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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD)
AMD 213.43+6.2%Dec 19 9:30 AM EST

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To: wanna_bmw who wrote (59360)10/19/2001 5:07:32 PM
From: combjellyRead Replies (3) of 275872
 
"What the article fails to really get into is that Wen-Mei had a lot of optimism for future IA-64 compilers"

There is likely a basis for that optimism. And who knows, maybe that optimism is well placed. But so far, history has shown that it is harder to optimize the compilers than it is to throw transistors at the problem. Sure, the compiler work pays off, but it also pays off on the hardware solutions too. A driving force behind EPIC was that out of order processing was going to be too difficult and wasn't going to yield enough benefit to be worthwhile. A solution to the problem, as it has been a potential solution for 20 years, was to go VLIW. EPIC was going to solve the problems that killed previous attempts at VLIW, and promising new compiler technology was going to be the lynch pin.

So will Itanium be the future? I am dubious, if only because any architecture that has been worked on for close to a decade before it manages to ship, and then with only limited performance, has a serious uphill battle on it's hands. By the time that the 2nd or 3rd generation is out, the other chips out there will have advanced also. Ok, it won't have to worry about EV8 now, but the next gen. Power4 or AMD Dog series should be out there. A Hammer with a revised core and SMT (assuming that is what is in the next gen. Hammer) would be a formidable competitor to future Itaniums...
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