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Speculations Intel's Next Generation

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the boldy-go-somewhere-slightly-different dept.

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."

4 of 329 comments (clear)

  1. Speculation based on Itanium by team99parody · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Based on Itanium, I'd say it's a bluff to move Apple away from IBM.

    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.

  2. All just speculation... by doormat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  3. Apple didn't switch over for a chip by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Rosetta by interiot · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Or, the alternative you're missing...

    At one point, Transmeta was promising to be able to change the CPU on-the-fly from an x86 to other things (eg. ARM, MIPS), which is no problem, since it was doing the x86=>native translation anyway, all it has to do is change to a different translation.

    So, all Intel needs to do is make the CPU be able to be switched from x86 to PPC at runtime. That's why Apple claims they can run old apps so quickly.