Intel Corp (INTC)

[morrowinder]

Chipguy: There were a few quotes in here that I found completely laughable but I thought I'd ask an actual chip designer for his opinion.

http://www.computerworld.com.sg/pcwsg.nsf/0/EAAFAE24D76C416548256EED001242F2?OpenDocument

"Were EM64T sold for what it is – x86 with a wider address bus and larger register set – I'd have no complaints. But Intel hopes to use EM64T to blunt the market's growing interest in genuine 64-bit value servers and power desktops. These aren't waiting around the corner. They're here now, constructed around Advanced Micro Devices Athlon 64 and Apple Computer/IBM/Motorola PowerPC technology. But make no mistake: A 64-bit system requires a new system architecture (as AMD and Apple have created), not a new processor."

"What characterises a 64-bit system? Multiple independent I/O busses, on-chip memory controllers, and very highly integrated peripheral chip sets that eliminate the need for the many discrete single-purpose chips common to PC designs – along with the slower, noisier circuits between them. Sixty-four-bit systems are technically simple compared with PCs' convoluted, legacy-bound designs. It took AMD several years of obsessive engineering to create Hammer (the former code name for the Athlon 64/Opteron line). Apple had to create a new 64-bit system, almost entirely of its own design, to build around the PowerPC 970; Apple earned the right to put the G5 brand on the architecture."

This guys definition of a 64 bit system is very strange. Does he think that nocona DOESN'T have a completely new PCI XPRESS infrastructure? Isn't intel a big pioneer in highly integrated chipset designs that eliminate the need for additional chips? G5 doesn't have an on chip memory controller does it? Isn't Opteron VERY similar to the K7 architecture? Is it really a new architecture any less than Nocona? Or are both extensions of existing architectures. IBM does most of the of the work on ppc 970/G5 right? A lot of odd assumptions in this piece:/