Intel: We Will "Blow Away" the PowerPC 970
This is kind of funny. Two unreleased chips battling it out. If Intel feels the need to respond to the 970 it sounds good to me.
<a href="http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1612" target="_blank">Intel: We Will "Blow Away" the PowerPC 970</a>
which then later links too ...
<a href="http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20628.html" target="_blank">Could IBM Be the Next Computer Chip King?</a>
[posters note] I'm sooooo tiered of news stories that link to stock quotes. You think that would have died with the .com bubble burst?
<a href="http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1612" target="_blank">Intel: We Will "Blow Away" the PowerPC 970</a>
which then later links too ...
<a href="http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20628.html" target="_blank">Could IBM Be the Next Computer Chip King?</a>
[posters note] I'm sooooo tiered of news stories that link to stock quotes. You think that would have died with the .com bubble burst?
Comments
[quote]If IBM were to market the chip not only to Apple, but also to Windows PC OEMs, it would be a revolution: a 64-bit chip that could scale from desktops to the high end of mid-range Wintel-class servers.<hr></blockquote>
HELLO?! It's a different ISA. 970 instruction set != Intel instruction set.
[quote]Performance is a moving target, however, and Intel contends it will blow away any power advantage the 970 currently holds with its next Itanium, dubbed "Deerfield," to be previewed in February at its developer forum.<hr></blockquote>
Although they do mention power as in watts before I think here it's ambiguous what they mean by "power" here. CPU power? Electrical power?
This is good. This is very good. Moto who?
I want one of those, running OS X.
The Itanium should be in the same league as the Power4+ (or soon, 5), NOT the 970.
If I'm not missing something huge here, it sounds like Intel is saying:
"Our top-of-the-line Itanium for high-end servers will just beat the next $3000 PowerMac."
I can settle for that. :eek:
<strong>OMG the Power4 has 128 mb of L3 cache!!?? That's awesome!
I want one of those, running OS X.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Don't you know how much one of the Power4 systems cost??
<strong>No </strong><hr></blockquote>
"Currently, all Power4 servers contain a multi-chip module that houses four processors. As a result, the smallest Power4 server, the p670, contains four chips and starts at $178,000, while the next smallest is an eight-processor box that contains two modules."
They are going to introduce something that is sub $100k, however.
<strong>Keep in mind that each processor is dual core and each core supports 32MB of L3 cache. That's a total of 64 for the chip and the lowest config is a dual chip (4 cores in total) so that comes out to be 128MB. 128MB is the Max config for the system.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Are you sure that they have a two-dice MCM now? I had thought that they were still using the four-dice MCM, which is 8 cores.
Back on topic:
So, am I reading it right? Is Intel saying that it really takes an Itanium2 (a server chip) to beat the 970 (workstation chip)?
Curious as to why Intel positions the Itanic against the 970 though, as the P4 will be scaling to some ridiculous GHZ by 2004. Unless Intel knows something about the 970 that we don't.
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
<strong>I don't think IBM is positioning the 970 as a workstation chip. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly. I was just giving Intel the benifit of the doubt there. They're comparing a high-end server chips with a (at most) low-end/entry/server or (more likely) workstation/desktop chip.
[quote]
<strong>yo frat boy. where's my tax cut?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
You didn't get one? Do you pay any taxes? <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />