Licencing to third parties was done by Advanced Risc Machines, not Acorn (though they were a founding member of the company, along with VLSI and Apple).
ARM (the company) collaborated on desgin of the StrongARM, but it was DEC, and later Intel, who did the actual production. Even with their fully in-house designs, they've been produced by third party companies; e.g. VLSI was responsible for the ARM2 and ARM3.
So awhile back Jobs' predicts 3Ghz G5's in 2005 (which I guess became the "3GHZ Promise"). IBM fails to deliver. However, Microsoft announces shortly before E3 that the 360 will use a 3.2 GHZ triple-core G5. I can only imagine that Jobs was pissed on some level that Bill Gates trumping him in Apple territory.
The cores on the XBox2 are not G5. They are simple dual-issue in-order cores. The G5 has ten execution units.
It's been obvious for a while that the "real reason" is that Apple's needs are met better by Intel's roadmap than IBM's, and Apple doesn't have enough marketshare to make it worthwhile to change that.
Yes, the new 970FX chips are an improvement over the current tech. On the other hand, it's not mind-blowing compared to Intel's current line-up, much less what's in the pipeline. I'm supposed to be impressed by an announced 13W @ 1.4GHz and 16W @ 1.6GHz when Intel has been selling 10W @ 1.5GHz for months?
Even the dual-core Yonah core, slated for volume production first quarter of 2006, is quoted as staying within a 25W envelope @ 2.13GHz. Speeds for the low voltage, ultra low voltage, and single core parts aren't released yet, but Intel has made it clear that it's aggressively pursuing lower power designs and that notebooks based on the next generation of chips will "use approximately 33% less power".
It's the older Banias core that draws 27W. The newer 765, based on the Dothan core, draws 21W at 2.1GHz - a 33% increase in clock speed at 24% more power when compared to the 1.6GHz 970FX. Or if you're most interesting in power, how about the 758? That draws 10W at 1.5GHz - 37% power savings over the 1.6GHz 970FX with only a 6% drop in clock speed.
On top of that, the Pentium M outperforms the 970FX core clock for clock by most metrics.
Accessibility, anti-aliasing, internationalization, localization, integration, theming, etc. There's a lot of good that comes with the extra size of modern software.
Erm, IBM had well more than enough fab capacity to produce for Apple. Reports are even that the G5 processor line accounted for a whopping 2-3% of the capacity at a single fab (Fishkill). Afterall, they're going to be doing all the initial fulfillment on the Cell, which is going to be much higher volume than the G5 ever was.
The real issue with the PPC architecture was there wasn't enough volume in the desktop and portable markets to justify design.
For a statement to be considered libelous, they typically need to be known or suspected to be false. Given the fact that Intel has already been found guilty by one court of the behaviour they're being accused of, it is very unlikely it would pass the legal standard for libel.
Via dying? I'd say it's way too early to start writing an obituary. They're actually expanding their x86 compatible offerings quite a bit at this point, with the recent release of the C7, C7-M, Eden-N, and "Luke" chips. And Hewlett Packard just chose them to power their entire thin client line.
The thing about Via is that they're in a fairly invisible market segment, as far as mainstream computers go. They compete against the Pentium/Celeron M ULV and AMD Geode, not the Pentium IV and Athlon lines.
The industry is only just starting to focus on the issue of power consumption seriously, and the classes of devices where this is a key feature (e.g. tablets and ultraportables) are only just starting to show significant growth.
I have a feeling Via has a lot of untapped potential here. Intel finally coming out with decent low power designs hampers things a but, but Transmeta's exit from the marketplace balances that out somewhat and they still have a very compelling overall platform.
Sun had some i386 machines that you could call wintel. (though nobody used Windows then, and I'm not sure if Dos would run).
If noone ran windows, how would it be called wintel?:)
The machine couldn't natively run DOS or Windows. They did, however, support DOS applications under SunView by using virtual 8086 machines, and you could install Windows on top of that apparently.
Intel's mobile processors have lower power consumption than the G4, and their desktop processors have lower power consumption than the G5. If your friend's notebook runs how, either it's a bad thermal design (possible) and/or a notebook with a desktop processor (probable).
He says he and his wife already have phones. Verizon offers $9.99 for lines after the first two pretty much everywhere, as far as I know. Likewise with Sprint and T-Mobile. Cingular is a bit more expensive at $14.99.
As for additional handsets, a lot of us have those around as well. I get a credit towards a new phone every two years. Nothing wrong with the old ones, but not worth enough for me to bother selling, so I keep a couple around as spares in case one of the new ones dies.
That being said, his proposed hack is (as he admits) pretty kludgey, and cell phone charges are probably low enough for noone to care about the extra hassle and unreliability, coupled with having to pay Skype in the end anyways (though possibly at a lower rate).
I agree that traditional telephone service is doomed in the long run. As high speed untethered internet access becomes more prevelent, I'd expect straight wireless VoIP to become a player, rather than any weird hopping scheme like Cringly posited.
I don't doubt flash may make some headway in the ultraportable market, but the advances in microdrive technology promise escalating capacity with reduced power consumption. Toshiba's already announced an 80GB drive in a 1.8" form factor, drawing around 1.4W and Hitachi has been talking up plans for a 20GB drive in a 1" form factor.
Well, to be more accurate, they didn't start using it until Solaris 2.0 was announced. Solaris 1.0 was still on the market for something like a year before 2.0 was available.:)
And of course you could install SunView, NeWS, or X11 (R5 was out while SunOS 4.x was still king), but that doesn't preclude adopting a name for a bundle of components. SCO did a similar thing in the same time period with their OpenDesktop product, which was SCO Unix 3.2 + X11 and some other crap.
As for the pre-sparc Suns, I think my first was actually a 68030, though I never seriously used sun3 machines. Most of my early experience was AIX, followed up by HP/UX and various flavours of SCO (Xenix, Unix, Opendesktop). Eventually I ended up with an IPC, but it was a bit of an antiquated machine at that time.
Actually it wasn't until Solaris 2.0 that the switch to the SVR5 based SunOS 5.0. And it's still SunOS; Solaris is the name for the bundle of SunOS and the windowing system (origionally OpenWindows).
One of the problems I have with every "distance of finger movement" estimate I've seen is that it assumes the use of home keys. I've never used home keys, and wonder who the doofus is who came up with the idea, since on a "standard" keyboard, it forces the wrists to be bend unnaturally.
As for whether dvorak is any better in terms of RSI, I've seen a whole lot of claims, but noone ever seems to cite anything other than anecdote. Even if it does legitimate help with an existing case of RSI, who's to say that the specific layout is what does it? It could simply be a matter of it being a change.
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Licencing to third parties was done by Advanced Risc Machines, not Acorn (though they were a founding member of the company, along with VLSI and Apple).
ARM (the company) collaborated on desgin of the StrongARM, but it was DEC, and later Intel, who did the actual production. Even with their fully in-house designs, they've been produced by third party companies; e.g. VLSI was responsible for the ARM2 and ARM3.
So awhile back Jobs' predicts 3Ghz G5's in 2005 (which I guess became the "3GHZ Promise"). IBM fails to deliver. However, Microsoft announces shortly before E3 that the 360 will use a 3.2 GHZ triple-core G5. I can only imagine that Jobs was pissed on some level that Bill Gates trumping him in Apple territory.
The cores on the XBox2 are not G5. They are simple dual-issue in-order cores. The G5 has ten execution units.
ARM is an instruction set, not a processor. The XScale is an ARM processor.
It's been obvious for a while that the "real reason" is that Apple's needs are met better by Intel's roadmap than IBM's, and Apple doesn't have enough marketshare to make it worthwhile to change that.
Yes, the new 970FX chips are an improvement over the current tech. On the other hand, it's not mind-blowing compared to Intel's current line-up, much less what's in the pipeline. I'm supposed to be impressed by an announced 13W @ 1.4GHz and 16W @ 1.6GHz when Intel has been selling 10W @ 1.5GHz for months?
Even the dual-core Yonah core, slated for volume production first quarter of 2006, is quoted as staying within a 25W envelope @ 2.13GHz. Speeds for the low voltage, ultra low voltage, and single core parts aren't released yet, but Intel has made it clear that it's aggressively pursuing lower power designs and that notebooks based on the next generation of chips will "use approximately 33% less power".
Especially on the G5, with a relatively small L2 cache (especially for a 64-bit CPU) and exceedingly high memory latency.
It's the older Banias core that draws 27W. The newer 765, based on the Dothan core, draws 21W at 2.1GHz - a 33% increase in clock speed at 24% more power when compared to the 1.6GHz 970FX. Or if you're most interesting in power, how about the 758? That draws 10W at 1.5GHz - 37% power savings over the 1.6GHz 970FX with only a 6% drop in clock speed.
On top of that, the Pentium M outperforms the 970FX core clock for clock by most metrics.
Accessibility, anti-aliasing, internationalization, localization, integration, theming, etc. There's a lot of good that comes with the extra size of modern software.
Erm, IBM had well more than enough fab capacity to produce for Apple. Reports are even that the G5 processor line accounted for a whopping 2-3% of the capacity at a single fab (Fishkill). Afterall, they're going to be doing all the initial fulfillment on the Cell, which is going to be much higher volume than the G5 ever was.
The real issue with the PPC architecture was there wasn't enough volume in the desktop and portable markets to justify design.
For a statement to be considered libelous, they typically need to be known or suspected to be false. Given the fact that Intel has already been found guilty by one court of the behaviour they're being accused of, it is very unlikely it would pass the legal standard for libel.
Via dying? I'd say it's way too early to start writing an obituary. They're actually expanding their x86 compatible offerings quite a bit at this point, with the recent release of the C7, C7-M, Eden-N, and "Luke" chips. And Hewlett Packard just chose them to power their entire thin client line.
The thing about Via is that they're in a fairly invisible market segment, as far as mainstream computers go. They compete against the Pentium/Celeron M ULV and AMD Geode, not the Pentium IV and Athlon lines.
The industry is only just starting to focus on the issue of power consumption seriously, and the classes of devices where this is a key feature (e.g. tablets and ultraportables) are only just starting to show significant growth.
I have a feeling Via has a lot of untapped potential here. Intel finally coming out with decent low power designs hampers things a but, but Transmeta's exit from the marketplace balances that out somewhat and they still have a very compelling overall platform.
Sun had some i386 machines that you could call wintel. (though nobody used Windows then, and I'm not sure if Dos would run).
:)
If noone ran windows, how would it be called wintel?
The machine couldn't natively run DOS or Windows. They did, however, support DOS applications under SunView by using virtual 8086 machines, and you could install Windows on top of that apparently.
s/runs how/runs hot/
Intel's mobile processors have lower power consumption than the G4, and their desktop processors have lower power consumption than the G5. If your friend's notebook runs how, either it's a bad thermal design (possible) and/or a notebook with a desktop processor (probable).
He says he and his wife already have phones. Verizon offers $9.99 for lines after the first two pretty much everywhere, as far as I know. Likewise with Sprint and T-Mobile. Cingular is a bit more expensive at $14.99.
As for additional handsets, a lot of us have those around as well. I get a credit towards a new phone every two years. Nothing wrong with the old ones, but not worth enough for me to bother selling, so I keep a couple around as spares in case one of the new ones dies.
That being said, his proposed hack is (as he admits) pretty kludgey, and cell phone charges are probably low enough for noone to care about the extra hassle and unreliability, coupled with having to pay Skype in the end anyways (though possibly at a lower rate).
I agree that traditional telephone service is doomed in the long run. As high speed untethered internet access becomes more prevelent, I'd expect straight wireless VoIP to become a player, rather than any weird hopping scheme like Cringly posited.
I don't doubt flash may make some headway in the ultraportable market, but the advances in microdrive technology promise escalating capacity with reduced power consumption. Toshiba's already announced an 80GB drive in a 1.8" form factor, drawing around 1.4W and Hitachi has been talking up plans for a 20GB drive in a 1" form factor.
Well, to be more accurate, they didn't start using it until Solaris 2.0 was announced. Solaris 1.0 was still on the market for something like a year before 2.0 was available. :)
And of course you could install SunView, NeWS, or X11 (R5 was out while SunOS 4.x was still king), but that doesn't preclude adopting a name for a bundle of components. SCO did a similar thing in the same time period with their OpenDesktop product, which was SCO Unix 3.2 + X11 and some other crap.
As for the pre-sparc Suns, I think my first was actually a 68030, though I never seriously used sun3 machines. Most of my early experience was AIX, followed up by HP/UX and various flavours of SCO (Xenix, Unix, Opendesktop). Eventually I ended up with an IPC, but it was a bit of an antiquated machine at that time.
Actually it wasn't until Solaris 2.0 that the switch to the SVR5 based SunOS 5.0. And it's still SunOS; Solaris is the name for the bundle of SunOS and the windowing system (origionally OpenWindows).
Solaris hasn't been based on BSD since the 1.x days.
"Despite its large size, the IA's PetaBox installation draws only about 50kW of power..."
There are advantages to the VIA Eden platform.
Um, Theo is arrogant, opinionated and abbrasive. He doesn't need a magazine to help portray him that way. :)
Thanks!
:)
I was actually surprised by how easy it was to make some things out. Last visit we found out the boys are going to have big feet like me.
(Glad to know I'm not the only one planning on being obnoxious to their kids.)
Congrats :) I hope I can get video of my twins, but so far all I've got is tons of stills.
For some odd reason a lot of people aren't interested in blowing $500 to assuage their curiosity.
One of the problems I have with every "distance of finger movement" estimate I've seen is that it assumes the use of home keys. I've never used home keys, and wonder who the doofus is who came up with the idea, since on a "standard" keyboard, it forces the wrists to be bend unnaturally.
As for whether dvorak is any better in terms of RSI, I've seen a whole lot of claims, but noone ever seems to cite anything other than anecdote. Even if it does legitimate help with an existing case of RSI, who's to say that the specific layout is what does it? It could simply be a matter of it being a change.