Posts by Sven Dack

AMD to experts: Experts don't know jack

Sad story and the last heros?

It is a sad story. Once Intel was the monopolist and then along came AMD. AMD went from under dog to price dog, but still is nothing more than a company. AMD has delivered processors for many years and always kept up with the pace - until now. So what is the problem? The problem is that putting 4 cores on a chip-die is a *fucking* milestone in the computer industry! The challenge is to produce something that scales over all 4 corners and sides of a die. This is something Intel has not yet achieved. Intel has merely glued together two 2-cores and calls it cowardly "the first 4-core processor", knowing exactly what the challenge here is. You need to see the geometric, two-dimensional symmetry as well understand how electrons travel through a chip. The complexity of the job is then what makes it so difficult as well as challenging to produce. You do not win this challenge by glueing two 2-cores together. The performance potential that lies in a good chip design has literally gained another dimension.

So what is the damage here? There are hardly any Barcelonas available, the chip simply does not exist yet. All that got damaged were people's expectations. Do we still make news out of this? And the few chips that got sold to run and with all four cores - and a patch.

AMD is obviously in for the challenge. Even their execs feel challenged by stupid experts and wish nothing more to correct them. To me they are the last heros in an economic world where everyone is stepping back or avoiding confrontation because there may be a rational explanation for everything - there is not.

Is anyone here waiting for Intel to step out of the background and help out with showing the world the first "real" 4-core processor? After they have given us the "first" already? I do not think so.

Sven

German air passenger quaffs litre of vodka

It ain't beer!

@Ashley Pomery: Piss does not come from the udder, and men do not give milk.

Some old people are quite stubborn and it proofs that people need to make the experience of an alcoholic overdose at any age. It is not only the youth that is constantly seeking their limits. Of course, it is easier to think he did it to rebel against security. May be that the next time he is boarding a plane he is going to blow him self up to show his protest.

So this better be an example for not doing it at all rather than doing it anyway.

Sven

UK patent rules put firms at disadvantage

Where it should go to

One cannot change rules only to gain advantages! If the patent rules need a change then they need one regardless of what other countries are doing. Besides, having independent rules has the advantage of giving us a stronger position when it comes to defining the patent rules for Europe.

However, more important than this one change should be what it will look like in the future. Some centuries ago there were only a few inventions per year. Today we are creating thousands of inventions and this development continues. The next generation might already see thousands of inventions only per day. If we then hold on to rules like the church held on to the Spanish inquisition we find ourself in a future where we slap one another for simply having ideas.

Eventually these rules have to go and to let the economic competition sort it out. Some companies today do not need their patents but only keep them for defence. If they get sued they may be able to sue back and thereby settle the situation. These companies often employ many developers and scientist creating cutting edge technology that gets surpassed by its next generation only after just 6 months. No one today can compete with these companies even if they would start giving out the blueprints of their products*). For these companies there no longer is a point in holding patents for protecting their research investments. They have moved the research closer to the production process to a "just in time"-research.

Sven

*) Companies like IBM, Intel, AMD, Nvidia etc. in fact give out reference designs to support what others only call stealing.