"This could be done much faster in my favourite language X"!
I figure you were just trying to be cute and/or get this out of the way, but it does bear a bit more examination.
It's funny that the meme here on/. seems to be "Java is so big, bloated, slow and buggy it just sucks" when in fact it's being used for lots of interesting, cutting edge software projects. Freenet, speech recognition, game development, many Apache projects, Azureus...there are plenty of cool Java packages out there.
The fact is that the industry was badly in need of a sane replacement for C++. Java hit that niche quite nicely, and that accounts for its popularity. C# is 1) an obvious Java knockoff and 2) tied to Microsoft platforms, so it has an uphill battle to get anywhere.
One hopes that Sun sees the light and makes Java open source and standardized soon. In the meantime, though, it sure has a lot to offer. For those who doubt this, download Eclipse and give it a thorough tryout. It can even be built to native code using the free gcj compiler.
Interestingly, though, gcj generated code is often quite a bit slower at runtime than code run using Sun's JRE.
World of Warcraft doesn't use DirectX for it's networking, nor does Unreal Tournament 2004. They use DirectX for pretty much everything else on Windows and OpenGL and whatnot on OS X or Linux.
What I was referring to was games like Dungeon Siege, Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, which use DirectX for pretty much everything. Not surprising as they are Microsoft Games, but the OS X ports have no OS X -> PC networking, it's PC -> PC, OS X -> OS X.
That sounds like excellent justification for not using DirectX for networking. Thanks for the information.
What a smooth, effortless transition from fact to propaganda.
Gee, I guess I should have added an "IMNSHO".
As a person who has written numerous game engines, I can attest to the fact that OpenGL is - for me - not a better API. It is convoluted and over-complicated by the very fact that it is an "open" standard, decided upon by a committee of people who wouldn't know good design if it bit them in the rear.
I certainly disagree with this statement. I suppose you could make an argument that a C API vs. COM is a matter of taste. I think the simplicity of the C API (which is also slightly more efficient) is elegant.
Just the fact that most of the features easily found in D3D cannot be accessed in OpenGL, years after their invention, without the use of custom extensions is enough to throw me off the API.
The counterpoint to this is that hardware companies using OpenGL can expose new functionality without ARB approval. That has many beneficial effects, including the ability of game developers to use said new features in production games before the ARB gets around to deciding on the "best" official implementation.
DirectX developers, on the other hand, get to wait for Microsoft to release a new DirectX version. Guess which I find preferable?
If you want to use OpenGL that's your right. But it is not an objectively better API any more than Mac is objectively better than PC, Linux objectively better than Windows, or any of the other/. propaganda that we consistently read.
I'd say there are excellent cases to be made that "Mac is better than PC" and "Linux is better than Windows". However, the real problem is that "better" is a vague term. I should have been more specific. Let's try again:
OpenGL is a more elegant, leaner, and better designed API than Direct3D. Its cross-platform availability is simply icing on the cake. OpenGL will ultimately bury Direct3D. All IMNSHO, of course.
The benefit to DirectX is that it does so much for the developer, it takes care of sound/input/networking. All of which aren't fantastically easy to recreate, unfortunately.
They also aren't fantastically hard to recreate. There are plenty of third-party cross platform sound, input and networking libraries.
Regardless, in this case we're discussing a graphical application.
When a DirectX game gets ported to OS X or any other platform you'll often find that the multiplayer is limited to the platform you're using.
Or not. World of Warcraft comes to mind, for instance.
Perhaps someone can suggest some other libraries/frameworks for input/sound/networking. There's GLUT for input, but it's pretty simple so it might not work for everyone.
OpenML and OpenAL are two possibilities. Another thought might be to use a modern programming environment like Java, and use its abstracted sound, input and networking along with OpenGL. You could always write your own wrapper library in your language of choice as well. You could also use a third-party cross platform game engine like the Torque engine that supports OpenGL.
Here's a good link for those that'd like to learn more about OpenGL in general.
OpenGL stands for "Open Graphics Library". Microsoft did Direct3D as a way to lock 3D content into the Microsoft platform. Only id Software's stance on OpenGL for gaming saved the day. At the time, even Microsoft admitted that OpenGL was more appropriate for "professional" 3D apps like CAD. Now I'm sure they'd like to lure developers into using Direct3D for professional apps, just as this developer has done.
Developers should use OpenGL in preference to Direct3D if they want cross-platform compatibility, or simply to use a better API. One way to do this that provides a lot of flexibility is to choose a high-level scene graph library that uses OpenGL or Direct3D at a low level.
OpenGL apps run on Windows, MacOS and Linux. OpenGL has always been "For More Than Just Gamers".
This article has some interesting and somewhat current information.
Looks like pilot production should begin soon on a 90 nm. process similar to that used for current Athlon 64s and Opterons. No word in this article on initial clock speeds and power dissipation.
Anyone have additional info?
BTW, another article I hadn't seen linked claims that Cell will be relatively easy to program...seems that Sony learned from some of its PS2 mistakes. That contradicts a lot of the threads responding to the original article and this dupe.
I'm trying to work out how he's getting a 4.6 GHZ G5 on a chip along with all the processing units while apple currently can't make their (singular) chips go above 3 GHZ.
A good 65 nm. process? =)
IBM is making some amazing process breakthroughs lately...
Hello, folks. This is the speed in which these guys are talking! This isn't oh, Most powerfull PC in the world bullshit talk like from Apple. This shit is the next level. This is star treck shit, this is your-computer-is-now-HAL, type stuff.
Well, this could very well be the next "most powerful PC in the world" campaign from Apple.:-)
That said, I think one of the killer apps for this could very well be excellent voice recognition. That alone could provide a giant advantage over existing architectures.
Back to the article. The guy seems to understand hardware, but he does not understand shit about software.
This part I agree with. His statements regarding abstraction are just flat out incorrect. Is this going to be programmed in assembly only? I think not...and if not there is significant abstraction involved. The thing that's closest to his point is that multiple *layers* of abstraction tend to add significant overhead. That doesn't mean that program-level abstractions do.
Once he got past the first 3 parts he started babbling. Linux on cell, so on, so fourth. If he just read his previous parts he should have hit himself on the head. The only type of linux this can run is mcLinux. There is no memory protection as such. So no Linux, no Windows past 2000, no MacOS past X, so on so fourth.
There is memory protection if the PU is in fact "something like a G5". IBM would have to be insane not include a MMU, and it has already stated that it's going to build workstations based on the Cell architecture.
All in all, interesting stuff...we'll see how it plays out.:-)
To continue on this, the power of a modern general purpose OS is the task switching. How long does it take to load and store the context of the vector processing units? Doing so requires moving their dedicated memory to main memory. This will take ages.
This, of course, depends on how many cells are in the box (with 8 vector units per cell) and how many tasks need vector units. The main purpose of the vector units in an interactive workstation will be multimedia processing. How many multimedia applications can you view at once? For me, the answer is one. The vector units may be useful for other things like engineering simulation and pattern matching, but once again how many different tasks using those features will be running at once? Plus if the processors are cheap enough to put 4 in a Playstation, one hopes the workstations will have 8 to 32 of them.
Overall, this is a design similar to Cray 1 initial design. Cray initial design smashed the IBM, DEC (and lesser fish) monopoly on big computing iron to bits. Unfortunately the next thing the people buying the Cray asked for was "can we share this resource between two people?". The answer was provided eventually, but by the time Cray could do all the nifty time sharing and memory management tricks necessary to do this its advantage was no longer phenomenal. And all people who could use Crays for single tasks with manual scheduling actually continued to use it that way. But it did not even dent the general purpose big iron market.
Two points. First, this is based on an already successful processor - the Power series. It already multitasks:-) and is used in a wide range of applications. Second, this will be a low-cost part. Crays were a super high-end system, which cost millions of dollars. Your analogy doesn't work.
Oh, it pertains to no such thing. Drop the agenda-mongering and look at the facts of the case: Two men were causing a disturbance on government property. When given the opportunity to stop, they refused, knowing full well that they were in danger of being arrested on a misdemeanor charge.
How, exactly, were they "causing a disturbance"? Some people laughed? I mean, what exactly is the First Amendment about again? Did they yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater? I think not!
These boys weren't exercising their right to free speech. They were, deliberately and with malicious intent, making a public nuisance of themselves. And we have laws against that sort of thing.
I suspect the crowd of people in line were fine with the jokes...it offended one lawyer and the hammer came down. It is especially ironic given the "kings and peasants" analogy used in the article. (Did you read it BTW?)
The freedom of speech is not a freedom to be a shithead.
One person's shithead is another person's role model. THAT is the point of the first amendment. Just because you don't like it gives you no right to stop it. I mean, look at Jesse Jackson's marches through certain parts of the south...I guarantee that most people there think he's a shithead. However, he has the RIGHT to express his views.
If you look at those figures it indicates that Brazil (population around 170 million) produces 3% of the world's CO2. Thus per capita (which is what I was indicating) Brazil's CO2 production lags behind that of most Western nations. It is 6th in total terms partly because it is a fairly populous nation. Western nations (apart from the USA) have a smaller population so in terms of raw amounts per seem to have a smaller contribution even if some are high per capita.
First, the figure given is for 1994, which is likely substantially lower than today's figure. Second, you're ignoring the fact that the amount of destroyed Amazon rainforest significantly reduces the global ecosphere's ability to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere. Thus, as a net polluter, Brazil is doing quite badly.
That may be true, but what is significant is that human beings did not evolve during that period. We're evolved to cope with a world which does have permanent ice and is on the whole temperate. While we're individually very adaptable and I have no doubt that some human population could survive in a world ten degrees warmer, considered as a total population we need a huge amount of food which in turn means a huge amount of arable land.
First off, the thesis of the idea being discussed here is that essentially there will be a major cooling event, not a warming event. Temperatures in some areas in North America and Europe could drop 10-20 degrees C on average, and that's a LOT.
However, your other point about needing lots of arable land is valid. What you're ignoring is that in addition to possible drastic climate change, we are also faced with exponential human population growth at the same time. We need more food production in short order if we are to avoid a massive global die-off (Hi, Malthus!). These issues were discussed in the 60's in a book called "The Limits of Growth", and while its modeling and timescale were flawed, its essential message was correct.
I read recently that China's population just passed the 1.3 billion mark. That's scarier than climate change. Developing countries, which are some of the worst polluters per capita and habitat destroyers, have the fastest growing populations.
Given the pressures the human race faces, and the timescale we're looking at, the only hope for a reasonably "good" outcome (one that doesn't involve billions of people dying an untimely death) is massive technological progress to dig us out of the hole we're in. Otherwise, it's looking pretty grim - and we're not talking particularly long timescales either.
So, it's time to get busy...quit paying so much attention to trivial stuff people!
Let's figure that Apple can get these parts for significantly cheaper than you or I, though, and that these parts cost around $250
Oh, they can. I'd estimate the cost at no more than $180, possibly lower than $150. They have volume - the are probably the biggest single consumer of Motorola processors.
Regardless, as you point out, even with an $80 margin it's a worthwhile venture for Apple.
I was disappointed by the announcements earlier this year from Intel and AMD that they will no longer try to improve clock speeds (instead favoring multi-core CPUs, which IMHO are more difficult to optimize for).
I think AMD will still continue bumping clock speeds - it was Intel (which is a full GHz. ahead in that department, without getting any more performance) that blinked.
I still like AMD, but until they go multi-core you're gonna need a pair of cpus to handle multi-tasking...
I have to ask...how often do you multitask CPU-bound tasks? That's the only place that HT helps performance, and it actually hurts performance on some apps. Computers have been comfortably multitasking since long before HT, and AMD chips do fine at it. Lately I've been ripping CDs, listening to MP3s and programming on an Athlon XP 2600+. It works great, nice and smooth.
In short, you've fallen hook, line and sinker for Intel's marketing pitch. Congratulations.
It seems AMD's the one in trouble. They sell their shit so cheaply that profit margins are razor thin for them. They have to own this gamer market, any real competition in that arena could spell out the end for them.
Er, no. AMD is also doing very well with it's server and workstation chip, the Opteron. Thus, it's ASPs (average selling prices) are rising, which is a good sign long-term.
Intel could undercut them and eliminate them, if they chose to do so.
At least if there weren't anti-dumping laws.
BTW, you might want to check AMD's stock performance: $10.76/share to over $21 a share since September. At one point it hit $24.95. Not bad, eh? Especially compared to Intel's...;-)
Gaming is a niche market. The reason AMD can do well with it is that it's a botique market, and they produce so many less chips than we do.
I call BS. Intel has plenty of resources to go after all kinds of different markets. Further, AMD chips do better at many other kinds of applications. Even further, Intel went so far as to rebadge very expensive Xeon chips (Pentium 4 Extremely Expensive Edition) to go after the "unimportant" gaming market. Finally, for most server usage, Opteron vastly outperforms Xeon, especially for multiprocessor servers.
Sure, the world of processors is changing, but Intel is adapting to the overall MARKET, not merely to AMD's strategies and successes.
I hope your company has a high rate of adaptation, it'll need it.
Side Note: How come you anti-globalization folks aren't applauding Intel for expaning a facility in the USA? Hmm? Where are AMD's chips made again?
Yes, that's nice, though I'm quite sure Intel made the decision based on dollars and cents rather than any warm-and-fuzzy pro America sentiment. Good PR doesn't hurt either - and Intel could sure use some.;-)
It should also be pointed out that AMD could soon be manufacturing chips in East Fishkill, NY if Forbes is right.
I remember back when AMD announced a 64 bit desktop CPU. The common consensus was that they were completely daft, and other than the rabid early adopters who buy anything... it wouldn't do all that well, given that PCs are still tied to 32 bit software.
The only thing that saved AMD in this regard is that AMD64 chips run 32-bit code faster (for most software) than any of the Pentiums. Microsoft seems to have helped out it's old partner Intel by delaying Win64 until Intel managed to clone AMD64. Heh, that is quite a switch - Intel cloning AMD.;-)
At least Linux for AMD64 has been available for some time...and it's great to see Sun pushing Solaris for AMD64 also.
Now fast forward a year or two, and AMD is on top, and Intel is trying to play catch up. I never would have dreamed this would happen. I really have to tip my hat to AMD.
Yes, all this and lower power consumption (than P4) to boot. There should be some sweet notebooks and servers coming out over the next few months also, as the true low-power Athlon64s and Opterons roll out.
Slashdot Mirror
I figure you were just trying to be cute and/or get this out of the way, but it does bear a bit more examination.
It's funny that the meme here on /. seems to be "Java is so big, bloated, slow and buggy it just sucks" when in fact it's being used for lots of interesting, cutting edge software projects. Freenet, speech recognition, game development, many Apache projects, Azureus...there are plenty of cool Java packages out there.
The fact is that the industry was badly in need of a sane replacement for C++. Java hit that niche quite nicely, and that accounts for its popularity. C# is 1) an obvious Java knockoff and 2) tied to Microsoft platforms, so it has an uphill battle to get anywhere.
One hopes that Sun sees the light and makes Java open source and standardized soon. In the meantime, though, it sure has a lot to offer. For those who doubt this, download Eclipse and give it a thorough tryout. It can even be built to native code using the free gcj compiler.
Interestingly, though, gcj generated code is often quite a bit slower at runtime than code run using Sun's JRE.
Not with DTrace. :-)
What I was referring to was games like Dungeon Siege, Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, which use DirectX for pretty much everything. Not surprising as they are Microsoft Games, but the OS X ports have no OS X -> PC networking, it's PC -> PC, OS X -> OS X.
That sounds like excellent justification for not using DirectX for networking. Thanks for the information.
Gee, I guess I should have added an "IMNSHO".
As a person who has written numerous game engines, I can attest to the fact that OpenGL is - for me - not a better API. It is convoluted and over-complicated by the very fact that it is an "open" standard, decided upon by a committee of people who wouldn't know good design if it bit them in the rear.
I certainly disagree with this statement. I suppose you could make an argument that a C API vs. COM is a matter of taste. I think the simplicity of the C API (which is also slightly more efficient) is elegant.
Just the fact that most of the features easily found in D3D cannot be accessed in OpenGL, years after their invention, without the use of custom extensions is enough to throw me off the API.
The counterpoint to this is that hardware companies using OpenGL can expose new functionality without ARB approval. That has many beneficial effects, including the ability of game developers to use said new features in production games before the ARB gets around to deciding on the "best" official implementation.
DirectX developers, on the other hand, get to wait for Microsoft to release a new DirectX version. Guess which I find preferable?
If you want to use OpenGL that's your right. But it is not an objectively better API any more than Mac is objectively better than PC, Linux objectively better than Windows, or any of the other /. propaganda that we consistently read.
I'd say there are excellent cases to be made that "Mac is better than PC" and "Linux is better than Windows". However, the real problem is that "better" is a vague term. I should have been more specific. Let's try again:
OpenGL is a more elegant, leaner, and better designed API than Direct3D. Its cross-platform availability is simply icing on the cake. OpenGL will ultimately bury Direct3D. All IMNSHO, of course.
Happy now? :-)
They also aren't fantastically hard to recreate. There are plenty of third-party cross platform sound, input and networking libraries.
Regardless, in this case we're discussing a graphical application.
When a DirectX game gets ported to OS X or any other platform you'll often find that the multiplayer is limited to the platform you're using.
Or not. World of Warcraft comes to mind, for instance.
Perhaps someone can suggest some other libraries/frameworks for input/sound/networking. There's GLUT for input, but it's pretty simple so it might not work for everyone.
OpenML and OpenAL are two possibilities. Another thought might be to use a modern programming environment like Java, and use its abstracted sound, input and networking along with OpenGL. You could always write your own wrapper library in your language of choice as well. You could also use a third-party cross platform game engine like the Torque engine that supports OpenGL.
Here's a good link for those that'd like to learn more about OpenGL in general.
Developers should use OpenGL in preference to Direct3D if they want cross-platform compatibility, or simply to use a better API. One way to do this that provides a lot of flexibility is to choose a high-level scene graph library that uses OpenGL or Direct3D at a low level.
OpenGL apps run on Windows, MacOS and Linux. OpenGL has always been "For More Than Just Gamers".
Looks like pilot production should begin soon on a 90 nm. process similar to that used for current Athlon 64s and Opterons. No word in this article on initial clock speeds and power dissipation.
Anyone have additional info?
BTW, another article I hadn't seen linked claims that Cell will be relatively easy to program...seems that Sony learned from some of its PS2 mistakes. That contradicts a lot of the threads responding to the original article and this dupe.
Intel gets no royalties from Pentium emulation as far as I've ever understood...what makes you think so?
A good 65 nm. process? =)
IBM is making some amazing process breakthroughs lately...
Well, this could very well be the next "most powerful PC in the world" campaign from Apple. :-)
That said, I think one of the killer apps for this could very well be excellent voice recognition. That alone could provide a giant advantage over existing architectures.
This part I agree with. His statements regarding abstraction are just flat out incorrect. Is this going to be programmed in assembly only? I think not...and if not there is significant abstraction involved. The thing that's closest to his point is that multiple *layers* of abstraction tend to add significant overhead. That doesn't mean that program-level abstractions do.
Once he got past the first 3 parts he started babbling. Linux on cell, so on, so fourth. If he just read his previous parts he should have hit himself on the head. The only type of linux this can run is mcLinux. There is no memory protection as such. So no Linux, no Windows past 2000, no MacOS past X, so on so fourth.
There is memory protection if the PU is in fact "something like a G5". IBM would have to be insane not include a MMU, and it has already stated that it's going to build workstations based on the Cell architecture.
All in all, interesting stuff...we'll see how it plays out. :-)
To continue on this, the power of a modern general purpose OS is the task switching. How long does it take to load and store the context of the vector processing units? Doing so requires moving their dedicated memory to main memory. This will take ages.
This, of course, depends on how many cells are in the box (with 8 vector units per cell) and how many tasks need vector units. The main purpose of the vector units in an interactive workstation will be multimedia processing. How many multimedia applications can you view at once? For me, the answer is one. The vector units may be useful for other things like engineering simulation and pattern matching, but once again how many different tasks using those features will be running at once? Plus if the processors are cheap enough to put 4 in a Playstation, one hopes the workstations will have 8 to 32 of them.
Overall, this is a design similar to Cray 1 initial design. Cray initial design smashed the IBM, DEC (and lesser fish) monopoly on big computing iron to bits. Unfortunately the next thing the people buying the Cray asked for was "can we share this resource between two people?". The answer was provided eventually, but by the time Cray could do all the nifty time sharing and memory management tricks necessary to do this its advantage was no longer phenomenal. And all people who could use Crays for single tasks with manual scheduling actually continued to use it that way. But it did not even dent the general purpose big iron market.
Two points. First, this is based on an already successful processor - the Power series. It already multitasks :-) and is used in a wide range of applications. Second, this will be a low-cost part. Crays were a super high-end system, which cost millions of dollars. Your analogy doesn't work.
How, exactly, were they "causing a disturbance"? Some people laughed? I mean, what exactly is the First Amendment about again? Did they yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater? I think not!
These boys weren't exercising their right to free speech. They were, deliberately and with malicious intent, making a public nuisance of themselves. And we have laws against that sort of thing.
I suspect the crowd of people in line were fine with the jokes...it offended one lawyer and the hammer came down. It is especially ironic given the "kings and peasants" analogy used in the article. (Did you read it BTW?)
The freedom of speech is not a freedom to be a shithead.
One person's shithead is another person's role model. THAT is the point of the first amendment. Just because you don't like it gives you no right to stop it. I mean, look at Jesse Jackson's marches through certain parts of the south...I guarantee that most people there think he's a shithead. However, he has the RIGHT to express his views.
First, the figure given is for 1994, which is likely substantially lower than today's figure. Second, you're ignoring the fact that the amount of destroyed Amazon rainforest significantly reduces the global ecosphere's ability to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere. Thus, as a net polluter, Brazil is doing quite badly.
That is, until you consider the effects of burning large tracts of forest, which directly contributes CO2 and removes CO2 sinks.
Read this article.
First off, the thesis of the idea being discussed here is that essentially there will be a major cooling event, not a warming event. Temperatures in some areas in North America and Europe could drop 10-20 degrees C on average, and that's a LOT.
However, your other point about needing lots of arable land is valid. What you're ignoring is that in addition to possible drastic climate change, we are also faced with exponential human population growth at the same time. We need more food production in short order if we are to avoid a massive global die-off (Hi, Malthus!). These issues were discussed in the 60's in a book called "The Limits of Growth", and while its modeling and timescale were flawed, its essential message was correct.
I read recently that China's population just passed the 1.3 billion mark. That's scarier than climate change. Developing countries, which are some of the worst polluters per capita and habitat destroyers, have the fastest growing populations.
Given the pressures the human race faces, and the timescale we're looking at, the only hope for a reasonably "good" outcome (one that doesn't involve billions of people dying an untimely death) is massive technological progress to dig us out of the hole we're in. Otherwise, it's looking pretty grim - and we're not talking particularly long timescales either.
So, it's time to get busy...quit paying so much attention to trivial stuff people!
Oh, they can. I'd estimate the cost at no more than $180, possibly lower than $150. They have volume - the are probably the biggest single consumer of Motorola processors.
Regardless, as you point out, even with an $80 margin it's a worthwhile venture for Apple.
I think AMD will still continue bumping clock speeds - it was Intel (which is a full GHz. ahead in that department, without getting any more performance) that blinked.
AMD and IBM recently announced new strained silicon technology that should facilitate higher clocks.
I've been advising people to buy AMD stock for several years... ;-)
I might wait for a pullback at this point, but if you're holding it for 5+ years you might as well start buying.
I have to ask...how often do you multitask CPU-bound tasks? That's the only place that HT helps performance, and it actually hurts performance on some apps. Computers have been comfortably multitasking since long before HT, and AMD chips do fine at it. Lately I've been ripping CDs, listening to MP3s and programming on an Athlon XP 2600+. It works great, nice and smooth.
In short, you've fallen hook, line and sinker for Intel's marketing pitch. Congratulations.
Er, no. AMD is also doing very well with it's server and workstation chip, the Opteron. Thus, it's ASPs (average selling prices) are rising, which is a good sign long-term.
Intel could undercut them and eliminate them, if they chose to do so.
At least if there weren't anti-dumping laws.
BTW, you might want to check AMD's stock performance: $10.76/share to over $21 a share since September. At one point it hit $24.95. Not bad, eh? Especially compared to Intel's... ;-)
Many "industry pundits" (ROFL) initially claimed that AMD64 would die unless Microsoft promptly shipped Win64. Needless to say, it didn't happen.
I call BS. Intel has plenty of resources to go after all kinds of different markets. Further, AMD chips do better at many other kinds of applications. Even further, Intel went so far as to rebadge very expensive Xeon chips (Pentium 4 Extremely Expensive Edition) to go after the "unimportant" gaming market. Finally, for most server usage, Opteron vastly outperforms Xeon, especially for multiprocessor servers.
Sure, the world of processors is changing, but Intel is adapting to the overall MARKET, not merely to AMD's strategies and successes.
I hope your company has a high rate of adaptation, it'll need it.
Side Note: How come you anti-globalization folks aren't applauding Intel for expaning a facility in the USA? Hmm? Where are AMD's chips made again?
Yes, that's nice, though I'm quite sure Intel made the decision based on dollars and cents rather than any warm-and-fuzzy pro America sentiment. Good PR doesn't hurt either - and Intel could sure use some. ;-)
It should also be pointed out that AMD could soon be manufacturing chips in East Fishkill, NY if Forbes is right.
In that case you should be rooting for AMD as long as it doesn't break 50% marketshare. It's currently at 15%. Competition is a good thing.
In the meantime, I say buy the better product - AMD. :-)
The only thing that saved AMD in this regard is that AMD64 chips run 32-bit code faster (for most software) than any of the Pentiums. Microsoft seems to have helped out it's old partner Intel by delaying Win64 until Intel managed to clone AMD64. Heh, that is quite a switch - Intel cloning AMD. ;-)
At least Linux for AMD64 has been available for some time...and it's great to see Sun pushing Solaris for AMD64 also.
Now fast forward a year or two, and AMD is on top, and Intel is trying to play catch up. I never would have dreamed this would happen. I really have to tip my hat to AMD.
Yes, all this and lower power consumption (than P4) to boot. There should be some sweet notebooks and servers coming out over the next few months also, as the true low-power Athlon64s and Opterons roll out.
Bad proofread...mentally delete the "someone" in the parent post. ;-)