Da, cam multe aberatzii de la diversi "iepurashi"..:) Nimeni nu aduce argumente clare insa.
You have probably heard of AMD's upcoming Hammer processor (now formally announced as "Opteron"), to be released late this year. With Hammer, AMD is taking its war with Intel from the 32-bit field to the 64-bit field. I think Intel should be scared, and I'll tell you why. The Itanium is Intel's entry into the 64-bit space and includes x86 binary compatibility as a way to ease migration. The Itanium has been in the marketplace for almost two years, but has failed to make inroads, even with HP-UX, Linux, Windows XP 64-bit Edition, and Windows Advanced Server 64-bit Edition supporting it. Industry estimates project Itaniums as having only sold a few thousand units and my guess is that the recently released Itanium II won't improve the rate of deployment. What are the reasons for Itanium's depressing showing thus far? I believe that the main factor is that Itanium and Intel's entire 64-bit strategy is based on new RISC-type architecture, and with the exception of x86 binary compatibility bolted on to it, Itanium is just another 64-bit processor among Alpha, PA-RISC, Sparc64, and PowerPC. And although Itanium supports existing x86 32-bit applications, those applications suffer significant performance degradation when compared to native 64-bit applications. This means that you need to make sure that any applications that you want to run with reasonable performance on Itanium are ported to 64 bits. Hammer, on the other hand, is an evolution that naturally extends the x86 architecture and instruction set to 64 bits. It's capable of running 32-bit applications and 64-bit applications side-by-side at virtually the same performance levels. In addition, you can boot Hammer into full 32-bit mode, making it appear to be a standard x86 system capable of running a 32-bit OS. Not only that, but Hammer supports x86 16-bit modes and can use standard 32-bit x86 BIOS code even when you boot into a 64-bit OS. This means that you can have a dual boot system with a 32-bit OS as one selection and a 64-bit OS as another. I believe that AMD's approach offers a huge advantage over the direction that Intel took with Itanium. AMD can begin selling Hammer as soon as it's available to customers that might not be quite ready to go to 64 bits, or that have only one application that can take advantage of a 64-bit machine. 32-bit applications can take full advantage of the performance innovations that AMD puts into Hammer, and if AMD prices Hammer close to 32-bit CPU prices the purchase decision could be a no-brainer. This should allow AMD to infiltrate the marketplace with its 64-bit processors from the low end. Contrast this to Intel's high-end approach- a strategy that's likely to be far riskier and take much longer. I believe that Hammer gives AMD an opportunity to sneak in and become the de facto 64-bit platform. What about the performance edge that Intel might claim the Itanium's "clean" Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC) architecture provides over AMD's x86-64? We'll have to wait and see, but AMD has thus far given Intel a run for its money in the 32-bit arena. And, if you look at how Itanium II compares to the best x86 processors (see www.spec.org) you'll find them pretty evenly matched on integer performance, with Itanium having a 50-75% lead in floating point. This is despite that fact that Itanium is roughly twice as expensive. For example, the low-end Itanium II system from Hewlett Packard costs $5865 and a Hewlett Packard Pentium IV system running at 2GHz in an equivalent configuration costs just $2385. Where did AMD get the idea to extend the x86 architecture rather than define a new one with x86 compatibility as a feature? When Intel moved into the 32-bit world, it did so by extending the 16-bit x86 architecture and instruction set to make 32-bit version that could also run 16-bit applications. As a result, 32-bit x86 processors can run 16-bit and 32-bit operating systems. However, Intel didn't use this approach with their 64-bit strategy. This may be because in the mid-90's it saw the ceiling fast approaching for the x86 in terms of performance given the design's complexity, and felt a fresh design could go farther into the future. Today both Intel and AMD have proven this assumption wrong with their astonishing x86 clock speeds - Intel has demonstrated a Pentium IV running at 4 GHz. Intel could pay the price for their miscalculation. Regards, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PS: Da, AMD e proc bun dk il pui pe placa de baza care tb. Diferentele de stabilitate de aici provin. E destul de enervant insa ca tb sa pui cooler de xxUSD care in plus mai face si zgomot de AN-24. Dk acum ar tb sa imi schimb sistemul as lua INTEL. --- Pentru dezabonare, trimiteti mail la [EMAIL PROTECTED] cu subiectul 'unsubscribe rlug'. REGULI, arhive si alte informatii: http://www.lug.ro/mlist/
