Most Japanese lament the destruction of the beautiful nature and environment due to excess consumerism and uncontrolled urban expansion but are incapable of expressing such feelings publicly. That's why they created Godzilla to knock down tall buildings for them.
But 100% of the wafers in America (wafer = a pure silicon disk from which IC's are made) are imported from Japan, and if Japan refused to sell wafers, the whole American electronics industry will collapse.
Red Herring Magazine web page has an in-depth on-line article on why Intel totally blew it with Itanium.
http://www.redherring.com/insider/2001/0116/tech-m ag-89-intel011601.html
Intel: a limping giant
The much-delayed Itanium chip, Intel's most ambitious project in 32 years, is frustrating the chip maker's plans for life after the PC.
By Dean Takahashi
Redherring.com, January 16, 2001
This article is from the January 2, 2001, issue of Red Herring Magazine.
> From a programmer's perspective, SMT (as opposed to SMP) architectures will be a godsend.
One thing to remember is that EV8 will be everything EV7 is, which means EV8 will have 4 glueless high-speed interprocessor communication ports per chip, which can be used to connect multiple EV8's in a mesh or torus configuration. In other words, with EV8, you get best of both worlds, SMT and SMP.
The 1/2/2001 issue of Red Herring magazine has a cover-page article titled Limping Giant -
The much-delayed Itanium chip, Intel's most ambitious project in 32 years, is frustrating the chip maker's plans for life after the PC by Dean Takahashi.
I summarized the article as follows:
* Itanium is 2 years late
* Itanium was not ready for its official October launch event
* Itanium delay has:
o benefited Sun and frustrated HP and SGI
o created investor doubts
o reduced Intel's 4Q profit
o resulted in management shakeup
o Albert Yu was "the first head to roll"
* Intel has been diversifying but uP is still 75% of revenue
* Itanium is key to maintaining high uP margin
* Itanium delay has been attributed to:
o loss of manic focus on chip design
o loss of engineers to communication chip makers
o poor execution
o frequent spec changes to keep pace with competitors
o departure of Lew Platt, Richard Sevcik, David House
o layout delays caused by off-shore design group
o an over-inflated design team (300 to 500 engineers)
o overspecialization of circuit designers
o difficulty in coordination
o high number of inexperienced engineers
o high engineer turnover rate (30%)
o frequent abandonment of large blocks of finished work
o a committee that demanded approval for everything
o declining engineer morale
o bad blood between Intel and HP engineers
o changes in target manufacturing process
o failure to manage chip complexity
You bring up a very good point. Likewise in Japan, Nobody uses Unicode. The preferred encoding scheme is Shift-JIS (JIS = Japan Industry Standard) which has been in use since 1969. The usage is probably over 90%. The reason for the popularity is that shift-JIS was designed in Japan and extremely well-planned.
Characters are sorted according to the Japanese alphabet ordering (Unicode uses random ordering), and ideograms sub-divided into compulsory, common, and extended (Unicode uses random ordering). JIS and EUC comprise the remaining 10% of usage. My site uses shift-JIS. Yahoo Japan uses EUC. One should try to search for a web site in Japan that uses Unicode. I think you will find none. Even if you do, your browser will not be capable of displaying it! I'm not kidding. In IE or Netscape, look under the encoding menu. You will find 3 choices; Shift-JIS, JIS, and EUC. Let's face it. Unicode is a badly designed standard conjured by an uninformed committee. Most Japanese experts on this subject view Unicode as an unwanted Western imposition.
I memorized 50 digits when I was in high school and still remember them. FWIW, it is easy to memorize the first 20 digits in Japanese because it reads like a sad poem when you say them out aloud. The rough translation of this poem is "One body, one world, life is meaningless. No medicine for my illness, I recite the scripture."
Since the article had only a cursory reference to EV8, let me elaborate on this most significant product.
It isn't very often that an idea comes that is so revolutionary that it causes a discontinuity in the year verses performance curve. First was the idea of RISC. Next came the idea of having a plurality of execution units and issuing more than one instruction per cycle. Then came the idea of executing instructions out-of-order. What will be the next major paradigm shift? The answer is
Simultaneous Multithreading.
And Alpha (EV8) is the chip that is spearheading this revolution.
The problem of how to always keep the pipeline full has vexed architects for years. The solution presented by SMT is deceptively simple. When bubbles appear in the pipeline due to branch mispredicts, resource conflicts, etc, why not execute other threads? Most modern operating systems have multiple threads running simultaneously anyway. By adding only 5% additional SMT control circuit, EV8 performance will double. Contras this to the competitor's CMP approach (chip level multiprocessing) where doubling the chip area produces less than double the performance. Make no mistake, SMT is the next big thing. Expect other companies to follow suit. Even Intel expressed interest in embracing SMT in their future processors. Microprocessor Report Volume 13, Number 16, December 6 1999, page 10. I'm speaking only for myself.
On the topic of logical conjunctions, as a non-native speaker of English, I observed that in conversational English, the words AND, OR, and IF are used differently than the strict logical sense of those words. E.g., (1) Seek AND you shall receive. Here, AND is closer to a conditional. That is, an IF. (2) Live free OR die. Again, a conditional. (3) The meal comes with soup OR salad. Here, the waitress means XOR, not the inclusive OR. (4)Unable to send and/or receive email. When people say "and/or" they mean OR.
(5) I will see the movie IF you recommend it. Here the IF actually means IFF (if and only if) or XNOR.
Slashdot Mirror
Most Japanese lament the destruction of the beautiful nature and environment due to excess consumerism and uncontrolled urban expansion but are incapable of expressing such feelings publicly. That's why they created Godzilla to knock down tall buildings for them.
But 100% of the wafers in America (wafer = a pure silicon disk from which IC's are made) are imported from Japan, and if Japan refused to sell wafers, the whole American electronics industry will collapse.
Sorry, I forgot to HTML-format my posting. Here's a clickable link: http://www.redherring.com/insider/2001/0116/tech-m ag-89-intel011601.html
Red Herring Magazine web page has an in-depth on-line article on why Intel totally blew it with Itanium. http://www.redherring.com/insider/2001/0116/tech-m ag-89-intel011601.html
Intel: a limping giant
The much-delayed Itanium chip, Intel's most ambitious project in 32 years, is frustrating the chip maker's plans for life after the PC.
By Dean Takahashi
Redherring.com, January 16, 2001
This article is from the January 2, 2001, issue of Red Herring Magazine.
> From a programmer's perspective, SMT (as opposed to SMP) architectures will be a godsend.
One thing to remember is that EV8 will be everything EV7 is, which means EV8 will have 4 glueless high-speed interprocessor communication ports per chip, which can be used to connect multiple EV8's in a mesh or torus configuration. In other words, with EV8, you get best of both worlds, SMT and SMP.
The 1/2/2001 issue of Red Herring magazine has a cover-page article titled Limping Giant -
The much-delayed Itanium chip, Intel's most ambitious project in 32 years, is frustrating the chip maker's plans for life after the PC by Dean Takahashi.
I summarized the article as follows:
* Itanium is 2 years late
* Itanium was not ready for its official October launch event
* Itanium delay has:
o benefited Sun and frustrated HP and SGI
o created investor doubts
o reduced Intel's 4Q profit
o resulted in management shakeup
o Albert Yu was "the first head to roll"
* Intel has been diversifying but uP is still 75% of revenue
* Itanium is key to maintaining high uP margin
* Itanium delay has been attributed to:
o loss of manic focus on chip design
o loss of engineers to communication chip makers
o poor execution
o frequent spec changes to keep pace with competitors
o departure of Lew Platt, Richard Sevcik, David House
o layout delays caused by off-shore design group
o an over-inflated design team (300 to 500 engineers)
o overspecialization of circuit designers
o difficulty in coordination
o high number of inexperienced engineers
o high engineer turnover rate (30%)
o frequent abandonment of large blocks of finished work
o a committee that demanded approval for everything
o declining engineer morale
o bad blood between Intel and HP engineers
o changes in target manufacturing process
o failure to manage chip complexity
You bring up a very good point. Likewise in Japan, Nobody uses Unicode. The preferred encoding scheme is Shift-JIS (JIS = Japan Industry Standard) which has been in use since 1969. The usage is probably over 90%. The reason for the popularity is that shift-JIS was designed in Japan and extremely well-planned. Characters are sorted according to the Japanese alphabet ordering (Unicode uses random ordering), and ideograms sub-divided into compulsory, common, and extended (Unicode uses random ordering). JIS and EUC comprise the remaining 10% of usage. My site uses shift-JIS. Yahoo Japan uses EUC. One should try to search for a web site in Japan that uses Unicode. I think you will find none. Even if you do, your browser will not be capable of displaying it! I'm not kidding. In IE or Netscape, look under the encoding menu. You will find 3 choices; Shift-JIS, JIS, and EUC. Let's face it. Unicode is a badly designed standard conjured by an uninformed committee. Most Japanese experts on this subject view Unicode as an unwanted Western imposition.
I memorized 50 digits when I was in high school and still remember them. FWIW, it is easy to memorize the first 20 digits in Japanese because it reads like a sad poem when you say them out aloud. The rough translation of this poem is "One body, one world, life is meaningless. No medicine for my illness, I recite the scripture."
It is now API, not Compaq, who is going after that market segment. The REGISTER has an article on API's 21264E, a poor-man's EV7, so to speak.
Since the article had only a cursory reference to EV8, let me elaborate on this most significant product. It isn't very often that an idea comes that is so revolutionary that it causes a discontinuity in the year verses performance curve. First was the idea of RISC. Next came the idea of having a plurality of execution units and issuing more than one instruction per cycle. Then came the idea of executing instructions out-of-order. What will be the next major paradigm shift? The answer is Simultaneous Multithreading. And Alpha (EV8) is the chip that is spearheading this revolution. The problem of how to always keep the pipeline full has vexed architects for years. The solution presented by SMT is deceptively simple. When bubbles appear in the pipeline due to branch mispredicts, resource conflicts, etc, why not execute other threads? Most modern operating systems have multiple threads running simultaneously anyway. By adding only 5% additional SMT control circuit, EV8 performance will double. Contras this to the competitor's CMP approach (chip level multiprocessing) where doubling the chip area produces less than double the performance. Make no mistake, SMT is the next big thing. Expect other companies to follow suit. Even Intel expressed interest in embracing SMT in their future processors. Microprocessor Report Volume 13, Number 16, December 6 1999, page 10. I'm speaking only for myself.
On the topic of logical conjunctions, as a non-native speaker of English, I observed that in conversational English, the words AND, OR, and IF are used differently than the strict logical sense of those words. E.g., (1) Seek AND you shall receive. Here, AND is closer to a conditional. That is, an IF. (2) Live free OR die. Again, a conditional. (3) The meal comes with soup OR salad. Here, the waitress means XOR, not the inclusive OR. (4)Unable to send and/or receive email. When people say "and/or" they mean OR. (5) I will see the movie IF you recommend it. Here the IF actually means IFF (if and only if) or XNOR.