Slashdot Mirror
Intel Looks Beyond the Microchip
Dr Occult writes "BBC reports about upcoming major changes in Intel in 2006. The current Intel core, the Pentium, is on its way out and is to be replaced by a new chip called 'Core'. These new Core chips come in two flavours. Solo Core is a single core processor, and Duo Core is a dual core processor. Intel has also announced the Viiv standard. Viiv is less technology and more a shopping list of technologies. Aimed at the home entertainment market, it defines the latest generation of media centres that are capable of playing anything from MP3 songs to high-definition films."
I would assume there are plans for these, would seem to make sense based on their naming convention. :-P).
Goodbye mhz race, hello core race (not that it hasnt been on for a while
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I would have thought detailed information on how consumers view the machinations of evil corporations marketing departments would be vital to a nerd trying their best to do The Right Thing, i.e. stopping the rot before it takes hold.
The hot topic around computers right now is politics. Whether you get bound or gagged by DRM, legislation and software patents, or allowed to live free in a bountious field of quality products depends on how you play the game. No one won by being logical, truthful, and right - it's all in how you play the game.
I don't think this article is really saying much, except for the fact that Intel is going to try to put their chips in everything (DVD players, appliances, etc). From a technology/research standpoint, this kind of worries me. Does this suggest that Intel is trying to secure their future by broadening their market because they can't produce new technology? As much as I love AMD, I hope that competition continues between the two chip-makers for a long, long time.
TCP/DRM....
No thanks. Buh-bye Intel. I recently made the switch to AMD but I fear that will be short lived.
As much as I despise any product from China, I fear that some of us freedom rebels will have to resort to underground TCP/DRM-free chips.
I think they were working on a new chip called the Dragon or something like that.
I don't care about watching HD anything on my PC. I don't listen to music on my PC.
But I'll be damned if I'll be forced to replace all my stuff just because Mega-Corp(tm) decides that we all must comply and submit.
Freedom Fries and all that stupidity. It's all for our own good you know.
I think they should rename the new TCP/DRM chips the "INGSOC Chip"..
While 32bit x86 chips might be new and exciting to you the rest of the world have been using it for 20 years and are phasing it out for x86-64. Good luck with your new and improved Macintosh. It will be nice to see how many years Apple will give this platform before a complete upgrade is necesarry again. My guess is, not long.
I think that the number of cores is going to be the "megahertz" of the 2010s (no prizes for making this observation). It seems that Moore's law continues on, but the limits of electronics prevent higher clock rates so now it is all about adding cores (in its original form, Moore's law refers to a doubling of the number of circuits per linear dimension). What I would really like to see is a chip with about 512 80486 cores on it ... that would be sweet.
This "change" is more likely a marketing thing. If the marketing folks don't change everything every few years, they start to look idle.
theyll have a hard time marketing their CPUS in few years, and will end up with a mess on their hands, while AMD "leaps ahead"
Solo Core -current
Duo Core -current
Quadra Core?
Penta Core? or Viiv Core?
Octa Core?
Hexa Core?
as the numbers of cores increase, and they will! the names will get more rediculous, and harder for the average John Doe to pronounce
Intel has changed a few names and are out in full force at the press conference.
Makes me wonder if thats the best theyre going to do... a nice new website and shedding the Pentium name which is over 15 years old. Also Viiv is a list of technologies for the home media. Does that mean like, a PVR, game console, mp3 player and quite possibly a podcaster? If yes, then Viiv is a small collection of stickers.
I'm pretty sure Intel can do more than that. With awesome fabs under their thumb, they'll find ways to get back at AMD. However they should get rid of their overzealous marketing department, and invest more in engineers. Release a quad core chip, that'll take my attention. Even better, an 8-core chip like Sun. Make a chip with the first 8MB of Ram built in as fast sram and possibly a reasonable GPU as well to make a real motherboard-on-a-chip, and sell it for under $50. Release the 10-gbit ethernet card for cheap and sell 100-gbit cards too. Release a compiler that is truly gcc-compatible, along with a Linux kernel compiled with it to prove it, and make a compiler that can really optimise code for 8+ cores with no problems. But dont give me a Solo Core Duo Core crap.
(Typed on a Duo Core AMD machine)
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky