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: fyodor_ who wrote (53254)	8/30/2001 5:31:18 PM
From: Saturn V	Respond to of 275872

Ref < We agree on that part, but it just doesn't make a difference to most users whether or not it is enabled - until such a time Microsoft sees fit to support multiprocessing in their consumer version. Right now, MP support is one of the big selling points of the enterprise version (or whatever they are calling it) of WinXP over the regular consumer version > The Microsoft software has the multiprocessor support built in. But it is enabled only on the Professional Version. Does'nt that correspond to the Willamette/Northwood situation. It will be enabled on the consumer version for a slightly extra fee. Both Intel and Microsoft will practice the segmentation game to maximize their profit. Already consumer products which take advantage of multithreading exist. Adobe Photoshop comes to mind. Windows has supported multithreading since Windows 95, but most application software has not been written to take advantage of that, since the programmer did not see an immediate benefit except with multiprocessor systems. Now obviously that has changed. Unix has supported multithreading for decades and Software for multithreading is easy to write. However the reliability is worse, since it is almost impossible to test and verify all possible hazard conditions. The bottom line is ,yes, you wont see mulithreaded computers on the consumer desktop this year. But sometime next year multithreading will show up on the consumer desktop. This should also enlarge the potential market for Sledgehammer, which is also designed to benefit from multithreading.