Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: niceguy767 who wrote (11377)	10/4/2000 1:09:22 PM
From: peter_luc	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Niceguy, there is a good article at gurutech.org "IA-64: Intel's Last Leg? Author: Intaglio Date: 10/02/2000 @ 07:38 AM Intel hasn't been having the best of times as of late. The once-king of desktop CPUs has been feeling the searing flames of competition on its back for months from AMD, the comeback kid of microprocessors. Intel used to pummel its competitors into oblivion; just recently, Intel had to race AMD to 1GHz. That alone is enough to signify Intel's dethroning, but what could make its death? With the IA-64 instruction set, Intel is looking to dump the x86 legacy alltogether and adopt a brand new way of doing things. IA-64 is all about executing more instructions per clockcycle and making that more efficient via the compiler. With Intel's first IA-64 offering, the Itanium, 2 groups consisting of 3 instructions a piece will be executed at a time, making it extremely efficient. Not to be outdone, AMD is also working on a 64-bit CPU: the Hammer. More of an intermediary step between x86 architecture and fully 64-bit, the Hammer will feature a 64-bit mode with 64-bit address space and 64-bit data space. Couple that with the auto-detection of whether or not 64-bit bit processing is needed and you've got a CPU thats easier to develop for and much faster performing 32-bit instructions. Of course, on the flipside, the Hammer won't be able to handle 64-bit instructions nearly as well as the Itanium. Fully knowing this, Intel has stepped up its effort to get IA-64 architecture widely accepted. The first OS to get IA-64 functionality was Linux, however various IA-64 specific linux distributions (such as the 0825 RedHat ia64 beta distribution) are having trouble even booting up with the latest B1 Itanium incarnation. Windows 2000 64-bit edition (as seen in this Anandtech IDF report) won't be fully 64-bit, but more like a step between 64 and 32, so the Itanium will be fighting an uphill battle there, as well. Ontop of all of that, SUN is now endorsing AMD's Hammer for use with its Solaris operating system. Unlike the desktop market, high-end CPUs must be visibly superior in order to be widely accepted. With a desktop CPU, you can choose either an Athlon or a Pentium 3 and a corresponding motherboard and have a pretty balanced setup (cost and power wise) compared to what you would have had you gone the other way. High-end CPUs, however, are a whole different breed of animal. If you're going to invest thousands of dollars into a machine that will be holding and moving mission-critical data, you want the best. This market is too small for speculation; you can't compensate poor offerings in the desktop market with opening up a high-end market alternative. Compaq, SUN, HP and IBM are already sharing the largely elite high-end market; its sink or swim for Intel. If I were to base IA-64's success on one thing, it would be the widespread acceptance of IA-64 software. Until that comes into being, AMD's x86-64 hybrid processor will outperform the Itanium and with a shift of resources (Intel just recently cancelled its upcoming Timna line of processors) from desktop CPUs to server/workstation CPUs, AMD might be able to finally take the highground in the desktop market." I find this specially interesting: "various IA-64 specific linux distributions (such as the 0825 RedHat ia64 beta distribution) are having trouble even booting up with the latest B1 Itanium incarnation". Peter