Actually, my guess is that they would extend the extensions, as it were. Add a few new instructions, perhaps remove the limitations of no Virutual Mode when running in 'Long Mode', etc. That way any software already writting to AMD's x86-64 will work, plus Intel can use it's leverage to get developers to use their new extensions as well.
It's a good thing that the review wasn't hosted on one of these things! They sound really cool, but there's no way they'd handle a slashdotting! Then again...maybe a Beowulf cluster of them would...
While IA-64 isn't as bad as many here like to paint it, I'm looking forward to x86-64, if for no other reason than the continued pressure and competition for Intel.
We've all heard the rumors that Intel has a 'secret' project to produce a P4 that executes x86-64. I have a feeling that they might have to unveil it, if only for marketing reasons. Wouldn't it be ironic, Intel adopting AMD's extensions to the x86 instruction set!
While eventually we probably will move to a hydrogen based economy, there is a flaw here. Currently and in the foreseeable future, extracting the vast amounts of hydrogen that we'll need requires...wait for it...hydrocarbon based fuels like oil and coal! That's right, in order to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water, we need energy. How do we produce most of our energy? Hydrocarbons.
Increased nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal power generating capacity would help solve this problem of course. However, it will be a long, long time before we can wean ourselves off of hydrocarbon based fuel sources.
Games like Serious Sam and others show that small, independant teams can still produce a good game that sells well.
This trend has happened in other industries over the years, however. Once any given industry starts to 'mature' and gain critical mass, it becomes harder and harder for smaller outfits or independant entepeneurs to make it. It is a problem of scale. It used to be much cheaper to produce a game, but now the costs are rising to the point where VC's don't want to risk their money on small, unknown outfits.
I don't think the industry is 'fucked', but there are fundamental changes that have been going on over the past few years. This is nothing new, it's just starting to reach a point of critical mass.
Videogames, while wonderful pastimes, hardly rise to the level of importance that air or rail travel does. We're talking transportation infrastructure vs. entertainment. I know you were probably being cute with this comment, but some people really feel that way I'm sure!
Your post should be modded Funny. I think that's how you meant it, too.
Um...wrong. Even MS doesn't have the cash to buy out Sony. Do you realise how much of a giant Sony is? Certainly too large for even MS to swallow whole.
I somehow doubt that this (unverifiable) story is true. There may be some prototype units being made to test the new 'Cell' processor architecture, but the debugging cycle of a new processor can be time consuming. If the chip is still under developement, we won't be seeing the final unit this year.
Smells like vapor...looks like vapor...maybe it is vapor!
LOL. What a troll. PXE is hardly worth the effort, and YES I have used it. It's what is known as a kludge. I was referring to native segment sizes, but of course you knew that. You're just trolling.
A lot of people will buy 64 bit versions of games whether they really get any benefit from the 64 bitness or not. I don't know of many games that need to address more than 4 gigabytes of memory. Sure, there are a couple of other advantages (native 64 bit words, etc.), but this is really just marketing hype.
I reviewed one of their units awhile back. It worked very well but DID produce quite a bit of eyestrain after long usage. Not ideal for long gaming sessions, not yet at least. Great picture though, and the 3D effect was very nice.
Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects are made out of the stuff that the entire Solar System was formed of. Personally, I find the 'archaeology' of our home star system to be quite interesting, and this could indeed turn up some exciting results.
If we have learned anything from past probes, it's that we'll always learn something we never expected. That prospect is not exciting?
The eternal quest for knowledge and to understand our history is one of the things that makes us what we are.
The ISS crewmember who did this experiment did it on his own time. Yes, they have free time; nobody can work 24x7. They already have water up there, so how is this a big deal?
There have been quite a few posts about how this is an example of NASA wasting money. They do waste money in many cases, but this wasn't one of them. Stop the knee jerk reactions and share some of the wonder that these brave men and women who go up to the ISS have as a normal part of their lives.
Sometimes, as most geeks out there know, it's OK do to something silly just because you can. Sure, it probably be smarter to just buy a PC or buy the parts to build one, but many people get into either the 'coolness' factor or the 'because it was there' reasoning. Nothing wrong with that.
No, that's hardly enough CPU horsepower to run Doom3. Now, take a Beowulf cluster of these babies and then maybe...with an overclocked GF/FX or Radeon 9700 @1terahertz.
While you have some very good points, one must keep in mind the still staggering rate of performance increases in lightweight and embedded processors. No, you probably won't be able to build a $20 device that can run Embedded Linux on it effectively today, but what about next year? Or the year after that? Wouldn't it be better to have an established standard when such devices start becoming ubiquitous?
...but when I was a teenager oh so many years ago, we actually did make destructive devices out of model rockets. No guidance system, but boy did they go BOOM when they hit their target (usually wrecked cars at a local junkyard) and the makeshift warhead went BOOM.
However that may be, outlawing them seems to be going a bit too far. A determined terrorist doesn't need a kit to build a bomb or even a crude missile.
I'd like to know what you base your assumptions on. I do not have one byte of warez or pirated anything on my main workstation at home, and I'm using 54 out of 60 gig. Add up the OS, applications/games, MP3's (ripped from CD's that I bought legally), personal data, etc. etc.
I just love when people make pronouncements like that here, like they have actually done a survey and statistical analysis.
Twenty gigabytes is enough for a casual PC user, barely. I'd say 60-100 is a better bet for today's 'power user', at a minimum.
On the face of things, this sounds like a good step. Companies are certainly free to incorporate DRM or other anti-piracy features, but consumers should be equiped with all the information they need to make a sound choice. That will make it easier for people to vote with their wallets.
Unfortunately, it probably won't stop most of the unwashed masses from buying the latest [fill in the name of the flavor du 'jour] CD.
It's most likely desireable because they want to be able to run partitioned servers, much like one can do now with VMWare. Of course, I'm sure they won't mind 'embracing and extending' the product out of Mac-Space. It is probably the core virtualization technology that they are after though.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, my guess is that they would extend the extensions, as it were. Add a few new instructions, perhaps remove the limitations of no Virutual Mode when running in 'Long Mode', etc. That way any software already writting to AMD's x86-64 will work, plus Intel can use it's leverage to get developers to use their new extensions as well.
No, because I don't whore Karma. I say what I want and if it costs me that is just fine and dandy with me!
It's a good thing that the review wasn't hosted on one of these things! They sound really cool, but there's no way they'd handle a slashdotting! Then again...maybe a Beowulf cluster of them would...
While IA-64 isn't as bad as many here like to paint it, I'm looking forward to x86-64, if for no other reason than the continued pressure and competition for Intel.
We've all heard the rumors that Intel has a 'secret' project to produce a P4 that executes x86-64. I have a feeling that they might have to unveil it, if only for marketing reasons. Wouldn't it be ironic, Intel adopting AMD's extensions to the x86 instruction set!
+1, Insightful
I'm sick of fucking eurotrash bashing the US, when they'd ALL be speaking German and paying this outrageous tax if it weren't for us.
While eventually we probably will move to a hydrogen based economy, there is a flaw here. Currently and in the foreseeable future, extracting the vast amounts of hydrogen that we'll need requires...wait for it...hydrocarbon based fuels like oil and coal! That's right, in order to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water, we need energy. How do we produce most of our energy? Hydrocarbons.
Increased nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal power generating capacity would help solve this problem of course. However, it will be a long, long time before we can wean ourselves off of hydrocarbon based fuel sources.
Games like Serious Sam and others show that small, independant teams can still produce a good game that sells well.
This trend has happened in other industries over the years, however. Once any given industry starts to 'mature' and gain critical mass, it becomes harder and harder for smaller outfits or independant entepeneurs to make it. It is a problem of scale. It used to be much cheaper to produce a game, but now the costs are rising to the point where VC's don't want to risk their money on small, unknown outfits.
I don't think the industry is 'fucked', but there are fundamental changes that have been going on over the past few years. This is nothing new, it's just starting to reach a point of critical mass.
Videogames, while wonderful pastimes, hardly rise to the level of importance that air or rail travel does. We're talking transportation infrastructure vs. entertainment. I know you were probably being cute with this comment, but some people really feel that way I'm sure!
Your post should be modded Funny. I think that's how you meant it, too.
Um...wrong. Even MS doesn't have the cash to buy out Sony. Do you realise how much of a giant Sony is? Certainly too large for even MS to swallow whole.
I somehow doubt that this (unverifiable) story is true. There may be some prototype units being made to test the new 'Cell' processor architecture, but the debugging cycle of a new processor can be time consuming. If the chip is still under developement, we won't be seeing the final unit this year.
Smells like vapor...looks like vapor...maybe it is vapor!
LOL. What a troll. PXE is hardly worth the effort, and YES I have used it. It's what is known as a kludge. I was referring to native segment sizes, but of course you knew that. You're just trolling.
32 bit x86 code will run natively and just fine on x86-64 systems. You're getting confused by how IA-64 runs x86-32 software.
A lot of people will buy 64 bit versions of games whether they really get any benefit from the 64 bitness or not. I don't know of many games that need to address more than 4 gigabytes of memory. Sure, there are a couple of other advantages (native 64 bit words, etc.), but this is really just marketing hype.
I reviewed one of their units awhile back. It worked very well but DID produce quite a bit of eyestrain after long usage. Not ideal for long gaming sessions, not yet at least. Great picture though, and the 3D effect was very nice.
Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects are made out of the stuff that the entire Solar System was formed of. Personally, I find the 'archaeology' of our home star system to be quite interesting, and this could indeed turn up some exciting results.
If we have learned anything from past probes, it's that we'll always learn something we never expected. That prospect is not exciting?
The eternal quest for knowledge and to understand our history is one of the things that makes us what we are.
The ISS crewmember who did this experiment did it on his own time. Yes, they have free time; nobody can work 24x7. They already have water up there, so how is this a big deal?
There have been quite a few posts about how this is an example of NASA wasting money. They do waste money in many cases, but this wasn't one of them. Stop the knee jerk reactions and share some of the wonder that these brave men and women who go up to the ISS have as a normal part of their lives.
Perhaps they should include a blank CD-R with each of the Spam CD's that they mail out. Better yet, send the AOL software out on a CD-RW!
Sometimes, as most geeks out there know, it's OK do to something silly just because you can. Sure, it probably be smarter to just buy a PC or buy the parts to build one, but many people get into either the 'coolness' factor or the 'because it was there' reasoning. Nothing wrong with that.
No, that's hardly enough CPU horsepower to run Doom3. Now, take a Beowulf cluster of these babies and then maybe...with an overclocked GF/FX or Radeon 9700 @1terahertz.
Probably not. How many (non-geek) people know what OS their VCR runs? Their cellphone? Their DVD player?
While you have some very good points, one must keep in mind the still staggering rate of performance increases in lightweight and embedded processors. No, you probably won't be able to build a $20 device that can run Embedded Linux on it effectively today, but what about next year? Or the year after that? Wouldn't it be better to have an established standard when such devices start becoming ubiquitous?
...but when I was a teenager oh so many years ago, we actually did make destructive devices out of model rockets. No guidance system, but boy did they go BOOM when they hit their target (usually wrecked cars at a local junkyard) and the makeshift warhead went BOOM.
However that may be, outlawing them seems to be going a bit too far. A determined terrorist doesn't need a kit to build a bomb or even a crude missile.
I'd like to know what you base your assumptions on. I do not have one byte of warez or pirated anything on my main workstation at home, and I'm using 54 out of 60 gig. Add up the OS, applications/games, MP3's (ripped from CD's that I bought legally), personal data, etc. etc.
I just love when people make pronouncements like that here, like they have actually done a survey and statistical analysis.
Twenty gigabytes is enough for a casual PC user, barely. I'd say 60-100 is a better bet for today's 'power user', at a minimum.
On the face of things, this sounds like a good step. Companies are certainly free to incorporate DRM or other anti-piracy features, but consumers should be equiped with all the information they need to make a sound choice. That will make it easier for people to vote with their wallets.
Unfortunately, it probably won't stop most of the unwashed masses from buying the latest [fill in the name of the flavor du 'jour] CD.
It's most likely desireable because they want to be able to run partitioned servers, much like one can do now with VMWare. Of course, I'm sure they won't mind 'embracing and extending' the product out of Mac-Space. It is probably the core virtualization technology that they are after though.