3/3 Intel is cool in my book now. They adopted StrongARM.
\_ they're killing StorngARM, by jacking up licensing or somesuch,
I hear.
Well, Merced looks pretty good too. -muchandr
\_ And you told me not to work there ;) -emarkp
\_ I am not saying it is a good place to work. They are cool
for finally recognizing that x86 must die. -muchandr
\_ I think they've been aware the x86 needed to die a long time ago
but market forces prevailed over technology choices. You can't
just up and change your basic cpu architecture over night and
expect everyone will just recompile their OS, apps, reinstall,
buy new chips, all new whatever, etc, etc, just because you made
a poor long term architectural decision as a company 15+ years
earlier.
\_ Apple, PowerPC. Whatever you think of the platform, the
transition itself was comfortable and smooth (simile
self-censored) -pld
\_ Much like when I make love. -anonymous
\_ It was reasonably smooth. There are still problems running
old software on the new platform. It wasn't perfect. That
means lost money to some companies (customers) who would
see the hassle but not the benefit (I don't entirely agree
with this attitude but its the way things are). Thus,
squeezing every last drop out of the x86 was a better move
for Intel than trying to switch to something else (what?)
and do emulation/translation. Maybe the merced or whatever
will be the cool next step and whatever comes after won't
do x86 at all. But given the incredibly deep level of
x86 entrenchment, I doubt you'll see an x86 free world in
less than 10 to 15 years. The current line of chips from
the 486 to P][ are powerful enough for what the bulk of
business users need a computer for. They're not going to
switch and upgrade everything just because a new version
of something is out there. That costs money. |
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