I apologize, but could you please direct me to what companies have or are currently optimizing their software for this architecture? Is there something that works with it now? I would see no advantage to buying a computer with this configuration at this time, unless there was some program that processed significantly faster on this machine.
I can't seem to find the link which I thought I posted here a few weeks back in regard to the benchmark.
But a Candadian firm that does some sort of geographical work (geomography or something like that) ran their software on the Pentium IV unoptimized, Latest Athlon unoptimized, and the Pentium IV with this software optimized for the P IV (I believe they used a compiler to optimize the software or somehow got software optimized for the P IV, but the exact means used to accomplish this I don't believe were revealed).
Anyways, the P IV, unoptimized took 17 hours to run the program; the Athlon took something over 12 hours, and the P IV using the optimized software did the deed in around 7 hours. Meaning that if software developers want to write software that takes advantage of all the P IV offers, they will have to optimize their code for the P IV; which of course leaves the Athlon in the dumps as the next generation of new software comes to market.
In regard to software that is already optimized, I don't know of any; but then I haven't looked. The key point is, that software developers always have in the past, and will continue to do so in the future (because Intel holds 90% of the high-end market) design their new software for the new Intel architecture. If they want to do multi-tasking, 3-D graphics, newest and greatest action games, interactive video, voice recognition, or any of the new "killer app" sort of things they will be writing for the P IV or we know little of how the continuos cycle of Moore's Law pushing the need for greater and greater software ie, the exact forces which allowed MSFT and INTC to become the giants that they are.
Tinker
In regard to choosing between buying a P IV or an Athlon, I think the choice comes down to whether you want to buy a computer looking forward for the next two years or so and all the great multi-media software that will spring up to take advantage of the high-bankdwidth P IV architecture, or do you want to be stuck with legacy software.
As a buyer of computers for my law firm, and as someone who has observed computer buying habits over the last decade, the answer is pretty clear, that most people are forward looking in their PC purchases. One of the biggest questions is, "will this thing be obsolete in 6 months?" |
