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pete and chipguy: You are starting to make me feel guilty about SONY! Perhaps it is too sprawling a subject. When I made my initial remarks about how a Sony-AMD product might enhance the AMD brand and how a SONY-AMD thin-and-light might increase AMD's market share, I had in mind:
1. the several TV's and video players I and my family and friends have bought over the years. At the time of purchase they were leading-edge and they were trouble free and lasted a long time:
2. the leading-edge TV's and video and DVD players now being displayed in leading stores:
3. the early Walkman's:
4. the VIAO and the PC's (Intel inside) which dominate the shelf space along with HP here in Mexico:
5. the Sony radios in various nice cars I have had over the years.
But actually I was pointing to the very obvious fact that Sony is a leading world-wide brand. Even you knowledgable people have being repeatedly buying Sony, it seems.
* WRT mmoys debating point about the demise of Beta. I think Beta was the better system. The fact that America industry imposed it's preferred standard does not alter that.
It's a little like the TV standards issue. The UK, France and Russia have developed three different systems for colour TV and they have been in operation for generations. Each one is superior to the American system (partly because America went to mass colour TV before Europe). Yet Americans tried to enforce their standard worldwide. Thankfully the emergence of the EU has put a stop to that although the European countries now have to work out compatability issues between themselves within the EU.
fastpathguru: My first assumption was that he is too well-informed and sharp for the liking of one or two posters, including a moderator, on another board. I still think that is true, but I now believe that he is also the object of irrational animus from on high.
sgolds: Careful about the assumptions you make about the experience of posters here!
Most probably think I know nothing about technology. In fact, I once played one of the leading characters in a college production of Chips with Everything by Arnold Wesker.
Does AMD marketing get a deduction whenever Schumacher fails to wear the cap that shows the AMD logo? This picture from yesterday.
H-P to Increase Support
Of Open-Source Software
By PUI-WING TAM
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 31, 2004
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108596777560124829,00.html?mod=COMPANY
Hewlett-Packard Co., one of the biggest backers of the Linux operating system, said it will increase its backing of "open-source" software by being the first large technology company to certify and support programs made by MySQL AB and JBoss Inc.
The move by H-P, Palo Alto, Calif., is intended as a competitive strike against rival International Business Machines Corp., which sells its own stack of proprietary "middleware" software. By adding open-source programs from MySQL and JBoss to its offerings, which also include middleware programs from Oracle Corp. and BEA Systems Inc., H-P says it is giving customers more software choices.
Using these new offerings, "we'll push hard against IBM's 'blue stack' of software, said Martin Fink, H-P's vice president of Linux. He said H-P won't push the "open-source" software ahead of products by Oracle and BEA, however.
Open-source programs, which are often available in free or inexpensive versions, give users access to programming instructions that are kept secret in most commercial products. Such products have been growing quickly as H-P, IBM and other big companies have offered technical support, testing and other services. Over the past few years, for example, the Linux platform has become a primary competitor to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, especially on hardware such as server computers.
MySQL competes with Oracle and others with an open-source database system, a kind of universal filing cabinet and a foundation for writing other programs. JBoss offers technology to run software applications over the Web, in competition with BEA, IBM and others.
Write to Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@wsj.com
Intel senior chip designer on microprocessor futures
Exclusive interview with Steve Pawlowski, Intel Fellow and director of the company's microprocessor technology lab.
By Manek Dubash, Techworld
EDIT: It is a registration only site. I have cut and pasted but suggest that interested folk register at the stie - it is free.
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/features/index.cfm?featureid=609
At this moment of change when the trade-off between heat and power is getting harder and harder to resolve, when clock speeds have started to matter less than chip design, and when untried new technologies will be needed if Moore's Law is not to collapse, we asked Steve Pawlowski in this exclusive interview whether Intel can keep the engine running at the breakneck speeds of the last 30 years and, if so, how.
Please tell us what keeps you at Intel, and what you do there.
What keeps me at Intel? Two things: The job is fun and remains fun. I still enjoy getting up and going to work everyday. Secondly, Intel is a place of opportunity. I've been given the opportunity to do board design, system design, chipset design, CPU design, created a wireless research group. I've been given the privilege to head our corporate micro-processor research group, where we are working on designs and technologies that are five to 10 years out, and I work with some of the best and brightest people at Intel and externally. There are few companies that can offer this breadth of opportunities and I'm fortunate to be at one of them.
The Intel architecture has undergone considerable changes since the original 8086. How much of that design remains in Intel's latest designs?
We strongly maintain instruction compatibility between current generations and previous generations of micro-processors. Though the exact structures may not be the same, with some exceptions - such as the number of architectural registers - the functionality is the same. There are several issues with 'legacy' at the platform that we evaluate for removal with each generation. Very rarely does one of these features get removed unless we are absolutely (100%) confident that there will not be any compatibility issues with its removal.
Intel has always emphasised backwards x86 compatibility. Is this as important as it was - and how long is it likely to remain so?
ISA compatibility is still very important because of the installed software base that is out there that is written in x86 binaries. It's important to maintain that compatibility and to show performance improvement from one generation to the next. It will remain so as long as there is software that depends on this compatibility.
Intel has moved from clock speed-driven marketing to selling features such as longer pipelines, hyper-threading and multi-core processors. The move was essential according to Intel's chief technology officer Pat Gelsinger who said at IDF: "Power, memory, RC delays and other effects are going to curb the rate of frequency growth into the future."
How does this affect the chip R&D effort from the perspective of providing the marketing team with features they can take to market? Does it mean, for instance, that engineers no longer have as easily definable a target to aim for?
Actually, as far as an easily definable target to aim for, I've observed the opposite. The variables constraining the design are increasing; however, we have many features that we could add, and it's just determining which are of significant and marketable value and we have processes in place to provide this guidance. There are also features that we add that really aren't that visible to the user, although they improve performance, reliability, etc.
What we believe is that the computing demands for a next generation of workloads and applications, as Pat described in his IDF keynote, will only increase and at a fairly steep rate. So, our challenge is that with the increased workloads and the effects we are seeing, we as architects are going to have to get creative and use the transistors we are given much more efficiently and to increase performance in other ways. It's an exciting challenge and one that, depending on the solution, will have ramifications for the software, which includes the development and debug tools and possibly how we teach computer science to the next generation of programmers and engineers.
To what extent are multi-core processors going to be the main thrust of Intel's future development in the foreseeable future?
It's one vector that we are pursuing but any significant change is not going to occur overnight. Having multi-cores doesn't mean that the software is going to be able to utilise all the cores right out of the chute. We still need to balance single thread performance and power efficiency, and look at the application of multi-core architectures going forward. We need to understand the workloads where we think multi-core performance will become significant. There is a lot of research to be done on the core capability, the interconnect, communication model and programming model. It will take time and a lot of work.
Given the difficulties not just in designing multi-processor architectures but, in a way more critically, designing software to fully exploit such systems, to what extent does the software development effort lag behind processor architectures? If this is the case, what can be done to fix it?
Traditionally, if we look for example at the migration from 16-bit to 32-bit architectures, the lag was in the order of five years or more. A new architecture needs to be comprehended and developed with the programming issues in mind. Understanding the programming model, the debug environment, the programming language support, impact to the OS, the platform requirements (memory bandwidth/latency, event recognition/servicing requirements, synchronisation, memory coherency, etc.), all need to be in the forefront of the architecture discussion and the research/development of these capabilities has to begin much earlier than when the silicon and platform are available. I would anticipate that software support would be a large part of any multi-core architecture R&D investment.
Can you foresee a fix for the problem of memory latency, in terms of reducing it rather than using, for example, helper threads to make use of the waiting time?
The latency at the memory device may not change too drastically in the foreseeable future. One of the things that could be done would be to improve the I/O bandwidth of the device to match more closely the internal bandwidth of the DRAM core, but the raw access time of the core will probably remain roughly equivalent to what it is today.
There are other solutions to reducing the impact of latency. Helper threads using profile-guided optimisations are one example that you cited, other pre-fetching methodologies and/or techniques for reducing branch penalties will always be studied; however, I think the energy efficiency used to support traditional latency reduction techniques may play a significant role in how these are implemented in future architectures. What that solution(s) is/are remain to be seen.
How are changing datasets changing the future of chip design?
We will always have to deal with bandwidth and getting more and more effective bandwidth for moving information into and out of our devices. The increasing data set size will have an effect on the memory and I/O subsystems in a significant way and we will have to be able to move these data elements at ever faster rates.
Copper interconnects are presenting some challenges in meeting future bandwidth needs. There's still some headroom but it's moved way beyond the point where you could just lay a trace down on a motherboard and expect that you could transfer data where only one in 1024 bits is in error. The error rates are going up, and these will be compensated for by communications processing technology to get the levels of reliability that we are accustomed to, or we will understand how to live with the larger error rates. When the cost of transferring data using the dominant technology - that is, copper - becomes greater than another technology, then, at that time, you will probably see a change.
Have you any news/updates on the issue of optical interconnects?
We have research going on in this area on several fronts. Earlier this year Intel disclosed that it had designed an optical I/O link with high bandwidth that can be used for chip-to-chip interconnect. As CPU speeds increase over time, system bus speeds, such as those between the CPU and memory, must also increase.
Optical I/O is being investigated for possible use in the first half of the next decade to interconnect chips in a cost-effective, power-efficient manner. You can read the paper on this technology that was presented at the Photonics West 2004 Conference on January 29 here. We also published an article in Nature magazine this past February on a silicon-based modulator that operated at frequencies over 1GHz, and we believe that there is still plenty of frequency headroom. Intel's research work in these and possibly other areas is continuing with the goal of being ready when the copper transition needs to happen at the box, board and chip levels.
Do you foresee the abolition of wiring inside the PC/server chassis based on its replacement by wireless interconnects and, if so, when?
By wireless, I assume that you mean RF, not copper or optical. My opinion is that wireless will never replace optical or copper for inside the box connectivity. The channel is very noisy, it's not well contained, like copper or fibre, and in order to get the data rates that we will require, we will need a great deal of bandwidth. On top of this, the bit error rate is nearly six orders of magnitude worse than either copper or optical channels.
I've been asked this question by people in industry and academia from around the world and I just don't hold out a lot of hope that it will be a viable solution for internal high speed interconnects.
About 30 percent of the total power consumed by Intel's newest Pentium 4 processor is wasted as current leakage, according to Intel's manufacturing VP Joseph Schutz. Can we foresee any breakthroughs in the vexed issue of processor power consumption in the medium term? If so, can you give us any ideas what technology might be involved?
There are several design technologies to reduce leakage power during idle periods. Substrate biasing, removing the bias on the idle logic, etc. We are investigating technologies such as these to reduce leakage power.
For active power reduction there are several types of techniques that we've used to reduce overall power consumption. Again, there are engineering solutions but implementing them will have to be made by the engineering team for the individual products and their market segment.
How closely do you watch what AMD and others are up to?
I don't have much insight into this from a product perspective, as I am in our R&D organisation. From that perspective, we constantly benchmark the computing (including micro-processor companies) and academic research to evaluate our efforts and line of thinking. Some of these metrics have greater weight than others, it depends on the particular area of interest.
Finally, Moore's Law - some might argue it's not a law but more a prediction that has given companies such as Intel a guiding path for the development effort - a self-fulfilling prophesy, if you like. Had Moore said triple the number of transistors rather than double, could Intel have made that happen?
Moore's law was created by observing the rate at which transistor density increased per unit time and extrapolated those phenomena into the future. Had this been triple rather than double, then we would have probably seen this trend in industry.
Is it self-fulfilling? Not from what I've heard from our process manufacturing engineers. The fact that Moore's Law continues today and in the foreseeable future, enables us to architect and design components that can take advantage of the increased number of transistors for much improved capability, reliability and performance. This has had a tremendous impact on society. The increase in performance and capability at a lower cost, on a regular cadence, has created new uses and applications that one could not have envisioned when Moore's Law was postulated.
What always impresses me is that this 'prediction' in device density was made several decades ago! Not too many predictions in this industry have withstood the test of time like that.
Ripple effects of the AMD, Intel Performance Plateau
The fight is on with a vengeance
.......It will be interesting to see how Intel handles the low-cost Centrino line during the big unification. VIA has announced a low-cost and power-efficient solution made on a 90mn SOI process, clocking at 1 GHz will only consuming 3.5W. It's powerful enough to do video streaming and data encryption and it won't need a fan. It is only be a matter of time before VIA starts snipping away at Centrino's heels more aggressively
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16234
BUGGI: It reminds me of a DDT disperser that a mad scientist tried to sell to me as an investment. You put DDT inside an artillery shell-like object and then wire it up and place it in the pig pen or cow barn to kill the flies.
AMD to add 1000 resellers (India)
It is expected to form an exclusive channel club shortly, which will have over 2,000 resellers and SIs as its member
http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2004/104053101.asp
Buggi: I wrote to Matt, who is the person responsible for suspending doug recently and in the past. I received a private reply from him, which I will not divulge. However, his reply suggests to me, for the first time, that the moderation of iHub is dictated more by emotion than by reason. Apparently there are none of the normal democratic safeguards against arbitrariness.
rlweitz: I guess you are well informed about computers and other electronic devices. Most of the world is not. Most have no problem with those so-called Sony proprietary features. In fact they quite like them. Most Sony buyers have no intention of ever engineering an upgrade or interface. In fact, they buy SONY partly because they don't want to upgrade. They want a trouble-free, long-life in their products.
nmoy: Well I owned a Lexus until a couple of years ago - so obviously I like Toyota. I probably would have bought a Sony if they made cars.
Your arguments on Sony are confused. You mix criteria. You seem to concede that Sony does have a strong brand (which is my main point) but that it is underserved because some of its Walkman models disappointed you, or it's so-called proprietary designs in PCs' make them difficult to upgrade. There appears to be an "American is best" element in your posts. However, you also say you have bought Sony products for 30 years!
Sony is a business. It makes money. Frankly I don't care how it does on the US stock markets. I think its primary listing is in Japan. In the USA it is probably an ADR - you can correct me if I am wrong - but it's beside the point. I don't care what the "market" says. It's not very accurate in its valuation of AMD either.
greg: I won't engage in a prolonged dialogue with you about this, but I wonder how you think you can maintain the appearance of fairness and impartiality as a moderator of the iHub Intel board if you visit the SI AMD board for the sole purpose of baiting doug - as you do?
nmoy: Sorry you will never convince me. I have bought Sony for about 35 years and never regretted it. In Europe and Canada, (with which I am very familiar) and the USA, not to mention Japan and most of Asia (with the exception of China) it is recognised as top brand because its products are so well designed for the consumer and so reliable and durable. A Sony-AMD product would enhance AMD's brand and a thin-and-light would make inroads in Intel's market share.
Tiny Computers has what is probably the absolute value for money Athlon 64 system (knowTiny Power 3700-64 Digital) anywhere at £999 excluding VAT. Granted, you get only the base unit but what a base unit! The unannounced AMD Athlon 64 3700+ processor coupled with one gigabyte of Micron DDR memory and a Microstar MS6741 motherboard, two 200Gb Western Digital Hard Disk drives coupled in RAID-0, an ATI Radeon 9800XT graphic card with 256Mb memory, 2 firewire ports, a 16x DVD reader and a 8x Multiformat NEC DVD writer. The usual software like Windows XP and Works are included. Tiny.com Athlon 64 computer range start as from £599 including VAT
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16228
mmoy: They sell at a premium because their stuff has been superior over the years. This has led to a strong brand which, in turn, leads to a higher premium in price.
What you say may be true from an engineer's or bargain-shoppers point of view - but millions the world over are willing to pay a premium for Sony's products.
I would love to see a Sony-AMD thin-and-light mobile. I would also like a SONY-AMD media centre and perhaps some Sony gadgets with GEODE chips.
paul: Advanced Micro Devices said its first commercial 90nm microprocessors will show up in “September-October-November” timeframe.
The article also said that AMD officials did not comment on the story. Given X bits spotty accuracy I put more faith in AMD's statements that it will ship 90 nm processors for revenue in 3Q. September would fit - just.
yourbankruptcy: The Vaio always catches my eye. Sony screens are also amazing.
Sony can charge a premium for almost all its product lines in any country in the world and get away with it. I have always bought Sony TV and other devices. An AMD-Sony line would contribute to AMD's burgeoning reputation for quality and best-of-breed.
greg: I had already written to Matt before I saw Doug's post on SI. Doug's iHub account is still open and I hope he checks his PM inbox box for my message. In essence, I agree with what he says and I hope that he reconsiders his decision.
greg: done!
Revamped AMD Athlon 64 Chips to Debut at Computex
Socket 939 Platform to Launch in Days
by Anton Shilov
05/30/2004 / 09:53 AM
As previously reported, Advanced Micro Devices is likely to roll-out its new 64-bit microprocessors with more efficient design and higher performance at Computex 2004 show in Taipei, Taiwan.
Three New Chips Coming
According to various sources around the world wide web, there will be a number of new SKUs in AMD’s product lineup starting from the 1st of June, 2004: AMD Athlon 64 3500+, AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 for Socket 939............
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20040530094730.html
Paul: Here is doug's response to that on SI. (BTW what sort of a message board is it that periodically bans one of its better-informed most industrious contributors? If intellibies can't take the heat they should stay out of the kitchen).
"All c't said was that they received "pilot lot" boards, which might not be unusual for a pre-NDA article.
The article doesn't claim 939 boards are not ready, just that the board *they* tested was from the pilot lot.
Now, maybe the production boards are slightly delayed-- but that's not directly stated in the referenced article.
Doug
This http://www.heise.de/ct/04/12/034/ translates as:
Nichtmal one year after the introduction on the market of the Athlon 64 presents the third base format already to AMD. That sounds annoying and nervt to Upgrader, proves with the view of the technical background however as meaningful. Completely besides the Athlon makes the life still heavier for 64 3800+ Intels Pentium 4.
AMD had developed two platforms for the two variants of the 64-Bit-Prozessors: The server processor Opteron with two memory channels needs Sockel-940-Mainboards and buffered memory. The Desktop variant Athlon 64 has only one memory channel and runs on more inexpensive Sockel-754-Boards.
AMD wanted to establish the advantage of the two memory channels also within the Desktop range and therefore to the Athlon 64 FX offered - for the base 940. Because it needed special memory (registered PC3200R), did not run it not in all Opteron boards. Besides the boards were rather aligned to the server as the Desktop market: The current savings technology Cool'n'Quiet is not missing, some boards has AGP, but but PCI x or Onboard SCSI. Fast this FX the call had to be away, only a renamed Opteron, a notloesung.
The new base 939 is one for Highend PCS custom-made platform: It supports like the base 940 two memory channels. Owing to skillful layout the obligation to buffered memory is void, whereby also Cool'n'Quiet functions again. The base 939 is however not dualable.
Architect
Two processors for the new base AMD presents at first, to the Athlon 64 3800+ and the Athlon 64 FX-53. Both use two memory channels and run like the Opteron 150 (see c't 12/04, S. 20) and the FX-53 for the base 940 with 2,4 GHz, introduced in March.
Because the number of the memory channels is omitted as demarcation of the FX series of the Athlon 64, AMD has now the L2-Cache as small difference auserkoren: While so far the Athlon-64 and mobile versions were equipped with 512 KByte or 1 MByte depending upon model, each 939er-Athlon will have only 512 KByte and each FX 1 MByte L2-Cache.
Besides AMD accelerated the Hypertransport Frontsidebus from 800 MHz to 1 GHz (HT1000), transfers it now maximally 4 GByte/s into both directions. That support three chip-corrode: Nvidia nForce3 250, the SiS755FX and VIA K8T800 pro.
Overhauling maneuver
So far exists however no hardware, which reaches this speed: AGP-8X gets along with approximately 2 GByte/s and uses already only rarely, and even the fastest Athlon-64-Chipsatz Nvidia nForce 250Gb binds the other periphery (PCI, non removable disks, LAN) also straight times maximally 400 MByte/s on (see ct 12/04, S. 138). PCI x transfers 533 MByte/s, to Sockel-939-Boards not to be found will however probably have.
HT1000 nevertheless offers air for PCI express, which hunts as diagram map interface in the 16X-Version 4 GByte/s per direction by the conductive strips.
Pilot lot boards of MSI and Asus with the Via Chipsatz were to us at the disposal. At first they ran disappointing slowly, then different bio its positions - above all switching the 2T COMMAND off rate - lifted the bench mark results on the expected order of magnitude. Only a test of production stages boards will uncover the final performance of the 939er-Plattform.
After the past measurements the FX-53 in the base 939 due to the unbuffered memory modules about two per cent works faster than in the base 940. In running with Intels Pentium of 4 extremes edition differ most test results around less than five per cent. With some 3D-Benchmarks the FX-53 has clearly the nose in front, the P4EE profited however by the Cinebench 2003 from the Hyperthreading and by the memory throughput from 2 MByte large L3-Cache.
The 3800+ profits to 64 3400+ (1 MByte L2-Cache, 2.2 GHz clock, base 754) in the comparison to the Athlon more strongly from the second memory channel and from the higher clock, than it loses due to the smaller Cache: Many applications do not add more clearly, than alone the higher clock explains, not one program work more slowly. The designation 3800+ suggests more speed than the 3400+, which after the past measurements only with few applications the case is however twelve to per cent. Before the Pentium 4 with 3,4 GHz the 3800+ with most applications, only remains the domain leads the binaryable of hyper+ Threading.
The Athlon 64 exists in three designs for the base 754 (left), the base 940 (center) and the base 939 (right).
Cool'n'Quiet did not function yet perfectly: The two Sockel-939-Prozessoren throttled their clock on 1,2 GHz, however no more shifted up to their full clock. With a memory module both processors functioned, worked then however naturally clearly more slowly - with FR C C dropped back the 3800+ even behind the 3400+. Mixed components did not run reliably; AMD recommends, only modules with same capacity to use organization and CAS Latency parallel. With the assembly with 4 GByte only about 3.5 GByte can be used due to the faded in PCI address area also in the 64-Bit-Modus - a restriction, from which so far all x86-Chipsaetze suffers.
Track switching
The Sockel-939-Plattform combines the advantages of the two past platforms for AMDs 64-Bit-Prozessor: Two memory channels for quite inexpensive PC3200-Speicher provide for high speed and support Cool'n'Quiet, the boards leave themselves for Highend PCS massschneidern. The smaller L2-Cache brakes the Athlon 64 hardly out, the advantage of the two memory channels weighs more strongly. The 939er FX-53 outdated even the Opteron and proves as the fastest AMD processor. Also the Intel competition the AMD processors leave with many applications behind itself, only the hardly available and expensive P4EE keep up.
AGP-8X and PCI must exist probably still at least a half year long, before PCI express Chipsaetze for the Athlon are available 64. All too heavily waiting should not fall however, brings nevertheless ATI and Nvidia their current diagram chips also in a AGP version (see c't 11/04, S. 130). Nvidias chip set nForce3 ties up besides non removable disks and Gigabit LAN so fast that the whole 133 MByte/s of the PCI are available for extensions. Thus at present few reasons exist not to seize with the desire for much performance to the base 939 - if production stage board and processors are available (jow)"
here
http://www.amdboard.com/
A list of 939 motherboards and translation of the German 250 benchmark review
Barron's Market Analysis with some reference to semiconductors and Intel's Thursday report and Smith Barney's semiconductor meeting at which Rivet( AMD) will be presenting. (Scroll down for my bold type).
http://online.wsj.com/barrons/article/0,,SB108578485350324324,00.html?mod=b_this_weeks_magazine_mark...
Drop in Rates, Oil Quotes Spurs Rebound in Stocks
Vital Signs
AN EQUITY TRADER COULD'VE FINISHED in the money last week without keeping a single stock quote on the screen, just by watching the pulsating ticks in crude-oil futures and Treasury-note yields.
Buying when those numbers were falling was a profitable reflex, which indicates Wall Street's present absorption with the essential macroeconomic factors of monetary liquidity and liquid gold.
The ebbing of oil prices following vows of new supply from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the downtick in bond yields after some tame inflation and economic data left clear the upside path for stocks, which have now bounced more than 3% in the last eight trading days.
Or, at least, that was the proximate excuse for the latest bout of buying. Others who think economic numbers are only for government bureaucrats and lazy journalists will say that stocks had sold off too steeply, important index levels held, transport stocks never sank to meet the broad market and investor sentiment had gotten too negative for stocks not to rebound.
The buying was done before a largely inconsequential, lightly traded Friday session ahead of the three-day weekend. But four days' work was enough to boost the Dow Industrials by 221 points, or 2.2%, to 10,188.
The Standard & Poor's 500 gained 27, or 2.5%, to land at 1120. The S&P has essentially rebounded to the halfway point from the low end of the compressed range it's occupied all year, spanning from 1080 and 1160. For all the to-and-fro, high hopes and grand pronouncements swirling about the market in 2004, neither the S&P nor the Nasdaq has strayed even 1% from year-end 2003 levels. The Dow is down less than 3%.
It's an easy call to say that, to most, it has felt more eventful than that. For one thing, the low-volatility environment that has prevailed for months has caused small moves to seem significant, like a 10-degree drop in temperature in Miami that has locals donning parkas.
Below the calm surface of the indexes, there has been a strong enough undertow for investors to lose plenty in individual stocks.
Going into last week, Smith Barney strategists had calculated that the average decline from their 2004 high of stocks in the S&P 1500 (encompassing large and small stocks) was 16%. The average drop from their 52-week high was 18%, so there's a good chance that plenty of investors are looking at a flat market year to date and feeling neither lucky nor smart. This also shows how a market with slim index losses can qualify for an oversold bounce.
For professional investors, the market hasn't been particularly accommodating, either. Through Thursday, every category of large-cap stock funds was trailing the return of S&P 500 index funds this year. The large-cap core funds average -- the one most comparable to the S&P 500 and the group with the most assets, at almost a half-trillion dollars -- had returned 0.4%, less than a third of the index funds' total return.
This helps explain why the most commonly uttered remark on Wall Street these days might be: "Tough market."
Worsening the confusion is the broad perception that the market sits at multiple inflection points -- poised to shift from monetary easing to tightening, from economic acceleration to deceleration and perhaps from disinflation to rising inflation. Reasonable men, and even black-box trading systems, can disagree on how the scenarios might play out; thus the lack of conviction and constant looking over one's shoulder.
Until Friday, four of the latest five big economic data releases arrived slightly weaker than expected, including the revision to first-quarter gross domestic product that showed less inflation and damper final demand than before.
This moderation in the numbers and the resulting firmer bond market apparently sent investors dreaming lustily of Goldilocks, that temptress of the temperate 'Nineties economy who made things "just right" for equity owners.
Such dreams are the stuff that bullish market forecasts are made of. They animate the consensus view that the economy will cool, but to a comfy pace, and that rates and inflation can rise gently without compromising this year's bonus.
The mini-streak of softer economic figures was interrupted Friday by a hefty rise in the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index, a gauge of Midwestern manufacturing, which defied forecasts of a decline by jumping to a 16-year high. This indicator is significant mostly as a foreshadowing of the national ISM manufacturing numbers, due Tuesday.
The ISM is probably the most important timely measure of economic momentum and breadth (though not the magnitude of improvement). It correlates almost flawlessly with the quickening of corporate profits, the outperformance of economically cyclical stocks and the amplitude of stock-market returns. The ISM is still expected to tick lower. Even if it doesn't, it's at levels that have always meant that a peak is near.
Those investors with aggressive expectations for further upside in stocks might wish for another burst of acceleration in economic growth, rather than a bond-friendly slowdown. And it may take a hotter-running economy to drive big upside profit surprises in late 2004 and early '05.
Many market observers compare today's investment backdrop with that of 1994-95, during which interest rates jumped. But, remember, S&P 500 earnings for all of 1995 came in 20% higher than had been forecast as late as September 1994. That helped power stocks higher in the teeth of sharply higher rates.
Yet it hardly seems that Wall Street is deeply underestimating the profit outlook today. The rate of upward revisions to one-year forward profit forecasts versus downward changes has spiked to levels that have usually represented a peak. Pretax corporate profit margins are also at historic highs, just as hiring has picked up and wage pressures are building.
The broad measure of business profits in last week's GDP data showed a sequential decline in earnings from the fourth quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis, while the annual rate of increase slowed rapidly. Even if earnings merely match current forecasts, they'll show solid double-digit percentage growth in the second half and next year and could provide support for stock prices.
But at some point, analysts will probably overestimate how good the good times can get. If that happens soon, in a market addicted to robust earnings gains, the heady forecasts of 20% upside for equities won't have much of a chance.
Leaders of the Pack
Some inspectors of the indexes' latest upward blip have been going down their checklists and nodding approvingly.
Several elements that market handicappers like to see have been present, including broad upside participation. The sectors that have taken the lead also are prompting some analysts to give this advance the benefit of the doubt and propose that it could carry on for another few percent.
Semiconductor stocks are the EKG of the market's speculative metabolism, and they have shot ahead by 7.5% since May 20, as measured by the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index.
Retail shares, barometers of economic conviction, have also been standouts, helped last week by solid profit reports from Home Depot, Lowe's and Costco.
Less remarked upon are the regional-bank stocks. The Regional Bank HOLDRs, a traded basket of the stocks, is up 7% since May 10, the day the 10-year Treasury yield first hit 4.8%. The yield began receding toward the current 4.65% a couple of days later. The participation of bank shares is widely understood to be crucial to the health of any rally, and so far they are holding up their end.
Each of these groups will need to run through a steeplechase of obstacles to hold or build on their recent winnings, even before the earnings-warning season begins in earnest later in June.
The semis stretched their two-week gains Friday after Novellus offered a cheery outlook for chip-equipment demand. For the moment, that good news has been taken as good, and not as a worrying sign of future capacity growth and supply pressures on the chip business.
The sector index, though, remains nearly 13% below its January peak. And, notably, the Semiconductor HOLDRs, the exchange-traded fund tracking the chips, saw one of the largest decreases in short interest in the month ending May 10. That implies the recent gains have been more than short-covering. But it also suggests that one chunk of latent buying demand is gone.
Thursday afternoon brings Intel's mid-quarter update, always hotly anticipated even by Wall Streeters who try to conjure riches from estimates of Intel's gross margins and its CFO's verbal inflections. If strong share prices persist ahead of the news, it will raise the threshold of satisfaction for Intel partisans.
Also note that Smith Barney is hosting its semi industry conference Wednesday and Thursday, where every stray utterance by a chino-clad executive will be conveyed via cell phone to trading desks.
As for retail, the stocks are suggesting that the cooling of consumer spending lately is a mere stutter-step before another pickup and not the start of trend.
Yet veteran trader and financial author Michael Panzner points out a close relationship between consumers' preference for adjustable-rate mortgages and retail-sales growth. The most recent Mortgage Bankers Association data showed 32% of all mortgage volume in April were ARMs. The past two times ARMs hit the 30% level -- November 1999, and before that in late 1994 -- it coincided with the peak in year-over-year percentage gains in retail sales.
The relationship seems to be that when consumers are eager to minimize their monthly payment (and shoulder interest-rate risk) by taking out floating-rate debt, they're a bit strapped and need to slow their spending. If nothing else, it offers one other reason to watch the mortgage data.
As for regional banks, the calming of the bond market has helped, to say the least. And the rising volume of takeover chatter has also excited some buying while no doubt dissuading some would-be sellers and short players.
Last week, BB&T, the North Carolina bank, was caught up in takeover gossip that went unconfirmed and uncommented upon by the company. The stock jumped 2.55, to 37.68, on heavy volume, even as some analysts downgraded the stock saying it's fully valued barring a buyout.
Perhaps the stocks' recent sneaky move higher means the market is betting that violence in the bond pits will subside for some time to come. Friday's employment report will help settle the wager.
A Quality Product
When a new investment product debuts, it's usually safe to guess that the launch is meant to seize on a hot market trend -- one that's bound to cool before long. That's just the nature of marketing in a business where a product's "time to market" is often longer than the duration of investment themes.
Crude Response: A dip in oil prices and bond yields helped boost the Dow 221 points. Home Depot ran higher on strong earnings, helping the index overcome losses in Altria.
A refreshing exception to this rule showed up last week, an exchange-listed fund that will employ a strategy boasting a fine long-term record but that's been out of favor for most of the rally off the March 2003 low. It hits the scene just as the winds seem to be shifting back in favor of this quality-based strategy.
The closed-end fund goes by the clanging name, S&P Quality Rankings Global Equity Managed Trust, and its shares trade on the American Stock Exchange under symbol BQY. It is an actively managed fund that uses S&P's quality ratings of stocks, a tool that has produced excellent risk-adjusted returns since it was created in the 1950s.
These ratings run from A-plus to D grades, and are based on a simple but durable evaluation of 10 years' earnings growth and stability, dividend growth and stability and total sales. As noted here in February of last year, from 1986 through 2002, all A-rated stocks beat all B's by 2.4 percentage points a year, and A-plus stocks handily beat the S&P.
As if on cue, once these results were made public, one of the great low-quality feeding frenzies in history was touched off. Cheaper credit and a shift from losses to profits among financially strapped companies meant that companies rated C and below gained 62.3% in 2003. B-rated stocks returned 31.9% and A's delivered 24.6%, underperforming the S&P 500's 28.7% total return. Higher-quality stocks, though, still retain their strong advantage over the past three, five, 10 and 15 years.
This outperformance by financially shakier companies is most closely reminiscent of the 1992-1993 period, when accommodative debt markets and a strong acceleration in the economy also swung investor attention on the most cyclically and financially leveraged stocks.
Add S&P researchers to the list of those who believe a distinct rotation toward higher-quality, lower-risk stocks is at hand. These stocks fare better when corporate earnings growth is decelerating. And high-quality shares now trade at a discount to lower-rated ones, contrary to the historical premiums they were afforded due to their stability.
There are quality ratings for some 3,400 stocks, essentially every one with 10 years' worth of data. Of those, about 2,400 are rated B-plus or higher, making for a big and cumbersome list to digest for any stock picker. The closed-end fund, managed by BlackRock Advisors, will run those 2,400 stocks through a quantitative model to focus more tightly on the most solid and highest-yielding issues.
The idea is to own 60 to 90 names, using real-estate-investment trusts to gain dividend income and allocating around 30% of assets to non-U.S. stocks in S&P's international quality rankings.
Investors who buy the fund now that it's already trading will have avoided the 4.5% sales charge from the initial offering but will pay 1.12% a year in fund expenses. That's not insignificant, but if the active managers don't squander the inherent advantages of buying quality, it would be well worth it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail: michael.santoli@barrons.com
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paul: A list of the 939 motherboards and better translation of the 250 review is here.
"Sony is currently working with AMD to produce AMD based systems for consumers. Dell, however, is still on Intel's side, which is why Dell was one of the companies to get a negative response from AMD executives at the conference"
http://www.cooltechzone.com/reviews/itcomputing/amd_tech_tour_2004_006.php
Opteron 250 benchmarked
But 939 boards not exactly ready
"TOP GERMAN MAG c’t has benchmarked the AMD Opteron 250 and there’s talk not only of dual systems but quad systems at its web site.........."
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16223
EDIT: This is the babblefish version I made of the German article.
Tandem teams AMD Opteron 250 against Intel Xeon 3.20 GHz with 2 MByte L3-Cache the 64-Bit-Serverprozessoren of AMD begin now with 2,4 GHz against Intels Xeons. The eternal race goes into a further round, this time into the workstation and server disciplines. AMD pushes with full Opteron force into the lucrative market of the binary systems, which Intels Xeons dominate to time. Good bench mark results and favourable prices gave much attention to the Opterons - enough anyhow, in order to induce Intel to the announcement AMD64-kompatibler processors. Also the past Xeons has Intel better against the competition prepared. Only for the expensive multi-processor (MP)Xeons developed Gallatin core still 1 or 2 MByte L3-Pufferspeicher is for some time available originally also for dual processor (DP)Xeons and gives these additionally to 512 KByte L2-Cache. A DP Xeon with 3,20 GHz and 2 MByte L3-Cache costs approximately 1200 euro. The Opteron 250 (2.4 GHz, 1 MByte L2-Cache) is not to be had in the German retail trade yet, might however at least 150 euro become more inexpensive (OEM list price 851 US dollar). For single as well as four to eightfold systems Opteron 150 and 850 are meant. In this test we compare the AMD Opteron 250 with the Intel Xeon 3.20 GHz with 2 MByte L3. over also diagram bench mark to accomplish to be able, we in each case two CPU tandems on workstation boards with AGP Slots tested. AMD recommends the Tyan Thunder K8W (S2885, about 480 euro), the Xeons was on nearly equal expensive SE7505VB2 von Intel (test into 18/03 c't). For two gigabyte memory from 512-MByte-Registered-DIMMs one must put on to time about 640 euro; there is not a considerable difference in prices between the PC2100R-Riegeln of the Xeons and the PC3200R-Modulen for the Opterons thereby. We used Mushkin DIMMs, which exhibit particularly short latencies (with 200 MHz as PC3200: 2,0-3-2, with 133 MHz as PC2100: 2,0-2-2), but because of their TSOP chips not the JEDEC standard corresponds. Workstations with equipment, which corresponds approximately to the test configurations, might cost at least 4000 euro. For a professional diagram map and a SCSI subsystem easily still 2000 euro are added. The fun is not only expensive, but also loud: The maximum waste heat production of these computers reached about 300 Watts and leads therefore to substantial fan noises (see in addition also page 81). Bench mark such expenditure is worthwhile itself only for strong computing power, and of it both twin couples offer enough. In most bench mark lie together their achievements closely, a view of the details shows however partially extreme differences. An example of it the results are accomplished in the CPU2000-Benchmark of the SPEC [ 1 ], under Windows XP (32 bits): The total results for firm (INT) and tasks of floating decimal point (FP) differ only in each case by a half per cent. But in individual tasks (further measurements under [ 1 ]) the differences between the processors up to 33 per cent amount to. The differences are still more glaring with the rate valuations, which measure the co-operation of CPUs in multiprocessor systems (scaling): Here the Opterons lies particularly in the floating decimal point discipline far in front (31 per cent), in single valuations gives it even differences of up to 112 per cent (with the Swim.171). Measurements on [ 1 ] with 64-Bit-Linux and the compiler GCC 3,3 show that the Opteron team still adds then with the CFP2000-Rate-Wert, in the CINT2000 rate however somewhat drop. The very good CPU2000-Rate-Werte is to be due probably to the NUMA architecture of AMD64: Each processor is directly tied up and communicated to fast RAM by hypertransport (6.4 GByte/s) with its CPU partner. Intels Xeon tandems against it must complete all accesses over a common FSB533 (4.3 GByte/s). Soon however the Xeons with FSB800 and DDR2-Speicher comes - it remains thus exciting. Performance data under Linux and Windows XP Professional. For servers with four and more processors plans Intel however first no FSB acceleration, and also with these computers the AMD64-Architektur shines: For the ProLiant DL585 HP announces a value of 770 Usern in the SAP SD bench mark; the Quad Xeon server IBM x365 lines up with MP Xeons with in each case 3 GHz and 4 MByte L3-Cache by 6,5 per cent behind it (720 user). Suns dual Opteron system V20z brings it with two Opteron to 248 to 410 user, nearly up (408) lies a HP ProLiant BL20p with 3,2-GHz-Xeons (with 2 MByte L3). Still hypertransport and AMD64 do not bring side and hyper+ Threading and high clock frequency on advantages so clear on the other side that one could kueren one of two processor architectures to the generally better product. Perhaps are missing also only suitable bench mark? Who stands before a purchase decision, must see completely exact anyhow. Particularly with professional servers, where one will use not constantly new, optimized compiled software for reasons of the operating and network security as well as because of the administration expenditure, one comes probably only with power measurements with the concretely planned programs of far (ciw) literature [ 1 ] official results of the SPEC CPU2000: www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/------------------------------------------------------------------------------- of comments: Achievement! (MacAthur, 29,5,2004 11:54)
EDIT: And this is my babblefish version of the article on the lack of 939 motherboards.
Zweispurig developed AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and Fx-53 for the base 939 Nichtmal one year after the introduction on the market of the Athlon 64 presents the third base format already to AMD. That sounds annoying and nervt to Upgrader, proves with the view of the technical background however as meaningful. Completely besides the Athlon makes the life still heavier for 64 3800+ Intels Pentium 4. AMD had developed two platforms for the two variants of the 64-Bit-Prozessors: The server processor Opteron with two memory channels needs Sockel-940-Mainboards and buffered memory. The Desktop variant Athlon 64 has only one memory channel and runs on more inexpensive Sockel-754-Boards. AMD wanted to establish the advantage of the two memory channels also within the Desktop range and therefore to the Athlon 64 FX offered - for the base 940. Because it needed special memory (registered PC3200R), did not run it not in all Opteron boards. Besides the boards were rather aligned to the server as the Desktop market: The current savings technology Cool?n?Quiet is not missing, some boards has AGP, but but Pci x or Onboard SCSI. Fast this FX the call had to be away, only a renamed Opteron, a notloesung. The new base 939 is one for Highend PCS custom-made platform: It supports like the base 940 two memory channels. Owing to skillful layout the obligation to buffered memory is void, whereby also Cool?n?Quiet functions again. The base 939 is however not dualable. Architect two processors for the new base AMD presents at first, to the Athlon 64 3800+ and the Athlon 64 Fx-53. Both use two memory channels and run like the Opteron 150 (see c't 12/04, P. 20) and in March the introduced Fx-53 for the base 940 with 2,4 GHz. Because the number of the memory channels is omitted as demarcation of the FX series of the Athlon 64, AMD has now the L2-Cache as small difference auserkoren: While so far the Athlon-64 and mobile versions were equipped with 512 KByte or 1 MByte depending upon model, each 939er-Athlon will have only 512 KByte and each FX 1 MByte L2-Cache. Besides AMD accelerated the Hypertransport Frontsidebus from 800 MHz to 1 GHz (HT1000), transfers it now maximally 4 GByte/s into both directions. That support three chip-corrode: Nvidia nForce3 250, the SiS755FX and VIA K8T800 pro. Overhauling maneuver so far exists however no hardware, which reaches this speed: Agp-8x gets along with approximately 2 GByte/s and uses already only rarely, and even the fastest Athlon-64-Chipsatz Nvidia nForce 250Gb binds the other periphery (PCI, non removable disks, LAN) also straight times maximally 400 MByte/s on (see ct 12/04, P. 138). Pci x transfers 533 MByte/s, to Sockel-939-Boards not to be found will however probably have. HT1000 nevertheless offers air for PCI express, which hunts as diagram map interface in the 16X-Version 4 GByte/s per direction by the conductive strips. Pilot lot boards of MSI and Asus with the Via Chipsatz were to us at the disposal. At first they ran disappointing slowly, then different bio its positions - above all switching the 2T COMMAND off rate - lifted the bench mark results on the expected order of magnitude. Only a test of production stages boards will uncover the final performance of the 939er-Plattform. After the past measurements the Fx-53 in the base 939 due to the unbuffered memory modules about two per cent works faster than in the base 940. In running with Intels Pentium of 4 extremes edition differ most test results around less than five per cent. With some 3D-Benchmarks the Fx-53 has clearly the nose in front, the PÊE profited however by the Cinebench 2003 from the Hyperthreading and by the memory throughput from 2 MByte large L3-Cache. The 3800+ profits to 64 3400+ (1 MByte L2-Cache, 2.2 GHz clock, base 754) in the comparison to the Athlon more strongly from the second memory channel and from the higher clock, than it loses due to the smaller Cache: Many applications do not add more clearly, than alone the higher clock explains, not one program work more slowly. The designation 3800+ suggests more speed than the 3400+, which after the past measurements only with few applications the case is however twelve to per cent. Before the Pentium 4 with 3,4 GHz the 3800+ with most applications, only remains the domain leads the binaryable of hyper+ Threading. The Athlon 64 exists in three designs for the base 754 (left), the base 940 (center) and the base 939 (right). Cool?n?Quiet did not function yet perfectly: The two Sockel-939-Prozessoren throttled their clock on 1,2 GHz, however no more shifted up to their full clock. With a memory module both processors functioned, worked then however naturally clearly more slowly - with FR C C dropped back the 3800+ even behind the 3400+. Mixed components did not run reliably; AMD recommends, only modules with same capacity to use organization and CAS Latency parallel. With the assembly with 4 GByte only about 3.5 GByte can be used due to the faded in PCI address area also in the 64-Bit-Modus - a restriction, from which so far all x86-Chipsaetze suffers. Track switching the Sockel-939-Plattform combines the advantages of the two past platforms for AMDs 64-Bit-Prozessor: Two memory channels for quite inexpensive PC3200-Speicher provide for high speed and support Cool?n?Quiet, the boards leave themselves for Highend PCS massschneidern. The smaller L2-Cache brakes the Athlon 64 hardly out, the advantage of the two memory channels weighs more strongly. The 939er Fx-53 outdated even the Opteron and proves as the fastest AMD processor. Also the Intel competition the AMD processors leave with many applications behind itself, only the hardly available and expensive PÊE keep up. Agp-8x and PCI must exist probably still at least a half year long, before PCI express Chipsaetze for the Athlon are available 64. All too heavily waiting should not fall however, brings nevertheless ATI and Nvidia their current diagram chips also in a AGP version (see c't 11/04, P. 130). Nvidias chip set nForce3 ties up besides non removable disks and Gigabit LAN so fast that the whole 133 MByte/s of the PCI are available for extensions. Thus at present few reasons exist not to seize with the desire for much performance to the base 939 - if production stage board and processors available are (jow) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even the cat likes the iWill Pentium 4 shoebox
Review Small form factoids
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16224
Sun Broadens Solaris Availability On AMD, Intel-Based Systems
Sun Microsystems Inc announced the availability of the Solaris Operating System (OS) on a variety of AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon-based systems with 15 new Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) for a total of 20 x86 platform partners, including ASA Computers, Continuous Computing Corp, Electronic Business Solutions, Flight System Consulting Inc, NatureTech, Pinnacle Data Systems, Portable One, PSSC Labs, Rave Computer Association Inc, S-Terra Group, System Works Corp, Think Computer Products and Tokyo Forex Financial
http://www.gridtoday.com/04/0531/103325.html
EDIT: I think this has been posted here a few days ago but it is dated 31st May so it might contain some updates.
Tech Stocks Still Lead the Market
Saturday May 29, 12:11 pm ET
By Michael J. Martinez, AP Business Writer
Stocks of Large, Stable Technology Companies Leading the Market
.........."As we get out of this correction, the second leg up of this bull market will be fueled by the larger tech companies," said Ken Tower, chief market strategist for Schwab's CyberTrader.........With the economy continuing its robust growth, corporations have been setting aside more money for capital expenditures such as technology purchases. That bodes well for tech firms, which stand to see profits grow thanks to corporate spending on new workstations, servers, networks and software.....However, tech's former leaders, such as semiconductors and networking, are still too closely tied to the vagaries of the market. While they may indeed forecast Wall Street's ups and downs, they won't be the ones to lead an upside swing.
Semiconductors -- the microprocessors at the heart of every piece of computer hardware -- should enjoy the biggest gains coming off of their March and April lows. Worldwide chip sales have had double-digit growth each month since the beginning of 2004, and demand should keep those sales robust.
Those gains are coming, in part, because semiconductors were hit hardest in the recent market correction. And some of those second-half gains could already be priced into stock prices, analysts said.
Since topping off for the year at $32.04 per share on Jan. 12, Intel foretold the market's correction through February and March, bottoming out at $26.03 on April 20. Since then, Intel Corp. has risen 9.7 percent, closing Friday at $28.55 per share. As the market continues to improve, analysts believe Intel and other chip stocks will continue to rise, but can still fall victim to the market's volatility.
"Semiconductors have risen to the top just recently because they got so beaten down earlier," said Richard A. Dickson, senior market strategist at Lowry's Research Reports. "They might be worth holding onto to make up for earlier losses, but they're still vulnerable."
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/040529/weekly_wall_street_3.html
Linux and server sales.
"As in past quarters, sales of servers that run on the freely available Linux operating system rose the most, climbing 57 percent to more than $900 million, IDC said. It was the second straight quarter in which Linux server revenue has topped $900 million. Unit shipments climbed 46 percent."
EDIT: A snippet from yesterday's report.
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040528/tech_serversales_1.html
Nostalgia is not like it used to be.
"Chip analyst Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group thinks AMD is wasting its time. Already, the leading server makers have committed to Itanium. That means they're spending millions to design Itanium-based systems and compatible software. The first-generation Itanium hasn't been a hit with end users, but at least Intel has a finished product to offer. The first Hammer chip is over a year away.
"It's about two or three years too late" for Hammer, says Gwennap. "The game's over."
http://www.linleygroup.com/about.html
and here's another
"As for Hammer, Otellini thinks AMD's plan to run 32Mbit and 64Mbit code on the same chip is a waste of time and silicon. There are no consumer or business desktop programs using 64Mbit code, so backward compatibility with 32Mbit software isn't that important. Itanium, he says, is a pure 64Mbit product aimed at the stratosphere of high-end computing, and he expects it to dominate the field.
Meanwhile, the Pentium series will continue to ramp up. Intel thinks it can squeeze out speeds of up to 10GHz using its current architecture.."
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/archives/2001/12/27/0000117586
GEODE applications including light laptops.
I am very interested in applications for GEODE. This extract from a post by m_a_x on SI is stimulating.
Primary Features
Memory Devices
•DIMM memory support for DDR DRAM
module of up to 1GB
•512MB Spansion ™Boot
FLASH memory
AMD Geode ™ NX DB1500 Development Board
Single
Socket-A
(Socket-462)
CPU
Northbridge
Chipset
KM400A
http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInform...
This is a really good move from AMD (edit no Asus involved in DB), lots of potential for such a powerful mini-ITX barebone. Think tablet PC, handheld gaming, ultra-portable labtops and any emebeded media box.
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=20177224
Rivet (AMD) @ Smith Barney Annual Semiconductor Conference
8:40 a.m. PT (11:40 a.m. ET) on Thursday, June 3, 2004
http://www.veracast.com/webcasts/sbcitigroup/semiconductor-2004/94202193.cfm
EDIT: Formatting the original post for archive convenience
Acer Ferrari notebook a beauty to behold
Review Chequered flag gets waved
By Pocket-Lint Team: Saturday 29 May 2004, 03:18
WHAT DO YOU get the formula one racing fan? A Ferrari laptop of course. Scuderia Ferrari and Acer has joined forces to bring you the Ferrari 3200, a powerhouse of a machine that has the style to carry it off.
From the outset you can see this is a machine that means business. The main styling comes in the form of a shiny red highly polished case that sets the scene nicely.....
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16219
EDIT: Another drooling review
HP Athlon 64 business desktop a great bit of kit
Review DX 6050 is outstanding value for money
By BIOS Magazine: Saturday 29 May 2004, 03:07
HP'S new dx6050 range represents outstanding value for business users. From just £299 you can have a 64-bit system based on AMD's Athlon 64 processor, 512MB of DDR SDRAM and a 40GB hard disk................
Review kindly supplied by BIOS Magazine. Go to that page for its performance testing results and pricing
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16218
HyperTransport—An Optimized Board Level Architecture Overview
Webcast Date May 26, 2004
Status Available On-demand
Transcript Available Soon
Series Overview:
HyperTransport is an industry standard that has become the technology of choice for chip-to-chip interconnects. Many of the performance bottlenecks in today's designs arise not at either the system-to-system or the board-to-board level, but occur when trying to move data between on-board devices. Often these shortcomings are brought about by the use of technologies that were designed for other tasks. HyperTransport is the only royalty free chip-to-chip architecture that was designed specifically to move data at the highest throughput rates with the lowest possible latency. To learn more about HyperTransport and how it can help solve your chip-to-chip communication needs plan to attend the three part HyperTransport interconnect technology on-line seminar series starting at 2:00 P.M. (PDT) on May 26th, June 24th and September 15th.
Series Schedule:
May 26, 2004 . HyperTransport - An Optimized Board Level Architecture Overview
. . Presented by Mario Cavalli, General Manager of the HyperTransport Consortium
. . Presented by Brian Holder, Chairperson of Technical Workgroup of the HyperTransport Consortium
June 24th, 2004 . Advanced HyperTransport 2.0 Functionality
. . Presented by Brian Holder, Chairperson of Technical Workgroup of the HyperTransport Consortium
September 15th, 2004 . Getting Started With Your HyperTransport Design
. . Presented by Don Anderson of MindShare, Inc. developer of HyperTransport training courses and author of HyperTransport System Architecture.
Overview of May 26th broadcast:
The net broadcast on May 26, 2004 will provide an overview of the HyperTransport technology and how it is being used throughout the industry. The presentation will also take a detailed technical look at the physical and protocol layer of HyperTransport.
. Key Topics:
1. Special Values of HyperTransport
2. Market Applications
3. Consortium Profile
4. Overview of HyperTransport protocol and physical layer
5. How HyperTransport Achieves Low Latency
Who Should Attend:
Engineering and Technical Managers, Designers, Innovators and Technology Leaders
Presenters for May 26th Broadcast:
Mario Cavalli General Manager, HyperTransport Consortium Brian Holden Principal Engineer PMC-Sierra and Chair of the HyperTransport Technical Working Group
HyperTransport Technology Consortium
The HyperTransport Technology Consortium is a membership-based non-profit organization in charge of managing and promoting HyperTransport Technology. It consists of over 40 member companies, including founding members Advanced Micro Devices, Alliance Semiconductor, Apple Computer, Broadcom Corporation, Cisco Systems, NVIDIA, PMC-Sierra, Sun Microsystems, and Transmeta. Membership is open to any company interested in leveraging the HyperTransport technology. It is based on a minimal yearly fee and includes the right to royalty-free use of HyperTransport technology and Intellectual Property. More information can be obtained at HyperTransport Technology Consortium's website at www.hypertransport.org
Technical Support
Please contact TechOnLine Webcast Support with any questions.
Email: webcast@techonline.com
Phone: 1-877-472-7882 (if calling within the United States),
or 1-781-266-5000 (if calling outside the United States)
http://www.techonline.com./community/home/36618
http://www.techonline.com./
EDIT: I expect at least one member to listen and then to explain it to the board in words of one syllable.
Keith: Before I went out for the day I referred you to earlier posts on here that spoke of the strong demand for the Acer Ferrari. Here is one. The demand-supply ratio was 3-1 in some periods for the first model of the Acer Ferrari.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3187178
Keith: Earlier links on here in the last few days cited the fast turnover of this model. It is selling and improving AMD's position in this market. The buyers do not seemed concerned about the battery life.
Other posters, particularly DARBES, have provided links in the past few days to support their suggestions that AMD may be preparing to announce new thin-and-light models which will be very competitive with anything Intel has.
The AMD inverted pyramid is Servers, Mobile and Desktop. It is rational to expect that following the evident success of the new servers, new mobiles will appear soon.
I will not look it up but I believe Ruiz has also said recently that AMD will be producing chips for thin-and-light, but that in the meantime desktop replacement mobiles had to come first because that is what corporate customers want.
I agree that Intel has a huge lead and that AMD should make mobiles a priority, and I agree that mothers are good things (usually) and apple pie is very nice.