No, actually, they aren't. These are AMD's new-generation processors for laptops and desktops, and their power characteristics are totally unsuited for the netbook/tablet market.
Microcode is not "emulation." The Atom actually executes almost all x86 instructions directly; only a few complex instructions are broken into uops, and usually only two. Even something like the Nehalem probably executes well over half of the x86 instructions directly, without breaking them up. The "omgz modern x86 processors are emulating!!!!!!111!!" line is a myth - most high-end processors for well over a decade are microcoded for certain complex instructions, it's a normal part of making a high-performance CPU, and it doesn't involve any significant drain on performance.
You're missing the point. If Red China passed such a law, Mainland Chinese companies would have to accommodate it. Similarly, US companies have to comply with US law, even for their operations overseas.
What the fuck? Oracle's progress on SPARC so far is a complete joke. They're still using the ancient (and horrible) SPARC64 VII processors - the ones quite a bit slower than a Core 2 Quad, with DDR2 memory, and massively overpriced. Not only that, their roadmap says that the M-series machines won't get a processor update until late 2012 or early 2013, and it'll only increase single-core performance by 50% - a number that might, might, put those chips in a similar range to lower-end 2010 Xeons. Meanwhile, POWER7 is still the fastest processor in the industry over a year after release, and IBM is actively pushing for new customers, and even their z mainframe line is picking up a few dozen new customers a year.
SPARC is a joke, and Oracle doesn't seem to be improving it in anything resembling a timely manner.
It's not standard SPARC. The VIIIfx's commercial-workload performance would probably be pretty bad - the cores themselves are more or less identical to the existing VII cores, which have less than impressive performance. The VIIIfx derives its HPC performance, which is admittedly good, from some extensions (called HPC-ACE) that are not part of the normal SPARC instruction set. In a lot of ways, the VIIIfx is closer to a vector processor than a conventional SPARC chip. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it is certainly not a general-purpose processor.
It sounds vaguely similar to the new feature in HP WebOS, where two devices only have to be tapped together in order to be synced. That's still only for phones and tablets, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if it makes its way into PC's when the promised WebOS PC's appear in a few months.
Nokia has been pretty upfront ever since the announcement of the move to WP7 that it was their primary smartphone OS, and MeeGo was mainly an experiment. I really doubt that Nokia gives much of a fuck if this WP7 device hurts the N9 at all, especially since they appear to be almost identical in hardware.
Sure I did. It can be summarized, roughly, as "Microsoft won't abandon developers because, uh, they won't. And the reason they've said nothing about native and.NET development is... hmm. BUT THEY'LL PULL THROUGH!"
The difference is that Longhorn's projected API's were advanced API's built on existing languages, tools, and frameworks, whereas the JavaScript switch is an attempt to move developers to a totally different (and arguably inferior) system. It solves the architecture-compatibility issue easily enough, but there are serious limits in what currently exists as "HTML5 and Javascript" (lack of threads, performance, etc) that make this a potentially very bad decision.
Why does skin color come into it? The US killed far, far more civilians during the Second World War than in Afghanistan. Get off your leftist high horse.
WP7 can execute in the background, it's just (currently) generally disabled for third-party applications. The Mango update in a few months is expected to offer full multitasking support for all applications.
More or less. Harmattan is theoretically a hybrid release, with MeeGo elements on top of a Maemo core. If I recall, it was supposed to be API-compatible.
The N950 was also announced with similar specs, as a keyboard-including successor to the N900. I'll laugh my ass off if the N9 takes off to the point where Nokia reconsiders going with WP7 - WP7 isn't a bad system, but a proper, complete, Linux on fast quality hardware is truly awesome.
The assumption that the only enemy the US will be fighting until the end of time are "terrorists" is asinine. You may have heard of these "nation-state" things...
70-80, and a Power7 can do a quoted 256. That being said, all of these numbers (including the Xeon and P7 ones) are coming from using strange vector extensions - ones that, in the case of the SPARC VIIIfx, are not available in any commercial-workload system, and are therefore basically irrelevant except for supercomputing.
I doubt they will, since the SPARC's in this are totally different than the SPARC's in any commercial system. Almost all of the floating-point oomph is provided by massive vector units using an instruction set that isn't (and probably will never be) part of standard SPARC.
The fact that it's SPARC is basically incidental - the VIIIfx is far closer to the traditional vector processors in design. The SPARC scalar cores are basically underclocked versions of the awful VII's currently in use in commercial systems, and comprise only a few percent of the VIIIfx's compute power, and probably only a few percent of the die. It doesn't primarily use standard SPARC instructions, but a custom vector instruction set called HPC-ACE.
Nice controllers and decent games, but seriously underpowered for that generation. On the other hand, the PS2 was arguably the slowest of the big three (Gamecube, Xbox, PS2) and that doesn't seem to have hurt it much.
Slashdot Mirror
No, actually, they aren't. These are AMD's new-generation processors for laptops and desktops, and their power characteristics are totally unsuited for the netbook/tablet market.
Actually, AMD has claimed that Llano's IPC is about 6% better than previous K10-derived cores.
Microcode is not "emulation." The Atom actually executes almost all x86 instructions directly; only a few complex instructions are broken into uops, and usually only two. Even something like the Nehalem probably executes well over half of the x86 instructions directly, without breaking them up. The "omgz modern x86 processors are emulating!!!!!!111!!" line is a myth - most high-end processors for well over a decade are microcoded for certain complex instructions, it's a normal part of making a high-performance CPU, and it doesn't involve any significant drain on performance.
You're missing the point. If Red China passed such a law, Mainland Chinese companies would have to accommodate it. Similarly, US companies have to comply with US law, even for their operations overseas.
What the fuck? Oracle's progress on SPARC so far is a complete joke. They're still using the ancient (and horrible) SPARC64 VII processors - the ones quite a bit slower than a Core 2 Quad, with DDR2 memory, and massively overpriced. Not only that, their roadmap says that the M-series machines won't get a processor update until late 2012 or early 2013, and it'll only increase single-core performance by 50% - a number that might, might, put those chips in a similar range to lower-end 2010 Xeons. Meanwhile, POWER7 is still the fastest processor in the industry over a year after release, and IBM is actively pushing for new customers, and even their z mainframe line is picking up a few dozen new customers a year.
SPARC is a joke, and Oracle doesn't seem to be improving it in anything resembling a timely manner.
Asshole bosses and ridiculous work hours? In the software industry? Say it ain't so!
No it wouldn't, and that's completely immoral. People are not slaves to their parents' occupations.
SIP isn't an application, it's a protocol. Calling it "copyleft" is moronic.
It's not standard SPARC. The VIIIfx's commercial-workload performance would probably be pretty bad - the cores themselves are more or less identical to the existing VII cores, which have less than impressive performance. The VIIIfx derives its HPC performance, which is admittedly good, from some extensions (called HPC-ACE) that are not part of the normal SPARC instruction set. In a lot of ways, the VIIIfx is closer to a vector processor than a conventional SPARC chip. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it is certainly not a general-purpose processor.
It sounds vaguely similar to the new feature in HP WebOS, where two devices only have to be tapped together in order to be synced. That's still only for phones and tablets, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if it makes its way into PC's when the promised WebOS PC's appear in a few months.
Don't you dare tell other people how to license work that they created. That is both arrogant and insulting.
Nokia has been pretty upfront ever since the announcement of the move to WP7 that it was their primary smartphone OS, and MeeGo was mainly an experiment. I really doubt that Nokia gives much of a fuck if this WP7 device hurts the N9 at all, especially since they appear to be almost identical in hardware.
You know Java isn't related Javascript, right?
Sure I did. It can be summarized, roughly, as "Microsoft won't abandon developers because, uh, they won't. And the reason they've said nothing about native and .NET development is... hmm. BUT THEY'LL PULL THROUGH!"
The difference is that Longhorn's projected API's were advanced API's built on existing languages, tools, and frameworks, whereas the JavaScript switch is an attempt to move developers to a totally different (and arguably inferior) system. It solves the architecture-compatibility issue easily enough, but there are serious limits in what currently exists as "HTML5 and Javascript" (lack of threads, performance, etc) that make this a potentially very bad decision.
Hotmail still has a massive userbase.
Why does skin color come into it? The US killed far, far more civilians during the Second World War than in Afghanistan. Get off your leftist high horse.
WP7 can execute in the background, it's just (currently) generally disabled for third-party applications. The Mango update in a few months is expected to offer full multitasking support for all applications.
More or less. Harmattan is theoretically a hybrid release, with MeeGo elements on top of a Maemo core. If I recall, it was supposed to be API-compatible.
The N950 was also announced with similar specs, as a keyboard-including successor to the N900. I'll laugh my ass off if the N9 takes off to the point where Nokia reconsiders going with WP7 - WP7 isn't a bad system, but a proper, complete, Linux on fast quality hardware is truly awesome.
The assumption that the only enemy the US will be fighting until the end of time are "terrorists" is asinine. You may have heard of these "nation-state" things...
70-80, and a Power7 can do a quoted 256. That being said, all of these numbers (including the Xeon and P7 ones) are coming from using strange vector extensions - ones that, in the case of the SPARC VIIIfx, are not available in any commercial-workload system, and are therefore basically irrelevant except for supercomputing.
I doubt they will, since the SPARC's in this are totally different than the SPARC's in any commercial system. Almost all of the floating-point oomph is provided by massive vector units using an instruction set that isn't (and probably will never be) part of standard SPARC.
The fact that it's SPARC is basically incidental - the VIIIfx is far closer to the traditional vector processors in design. The SPARC scalar cores are basically underclocked versions of the awful VII's currently in use in commercial systems, and comprise only a few percent of the VIIIfx's compute power, and probably only a few percent of the die. It doesn't primarily use standard SPARC instructions, but a custom vector instruction set called HPC-ACE.
Nice controllers and decent games, but seriously underpowered for that generation. On the other hand, the PS2 was arguably the slowest of the big three (Gamecube, Xbox, PS2) and that doesn't seem to have hurt it much.