Replies to post #27294 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[HailMary]

IPF is still the best platform for the future, as soon as infrastructure can support it.

Can an IPF part be die size competitive with x86? In other words, does Itanium just require huge caches by nature to perform well? It seems if we took an x86-64 part (either Intel or AMD), and put enough cache on it so it was roughly the same size as an Itanium today, how would performance stack up between the two? Or even the opposite. If IPF were suddenly targeted for desktop machines with a dize size of say 150 square millimeters, how would it stack up? It there some point in the future where there is a crossover of performance per unit of die size for IPF parts?

I know it is not all about die size, but for IPF to be the future platform as you suggest, it will need a lower cost mainstream solution that doesn't have poor performance.

What am I missing?

[dougSF30]

The point, of course, was that Intel would have pulled out all the stops in the past, to prevent 'CT' from being necessary. Your argument is that Itanium would be a great workstation chip, if only Intel would get around to building some infrastructure. That seems unlikely in light of the first point: the infrastructure would've been rolled out last year, or before, as part of Intel's attempt to successfully market Itanium.

Doug