MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-03-21 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] Lindows CEO attacks Intel's Centrino Linux lockout
|
Thanks Evan
I beleive the alpha chip works fully and with better performance
than the Intel Chips up to a very few months ago, even with
years of difference between the Alpha design and the x86 designs
which followed.
The cost of making a chip is about 40 cents, and the entire pricing
and expenses is involved with artificial scarcifty and the cost
of building the manufactoring. In the day of the Alpha, everything
was built, nothing came close to the performance, and Compact had a
choke hold on the distribution outlets. They had ALL the peices
in place.
It was only Compacts lack of desire to risk shaking up the market
which caused them to fail. The long term costs to compact for this
error can be seen today.
While the below article is ends by saying that Alpha Chips are not
wanted anymore, well .. this is still a Windows Monopoly market and
none of the major players are backing the Free Software desktop (yet).
I'd take as many Alpha's (now over 3 years old - who wants to buy a Pentium
3) as anyone wants to dedicate.
If the IA-64 is really seriously flawed, that is another issue which
Intel might need to address. But Intel, according to this article,
clearly has no desire to put out a 64 bit processor for the masses.
If this is so, then it UNDERSCORES what I'm saying. While not a
hardware guru, clearly the reals costs of manufactoring of Pentium 4's
and AI-64 chips is negligable. So the issue is marketing stratergy.
If Intel wants to bring out the AI-64 for the 'masses' with free
desktops at low cost, Intel can do this tomorrow and end the
WINTEL stranglehold, which in the future jepordizes Intels economic
future. Intel needs to be a position to innovate freely and lead.
In order for them to do that, they need to end their fear for Microsoft
and make the break. This will assure Free Softwares future and Intels.
Let's get those LINTEL machines out their, the best Intel can produce...
and the hell with Microsoft.
Ruben
On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 06:16:07PM -0000, Inker, Evan wrote:
> Ruben,
>
> While I agree with some of what you are saying, you are wrong in the
> following respects:
>
> The new IA-64 Itanium will be much much more expensive not cheaper
> Additionally they will be slower (currently top speed is 1.5 Ghz).
>
> Most importantly, if you want to be heard, Linux Distro makers like Red hat,
> Suse, and Mandrake (already out now) should not release a IA-64 bit release
> Based on Intel's Itanium based solely on the stupid design flaws of the chip
> (see Linus Torvalds rant about this
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7966)
> While RISC seemed like a good idea in theory, in practice its just too
> kludgy to be practical
>
> Linus Torvalds, Itanium "threw out all the good parts of the x86"
>
> IA64 falls flat
>
> By Arron Rouse: Monday 24 February 2003, 19:58
>
>
> LINUX CREATOR AND INDUSTRY GURU Linus Torvalds has been holding forth on the
> state of processor architecture on the Linux Kernel Archive. In words that
> Intel are likely to be far from happy with, the Finnish luminary has stuck
> the boot into Itanium. Only just falling short of calling the processor
> Itanic, his responses to some questions on processor architecture are sure
> to be music to AMD's ears.
> In a discussion on the merits of various processors, Torvalds wrote that
> Intel had made the same mistakes "that everybody else did 15 years ago" when
> RISC architecture was first appearing. Itanium tries to introduce an
> architecture that is clean and technically pure, something that just doesn't
> seem to work in the real world. He claims that Intel "threw out all the good
> parts of the x86 because people thought those parts were ugly. They aren't
> ugly, they're the 'charming oddity' that makes it do well."
>
> He almost certainly has a point. Although a 1.5GHz Itanium would be faster
> than a 1.5GHz Pentium 4, that's not the competition it has to face. The
> Pentium 4 is available at twice that clockrate and the Itanium only gets to
> keep pace by having huge amounts of cache despite all of its clever
> architecture.
>
> Clever architecture is something that has trapped others in the past. The
> Alpha processor team spent years learning that many of the architecturally
> correct ideals they had held needed to be thrown out when it came to the
> real world. According to Torvalds, "And all the RISC stuff that tried to
> avoid it was just a BIG WASTE OF TIME. Because the _only_ thing the RISC
> approach ended up showing was that eventually you have to do the hard stuff
> anyway, so you might as well design for doing it in the first place."
>
> He goes on to write, "As far as I know, the _only_ things Itanium 2 does
> better on is (a) FP kernels, partly due to a huge cache and (b) big
> databases, entirely because the P4 is crippled with lots of memory". That
> crippling with lots of memory is due to what many people describe as a major
> kludge in the Pentium architecture called Page Address Extensions (PAE).
> According to Torvalds, "the only real major failure of the x86 is the PAE
> crud".
>
> There are quite a few Xeons in particular that you will see advertised with
> 8GB or 16GB of memory. Astute observers will have wondered how a 32bit
> processor can address more than 4GB of memory. PAE is the answer. It allows
> 36bit addressing using 'pages' of memory. According to Torvalds, the Pentium
> 4 is crippled "because Intel refuses to do a 64-bit version (because they
> know it would totally kill ia-64)."
>
> AMD can take some heart at his comments. Reading between the lines, it's
> obvious that Torvalds thinks x86-64 is the way to go. "Right now Intel
> doesn't even seem to be interested in '64-bit for the masses', and maybe IBM
> will be. AMD certainly seems to be serious about the 'masses' part, which in
> the end is the only part that really matters". It's worth noting that
> Torvalds' employer, Transmeta, has licensed x86-64 so he is likely to have
> access to Hammer hardware.
>
> Intel has spent a huge amount of money developing its 64bit processor but
> the payoff in the real world is likely to take a long time. The problems
> that are being found now that the processor is out with customers are going
> to take a lot of effort to smooth over. In his scathing view on the Itanium,
> Torvalds postulates that "in another 5 years they'll get to where the x86
> has been for the last 10 years".
>
> In what could be the best news for AMD, Torvalds summarised his thoughts on
> Itanium. "Code size matters. Price matters. Real world matters. And ia-64 at
> least so far falls flat on its face on ALL of these." ยต
>
>
>
> And if you wanta 500 MHZ Alpha I can find you one for a really good price as
> no one wants these any more.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Evan
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ruben Safir [mailto:ruben-at-mrbrklyn.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 1:03 PM
> To: Bruce Perens
> Cc: rc; Inker, Evan; 'hangout-at-nylxs.com'; Ruben Safir
> Subject: Re: [hangout] Lindows CEO attacks Intel's Centrino Linux lockout
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 09:29:32AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> > I also pulled out of the Lindows desktop summit. The reason was that
> > the summit was not representative of the free software developer
> > community, and only communicated the Lindows.com viewpoint. Many other
> > companies pulled out, as well.
>
>
> Right, and this was a proper action IMO. However, the point Ray makes is
> valid.
>
> If such a heavy hand was taken with LINDOWS, then even more so it should
> have been taken with Microsoft who's attacks on the Free Software community
> is many times worse than Lindows in it's best day.
>
> Yet, Microsoft was given a free pass at Egov-OS and other places, whereas
> Lindows is at least a contributer to the Free Software community putting
> GNU/Linux on the desktop of milions of users daily.
>
> >
> > Regarding the Centrino, Microsoft has Intel over a barrel. Intel feels
> > that the IA64 chip will be a failure without Microsoft's
> > _enthusiastic_ cooperation. Not just cooperation, they need to be
> > enthusiastic. Remember what happened with the Alpha chip.
> >
>
> The stupidity of the Alpha Chip and Compact should be remmebers, not because
> Alpha was crushed by a lack of Microsoft support, but because Compact was
> too stupid to make those Alpha Chips cheap and to put and
> invest in an alternative desktop, one which was already mature and ready for
> business, in the GNU/Linux desktop.
>
> Intel shouldn't repeat this mistake and they should break from Microsoft
> entirely.
>
> If intel floods the market with $300 64 bit processor system running SUSe,
> KDE,
> Evolution and Open Office, MS is dead in 2 years....
>
>
> The problem with Compact, and repeated with Intel is they REFUSE to compete.
>
> Your a big houncho.... contact intel and let's blow open the GNU/Linux
> market
>
> Ruben
>
>
> --
> __________________________
> Brooklyn Linux Solutions
> __________________________
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__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
__________________________
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS http://fairuse.nylxs.com
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
http://www.inns.net <-- Happy Clients
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and articles from around the net
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New Downtown Brooklyn....
1-718-382-0585
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