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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kash johal who wrote (82686)	12/11/1999 5:38:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1571600

Kash - Re: "The other issue is the ease of moving 32 bits apps to use 64 bits of memory space. Not being a software guy I have assumed it is trivial with the appropriate compilers." It may be trivial to recompile, but that does not mean they will be optimized to run using the capability of a 64 bit address . If the original application assumes a maximum of 32 bits addressing, then the code would have to be re-worked to make it 64 bit address "aware". Re: "Well my understanding is that sledgehammer will have leading edge 32 bit performance coupled with the switched fabric for multiple CPU's. In addition the closck speeds should be well over 1Ghz at that stage. Now folks purchasing such a server will get blistering performance with existing 32 apps. In addition as a portion of the apps get moved to 64 bits the performance will be excellent." That may - or may not - be. The problem for AMD is that all the major OS's have already been ported to IA/64 bit architecture, and Intel is shipping IA/64 bit systems to hardware AND software developers. Thus, by the time SLUDGEHummer comes out, all the major players will have had 18 months of IA/64 development under their belts, and will be shipping their applications running under EPIC/IA/64 versions of Windows 2000, Solaris, Linux, Monterey, etc. That puts AMD well behind the 64 bit 8-ball - late again to the new market ! Even when AMD was EARLY to market with 3DNOT!, they barely attracted anybody but gamers to use that software, giving up a nine month lead to Intel's SSE. Now, when SLUDGEHummer appears, AMD will have a NEGATIVE 18 month "lead" - I doubt that any major developers will shift gears from IA64 - unless the IA64 is a total bust. So far, the ITaniun sounds like it will be what Intel expected it to be - far from a bust. Paul