Joey, wrt the article on Merced, of course, we have to take into consideration the source from whence it came (the Register). Just check the mistakes in English/spelling (bold), as well as the fopars (quoting Sun about HP), etc. The Register is about as newsworthy as the rags on sale at the supermarket checkout. I take it back, it's worse.
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The question of Intel's Merced's future has again come into focus as a
senior executive from Sun Microelectronics described it as a "failure".
Harlan McGhan, architecture marketing manager at Sun
Microelectronics in California, said: "Everybody's agreed that Merced
is already a failure. This Sun guy is speaking for EVERYBODY? I'm not expecting very much from Merced and it's a
lot more expensive than its x.86 chips." x dot86 sounds like a communications protocol. There is a cost on Merced now?
McGhan was reacting to claims revealed here that Sun's UltraSparc III
is late.
He said: "We continue to expect that it will ship before the end of the
year. Merced is two years behind this schedule. It is? We're projecting that it
will ship with an initial frequency of 600MHz. If it were shipping right
now, it would be the fasted thing out there."
He said: "The only thing that could beat it is the Alpha 264 at 750MHz,
if it [Compaq] gets it out. By the end of the year, we'll be tying with the
Alpha." He said that the UltraSparc III's memory latency made it
superior to the Alpha 264.
"We'll have a significant advantage on any of the TPC applications.
The other area we're very strong in is the Internet."
He said even Intel's erstwhile partner Hewlett Packard (HP) has lost
faith in Merced and the IA-64 architecture. "MIPS," he said, "had just
there's a lot more headroom in the R6000 architecture. What?HP is now the
saying they'll have an 8900 five years from now. What does that tell
you about their confidence in the IA-64?" Yeah, right, a Sun guy is going to talk about how a competitor, HP, is feeling. Give me a break.
He said that architectures are good for at least 25 years.
"In 25 years' time I think the x.86 will still be shipping." ® |
