Intel to Take Online Suggestions for New Chips

hhavensteincw writes "Intel has quietly launched a new online community that it plans to use to take feedback and suggestions from OEMs and end users for new features in its vPro chips and management software. Intel envisions that the community will grow to allow users to get answers from other community members faster than Intel's support group can answer questions."

Comments

Captain Marvell and the Super-Duper-Threading

[tepples]

Please. That's entirely unrealistic. Now, if you wanted 2048 cores*, that's doable!

*(Cores are process-shrinked versions of the Intel 8088) I'd like to see Intel try making some massively multicore CPU, even if it's just a 64XScale. A joint venture with a company whose name sounds like it comes out of superhero comics would have to be called Super-Duper-Threading.

Important suggestion - be truly open

[jkrise]

Intel has nothing to lose by documenting all the instruction sets, architecture designs etc. They have such a big brand name - it doesn't really matter if their designs became public.

It is quite sad that despite their chips being 100s of times faster than a few years ago, so-called 'partners' and OEMs like Microsoft have given the x86 series a bad name - resulting in little or no incremental performance gains for the user community.

Like HP made winprinters and some vendors made winmodems to the customer's ire... and the perennial problems faced by video and audio device mfrs. including big names like Creative... it is clear that the biggest OEM, namely Microsoft determines what customers get to see of "Intel Inside".

The recent thrust towards Open Source drivers for wireless cards from Intel is a very small and incomplete step. Recently at my firm, we talked to Intel for sourcing a 1000 laptops for students joining our colleges. Intel said they would share roadmaps and plans under NDA!!

This is a far cry from 20 years ago when Intel gave out the complete instruction sets and architecture layouts for their 8080; I sort-of remember the Zilog Z-80 did a better job of implementing them. Unless Intel come clean in favour of the truly Open source model, they risk small time players making it big in niche segments - including the biggest niche of them all - the PC market. If not Negroponte, someone else will come out with a non-Intel platform for under $100 and Intel will go down pulling others like Microsoft behind them.

Faster Please

[rlp]

I'd like a chip with a higher clock speed. I'd like a chip that doesn't cause the lights to dim around the house when I power it up. I'd like a chip that doesn't require a heatsink the size of Guatemala and a fan with the power of a small tornado. I'd like a chip that doesn't glow like the surface of the sun if you remove the heatsink.

I've read that the reason Intel / AMD are going parallel rather than increasing clock rate is due to the problem of heat dissipation. Multi-core is great for some apps (web-server farms, simulation), but is not going to speed up most (single-threaded) apps. Dual core is nice. About the time the industry is going from 16 to 32 cores, I doubt most users will care - or bother to upgrade. And if the heat problem is not solvable - that may be a serious marketing problem for chip makers and computer manufacturers.

Re:Faster Please

[maztuhblastah]

And if the heat problem is not solvable - that may be a serious marketing problem for chip makers and computer manufacturers.

Amen to that. On the bright side though, if chip growth stagnates for too long, software developers will have to start optimizing and writing streamlined code. That's never a bad thing.

I think we're long overdue for an architecture change, by the way. Can't we just start transitioning out of x86? It's well past its limits -- a Core 2 Duo generates a TON of heat, compared to an equivalent POWER chip. I mean, sure, it's way better than a Pentium 4, but it's still a kW hungry beast. Its FP performance is great -- compared to other x86 chips. Compared to other architectures though, it needs work.

POWER's not that alien either -- it's got a lot of the "improvements" that Intel/AMD have been trying to bolt onto the x86 architecture. Difference is, these improvements already exist, are well tested, and well-performing. Want multi-core? SPARC and POWER have got it. Want high-speed multithreading? Look to the Niagra II. Want virtualization? Look to POWER.

Geek fantasy: IBM open-sources the POWER architecture, Intel licenses it and starts producing a high-end chip, AMD competes. Intel and AMD start to use the improvements on their x86 chips, and, in an effort to one-up one another, start producing high-end desktop POWER-based chips. This trickles down, and soon, the x86 and POWER architectures are in competition. POWER, being a better, more modern design, eventually overtakes x86 (starting with high-end desktop usage, and trickling down to the lower-end.) Multi-core POWER chips (or SPARC, depending on the fantasy) often run with one or two cores dedicated to x86 emulation for backwards compatibility. Microsoft, having just released Blackcomb, finds their target chip slowly relegated to emulation, concurrent with the development of their next OS. Unable to use the existing codebase (which is, by this time, highly x86-centric), Microsoft is forced to roll out a new OS, built from scratch. Using some of the lessons learned from Microsoft Research, a new OS is built, embracing the core values of security, modularity, and portability. While the OS is good, the lost development time provides the boost that *nix needed. Linux takes marketshare, as does Mac OS X. During Microsoft's transition period, Apple seizes the opportunity, and releases Mac OS X for all x86 boxes. The driver situation is a little rocky at first, but open source helps ease the pain. By wholeheartedly supporting open source development, Apple leverages their work, soon gaining support across the board. Already having years of experience with the POWER chips, their dual-platform OS development allows them to provide compatible OS's for POWER and x86 computers -- and translation software (already written) helps unify the two.

Well... that's my dream anyways.

Add a FPGA

[maz2331]

I'd like to see something like an FPGA onboard with a compiler (or device driver model) that can allow us to take some time consuming things such as CODECs and push them off into hardware.

Programmable TPM

[Valen0]

I would be happy if they released a motherboard with a user programmable TPM chip. In particular, I am looking for a chip that can be used for general purpose cryptographic functions, that can be reprogrammed with a different (user known) endorsement keys, and that can permanently disable remote attestation and other chip dependent remote and/or configuration based DRM functions.

Computing Appliance

[turing_m]

Make something with the equivalent power usage of Via's Eden 15000, but faster. Surely Intel has the research budget to accomplish it too.

I want a small, fanless computing appliance that is going to last 20 years or more with zero maintenance other than software. No dust, no noise, no ticking time bomb spinning parts and electrolytic capacitors. Something that will not require me buying a huge solar panel if I want to go that route. If I have data storage needs, USB, firewire or eSATA external hard drive enclosures will suffice.

Re:Sort of off-topic...

[BlueParrot]

The problem with the instruction set is not due to the chipmakers but because there is an awful lot of proprietary software ( in particular windows ) which relies on it. Just have a look at Linux, the BSDs and Solaris. They have all been ported to numerous architectures, but this just isn't possible with a closed source application unless the vendor decides to do it. As a consequence Intel and AMD has no choice but to continue using x86 because so much software depends on it, and it would be suicidal for them to stop supporting it.