IBM hinting the power of the 970???

[aethier]

I was reading my usual websites, when i came across this... http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7641 It states that a guy over a IBM said that AMD will be out of buisness withen 5 yrs... he said that it will be only IBM and Intel doing 64bit chips... so i was thinking that maybe the 970 will be more powerful then we think???

-aethier

 

[Catfish_Man]

Nah, it's just that AMD's too small to compete. They're losing money rapidly, they don't own their manufacturing facilities, and they're having to bet the whole company on each new generation of processors. I think Motorola will still be doing 64 bit, but the other ones are going down (Alpha's pretty much dead, so is MIPS, Sparc might still be around). It's going to be Itanium vs. POWER with a few little guys around the edges.

 

[P-Worm]

That scares me. AMD always seemed like the good guys to me. It would please me more if hte article said that Intel would go out of business in 5 years (even though that won't happen) just because I don't like their business practices.

But if this means ultimate chips are coming to the Mac, then I'm all for it.

P-Worm

 

[Chaszmyr]

I am mad at AMD right now... AMDs new Athlon prices are back up to the same cost as the new Pentium4s

 

[lmalave]

Originally posted by P-Worm
That scares me. AMD always seemed like the good guys to me. It would please me more if hte article said that Intel would go out of business in 5 years (even though that won't happen) just because I don't like their business practices.

But if this means ultimate chips are coming to the Mac, then I'm all for it.

P-Worm

Think of it this way: it'll go from a chip war to a true platform war. AMD has pushed Intel to speed up development and lower prices, leaving IBM/Moto in the dust. But with AMD gone, Intel prices will go back up, making IBM more competitive. But this will just trigger a battle royale between Intel and IBM that will REALLY push the envelope and benefit consumers, since we're talking Clash of the Titans instead of David vs. Goliath.

 

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by lmalave


Think of it this way: it'll go from a chip war to a true platform war. AMD has pushed Intel to speed up development and lower prices, leaving IBM/Moto in the dust. But with AMD gone, Intel prices will go back up, making IBM more competitive. But this will just trigger a battle royale between Intel and IBM that will REALLY push the envelope and benefit consumers, since we're talking Clash of the Titans instead of David vs. Goliath.

It depends if IBM cares enough. In the server world, it's definitely going to be IBM vs. Intel (and Linux vs. Windows). In the desktop world... it might be IBM vs. Intel, or IBM could just decide not to bother competing with desktops.

 

[ddtlm]

Catfish_Man:

Nah, it's just that AMD's too small to compete. They're losing money rapidly, they don't own their manufacturing facilities, and they're having to bet the whole company on each new generation of processors.

AMD does own their own fabs, and their next generation of chips is awesome, apparently providing per-clock performance just about the same as the PPC-970 (I forget if that was for an Opteron or just a Athlon 64). Not bad for x86, huh? Also, AMD's chips are almost certainly going to clock higher than the PPC-970.

 

[Telomar]

Originally posted by ddtlm
AMD does own their own fabs

They have Dresden. From memory all their fabs in Texas are either closed or shutting down and they are increasingly relying on contracting to external companies.

Originally posted by ddtlm
Their next generation of chips is awesome, apparently providing per-clock performance just about the same as the PPC-970

That's pure speculation considering there has been no PPC970 actually publicly tested yet.

 

[G4scott]

Originally posted by Catfish_Man


It depends if IBM cares enough. In the server world, it's definitely going to be IBM vs. Intel (and Linux vs. Windows). In the desktop world... it might be IBM vs. Intel, or IBM could just decide not to bother competing with desktops.

The desktop processor can be a very lucrative market... Of course, developing for Mac only may not seem too appealing, but hey, ther are versions of Linux that run on RISC based processors, so if Apple or somebody else shows that making a processor for them would be worth it, to compete against intel and windoze, then I'm sure IBM would be all for it.

I have an uncle that works for IBM... I think it's with the processor division, becasue he gave my grandma this paperweight thing that is clear plastic, with a PowerPC 604 Processor in it. It's really cool. I'm wondering what he knows about the 970... Of course, I haven't talked to him in years, and he's on the better side of my family... I think I need to arrange a family get-together...