Intel reworking its multiprocessor strategy?

[Yousuf Khan]

The Inquirer is rumouring that Intel is quite flustered by the
multiprocessing capacity of Opteron. It's only solution so far is to add
more cache to its Xeons. It may well have to come up with a NUMA chipset of
its own, because all it's got right now are a bunch of Serverworks chipsets
supporting it. And it may be forced to use its expensive server Gallatin
core for its desktop Extreme Editions from now on, since Prescott will be
fulfilling the role of the P4 Regular Editions.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13286

Yousuf Khan

[Gnu_Raiz]

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 19:27:06 +0000, Yousuf Khan wrote:
The Inquirer is rumouring that Intel is quite flustered by the multiprocessing capacity of Opteron. It's only solution so far is to add more cache to its Xeons. It may well have to come up with a NUMA chipset of its own, because all it's got right now are a bunch of Serverworks chipsets supporting it. And it may be forced to use its expensive server Gallatin core for its desktop Extreme Editions from now on, since Prescott will be fulfilling the role of the P4 Regular Editions. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13286 Yousuf Khan


I did get a kick out of that, and also of the fact that windows for X86-64
is delayed makes me wonder, just what is going on. I just wish Linux had
more traction on the desktop, because in a few years if Microsoft, or
Intel tried this kind of trick again, they would lose major market share.

This could be very well be the last time this trick will work, the longer
Microsoft puts off an OS the better OSS gets. I can see Sun, and IBM
being the real winners here.

Gnu_Raiz

[Yousuf Khan]

"Gnu_Raiz" <Gnu_Raiz@uptime-is-us.net> wrote in message
news:25937ef45e19abc3a8f36e029e0dafb7@news.teranews.com... I did get a kick out of that, and also of the fact that windows for X86-64 is delayed makes me wonder, just what is going on. I just wish Linux had more traction on the desktop, because in a few years if Microsoft, or Intel tried this kind of trick again, they would lose major market share.

I am starting to see that corporations may be seeing a value to a Linux
desktop within the office environment. One of the big reasons maybe the
ability to standardize the desktop remotely. There may be a way to go yet
before home desktops are running Linux. That will take a lot of games be
ported to Linux.
This could be very well be the last time this trick will work, the longer Microsoft puts off an OS the better OSS gets. I can see Sun, and IBM being the real winners here.

In just the AMD64 space, yes. Microsoft's delays are not being accepted by
the public anymore.

Yousuf Khan

[Nate Edel]

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Yousuf Khan wrote: I am starting to see that corporations may be seeing a value to a Linux desktop within the office environment. One of the big reasons maybe the ability to standardize the desktop remotely.

You missed "...without expensive system management products." There are
existing products on top of Windows that let you do that... you just pay
heavily for them (whether Microsoft SMS or something third-party).

--
Nate Edel http://www.nkedel.com/

"But Marge! I've never felt so accepted in my life. These people looked deep
into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."

[Rob Stow]

Yousuf Khan wrote:
"Gnu_Raiz" <Gnu_Raiz@uptime-is-us.net> wrote in message news:25937ef45e19abc3a8f36e029e0dafb7@news.teranews.com...I did get a kick out of that, and also of the fact that windows for X86-64is delayed makes me wonder, just what is going on. I just wish Linux hadmore traction on the desktop, because in a few years if Microsoft, orIntel tried this kind of trick again, they would lose major market share. I am starting to see that corporations may be seeing a value to a Linux desktop within the office environment. One of the big reasons maybe the ability to standardize the desktop remotely. There may be a way to go yet before home desktops are running Linux. That will take a lot of games be ported to Linux.This could be very well be the last time this trick will work, the longerMicrosoft puts off an OS the better OSS gets. I can see Sun, and IBMbeing the real winners here. In just the AMD64 space, yes. Microsoft's delays are not being accepted by the public anymore.

There has yet to be anything more than speculation about why
MicroSoft is delaying Windows for AMD64. In the absence of
a single shred of real evidence I would suggest that people
forget about these conspiracy theories and simply look at
MicroSoft's long history of missing target dates for Windows,
Office, etc. In other words, the current delay is simply par
for the course for MicroSoft.

If MicroSoft had somehow managed to release Win for AMD64 on
schedule we would all be saying, "Wow ! First time for everything."
But when MS misses the release date, instead of just saying
"What else is new ?" people go around espousing totally
unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

Personally, I would love it if the far-fetched conspiracy theories
turned out to be true and MicroSoft got badly embarrassed by it.
However, looking at what little evidence there is and applying
Occam's Razor has to lead anyone with half an ounce of brains
to conclude that MicroSoft simply missed yet another release date.

Everyone here or in any of the Windows newsgroups should have
learned long ago that when MicroSoft announces a release date
then even optimists should expect them to miss that date by
at least a year.

[Bill Davidsen]

In article <25937ef45e19abc3a8f36e029e0dafb7@news.teranews.com>,
Gnu_Raiz <Gnu_Raiz@uptime-is-us.net> wrote:

| I did get a kick out of that, and also of the fact that windows for X86-64
| is delayed makes me wonder, just what is going on. I just wish Linux had
| more traction on the desktop, because in a few years if Microsoft, or
| Intel tried this kind of trick again, they would lose major market share.

It *may* be that the time is now. IBM, Novell, Intel, all see Linux
spelled with $ in it somewhere.

| This could be very well be the last time this trick will work, the longer
| Microsoft puts off an OS the better OSS gets. I can see Sun, and IBM
| being the real winners here.

With HP and SGI moving to Linux the snowball may be headed downhill.
Granted they don't compete in the x86 market, but "one o/s from the paln
to the mainfram" does have some appeal to management. The cost of the
o/s is not the real issue, the TCO include license compliance and admin
training.

--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> CTO, TMR Associates
As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should be
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and
this we should do freely and generously.
-Benjamin Franklin (who would have liked open source)

[Bill Davidsen]

In article <vuht5uo08g069c@corp.supernews.com>,
Rob Stow <rob.stow@sasktel.net> wrote:

| There has yet to be anything more than speculation about why
| MicroSoft is delaying Windows for AMD64. In the absence of
| a single shred of real evidence I would suggest that people
| forget about these conspiracy theories and simply look at
| MicroSoft's long history of missing target dates for Windows,
| Office, etc. In other words, the current delay is simply par
| for the course for MicroSoft.

Question: does it matter *why* MS is delaying? When people choose
software do they care why something is unavailable? If "next month"
means same software, different platform, higher price, where's the
excitement?

--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> CTO, TMR Associates
As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should be
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and
this we should do freely and generously.
-Benjamin Franklin (who would have liked open source)

[Robert Myers]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 20:08:13 -0600, Rob Stow <rob.stow@sasktel.net>
wrote:

<snip>Personally, I would love it if the far-fetched conspiracy theoriesturned out to be true and MicroSoft got badly embarrassed by it.However, looking at what little evidence there is and applyingOccam's Razor has to lead anyone with half an ounce of brainsto conclude that MicroSoft simply missed yet another release date.

This is a circumstance where the conspiracy theory will be easy to
confirm. When you find out that M$ releases Windows for 64-bit AMD
and Intel (different ISA's) at the same time, you may safely conclude,
Occam's razor and all, that it is not an accident.

RM

[Rob Stow]

Robert Myers wrote: On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 20:08:13 -0600, Rob Stow <rob.stow@sasktel.net> wrote: <snip>Personally, I would love it if the far-fetched conspiracy theoriesturned out to be true and MicroSoft got badly embarrassed by it.However, looking at what little evidence there is and applyingOccam's Razor has to lead anyone with half an ounce of brainsto conclude that MicroSoft simply missed yet another release date. This is a circumstance where the conspiracy theory will be easy to confirm. When you find out that M$ releases Windows for 64-bit AMD and Intel (different ISA's) at the same time, you may safely conclude, Occam's razor and all, that it is not an accident.

Depends on which Intel ISA you are talking about. Supposedly the
64 bit Windows for AMD64 and Itanic is a write once, compile twice
situation. If the final release of both of those comes out at the
same time, then I don't think that is particularly noteworthy.

However, if a version of Windows is being developed for the
supposed Intel 64 bit extensions to x86-32 and *that* is released
at the same time as Windows for AMD64, then that would indeed by
pretty good evidence for the conspiracy theory guys to play with.

[Tony Hill]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 20:08:13 -0600, Rob Stow <rob.stow@sasktel.net>
wrote:Yousuf Khan wrote: In just the AMD64 space, yes. Microsoft's delays are not being accepted by the public anymore.There has yet to be anything more than speculation about whyMicroSoft is delaying Windows for AMD64. In the absence ofa single shred of real evidence I would suggest that peopleforget about these conspiracy theories and simply look atMicroSoft's long history of missing target dates for Windows,Office, etc. In other words, the current delay is simply parfor the course for MicroSoft.

I agree. The delay seems to have absolutely nothing to do with
pressure from Intel or any political motivation, it's simply business
as usual at Microsoft for a product to be delayed ~9 months.

FWIW it seems like the delay is mainly because they want to sync up
the release of WinXP for AMD64 with the release of WinXP SP2. This
makes good business sense, even if it is a bit of a pain in the butt
for us users.

AMD64 just doesn't have enough market share or traction yet to make it
really worthwhile for Microsoft to push it hard and support it
entirely separately from their main IA-32 code base.


That being said, I think that Yousuf does have a bit of a point in
saying that people are getting fed up with Microsoft's product delays,
regardless of the reason. It's one thing if they occasionally miss a
date, but they have been consistently missing their product release
dates for quite some time now. This is never a good idea for a large
company.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca