Moore’s Law is alive and well, but Intel is changing its basic semiconductor recipes to make sure that it stays that way.
Intel Mulls Metal Over Silicon for New Chips
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the win by ibm of the ms x box contract might more cause for concern than it appears.
MS might be diversifying risk in case the x86 to itanium migration that intel plans is a flop.
MS may also be showing the value for a lower power simpler core architecture. Intel just can’t keep adding complexity, cost, and power consumption forever. the model breaks down eventually.
then again, intel is not going away.
the win by ibm of the ms x box contract might more cause for concern than it appears.
I think Microsoft learned that making a console with the same ISA as commodity computer hardware only makes it that much more easier for people to use it for purposes they didn’t intend, such as the XBox Media Player. Using an ISA that doesn’t allow them to set page permissions only makes the bootloader that much easier to hack. From a console hardware perspective PPC is a much better choice than x86.
MS might be diversifying risk in case the x86 to itanium migration that intel plans is a flop.
Microsoft will, of course, keep their options open, but I doubt we’ll see them campaigning a “move away from x86” initiative any time in the near future.
MS may also be showing the value for a lower power simpler core architecture. Intel just can’t keep adding complexity, cost, and power consumption forever. the model breaks down eventually.
Moore’s Law stipulates that the transistor count of processors doubles every 12-24 months. The increase in core complexity of processors has been a consistent trend for decades, and is unlikely to change any time in the near future.
The trend now is towards multicore processors sporting SMT, and Intel has lead the way with HyperThreading. I think we will only continue to see more and more transistors packed into a single die.
The important item here is that if the switch to metal gates & oxide can be accomplished in the next few years then upto half the power budget may be available for more performance or lower power consumption instead of leakage. That can only be good for all consumers.
“The trend now is towards multicore processors sporting SMT, and Intel has lead the way with HyperThreading. “
Intel didn’t invent multicore-CPUs.
Somewhere here I have a CPU from Masspar lyiong around (I’ll post a pic if I find it).
It has 32 32Bit-Cores. And if I’m not mistaken the minimum-configuration of their computers had 32 of these chips (32×32=1024 cores).
Intel still has a long way to go to get even close to what’s been availabel in 1995
Intel didn’t invent multicore-CPUs.
I certainly didn’t say they did, and for that matter HyperThreading P4s aren’t even multicore, they simply have two decoders which can utilize the overly-idle execution units of the P4 as a single mispredicted branch results in about two dozen cycles before the pipeline can be refilled. HyperThreading is currently the most visible SMT implementation around, and following the release of HT P4s several other CPU manufacturers, namely IBM and Sun, announced their SMT-based designs, the Power 5 and Niagra respectively.
Intel still has a long way to go to get even close to what’s been availabel in 1995
Multicore SMT implementations will far exceed what can be done with HyperThreading, however HyperThreading is what introduced SMT scheduling policies to commodity operating systems such as Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD.
“I think Microsoft learned that making a console with the same ISA as commodity computer hardware only makes it that much more easier for people to use it for purposes they didn’t intend, such as the XBox Media Player. Using an ISA that doesn’t allow them to set page permissions only makes the bootloader that much easier to hack. From a console hardware perspective PPC is a much better choice than x86.”
i don’t agree with you on this. someone who can hack an x86 xbox can most probably also hack an PPC xbox. how many people are really buying xbox’s to hack anyway. They have not sold all that many of them in total.
“Moore’s Law stipulates that the transistor count of processors doubles every 12-24 months. The increase in core complexity of processors has been a consistent trend for decades, and is unlikely to change any time in the near future.”
Intel makes ovens with suboptimal heat (power) to performance ratio. A change in architecture is one way to tackle that. One of the problems for xBox has been the japan market where the Xbox is considered to be too big and too power hungry. if they keep pushing intel micro-ovens then they can kiss japan goodbye. the brute force approach (moore’s law) has limits too.
i also doubt that MS would jump to ppc for windows but i don’t doubt that they appreciate having a plan b.
i don’t agree with you on this. someone who can hack an x86 xbox can most probably also hack an PPC xbox.
Maybe, but then if it isn’t as common an architecture as x86 is it’ll be harder to get more interesting things to run on it since the code isn’t already written- like the Xbox Media Player he mentioned. Try to read what people say a little more.
“Try to read what people say a little more.”
you might try the same. the relevance of hacking is a function of how much it is actually being done and i really don’t think its happening all that often . i mentioned that. there are a lot more video games players than hackers.
moreover the point is this if the person can hack they are evidently pretty technically savy, they’ll make use of the powerpc xbox just as they will of an x86 chip. It just might take a little longer.
regardless i really doubt hacking is the reason why microsoft is switching. size and power consumption are far larger issues.