Buyer Beware. I'll believe it when I see it; till then, it doesn't exist.
Delays and poor execution used to be AMD's realm, exclusively. Intel has had quite a few flops, lately.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I find it seriously doubtful that the next intel chip (at least the one that apple is planning to use) will use a translation layer. Think about it; if it had such a capability, why would they (Apple) go through all the trouble to program an incredibly slow emulator when they could pressure intel to make it processor/firmware reliant and avoid the panic from the intel switch? Granted, this may be the performance boost they are banking on in rosetta, but I still fail to see how it could not be completely confined to a lower level of the system and transparent, as well as make it better performing (I'm probably wrong, but I thought that Transmeta had a working PowerPC translator working for their chips, but maybe it was just hypothetical propaganda). So, either Apple is not being its typically self-centered, well, self, or they are pulling the ultimate double-reverse psychology marketing to make us exercise our (your) code foo and think there will be a nonexistent change! Seriously, though, why go through all this trouble when there exists a way to, with a bit more input from both parties, they could avoid this transition problem apple zealots (myself included)are squirming about? Unless IBM has some IP issues with its processors..... Bashing and Speculation in 3.... 2.... 1.....
Correction: FreeBSD is FreeBSD is dead.
The writer of the article does have a point about Intel's next gen chips. It does lay in line with the current fab expansions, BUT (there's always a but), there could of course be other aspects of it. As far as I know, Apple won't struggle to beat the fastest PC:s in the world no more, simply because they never will. Therefore, I doubt that such move would be based purely on better Intel chips. Instead, I would suggest that PPC architecture wasn't pleasing Apple just that much. After all, PPC is unable to keep up with Intel/AMD nowadays and supposedly, Apple could be worried about this. On the other hand, Apple is so well known for surprising the masses. What if old Stevie woke up one day with that big idea in his mind of switching over to x86 architecture, just to make a move on Microsoft? What if they actually expand to non-Apple certified hardware? I wonder if they could make more money on such choice, and really, I doubt that people would stop buying iMacs because of this. That's still a matter of taste, since iMacs come with simplicity and style. PC:s generally don't. Last but not least, COSTS. Apple is expected to announce their own developed iPods. Nowadays, they sell iPods with peripherals from Samsung, Toshiba, etcetera. So what it comes down to is, perhaps this move was purely so that it could make an extra buck or two? I'm pretty sure that Intel would love to make a sweet deal with Apple as it did with Dell. Depple? FINALLY!
Full Tilt
I think many slashdoters is missing the point on Apples transition to Intel. Its not about the miracle Intel will deliver, its about what IBM won't deliver.
The IBM roadmap didnt include a processor that suited Apples needs (or even came close), Intels did.
I am just going to rip my own comments from the last time Slashdot posted this article, since no one cares about dupes anymore.
4 92
It's Conroe
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2
HJ
Will it run Lotus 1-2-3?
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
for management to pump the stock so that they can bail unto a gullible public. The institutional investors have been slowing catching on.
AMD is now selling (for reasonable ~400-600$CDN prices) dual-core 4600-model 64-bit processors (or course usualy stuff with their own memory controller).
AMD went dual core around the same time as Intel (to silence the hype), AMD made 64-bit marketable while Intel was still saying "64-bit has no place on consumer-grade machines".
Why would AMD react? They're already 10 steps ahead!
PS: Why are they wasting time with SSE3. Almost no programs actually use these new instruction sets for at least 5 years until they're adapted as commonplace. You might find a few video editing software packages using them, but put the time/effort/space/power to speeding up the processor rather than adding instructions nobody uses.
-M
Suddenly I'm reminded that at a local university in one of the bathrooms there is a trash can with an Intel Inside sticker stuck to the side of it.
With this tiny font, I couldn't make out what the word there was, but after reaching for my skeptacles it was all clear. Truly the wealth of alternative spellings on Slashdot never ceases to surprise. I'm not even a native English speaker.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The author of the article is speculating too much and building a house of cards.
The real reason why Apple went to Intel is simple: Intel design processors for desktop and notebook computers and manufacture those processors in huge quantities. IBM doesn't. Digging deeper than that for an explanation isn't necessary.
</VerbatimQuote>
This guy is the first I've seen who could give that clown Fuad a run for his money. Seriously, The Inq really needs to re-evaluate their hiring policies.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Maybe Windows XP x64 will have drivers by the time this is released.
As the article points out, you could use this same basic design for x86 or Itanium instructions. If this were true, then Apple wouldn't be switching to x86; it would be easy to use this as part of a PPC instruction set processor, with no ISV transition effort necessary.
And, while Intel is at it, do a POWER decoder, a V9 SPARC decoder, an Alpha decoder, and a PA-RISC decoder. Any doubt HP would love to be able to sell one machine that could serve as an upgrade for all its legacy lines and compete with Sun and IBM for legacy SPARC and POWER upgrades?
The interconnect for intells xeon servers is really poor and at high loads all the processors compete for access to the shared bus and memory. This means it doesnt scale worth a darn. You have diminishing returns for each processor something along the lines of:
1 xeon = 100%
2 xeon = 140%
3 xeon = 160%
4 xeon = 170%
Wheres with the amd opteron with hyperTransport interconnect the processors dont have to fight for resources. And performance scales much better along the lines of:
1 opteron = 100%
2 opteron = 180%
3 opteron = 250%
4 opteron = 310%
We have the best government that money can buy.
If you haven't been paying attention, the Inquirer is one of a new pile of pseudo-news websites posting ridiculous garbage with sensationalist headlines and plenty of ads. Nothing to see here, please move along.
This is a real conversation I had with a reporter that doesn't work for the Inquirer.
(Reporter): so who here is betting that nicky is right and Intel will announce that they are departing from x86 at IDF
(Reporter): and who here is betting that he is a fucktard?
(Me): oh oh me me
(Reporter): i'll give you 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000:1 odds
(Reporter): that he's a fucktard
(Me): omg that would make the most best slashdot post ever
Introducing the new Intel 64 processor, with 16 cores! Just don't tell anyone that each core is 4 bit!
Intel offered the kinds of exclusive deals it makes Dell for their loyalty. As soon as Apple decided they could still make a computer system (hardware, OS, and software) that was as compelling as the product they have now, and get better margins per machine, then the choice became easy to screw the existing developers (who spent years learning and optimizing for PowerPC and AltiVec), screw the installed base (who've spent years purchasing PowerPC software), and screw the existing suppliers (who've spent years pandering to the whimsical demands of Apple).
Intel Anti-Competitive? When's AMD going to subpoena Apple?
You need it to run OSX x86 - which is why it will run on P4 but only on AMD64...
The largest reason for the Apple switch: Digital Rights Management/TCPA.
You've mixed up cause and effect here. That TPM chip is on the motherboard because Apple needs a hardware dongle to stop people from running OSX86 on non-Jobs-blessed hardware.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
In any case, the fact that everyone wants to jump to 64 without testing the waters very carefully first is seriously foolish. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way -- Microsoft's Windows speech recognition subsystem refuses to run on any 64 bit architecture unless all of the OS and applications are strapped to 32 bit mode.
This is possibly worse than five years ago when people were paying absurd premiums to go from 800 MHz to 1.3 Ghz with RAM speeds stagnant. At least then you got something more from algorithms which weren't memory access-bound. From 32 to 64 is a significant step backwards in many cases.
The P4.
The most clever thing would be some smooth transition to ia64 that is super fast, super low power and costs $99 a chip. Stick it to AMD and all the doubters in one blow.
In reality it'll be the "pentium 5" or something other, pretty much the pentium-m++, 64bit, multicore and the interconnect will go up to 32way. More of the same. No hyper threads.
We'll see, they've got a low power advantage but AMD is closing on that. If I were Intel, I'd be trying to solve my two problems, my mega investment in Itanium that will start pissing off HP pretty soon and AMD. Doing something to shake AMD makes more sense in the interrim.
Sounds like it ;-)
So, Apple is switching from PowerPC to x86, so that x86 can be translated into some other instruction set... That sound funny to any one else but me?
If I remember right...the P4 was supposed to scale to 10GHz. It almost reached 4Ghz... so maybe we might see around 4 cores or so before intel throws up its hands this time around? And I wonder what AMD will have by then...
Sory Intel. Just looks like you're playing catch up to me.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
The proven existence of OSx86 is the biggest hole in this writer's argument.
Because this proposed new Intel CPU emulates an x86 CPU in its VLIW code, it could also emulate a PPC CPU (the processor used in Macs).
But if that's the case, why has Apple gone to the trouble of producing an x86 version of Mac OS? This is a confirmed fact. OSx86 has been leaked and shown to run.
Is Apple going to hop to x86 code temporarily and then hop back to PPC code again when the new Intel CPU appears? That would be a big waste of money and resources. It's not going to happen.
So the existence of OSx86 proves this speculation is incorrect.
Interesting idea all the same. A bit of speculation is good...
Not just the cheaper Athlon64s, but low cost 64-bit computing with the new AMD64 Semprons on Socket 754.
That is insanely funny...
"Yep. My Xeon desktop runs on mumbo-jumbo and brand identity."
Running Windows, I see.
No. But I see what you're getting at. ;-j
Using empirical analysis, I wrote "x86", "NEXT", and "next" separately on three pieces of paper. I then placed the pieces of paper into a blender, spilled the shredded remains, and that's what came out. :-j
Since the MacIntel is technically the next NeXT, and NeXT Step already used x86, this would be the next next NeXT; much too messy for me.
If you're willing to live with just combining "next" and "x86" while preserving the lower case "x" of x86 while still making it stand out, it would be ... NExT86 ... but that just gives me the collywobbles.
So it's neXt86 for me!
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
I had a friend that worked at intel [he now works for amd] who was telling me he was working on an 8 core chip with a shit load of cache last year. But he said hp wasn't interested [since they by a lot of server class chips] and they killed the project...
As it looks now Apple will have to switch twice: first to the present Intel offerings (probably 32 bits). And later on to the definitive version: 64 bits.
And that is the optimistic variant of the story. More probably Intel will enter some dead alleys before it finds the right formula for 64 bits.
Apple would have done better to wait for an appealing 64 bit architecture instead of buying into a vague plan.
At least by looking at his website it seems that he's a class A nutjob. Anti-gravity, faster than light travel and whatnot. ;-)
If they're announcing an archtecture this radical at next week's IDF, what are the chances that it will be available and running well in time for Apple's announced timeline for desktops?
Apple's pro class machines are not going Intel until '97, there could be plenty of time. The consumer machines go Intel in '96 and a Pentium M would work quite nicely.
I thought the same thing... but then I remebered that NeXT ran on 68k, Intel, PA-RISC and SPARC.
Yay for micro-kernels, they make processor shopping so much easier.
Waitasec... Did they just name their next generation chips "Speculations"?
The way I understood it was that x86 processors were faster because of the huge investments that had been made in them over the years creating the monolithic out-of-order, hyperthreaded processors. ie, put together some very, very, clever hacks, damn the bang-per-watt, and watch the performance sore. Why would you do this? Because Windows uses x86 and developers have a vested interest in keeping it alive, so they can continue to make money from "Upgrades".
We know x86 is an outdated instruction set. We also know that what they said in the article makes sense: don't process x86, convert x86 to something better (VLIW) and run it in order. But why bother with that stage if you have no legacy x86 code to support?
Why not just make the new chips with this new instruction set, and compile accordinly? Why not replace the x86 software decoder with a PPC software decoder?
I guess this boils down to getting market forces to work in your favour, and get the same discounted hardware Win32 has been getting... but it seems like such a nasty hack! I also expect there is a bit of politics going on, Intel are all about x86 and they're not about to change that for 3% of all processor sales.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Apple's pro class machines are not going Intel until '97, there could be plenty of time. The consumer machines go Intel in '96 and a Pentium M would work quite nicely.
Nicely? I know Mac users are fanatics, but I am not waiting another 92 years for the Intel upgrade.
I'm outta here, Steve.
When the article talks about Intel's new VLIW chip using one of its many cores to translate x86 instructions into the VLIW ISA, I didn't understand why Intel wouldn't just put the x86 translation code in hardware. The reason Transmeta had to do it in software is because they're not licensed to do that (only AMD is) and they needed to be able update it as they improved their understanding of the x86 instruction set. But Intel could have the chip do it. However, I thought that's already what the modern P4's do, isn't it? It's just a big, fast chip with a different ISA that has hardware to translate x86. I would think Intel would just continue what they're already doing in this regard.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Personally I would buy any chip, or computer, or product, offered by Apple Computer, which featured a design or even just a name to do with sea turtles. Steve Jobs doesn't need his RDF on that one. Just put a little baby sea turtle icon on the side, and I'll pay an extra $50.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Microsoft Windows XP
The BSOD would take on a whole more literal meaning
Yes, there are a few huge sea-turtle species as well as the giant tortoises but there is an amazing variety of turtles on this planet. The vast majority of turtles/tortoises/terrapins are not exactly 'mega' :)
If you don't already own it, I found "Turtles, Tortoises and Terrapins: Survivors in Armor" by Ronald Orenstein to be an excellent introduction to all things turtle.
Blar.
It was late, end of a long day, I was thinking '07 but the fingers have far more experience typing '97. Weird sort of typo. It's only two years, I hope I didn't cause you to run down to the local PC store this morning. ;-)
I'll look that one up. Got a 12-year-old who would love to skim that one, too.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
(I am a native English speaker, and I've long given up correcting people's grammar, spelling, punctuation, and logic around here. What depresses me isn't that people make mistakes -- we all do that -- but that they don't care. Being able to communicate clearly with others is important, people! And every mistake makes it that bit harder to follow your meaning.
As ESR says, "We've found by experience that people who are careless and sloppy writers are usually also careless and sloppy at thinking and coding (often enough to bet on, anyway). [...] you will get a limited amount of slack for spelling and grammar errors -- but no extra slack at all for laziness (and yes, we can usually spot that difference).")
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
you trolls rock :)