Slashdot Mirror
Intel Moves Up 32nm Production, Cuts 45nm
Vigile writes "Intel recently announced that it was moving up the production of 32nm processors in place of many 45nm CPUs that have been on the company's roadmap for some time. Though spun as good news (and sure to be tough on AMD), the fact is that the current economy is forcing Intel's hand as they are unwilling to invest much more in 45nm technologies that will surely be outdated by the time the market cycles back up and consumers and businesses start buying PCs again. By focusing on 32nm products, like Westmere, the first CPU with integrated graphics, Intel is basically putting a $7 billion bet on a turnaround in the economy for 2010."
... AMD has 45nm.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
*wakes Gogo0 up*
most people already have computers
Really? Have an eyeopening look here:
http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12758865&subjectID=348909&fsrc=nwl
Computer ownership is really very low worldwide. Even the US has only 76 computers per 100 people. Keep in mind that includes people like myself who, between work and home use, have 4 computers alone.
Some other socking figures:
Italy 36 computers per 100 people
Mexico 13 computers per 100 people
Spain 26 computers per 100 people
Japan 67 computers per 100 people
Russia 12 computers per 100 people
And the billions of people in China and India don't even make the list.
Seems to me that there are a lot more computers Intel could be selling in the future. The market is far from saturated.
I wasn't around when they landed someone on the moon so I can't quite comment on that bit, but I can tell you what I (and the rest of my kind) use the extra processing power for:
Finite Element Analysis (simulating car crashes to make them safer before we crash the dummies in them).
Multibody Dynamics (Simulation of robot behavior saves a ton of money, we can simulate the different options before we build 10 different robots or spend a year figuring out something by trial and error)
Computational Fluid Dynamics (designing cars, jets and pretty much anything in between like windmills and how they affect their surroundings and how efficient they are)
Simulating Complex Systems (designing control schemes for anything from chemical plants, to cruise control to autopilots) Computational Thermodynamics (Working on that tricky global warming thing, or just trying to figure out how to best model and work with various chemicals or proteins)
This is just the uses (that I know of) that more raw power can help out in Mechanical Engineering. I still have to wait about an hour for certain simulations or computations to run and they're not even all that complex yet. The faster these things run (even a few percent increases) can save us tons of time in the long run. And time is money...
Intel announced today that it was investing $7bln to build new manufacturing facilities in the US to manufacture these chips.
The new facilities will be built at existing manufacturing plants in New Mexico, Oregon, and Arizona. Intel is estimating 7,000 new jobs will be created. BizJournals.com
Additional disclaimer: I'm not a CPU engineer, and this is still based on things I read on public websites.
I can't find the article, but Anandtech explained this well. Apparently the high-k+ process that's used in 45nm and smaller Intel chips make for incredibly low leakage currents.
I did, however, find a graph that shows total system power consumption moving from 65nm (Conroe) to 45nm (Penryn), at the same clock speed: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3137&p=6
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Again: What quality of movie?
I can watch 1920x1080 movies, smoothly, at least 30fps, if not 60. A quick calculation shows that the poor machine would likely be using over half its RAM just to store a single frame at that resolution. I'd be amazed if your 486 could do 640x480 at an acceptable framerate -- note that we had a different measure of "acceptable" back then.
Also consider: Even if we disregard Flash, I am guessing talking to the network -- just straight TCP and IP -- is going to be its own kind of difficult. Keep in mind, Ogg Vorbis was named for how it "ogged" the audio, and machines of the time couldn't really do much else -- while decoding audio.
Yes, there are hacks we could use to make it work. There are horribly ugly (but efficient) codecs we could use. We could drop JavaScript support, and give up the idea of rich web apps.
And yes, there is a lot of waste involved. But it's been said before, and it is worth mentioning -- computers need to be faster now because we are making them do more. Some of it is bloat, and some of it is actual new functionality that would've been impossible ten years ago.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!