I can't believe I'm seeing yet another article that says linux won't run on multiprocessor machines (YAATSLWROMM). The direct quote is "And Microsoft's Edwards says that Linux lacks many advanced capabilities, such as the ability to run on computers with multiple processor chips." Obviously, linux can run on multiprocessor systems... the issue is that at present it isn't very efficient when handling more than a few processors.
In net media vs. old school media arugments, the old school guys are always arguing that the net media and forums like/. have no credibility to back them up, and that there is no code to research and fact check stories. But when dealing with tech especially, old media is as bad or worse at spreading rumor and misinformation as the new media. Sheesh.
I think this is a great thing. I'm a technologist... I'd like to see technology cheap and plentiful for everyone to use. But if this is to happen, if computer technology is going to have such a large impact on people's lives, then I think people need some basic education on computers and programming. Computer knowledge needs to be something for the masses, not the elite few. This way people would be able to have their computers do what they want them to do, and understand the limitations of the devices.
One reason why this may never happen is because if computer knowledge became common, if everyone could program, and if programming languages were developed to make programming simpler; then jobs with computers and programming wouldn't be high paying and considered "hot" as they are right now, they would be considered menial and low-paying because it would no longer be the job of a specialist (oh sure, there would be a few high paying jobs for the true geniuses, but not many). Current techology companies may claim that technological advancement is their goal, but really profit is. It just so happens that the two coincide... but if their jobs and profits were threatened by consumer education, they'd fight it all the way. From my point of view, the long term goal of the computer industry should be to obsolete itself.
This education isn't intended for those with an interest in programming, it's intended for those who won't be doing that as a job... it's general education to give you a better understanding of how the things that have an effect on your life work. For example, a friend of mine is a math education major. Last spring she took an intro programming class in C++. With this basic understanding of the mindset it takes to create programs, and the debugging process, and the use of libraries, just last night I was able to give her an explanation that she easily understood about how OS's use dynamically linked libraries, and why her win95 machine has gotten so much slower and more unstable over time after adding many more programs.
General education is a good thing. Whether you make it your life's work or not, a little extra knowledge is always helpful.
Unless the compression is seriously changing the sound output, aren't there just too many factors to make any type of conclusion? There's the matter of codecs, soundcards, and speakers in the first place. Combinations of these are going to give you different sounds.
But besides that, some people really can't tell the difference between true cd quality, and mp3 quality. For those who can, though, what difference does it make? For example, how exactly do you know what the music is supposed to sound like? You're taking the cd as an example, but who's to say that's exactly what the artist had in mind... and most likely that's not how it would sound if the artist played it live.
A little while ago some guy posted in another audio related article that there was some free (gpl?) audio compression program that could compress about 60%, and on decompression reproduced the original song bit for bit (if anyone knows where this is available, could you point me to it?). The odd thing about it, though, was he said that it was the only compression scheme they used to trade Grateful Dead bootlegs. Does that make any sense? A bootleg itself will be low quality (I would assume), so that would be the limiting factor for compressed sound quality, not the compression itself... I get the feeling that there are many misconceptions about compressed digital audio.
It's more than just piece of mind. Buying the official Red Hat set usually entitles you to support from Red Hat, and it includes non-free applications as well. Take a look at this list to see some examples of what might be included on the set. Some of these are just demos, but I remember that I went and bought RedHat 5.0 box, even though I could have downloaded it, just because it came with a full copy of Real Audio Server. If I thought I was getting these things and then they weren't on the CD, I would be pretty pissed.
Here is a review of the Fast Trak IDE RAID Controller on AGN Hardware. It costs between $60-80, and in a RAID 0 did increase performance a bit. It supports RAID 0, 1, and 0+1. Not sure if it'll work in linux though.
Isn't there anyone who believes in tact anymore? If someone has a good idea and it becomes popular, it's raped for all it's worth to make as much money as fast as possible. I picture the Pony Express in the old west, with all messengers riding their horses to death for speed rather than taking care of them. In this case I'm not going to specifically blame Lucas... people and the media have been hyping this movie forever.
And it's hard to place blame, so I'm not going to try. I just wish people, businesses, and the media could have a little more tact... a little more decency, instead of being so greedy. If they have a truly great idea or product, it will sell without being crammed down everyone's throats 24 hours a day.
The problem with linux SMP...
on
Linux 2.3.0
·
· Score: 2
does not lie within the kernel so much as withing the apps. Look at the ZD tests... they consistently complain that there are very few apps that use threading, so the multiple cpus are actually getting used. The kernel handles threads fairly well, but until apps start handing the kernel threads to be spread among the processors, it doesn't matter how efficient the kernel is.
I am currently enrolled at the University of Illinois, going for a BA in computer engineering. When applying for college, I found it very hard to choose what I wanted to do... and I finally decided that I would be most interested in either psychology or computers. I finally chose computers because I had always been interested in them, and spent a good deal of my free time in high school fooling around with my pc.
I love my course material, and find it all very interesting, but one of the hardest things to deal with is that my hobby will become my job. It sounds like a dream come true at first... doing what you love every day and getting paid. But after meeting many fellow students here and going on a co-op last fall, I've become very frustrated because so many in the industry don't have any passion. I work on computers, and I love it. But so many work on them because they did well in math in science in high school and knew it would be a hot job market. They're just in it for the money, and don't hold any real interest in computers.
To quote JWZ, "You can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company and make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company." I'm definitely in the former group, and I wish more people in the industry were. It's hard to work on something when other's don't have the same passion. -------------------------------------------
Yeah, I wasn't thinking in that context. You definitely have to rember that it is possible to fry the processor, and be careful. For those of you who might be thinking of trying to change the voltage by cutting traces with an exacto knife (you might do this because these newer voltage-adaptable slotkets are hard to find), be VERY careful. If you don't cut through one of the traces completely, it will run the processor at 3.4V, which will destroy it. But if you do it right, you get a great deal. ------------------------------
Going from 2.0 to voltage besides 2.2 requires a lot more work. However, at 2.2V my procs run at 40 degrees C while running RC5. All I have on there a a nice fat super7 fan/heatsink... nothing special. That's not very hot at all... in fact, I think my old K6 233 ran hotter.
I don't know. I personally would go for the celerons, but I don't do anything cache intensive. Since you seem to do a lot of imaging stuff, you just might want that extra cache. On the otherhand, if you're gonna run the celerons at faster than 400MHz, the upped clock speed might offset the lack of cache.
Check out these benchmarks at Anandtech (under NT) for a general idea. Hope that helps. ----------------------------------------
I've been running dual ppga celeron 300a's overclocked to 450 for a couple of months now, and it works just great. Oldmanrant:But back in my day we had to solder to pins on the adapter to be able to dual them, and then cut 3 traces on the pcb with an exacto knife to increase the voltage from 2.0 to 2.2 volts (they wouldn't run stably at 450 at 2.0 volts). You youngins have it so easy.
Seriously, the best part about the card is probably the ability to change the voltage, so newer celerons can easily be overclocked too. --------------------------------------
For those wondering about shipping, prices, I ordered Debian 2.0.2 a while ago from lsl.com. I believe the cd's themselves (3 of them) cost $2, but there was like $3 shipping, and $4 handling. I've never really understood the handling thing, but that's where they make their money. I guess it's for the service of mailing it or something.
I live in the United States of America, and I am in fact from the Chicagoland area. And here in the USA, everything's always been about freedom and equality... and it's no different with software.
At it's core, linux and other pieces of software that fall under the GNU Public License are about this very freedom. Anyone can see what's in the software, and anyone can use it for whatever they want. Companies like Red Hat are trying to use it to make money and compete in the OS market, and others use it for other things. With free software, anything is possible: all someone has to do is write the code. At heart is has nothing to do with Microsoft, it's just that many people happen to be using free software to try to eliminate or as an alternative to Microsoft products.
The problem with having Microsoft products as the sole computer prodcuts available as this author suggests is that people would then be dependent on Microsoft products. And since Microsoft is a company whose goal is to make as much money as possible (just like any other company), this is a conflict of interest. A corporation devoted to profit cannot effectively serve the needs of the public.
It's for this very reason that the our government has departments to set certain standards rather than leave things up to private companies. The author is from Chicago... I'm surprised he doesn't recall the old chicago meat factory conditions before health standards were enforced. It's the exact same thing.
Only something like free software can effectively work in the public interest... in fact, that's why certain groups are involved in the Software in the Public Interest (SPI) project. As computers and software become a larger and larger part of our society, our freedoms will become more and more restricted if proprietary software and standards power these devices. And I'll be damned if I'm going to give up my freedom just to make it easier for some company to make money.
Is the Rage Pro 3D used on Macs the same chipset as the Rage 128 in PCs? Cuz if so, the performance on a Rage128 is comparable to a TNT, which is also very similar to a voodoo2 (depending on the exact demands of the app), and it's especially fast in 32bit color.
Why is it not fair to compare a Voodoo3 on PC to Rage Pro on G3? The statement he made is that the highest end performance 3D you can get on a mac is lower than the highest end performance 3D available on pc. That is exactly what he said. Is there some higher performance 3d solution for tha mac that we're unaware of?
"Analysts" are often quoted in computer articles... but just who are these people? Do they actually have any clue of what they're talking about? I wonder, because all they ever do is make unqualified statements about things (well, this is the way they are quoted at least). For example, from this article: Is a cheap AOL-Linux device in the cards? "It's a really dumb idea," and Though Linux is reliable, "I'm not convinced Linux is the appropriate operating system to run in a consumer device," said Patricia Seybold Group analyst Anne Thomas, echoing comments from other analysts. In consumer devices, the operating systems are hidden from the users, but "it's kind of hard to completely hide Linux," she said.. Now, it seems to me that linux runs on a variety of hardware, and could easily be hidden... would that be true? Whenever analysts become involved in an article, I have no idea what I should believe. -------
I think a good part of the idea behind free software is having freely available applications like word processors. Think about: since the 8088 people have been using pc's for the same thing: word processing, spreadsheets, databases, and a few other odds and ends. And that has been the MAIN use computers have gotten, until the recent advent of the net. And businesses are similar, the only have a few actualy applications they run, mostly databases. Sure, the apps have come a long way from what they used to be, but really, sometimes the functionality isn't all that different. With every generation of computers there has been another generation of word processors and databases, etc. But these programs can only evolve so much more... why should people have to keep shelling out to microsoft for them? It would be much better for everyone to have a freely available program that did all these things. Along with a freely available OS and freely available web browser, and a nice freely available gui, free software would take most of the business from companies like Microsoft. Hell, you wouldn't even need a PC, just an "appliance" with a microprocessor to handle these applications.
Intel's pricing model doesn't work that way...
on
Troubles with Merced
·
· Score: 1
Not in this case. These pricing models will be on a much larger scale. Try $10,000 for the first 10k chips, etc. This will one won't be quick to the home user (intel will still be realeasing some next get 32 bit chips (foster I think?)). And by the time it is ready for home market, well, I have serious doubts that anyone will need it. Think about it: right now, with what I actually use my computer for, all I need is a P200 with enough ram so I can run netscape, a word processor, and other common apps (so why is it that I have a dual celeron 450?). While there will undoubtedly be new apps that will start pushing cpu utilization, I think the trend will continue that the bottom line of applications that people actually use can be handled by a relatively slow processor, and only intense media functions will consume more. This indicates that people will not be buying full computers as we know them by the time Merced is out (maybe I'm pushing the speed at which this will happen a little bit), and will simply be buying "appliances" that will handle certain tasks (ie a WinCE style machine where it just does certain tasks and is networkable). I'm thinking the home user won't be having the "need" for a merced chip.
The idea with merced is and parallelism is this: the compiler does it all. No explicit coding should have to be done. If you write something in c++, the compiler will parallelize it to execute as much as possible in parallel within the cpu. Plus, the Merced architecture is scalable: more execution units can be added to future generations of chips for even more parallelism within the chip. Unlike the author of the article stated, this has nothing to do with multiprocessor systems, and the post above is correct, for that apps need to be coded with threads. That's not to say that there won't be multiple cpu systems: SGI and HP will definitely be making massively parallel supercomputers using merced, with 256+ processors.
Too many web sites (especially gamer sites, for some reason), don't seem to understand that Merced isn't for the average user. When it comes out, and at the very least for a few years following, it will be an ENTERPRISE level chip. This means 1) expensive as hell 2) used in supercomputers (a la SGI and HP) and 3)high end workstations/servers. The author of this article is right... it doesn't fit into Intel's business strategy for the consumer, but it isn't supposed to. Besides, I'm starting to get the feeling that by the time Merced is consumer viable, people will be using pure computers less, and computing appliances more.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe I'm seeing yet another article that says linux won't run on multiprocessor machines (YAATSLWROMM). The direct quote is "And Microsoft's Edwards says that Linux lacks many advanced capabilities, such as the ability to run on computers with multiple processor chips." Obviously, linux can run on multiprocessor systems... the issue is that at present it isn't very efficient when handling more than a few processors.
/. have no credibility to back them up, and that there is no code to research and fact check stories. But when dealing with tech especially, old media is as bad or worse at spreading rumor and misinformation as the new media. Sheesh.
In net media vs. old school media arugments, the old school guys are always arguing that the net media and forums like
I think this is a great thing. I'm a technologist... I'd like to see technology cheap and plentiful for everyone to use. But if this is to happen, if computer technology is going to have such a large impact on people's lives, then I think people need some basic education on computers and programming. Computer knowledge needs to be something for the masses, not the elite few. This way people would be able to have their computers do what they want them to do, and understand the limitations of the devices.
One reason why this may never happen is because if computer knowledge became common, if everyone could program, and if programming languages were developed to make programming simpler; then jobs with computers and programming wouldn't be high paying and considered "hot" as they are right now, they would be considered menial and low-paying because it would no longer be the job of a specialist (oh sure, there would be a few high paying jobs for the true geniuses, but not many). Current techology companies may claim that technological advancement is their goal, but really profit is. It just so happens that the two coincide... but if their jobs and profits were threatened by consumer education, they'd fight it all the way. From my point of view, the long term goal of the computer industry should be to obsolete itself.
This education isn't intended for those with an interest in programming, it's intended for those who won't be doing that as a job... it's general education to give you a better understanding of how the things that have an effect on your life work. For example, a friend of mine is a math education major. Last spring she took an intro programming class in C++. With this basic understanding of the mindset it takes to create programs, and the debugging process, and the use of libraries, just last night I was able to give her an explanation that she easily understood about how OS's use dynamically linked libraries, and why her win95 machine has gotten so much slower and more unstable over time after adding many more programs.
General education is a good thing. Whether you make it your life's work or not, a little extra knowledge is always helpful.
Unless the compression is seriously changing the sound output, aren't there just too many factors to make any type of conclusion? There's the matter of codecs, soundcards, and speakers in the first place. Combinations of these are going to give you different sounds.
But besides that, some people really can't tell the difference between true cd quality, and mp3 quality. For those who can, though, what difference does it make? For example, how exactly do you know what the music is supposed to sound like? You're taking the cd as an example, but who's to say that's exactly what the artist had in mind... and most likely that's not how it would sound if the artist played it live.
A little while ago some guy posted in another audio related article that there was some free (gpl?) audio compression program that could compress about 60%, and on decompression reproduced the original song bit for bit (if anyone knows where this is available, could you point me to it?). The odd thing about it, though, was he said that it was the only compression scheme they used to trade Grateful Dead bootlegs. Does that make any sense? A bootleg itself will be low quality (I would assume), so that would be the limiting factor for compressed sound quality, not the compression itself... I get the feeling that there are many misconceptions about compressed digital audio.
It's more than just piece of mind. Buying the official Red Hat set usually entitles you to support from Red Hat, and it includes non-free applications as well. Take a look at this list to see some examples of what might be included on the set. Some of these are just demos, but I remember that I went and bought RedHat 5.0 box, even though I could have downloaded it, just because it came with a full copy of Real Audio Server. If I thought I was getting these things and then they weren't on the CD, I would be pretty pissed.
Here is a review of the Fast Trak IDE RAID Controller on AGN Hardware. It costs between $60-80, and in a RAID 0 did increase performance a bit. It supports RAID 0, 1, and 0+1. Not sure if it'll work in linux though.
Isn't there anyone who believes in tact anymore? If someone has a good idea and it becomes popular, it's raped for all it's worth to make as much money as fast as possible. I picture the Pony Express in the old west, with all messengers riding their horses to death for speed rather than taking care of them. In this case I'm not going to specifically blame Lucas... people and the media have been hyping this movie forever.
And it's hard to place blame, so I'm not going to try. I just wish people, businesses, and the media could have a little more tact... a little more decency, instead of being so greedy. If they have a truly great idea or product, it will sell without being crammed down everyone's throats 24 hours a day.
does not lie within the kernel so much as withing the apps. Look at the ZD tests... they consistently complain that there are very few apps that use threading, so the multiple cpus are actually getting used. The kernel handles threads fairly well, but until apps start handing the kernel threads to be spread among the processors, it doesn't matter how efficient the kernel is.
I am currently enrolled at the University of Illinois, going for a BA in computer engineering. When applying for college, I found it very hard to choose what I wanted to do... and I finally decided that I would be most interested in either psychology or computers. I finally chose computers because I had always been interested in them, and spent a good deal of my free time in high school fooling around with my pc.
I love my course material, and find it all very interesting, but one of the hardest things to deal with is that my hobby will become my job. It sounds like a dream come true at first... doing what you love every day and getting paid. But after meeting many fellow students here and going on a co-op last fall, I've become very frustrated because so many in the industry don't have any passion. I work on computers, and I love it. But so many work on them because they did well in math in science in high school and knew it would be a hot job market. They're just in it for the money, and don't hold any real interest in computers.
To quote JWZ, "You can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company and make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company." I'm definitely in the former group, and I wish more people in the industry were. It's hard to work on something when other's don't have the same passion.
-------------------------------------------
Buy.com has it listed for $150, not $118.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking in that context. You definitely have to rember that it is possible to fry the processor, and be careful. For those of you who might be thinking of trying to change the voltage by cutting traces with an exacto knife (you might do this because these newer voltage-adaptable slotkets are hard to find), be VERY careful. If you don't cut through one of the traces completely, it will run the processor at 3.4V, which will destroy it. But if you do it right, you get a great deal.
------------------------------
Going from 2.0 to voltage besides 2.2 requires a lot more work. However, at 2.2V my procs run at 40 degrees C while running RC5. All I have on there a a nice fat super7 fan/heatsink... nothing special. That's not very hot at all... in fact, I think my old K6 233 ran hotter.
I'm using a Supermicro P6DBE. Works great, on pricewatch for about $170 (this is a dual processor board).
I don't know. I personally would go for the celerons, but I don't do anything cache intensive. Since you seem to do a lot of imaging stuff, you just might want that extra cache. On the otherhand, if you're gonna run the celerons at faster than 400MHz, the upped clock speed might offset the lack of cache.
Check out these benchmarks at Anandtech (under NT) for a general idea. Hope that helps.
----------------------------------------
I've been running dual ppga celeron 300a's overclocked to 450 for a couple of months now, and it works just great. Oldmanrant:But back in my day we had to solder to pins on the adapter to be able to dual them, and then cut 3 traces on the pcb with an exacto knife to increase the voltage from 2.0 to 2.2 volts (they wouldn't run stably at 450 at 2.0 volts). You youngins have it so easy.
Seriously, the best part about the card is probably the ability to change the voltage, so newer celerons can easily be overclocked too.
--------------------------------------
For those wondering about shipping, prices, I ordered Debian 2.0.2 a while ago from lsl.com. I believe the cd's themselves (3 of them) cost $2, but there was like $3 shipping, and $4 handling. I've never really understood the handling thing, but that's where they make their money. I guess it's for the service of mailing it or something.
I live in the United States of America, and I am in fact from the Chicagoland area. And here in the USA, everything's always been about freedom and equality... and it's no different with software.
At it's core, linux and other pieces of software that fall under the GNU Public License are about this very freedom. Anyone can see what's in the software, and anyone can use it for whatever they want. Companies like Red Hat are trying to use it to make money and compete in the OS market, and others use it for other things. With free software, anything is possible: all someone has to do is write the code. At heart is has nothing to do with Microsoft, it's just that many people happen to be using free software to try to eliminate or as an alternative to Microsoft products.
The problem with having Microsoft products as the sole computer prodcuts available as this author suggests is that people would then be dependent on Microsoft products. And since Microsoft is a company whose goal is to make as much money as possible (just like any other company), this is a conflict of interest. A corporation devoted to profit cannot effectively serve the needs of the public.
It's for this very reason that the our government has departments to set certain standards rather than leave things up to private companies. The author is from Chicago... I'm surprised he doesn't recall the old chicago meat factory conditions before health standards were enforced. It's the exact same thing.
Only something like free software can effectively work in the public interest... in fact, that's why certain groups are involved in the Software in the Public Interest (SPI) project. As computers and software become a larger and larger part of our society, our freedoms will become more and more restricted if proprietary software and standards power these devices. And I'll be damned if I'm going to give up my freedom just to make it easier for some company to make money.
Is the Rage Pro 3D used on Macs the same chipset as the Rage 128 in PCs? Cuz if so, the performance on a Rage128 is comparable to a TNT, which is also very similar to a voodoo2 (depending on the exact demands of the app), and it's especially fast in 32bit color.
Why is it not fair to compare a Voodoo3 on PC to Rage Pro on G3? The statement he made is that the highest end performance 3D you can get on a mac is lower than the highest end performance 3D available on pc. That is exactly what he said. Is there some higher performance 3d solution for tha mac that we're unaware of?
I don't see any confusion. Everyone is talking about Q3T: Q3 Test.
I know that the latest versions of winamp for Windows claim to be able to play without skipping at 128Kb/s on a 486 DX4/100.
"Analysts" are often quoted in computer articles... but just who are these people? Do they actually have any clue of what they're talking about? I wonder, because all they ever do is make unqualified statements about things (well, this is the way they are quoted at least). For example, from this article: Is a cheap AOL-Linux device in the cards? "It's a really dumb idea," and Though Linux is reliable, "I'm not convinced Linux is the appropriate operating system to run in a consumer device," said Patricia Seybold Group analyst Anne Thomas, echoing comments from other analysts. In consumer devices, the operating systems are hidden from the users, but "it's kind of hard to completely hide Linux," she said.. Now, it seems to me that linux runs on a variety of hardware, and could easily be hidden... would that be true? Whenever analysts become involved in an article, I have no idea what I should believe.
-------
I think a good part of the idea behind free software is having freely available applications like word processors. Think about: since the 8088 people have been using pc's for the same thing: word processing, spreadsheets, databases, and a few other odds and ends. And that has been the MAIN use computers have gotten, until the recent advent of the net. And businesses are similar, the only have a few actualy applications they run, mostly databases. Sure, the apps have come a long way from what they used to be, but really, sometimes the functionality isn't all that different. With every generation of computers there has been another generation of word processors and databases, etc. But these programs can only evolve so much more... why should people have to keep shelling out to microsoft for them? It would be much better for everyone to have a freely available program that did all these things. Along with a freely available OS and freely available web browser, and a nice freely available gui, free software would take most of the business from companies like Microsoft. Hell, you wouldn't even need a PC, just an "appliance" with a microprocessor to handle these applications.
Not in this case. These pricing models will be on a much larger scale. Try $10,000 for the first 10k chips, etc. This will one won't be quick to the home user (intel will still be realeasing some next get 32 bit chips (foster I think?)). And by the time it is ready for home market, well, I have serious doubts that anyone will need it. Think about it: right now, with what I actually use my computer for, all I need is a P200 with enough ram so I can run netscape, a word processor, and other common apps (so why is it that I have a dual celeron 450?). While there will undoubtedly be new apps that will start pushing cpu utilization, I think the trend will continue that the bottom line of applications that people actually use can be handled by a relatively slow processor, and only intense media functions will consume more. This indicates that people will not be buying full computers as we know them by the time Merced is out (maybe I'm pushing the speed at which this will happen a little bit), and will simply be buying "appliances" that will handle certain tasks (ie a WinCE style machine where it just does certain tasks and is networkable). I'm thinking the home user won't be having the "need" for a merced chip.
The idea with merced is and parallelism is this: the compiler does it all. No explicit coding should have to be done. If you write something in c++, the compiler will parallelize it to execute as much as possible in parallel within the cpu. Plus, the Merced architecture is scalable: more execution units can be added to future generations of chips for even more parallelism within the chip. Unlike the author of the article stated, this has nothing to do with multiprocessor systems, and the post above is correct, for that apps need to be coded with threads. That's not to say that there won't be multiple cpu systems: SGI and HP will definitely be making massively parallel supercomputers using merced, with 256+ processors.
Too many web sites (especially gamer sites, for some reason), don't seem to understand that Merced isn't for the average user. When it comes out, and at the very least for a few years following, it will be an ENTERPRISE level chip. This means 1) expensive as hell 2) used in supercomputers (a la SGI and HP) and 3)high end workstations/servers. The author of this article is right... it doesn't fit into Intel's business strategy for the consumer, but it isn't supposed to. Besides, I'm starting to get the feeling that by the time Merced is consumer viable, people will be using pure computers less, and computing appliances more.