Re: My guess is that a Pentium 4 will wait for keyboard input in Microsoft Word just as well as a DooWrong.
Microsoft VB and Access, Oracle Developer, and a myriad of similar tools are used by in house developers and / or outside consultants to build the applications that run modern business. They generally make calls through several layers of software to access a networked data repository. In some ways this is great news for Intel, since it is the explosive growth of these repositories that is driving demand for small and mid-range servers that are so profitable for Intel.
But it also means that some fairly straightforward looking applications can wind up having to chew through an enormous amount of code, and that code was targeted at older processors.
This may be a problem for P4, because there are multiple independent pieces of code that must be run by the CPU. Code written using tools acquired 6 months ago or more, tools written 6 months before that, and often interpreted code rather than compiled. It can be problematic to update one piece of such a software system without updating the other pieces, so such revisions are not made lightly.
A typical business PC is running more and more background applications too. Virus checker, email agent, appointment agent, etc. The result is that the primary application gets a smaller and smaller share of the CPU's time in which to chew through those layers of interpreted legacy code.
Locked configuration single purpose centrally managed machines will be fine with a VIA Samuel CPU or whatever NSM or Intel is willing to sell for $35.
But for the profitable heart of the general purpose business PC market, performance on legacy code will continue to be important - and noticeable.
Dan |
