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I hope all environmentalists throw away their harmful chemicals in solidarity against the abuse of the planet.

Discarding products already purchased will do nothing to the company that produces them. It is wasteful. Changing what you will purchase in the future is the only way to affect a company.

Edited 2006-11-24 23:58

Intel's processors are not as irreplaceable/essential as various industrial chemicals. You can choose to use PowerPC for embedded, server, and desktop applications.

NotParker, do you spend your whole waking life thinking of ways to insult and/or put down FOSS supporters?

It is sad...very sad.

desNotes

I think it's hilarious actually...makes for great reading. At least he sticks by his guns.

Nah, it was cute the first few times, now it's just old

Open your mind to different points of view. It's not that tough.

Whether you spend all day or just a few minutes, it certainly sounds like a destructive thing to do.

You are not the only one here that does it, but you do more than your fair share.

Personally, I have had enough of the bickering here...I am out permanently.

desNotes

> It only takes me a few minutes each day.

A few minutes wasted are still a wasted few minutes. Would it not be better to devote them to something contructive? 10 minutes/day is 60+ hours/year. That's a work week and a half. Given 7.5 workdays, all to yourself, to accomplish something constructive, imagine what you might do.

Positive motivations enrich the spirit, while negative motivations are poison to it.

A few minutes wasted are still a wasted few minutes.

Not if he and others enjoy the dialogue. And, I have to say, I'm glad that NotParker is around here. I want to read differing opinions. I don't want a boring, homogeneous, one-sided discussion of technical subjects, where everyone essentially agrees vehemently with one another.

A few minutes wasted are still a wasted few minutes. Would it not be better to devote them to something contructive? 10 minutes/day is 60+ hours/year. That's a work week and a half. Given 7.5 workdays, all to yourself, to accomplish something constructive, imagine what you might do.

Positive motivations enrich the spirit, while negative motivations are poison to it.

I am positively motivated to:

1) Point out the hypocrisy in the positions of the GPL cultists.

2) Annoy they GPL cultists for their non-stop diatribe against Microsoft

I'll make you a deal. You convince the cultists to stop modding me down when I'm civil and right (with references too) and you convince THEM to stop being so negative about Microsoft and I won't try to annoy them so much.

Try to remember, this is OSNews, not OSSnews. If the cult wants to preach, I'll point out the hypocrisy.

This site would be better if people actually expressed the positive things about their OS choices. Instead it seems to just a place for the cult to express hate.

However, I do find it endlessly amusing that the cult is spending a lot more time attacking fellow cultists for impure thoughts these days.

Edited 2006-11-26 19:12

NotParker, do you spend your whole waking life thinking of ways to insult and/or put down FOSS supporters?

It is sad...very sad.

Actually, it's neither sad nor anything else. Both FOSS and closed-source supporters are given to hypocrisy and the same kinds of conflicting emotions, and many people in both communities are so ideologically-driven that they can't stand being poked by people who notice their weaknesses.

Read some Mark Twain. I think you'll be happier.

ok, but i do think it's kind'a unfair. and it's not good for the competition (=consumers) either. if this is true, i think some government agency should step up and investigate this...

maybe Via can cooperate with AMD on this?!?

Sure, but that's the way the game works. Intel has many patents in this area, and any potential competitor needs to understand that this industry is extremely litigious. Via is definitely treading in dangerous legal waters here and, fair or not, Intel has a right to protect its turf with all potential tools of the legal system.

sure, sure, they should protect their intellectual property. nothing wrong there. but they try to use their patents on chipsets to prevent VIA from competition in another area - desktop/laptop processors. i think that's unfair...

Intel took VIA/Centaur to court back in 2002 and settled base on the processor patents. VIA has valid x86 designs that don't infringe on Intel.

It's definitely unfair to consumers... Unfortunately, as far as I know, it's completely legal. I just hope VIA has the guts to turn them down.

(If the last processor wars between Intel and AMD proved anything, it's that Intel needs competition. Give them no one to outdo, and they make mediocre CPUs.)

Yes, in the same way that Microsoft 'applied pressure' to PC manufacturers to 'discourage' them from bundling alternative software packages, amongst other things.

As I remember, MS didn't employ lawsuits either.

Thats just mean.

Actually, it's business

Maybe Intel is scared that nVidia will merge with Via?

Now that would be an interesting merger

I hate to see the x86 legacy go down the tubes due to legal agreements over intellectual property which should be in the public domain!

Well, I'm going to be rather happy if some new cpu replaces x86. It is a very old architecture and should have retired long ago. It survives because people just like old stuff, and they use windows, which is x86 only.

A new architecture will surely enforce better coding guidelines throughout the computer industry. I'm sick of devices that work only on 1 or 2 systems.

It survives because people just like old stuff, and they use windows, which is x86 only.

Windows runs on x86, x64 (AMD and Intel) and IA64.

Interestingly enough, 341 of the current Top 500 Supercomputers use x86 or x64. Another 35 use IA64.

In June of 2000, x86 had 3 on the Top 500.
In Nov 2003 x86 and x64 had 195 in the Top 500.
Now its 341.

Cheap commodity x86 and x64 processors are taking over the Top 500.

Cheap commodity x86 and x64 processors are taking over the Top 500.

But who's in the top ten? While half are x86, Intel is not dominating. 2 are opterons, 2 are Xeons, 1 itanium and then IBM rounds out the top 5 with Power boxes.

I'm afraid x86 is here to stay. Intel did try to come up with a replacement for it, and look at what good it did to them...

But who's in the top ten? While half are x86, Intel is not dominating. 2 are opterons, 2 are Xeons, 1 itanium and then IBM rounds out the top 5 with Power boxes.

Itanium is a RISC architecture designed by HP/Intel. It isn't x86.

I don't think anyone has made as big a jump in as short a time in terms of CPU power as Intel has done with the Core architecture which is now quad core. Think about it. If Cambridge (for example) wanted to upgrade their cluster, they coudl replace their dual core 5160's with quad core CPU's. (Maybe not today as the speed is a little slower).

Power's advantage partially revolves around a lot of cores. x64 can do that now.

>But who's in the top ten? While half are x86, Intel >is not dominating. 2 are opterons, 2 are Xeons, 1 >itanium and then IBM rounds out the top 5 with Power >boxes.
Please update your knowledgebase.
Refer to
http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/194300593

Aleast 3 Opteron based.

Cheap commodity x86 and x64 processors are taking over the Top 500.

I did not say that they aren't powerful. I know that x86 is now very much streamlined and poised to work for at least another 5 years, but we are reaching some limits that are very difficult to overcome.

Parallelisation is only going to take us so far... Some algorithms are almost impossible to run parallel. Today, the legacy x86 baggage is already heavy. Who knows what tommorrow will be? I'd rather let go of some baggage and move on.

Thomas Edison used to make houses out of nothing but concrete. I for one will abandon any of such housing than try to make it leak less.

the only reason the IT industry is still tied to x86 is called 'Windows'. Windows is very picky about what it runs on (=x86 or x86+64bit extensions) so nobody buys a computer which can't do x86. if linux was the most important OS, x86 whould have died long ago...

"Windows runs on x86, x64 (AMD and Intel) and IA64.

Interestingly enough, 341 of the current Top 500 Supercomputers use x86 or x64. Another 35 use IA64."

Look at the OS breakdown stats though:

Linux 75.20 %
Unix 17.20 %
BSD Based 0.60 %
Mixed 6.40 %
Mac OS 0.60 %

And compared to the Processor family:

Power 18.20 %
Cray 0.80 %
Alpha 0.60 %
PA-RISC 4.00 %
Intel IA-32 24.00 %
NEC 0.60 %
Sparc 0.60 %
Intel IA-64 7.00 %
Intel EM64T 21.60 %
AMD x86_64 22.60 %

It's clear that the Linux clusters are running on more than just x86, x64 and IA64. So the numbers are more about commodity architectures that will run Linux.

Isn't that what x64 does in part? I am not a CPU engineer, but I have understood it to be a more radical extension of the x86 arch...in that it cannot be equated to the previous evolutions of x86 which took it up to 32-bit. I could be completely wrong on that, though. If anyone can sum the x86 evolution up into a paragraph or two, please do so.

You are entirely correct, however, that x86 has not been replaced because of backwards-compatibility. It is only recently that hardware and software emulation has become a viable option. Until Vista, Windows could even run software written for the first Windows release. Although x86/x64 isn't going away soon, it is a good thing that MS put their foot down and did away with 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows. Although it was entirely possible to keep 16-bit compatibility (x64 chips can still run 16-bit x86), I see little need for it beyond a certain point. For change to come about, the old must eventually be retired.

How many of us out there are still running 16-bit Windows apps? If you are, I think it is finally time to give it up. The only 16-bit software I still run are some of the classic Maxis games, and I have a seperate box for that.

>I have a slimserver (http://www.slimdevices.com) >running linux now for over 500 days using only VIA >chips. And get this, it only consumes 70watts!

My very old Mitac 8355 AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Mobile @1.8Ghz/Radeon 9600Pro-Mobile/1GB SODIMM RAM/120GB HD laptop discharges ~50watts from it's li-ion battery while playing DX9c game (e.g. Titan Quest) at max performance mode.

Yeah... good idea. Its a shame I'm out of votes to mod that up.

AFAIK They don't really dominate that subsegment - I'm not sure if they even got any real interest in it.

The only real competition VIA got is the AMD Geode and naturally the widelyspread idea that you'll need at least 4 cores to start up firefox.

Intel saw what happened with AMD when they came out with the athlon64 and opteron line of cpu's and realized what a small company can do with the right engineers and innovation.


I wouldn't really call 5 billion dollar AMD a "small company".

Thats his point, AMD didn't enter the market as a 5 billion company they built it from small company with good products to compete with intel.

I too am sad that VIA might be pushed out of the market, competition is good for everyone both businesses and consumers, it makes businesses work harder and innovate more with new features and it give's these new features to consumers cheaper. The best example in the PC world i can think of is nVidia vs ATI. Look at the technology they put into the hands of consumers in a very short amount of time. These new graphics cards are becoming more capable then processors.

fight it VIA.

But there is no competition "thanks" to patents. They affect both businesses and consumers negatively. I'm afraid VIA can't fight the patent war, for not being a US based company.

Edited 2006-11-27 15:44

You might see things differently if you had invested serious dollars in developing a technology, patented it, and then watched a competitor waltz in and "borrow" much of your technology. Businesses aren't charities. They owe their continued existence to investing for the future and leveraging their past accomplishments. When someone steals your past accomplishments, you don't have much to leverage.

Who stole what past accomplishments? Intel never had to give anyone the ability to design and manufacture IA32 chips and chipsets. They chose to let Cyrix do it (was it Nat Semi?). Intel has also had a choice to make cheaper chips, and integrate hardware features that accelerate expensive tasks, for a long time. VIA has actually decided to do it. No one really likes their chips in performance terms, but there's no middle ground. Even a Celeron-M system generally raises you to 2-3x the cost of a VIA 1-1.5Ghz (or are they still stuck at 1.3?).

To me, it still looks very much like, "let's get this company out of this space so we won't have to genuinely compete in it."

I would certainly consider buying a system with similar performance to Athlon XP or late-gen PIII chips, consuming very little power. Pentium-M boxes have shown to be able to reach only about double the power consumption of the VIA boards (check SPCR), and that's without the rest of the machines really being made for low poer consumption (as the VIAs are). How much per units would a 1-1.4GHz PIII+i810 (but w/ DDR or DDR-II RAM support) chip be made with new 90nm or 65nm processes? How much would a dually like that be? If under $300 for the board, chip(s), and passive cooling, fitted to the Mini-ITX or Flex-ATX standard, that would compete well against VIA (VIA's ones currently go to near $300 at Newegg, but with the $150-200 ones being the good values).

Edited 2006-11-27 17:17