IBM & Intel chew up supercomputing chart, EOL for the Pentium 4

[Q Classic]

how is transmeta doing, anyway?

[Asher]

Thue: Go Itanium!

Speaking of Itanium, Madison launches in a week at 1.5GHz. 50% faster than the current Itanium II, they say.

[Thue]

An interesting development in processor design is the move towards multicore chips and multithreaded cores. FX this article about sun and IBM's future chips should make computer enthusiasts droll, especially the part about the 32-thread niagara in 2005: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030228S0017

Also of interest is the cell processor to be used in the upcoming ps3: http://www.arstechnica.com/****erdes...ystation3.html (edit: replace "****" with "wank")

And yes, intel is doing 2-way multithreading, which they call hyperthreading. Which is really quite cool and makes me consider buying an intel processor. (If they didn't cost so much compared to low-end AMD processors, I have a low budget)

[Asher]

Upcoming Prescott-based Xeon processors are rumoured to do 4-way multithreading.

Remember that Prescott literally doubled the number of ALUs in the P4 core...so that's going to be used in either Prescott or the Xeon derivations of it.

[Thue]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
how is transmeta doing, anyway?

I haven't heard anything about them for some time, though I tend to follow the tech news. They seem to be strugling to stay afloat.
A few news items about a new processor called astro coming up, but nobody seeming very excited about it.

[Q Classic]

i've been following the news off and on, and things have been quiet from their direction lately, which is why i ask.

pity if they're not doing well, their chip was quite a creative endeavour.