Intel set to announce graphics partnership with Nvidia?

Chicago (IL) – Intel may soon be announcing a close relationship with Nvidia, which apparently will be contributing to the company’s Larrabee project, TG Daily has learned. Larrabee is expected to roll out in 2009 and debut as a floating point accelerator product with a performance of more than 1 TFlops as well as a high-end graphics card with dual-graphics capabilities.

Rumors about Intel’s Larrabee processor have been floating around for more than a year. Especially since the product’s official announcement at this year’s spring IDF and an accelerating interest in floating point accelerators, the topic itself and surrounding rumors are gaining traction every day.

Industry sources told TG Daily that Intel is preparing a “big” announcement involving technologies that will be key to develop Larrabee. And at least some of those technologies may actually be coming from Nvidia, we hear: Our sources described Larrabee as a “joint effort” between the two companies, which may expand over time. A scenario in which Intel may work with Nvidia to develop Intel-tailored discrete graphics solutions is speculation but is considered to be a likely relationship between the two companies down the road. Clearly, Intel and Nvidia are thinking well beyond their cross-licensing agreements that are in place today.

It is unclear when the collaboration will be announced; however, details could surface as early as June 26, when the International Supercomputing Conference 2007 will open its doors in Dresden, Germany.

Asked about a possible announcement with Intel, Nvidia spokesperson Ken Brown provided us with a brief statement: “We enjoy a good working relationship with Intel and have agreements and ongoing engineering activities as a result. This said, we cannot comment further about items that are covered by confidentiality agreements between Intel and Nvidia.”

Intel replied to our inquiry by saying that the company does "not comment on rumors and speculation."



The AMD-ATI and Intel-Nvidia thingy

In the light of the AMD-ATI merger, it is only to be expected that the relationship between Intel and Nvidia is examined on an ongoing basis. So, what does a closer relationship between Intel and Nvidia mean?

The combination with ATI enabled AMD to grow into a different class of company. It evolved from being CPU-focused into a platform company that not only can match some key technologies of Intel, but at least for now has an edge in areas such as visualization capabilities. At a recent press briefing, the company showed off some of its ideas and it was clear to us that especially the area of general purpose GPUs will pave the way to a whole new world of enterprise and desktop computing.

Nvidia is taking a similar approach with its CUDA software interface, which allows developers to take advantage of the (general purpose) floating point horsepower of Geforce 8 graphics processors - more than 500 GFlops per chip. Intel’s Larrabee processor is also aimed at applications that benefit from floating point acceleration – such as physics, enhanced AI and ray tracing.

While it has been speculated that Intel may be creating Larrabee with an IA CPU architecture, we were told there may be more GPU elements in this processor than we previously had thought. A Larrabee card with a (general purpose) graphics processing unit will support CPUs in applications that at least partially benefit from massively parallel processing (as opposed to the traditional sequential processing); in gaming, the Larrabee processor can be used for physics processing, for example.

An imminent collaboration announcement between Intel and Nvidia, which reminds us of a recent Digitimes story that claimed Nvidia was trading technologies with Intel, of course, raises the question how close the relationship between Intel and Nvidia might be. It also raises the question, once again, if Intel may actually be interested in buying Nvidia – which could make a whole lot of sense for Intel, but appears to be rather unlikely at this time. Nvidia could cost Intel more than $15 billion, given the firm’s current market cap of $12.6 billion, and the talk in Silicon Valley indicates that Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang isn’t really interested in selling the company.

But a deal with Intel, involving the licensing of technologies or even supply of GPUs could have a huge impact on Nvidia’s bottom line and catapult the company into a new phase of growth. However, a closer collaboration could be important for Intel as well: AMD’s acquisition of ATI was not a measure to raise the stakes in the graphics market or to battle Nvidia; it was a move to compete in the future CPU market – with Intel. Having Nvidia on board provides Intel with a graphics advantage, at least from today’s point of view, and could allow the company to more easily access advanced graphics technology down the road.

What we know about Larrabee


Intel has recently shared more information with the public about its intents in the realm of general purpose GPU (GPGPU). In a presentation from March 7 of this year, Intel discussed its data parallelism programming implementation called Ct. The presentation discusses the use of flat vectors and very large instruction words (VLIW as utilized in ATI/AMD's R600). In essence, the Ct application programming language (API) bridges the gap of allowing it to work with existing legacy APIs and libraries as well as co-exist with current multiprocessing APIs (Pthreads and OpenMP), yet provides “extended functionality to address irregular algorithms.”




There are several things to point out from the image above, which is a block diagram of a board utilizing Larrabee. First is the PCIe 2.0 interface with the system. Intel is currently testing PCIe 2.0 as part of the Bearlake-X (Beachwood) chipset (commercial name: X38), which could be coming out as part of the Wolfdale 45 nm processor rollout late this year or early in 2008. Larrabee won’t arrive until 2009, but our sources indicate that if you buy an X38-based board, you will be able to run a Larrabee board in such a system.

In the upper right hand corner the power connections indicate 150 watts and 75 watts. These correspond to 8-pin and 6-pin power connections that we have seen on the recent ATI HD2900XT. Intel expects the power consumption of such a board to be higher than 150 watts. There are video outputs to the far left and as well as video in. Larrabee appears to have VIVO functionality as well as HDMI output based on the audio-in block seen at the top left.
A set of BSI connections are next to the audio in connection. We are not positive on what the abbreviation stands for but we speculate that these are connections for using these cards in parallel like ATI’s Crossfire or Nvidia’s SLI technologies. Finally, there is the size of the processor (package). That is over twice the size of current GPUs as ATI’s R600 is roughly 21 mm by 20 mm (420 mm²). Intel describes the chip as a “discrete high end GPU” on a general purpose platform, using at least 16 cores and providing a “fully programmable performance of 1 TFlops.”





Moving on we can see that Larrabee will be based on a multi-SIMD configuration. From other discussions about the chip across the net, it would seem that each is scalar that works using Vec16 instructions. That would mean that, for graphics applications, it could work on blocks of 2x2 pixels at a time. These “in-Order” execution SIMDs will have floating point 16 (FP16) precision as outlined by IEEE754. Also to note is the use of a ring memory architecture. From a presentation by Intel Chief Architect Ed Davis called “tera Tera Tera”, Davis outlines that the internal bandwidth on the bus will be 256 B/cycle and the external memory will have a bandwidth of 128 GB/s. This is extremely fast and achievable based on the 1.7-2.5 GHz projections for the core frequency. Attached to each core will be some form of texturing unit as well as a dynamically partitioned cache and ring stop on the memory ring.

In the final image below you will notice that each device will have a 17 GB/s of bandwidth per link. These links tie into a next generation Southbridge titled “ICH-n” as this is yet to be determined. From discussions with those in the industry, it would appear that the external memory might not be soldered into the board but in fact be plug in modules. The slide denotes DDR3, GDDR, as well as FBD or fully buffered DIMMs. It will be interesting to see what form this will actually be implemented as but that is the fun of speculation.



The current layout of project Larrabee is a deviation of previous Intel roadmap targets. In a 2005 whitepaper entitled “Platform 2015: Intel Processor and Platform Evolution for the Next Decade”, the company outlines a series of Xscale processors based on Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing or EPIC. Intel has deviated slightly from its initial roadmap since the release of this paper: Intel sold Xscale to Marvell last year, which makes it a rather unlikely product for Larrabee – and could have opened up the discussion for other processing units.

What is interesting is that rumors that Intel was looking for talent for an upcoming “project” involving graphics started passing around already more than a year and a half ago. In August of last year, you could apply for positions on Career Builder and Intel’s own website. A current generic job description exists on Intel’s website.



Concluding note

While this is an interesting approach to graphics, physics, and general purpose processing, we will be seeing the meat in the final product as well as the success of acceptance with independent software vendors (ISVs). In our opinion, the concept of the GPGPU is the most significant development in the computer environment in at least 15 years. The topic has been gaining ground lately and this new implementation from Intel could take things to a whole new level. As for the graphics performance, only time will tell.

It will be interesting to see which role Nvidia will play in Intel’s strategy. Keep a close eye on this one.

Mysterious chip start-up to take on Intel in mobile space

Stop me if you've heard this one: "A secretive, venture-backed startup company walks into a bar and announces that it plans to take on Intel by producing a low-power x86 processor aimed (initially?) at portables and laptops."

No, this isn't a joke about about Transmeta, though former Transmeta CEO Matt Perry is also CEO of the mysterious startup in question. Just about the only thing that's publicly known about this new x86 processor company is its name and its location: Montalvo Systems, based in—where else?—Santa Clara, California. All of the rest of the information to leak out about Montalvo comes courtesy of two recent stories by CNet's Michael Kanellos, who has a source that has been feeding him the goods on the startup. Kanellos has also dug up some patents filed at the WIPO, both of which provide additional insight into Montalvo Systems' plans.

From my reading of Kanellos' report and my admittedly hasty examination of the patents that Montalvo has filed in the US and internationally, it looks like the company will rely on at least two tricks to get x86 performance/watt ratios up enough to be able to make a go of dethroning Intel's Core 2 Duo.

The first trick that the company uses is an asymmetrical multicore approach, which Kanellos likens to IBM's Cell. Something tells me that whatever Montalvo has in mind, the only substantial thing that it could possibly have in common with Cell is that it can be generally described as an asymmetric multiprocessor on a chip. Anyway, Kanellos claims that Montalvo's chip mixes a more robust, larger-footprint core with multiple smaller, more lightweight, lower-power cores so that the processor can use the smaller cores for less intensive compute work and the larger cores when more muscle is needed.

The second trick, which I was able to sort out from looking through Montalvo's patents, is that the chip contains some sort of large pool of cache joined to a fairly robust control unit that can service DMA and DRAM requests by itself without waking the main processor. One suggestion from the patent is that you could put a highly compressed framebuffer in this cache and have an IGP read from it and decompress it without waking the CPU. Ultimately, the "buffer/mini-cache" (as the patent calls it) can be used for any type of non-cacheable traffic, with the control unit and cache servicing high-bandwidth DMA requests of any type without the processor's intervention.

There's no way for me to evaluate Montalvo's technology based on some reported rumors and an afternoon with a handful of patents, so I won't even bother to try to evaluate whether the company has a chance against even a small established player like VIA, much less Intel. But I will suggest a few general reasons why I'm skeptical.
No silver bullets

First, non-process-based power efficiency improvements from one processor to the next are like all other types of generational advances in processors—each generational jump in efficiency or raw performance is the cumulative result of many small tricks and tweaks, each of which contributes a few percentage points to the overall "20 percent performance improvement" claims that you typically see with a new processor.

My point is that there's never really a "silver bullet" for getting that magical double-digit improvement to whatever metric you're trying to improve, at least not at this mature stage in microprocessor evolution. You just make a whole bunch of refinements to an existing design (yours or someone else's) to get yourself over the hump. So if someone actually does come up with a way to remix processor microarchitecture and/or the cache hierarchy that gives them, say, a 15 percent or greater performance per watt boost over Intel on mainstream consumer workloads, I'll eat my hat. And if the company that buys that winning lottery ticket happens to be Montalvo, I'll eat your hat.

The second point that I want to make is that Intel has already announced (or rather, officially acknowledged the existence of) a forthcoming product family that consists of multiple small, low-power x86 cores on a single die. The company also has a large library of core designs of varying degrees of robustness. So if asymmetric multiprocessing turns out to be anything like a silver bullet for power efficiency, Intel could announce a competing product in short order.

FAQ: Menginstall Windows XP di Mac (Tanpa Mac OS)

Kali ini saya akan menampilkan post yang saya ambil dari sebuah blog seseorang bernama adinoto yang katanya dia adalah seorang MAC geek, dan juga merangkap Linuxers. So enjoy aja....



Inti postingan tersebut (silahkan direfer sendiri untuk lengkapnya), adalah apakah dengan beralihnya Apple ke processor Intel dan dari eksperimennya bahwa produk Apple tersebut dapat langsung di install dengan menggunakan CD Windows XP (generik) yang diperuntukkan untuk PC biasa, berarti Apple adalah PC biasa, kelihatannya masih menimbulkan (dan berpotensi besar) menimbulkan kebingungan (confusing) dikalangan pengguna PC yang baru beralih ke Mac, atau pengguna Mac yang baru mau/telah berpindah dari processor berbasis PowerPC ke Intel (iBook -> MacBook/MacBook Pro).

Kelihatannya potensi kesimpangsiuran tersebut bisa besar sekali, sehingga saya merasa perlu meluruskan/berbagi informasi, sehingga masyarakat luas tidak rancu lagi.

Jawaban saya lebih kurang:

“hehehe malem-malem mo sahur dibangunin si tukul , hehehe kayaknya perlu sharing buat generasi muda nih. sebenarnya mungkin “salah kaprah” dan “expectasi” nya ketinggian. Apple tentu komputer pc biasa, seperti halnya Sun dan pc lain. Tapi kayaknya konotasi PC disini diasumsikan PC intel ya, ya Sun yang berbasis AMD Opteron juga cuma AMD dikasih box oleh Sun + dikasih Solaris x86 biasa (malah gratis) bukan Hackintosh yang dikenal selama ini buat PC generik (istilah yang lebih tepat) buat instal Mac-mac-an.

Kasus yang dilakukan Tukul kebalikan, yaitu Menginstall Windows (Wedhus biasa istilah Tukul) di Mac Intel. Experiment itu juga sudah saya coba untuk Vista 64-bit pada tanggal 12 Desember 2006

jadi apa sebenarnya cerita dibalik ini? (Share buat referensi generasi muda ), ya itu tadi Mac setelah pake Intel juga adalah PC biasa? Ya emang dari dulu juga PC biasa, cuma ganti processor aja ke Intel. Asal mula Windows juga dulu di desain multiplatform (buat arsitektur Intel, MIPS, dan PowerPC), tapi terakhir dibangun itu ya sampe mentok Windows NT 4.0 yang multiplatform, karena IBM stop ngebackup PowerPC Platform (bahkan OS/2 for PowerPC juga ga jadi keluar-keluar).

Singkat cerita (lagi males + ngantuk), loncat ke point masa kini aja deh, soal history as request aja daripada kepanjangan, ya itu tadi Mac dg Processor Intel ga bisa dibilang sepenuhnya PC biasa, tetep lebih advanced (Apple pake EFI — yaitu “BIOS” yang lebih canggih, sedangkan kebanyakan PC masih pake BIOS = dengan segala keterbatasannya). Aslinya Windows (generik biasa for Intel) tidak mendukung EFI, tapi cuma mendukung BIOS untuk booting, kecuali Windows XP 64-Bit Edition. Faktor lain selain BIOS adalah faktor Hard Disk Partition Table Layout. Windows menggunakan Partition Table yang jauh lebih primitive yaitu FAT table (yang cuma mampu mendukung 4 partisi, itu pun kalo di format di fdisk DOS cuma bisa 1 primary, partisi ke dua adalah Logical Drive, dan bisa mengandung “container” beberapa partisi logical lainnya), sedangkan Apple memilih standard yang lebih advanced yaitu GPT Table (GUID Partition Table) yang dipergunakan di Intel Itanium platform (standard 64-bit chip dari Intel yang gagal di pasaran), yang mendukung sampai dengan 32 partisi.

Jadi proses “experiment” Windows di Mac dengan processor Intel itu pada awalnya ga sesederhana sekarang, karena EFI tidak di kenal oleh Windows standard, sampe akhirnya tim “opreker” di www.onmac.net mengadakan sayembara barang siapa bisa “mengepatch” EFI di Mac sehingga support booting emulasi BIOS. Sayembara ini berlangsung awal tahun kemunculan Mac dengan Processor Intel, yang menghasilkan uang saweran 13,000 dollar buat yang menemukan trick ini. Akhirnya salah satu peserta berhasil memenangkan “sayembara” ini dan EFI bisa dipatch dengan support emulasi BIOS. Tak beberapa lama kemudian Apple mengeluarkan BootCamp. Saya suspect Apple melisensi solusi ini agar Mac berbasis processor Intel bisa mensupport emulasi BIOS, karena itu tiba-tiba (awal kemunculan Core Duo processor di Apple Mac masih harus mempatch firmware Apple nya agar bisa mendukung BootCamp — coba experiment dengan Mac mini Intel generasi pertama ato komputer-komputer (desktop dan portable) Apple yang pertama kali menggunakan processor Intel Core Duo sebelum di patch (Intel Core 2 Duo sudah dipatch dari Apple by default), pasti tidak bisa install Windows generik biasa.

Experiment lama saya pun (http://adinoto.org/?p=280 ) akhir tahun lalu pun menarik karena itu pertama kali Apple merelease produk dengan chip 64-bit, karena itu saya penasaran ingin install Windows (generik) as people knows di produk 64-bit pertamanya Apple (buat yang awam: Intel Core Duo = 32-bit processor, Intel Core 2 Duo = 64-bit processor, Intel desktop processor sudah berapa tahun terakhir adalah 64-bit processor = lihat apakah ada tulisan EM64T nya, dan instruksi 64-bit x86 ini compatible penuh dengan instruksi AMD64 = Intel melisensi instruksi 64-bit dari AMD, setelah gagal dengan processor versi 64-bitnya yaitu Itanium), namun Instalasi Vista pun tidak sederhana karena Vista (walaupun sudah mendukung EFI pada AKHIRnya = awalnya diputuskan belum, tapi Vista tidak mendukung GUID/GPT Table), nah karena itu partition layout harus di delete (bisa didelete dengan menggunakan Windows XP misalnya), baru kemudian dapat diinstall Vista.

Kenapa Windows XP bisa langsung di install di Mac berbasis Intel (tanpa Mac OS) sesuai dengan “experiment” tukul? Ya karena:

1. Windows XP tidak mendetect GUID/GPT Table, jadi proses instalasi pertama adalah memformat/merelayout partition table menjadi FAT Table. Hal ini tidak dapat dilakukan oleh Vista langsung karena Vista mendetect ada partition dengan layout yang tidak dikenal.

2. Mac berbasis processor Intel sudah mengandung EFI (standard “BIOS” yang lebih advanced = contoh bisa mendownload driver-driver yang diperlukan sebelum proses instalasi OS, atau mendukung partition s/d 32 partition), ya seperti diuraikan diatas yang sudah dipatch dari fabrikasinya untuk mengenal emulasi BIOS, seperti yang saya suspect melisensi solusi para hacker www.onmac.net (solusi emulasi BIOS ini juga karena diperlukan Apple untuk BootCampnya = BootCamp itu sebenarnya tidak lebih dari solusi “Resizing Partition ala Partition Magic di Windows ato Parted di Linux” plus membungkus semua “Driver-driver Apple Hardware di Windows” sehingga tidak merepotkan).

Pertanyaannya sendiri:
1. Apakah Anda memerlukan menjalankan Windows ONLY di Apple Hardware? (Apple dengan Processor Intel?).

Jawab:
Ya: kalo anda merasa Apple Hardware lebih menarik dan pas di workspace anda. *So far saya belum lihat kok hardware semenarik iMac 20″ Alumnium untuk ditaruh di desktop kerja anda. Apple yang slim dan tidak memakan space besar.

Tidak: Apabila alasan Anda memilih Mac karena anda menginginkan Mac OS X nya. Kebanyakan orang sudah puas dengan menjalankan BootCamp (solusi dual boot dari Apple) atau Emulator seperti Parallels Desktop ato VMWare Fusion atau CodeWeavers CrossOver for Mac.

Ya: Kalo anda ingin mencoba atas dasar ingin bereksperimen dan meningkatkan pengetahuan dan wawasan. Not bad for trying things rite?

Pertanyaan berikutnya:
Mengapa Mac sebelum ini tidak bisa diinstall native?

Jawab: Hmm mungkin ini perlu diluruskan karena definisi native ini bisa rancu. Yang dimaksud native ini apa dahulu. Kalo yang dimaksudkan native itu adalah menginstall native Windows (generik) di Mac sebelum berbasis Intel ya jelas tidak mungkin, secara arsitektur PowerPC (processor Apple sebelum Intel) atau Motorola 68K (processor Apple generasi yang sebelum PowerPC lagi) jelas berbeda dengan instruksi low level processor berbasis x86 Intel (Bahkan Itanium pun tidak compatible dengan processor Intel biasa (Pentium, Core Duo, Xeon dll) walaupun sama-sama diproduksi oleh Intel), TAPI apabila definisinya instalasi native adalah native OS ya tetap bisa saja, CARI lah sistem operasi yang dibangun native untuk platform itu, misal Linux PPC (Linux for PowerPC) atau OpenBSD (atau FreeBSD atau whatever variant BSD atau Linux) yang dibangun untuk PowerPC, atau untuk Motorola 68K (sesuaikan dengan chip yang ada di dalam Mac anda), salah satu platform OPEN SOURCE yang mendukung platform paling banyak adalah NetBSD, coba lihat dukungan platform dari www.netbsd.org

Pertanyaan lain:
Mengapa Virtual PC (dahulu milik Connectix, kemudian diakuisisi Microsoft) menjalankan Windows di Mac (berbasis PowerPC) jauh lebih lambat dibandingkan dengan Parallels Desktop atau VMWare Fusion?

Jawab:
Karena chip PowerPC memiliki instruksi low level yang berbeda dengan instruksi x86 Intel maka emulator tersebut harus mendecode instruksi tersebut (on the fly) dari instruksi PowerPC ke x86, vice versa, sehingga processornya kehilangan resource yang cukup besar (CPU Tax) jadi process yang kelihatan terlihat lambat. Sedangkan Parallels Desktop/VMWare Fusion tidak harus mendecode instruksi tersebut karena keduanya didesain untuk jalan di processor Intel sedangkan Windows sudah berbasis instruksi yang sama (sama-sama x86 instruction sets).

Lebih jauh, Apple menggunakan beberapa sistem decode yang berbeda untuk PC terutama untuk mapping grafis, Apple menggunakan BIG ENDIAN (dari besar ke kecil memory mapping) sedangkan Windows menggunakan LITTLE ENDIAN (dari kecil ke besar), sehingga performance penalty yang paling kelihatan di solusi emulasi Virtual PC adalah REDRAW di tampilan terlihat lambat karena process encoding dan decodingnya yang harus dilakukan on the fly.

Lebih jauh lagi (kalo masih mau baca) … solusi emulasi pertama di Mac untuk menjalankan Windows dibangun oleh company bernama INSIGNIA. Insignia membangun SoftPC kemudian SoftWindows (sebelum lahirnya saingan yang lebih ok, yaitu VirtualPC dari Connectix), Solusi yang dibangun Insignia bukan cuma dipergunakan di Apple, Insignia Solutions membangun juga emulasi SoftWindows untuk platform-platform UNIX commecial lainnya, misalnya SoftWindows untuk HP/UNIX, dlsb. Bahkan Windows NT (cikal bakal kernel yang dipergunakan di Windows 2000 dan Windows XP) pun sebenarnya tidak compatible dengan Windows sebelumnya (later lah untuk cerita ini kepanjangan), jadi Microsoft menggunakan solusi Insignia untuk emulasi Win16 di Win32 secara built-in mulai jaman Windows NT, sampai transisi aplikasi 32-bit sepenuhnya terjadi di platform Win32.

Pertanyaan lain:
Mengapa Windows bisa begitu popular sehingga segala acuan bisa mengarah ke Windows. Ya itu lah karena Microsoft Windows bisa diinstall dimana-mana, Bill Gates & Co. memahami potensi OEM dan Taiwan sebagai rekan kerja penghasil compatible machines for masses. Critical masses ini yang tadinya saya harapkan terjadi di platform PowerPC, ketika IBM mendukung distribusi dan standard platform PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) ato CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform), tapi tidak diteruskan karena kepentingan dan visi manajerial dibawah Louis V. Gertsner. (Ref: Baca beberapa posting di blog saya yang terkait).

Nah terus apa bedanya Mac secara hardware dengan PC biasa? Selain EFI dan layout table yang berbeda tadi, ya sebenarnya masih ada satu lagi yaitu Gerstalt (mirip ID = identifier) disetiap mesin produksi Apple, jadi setiap kali machine Mac menerima installan dari OS X bawaannya (ato versi retailnya) dia akan detect ini mesin tipe apa, configurasinya apa, dan perlu diinstall software-software apa aja, berbeda dengan PC yang apabila kita tidak tahu perangkatnya ya harus tahu perangkat apa yang terpasang dan mencari drivernya masing-masing apabila tidak ada dibawaan perangkat lunak sistem operasinya.

Nah mengapa Apple masih keukeuh (bertahan) dengan business model Hardware+OS tidak mau membuka sistem operasinya untuk bisa diinstall langsung di PC PC rakitan? Rasanya Steve & Co. masih berpendapat tidak semua orang mau repot-repot mikirin tulisan diatas, karena mayoritas pengguna adalah end-user yang secara piramida adalah orang-orang yang menggunakan komputer untuk alat kerja tanpa memikirkan kerumitan teknisnya, tanyakan saja ke Steve Jobs kenapa? Karena gua juga udah bosen bilang dibuka aja hahahaa…. karena gua juga pengen dong pake Mac murah untuk satu-dua deployment tanpa harus setiap saat membeli Mac satu unit hehehe…

Jadi apakah Intel Core 2 Duo lebih inferior dibanding PowerPC? Hmm secara arsitektur saya sih lebih demen PowerPC, secara PowerPC itu lebih efisien, dan menghasilkan Instruction Per Cycle = kemampuan eksekusi instruksi yang jauh lebih cepat dibandingkan processor Intel pada jamannya (Intel Pentium 4), namun harap diingat PowerPC yang terakhir dipergunakan adalah 2 generasi lebih tua dibandingkan dengan generasi Intel Core 2 Duo. Jadi processor Intel Core 2 Duo jauh lebih baru, dan lebih maju dibandingkan PowerPC G4 (Processor PowerPC G5 masih lebih advanced dari sisi arsitektur sehingga dapat bersaing, walaupun termasuk 1 generasi sebelum nya, hanya sudah tidak didevelop dan tidak dipergunakan oleh Apple).

Secara singkat PowerPC Mac adalah masa lalu. Saat ini Intel processor yang dipergunakan Apple merupakan generasi terbaru sehingga memiliki kemampuan yang jauh dibandingkan produk-produk Apple berbasis PowerPC masa lalu (G4, G5), nah kecuali Apple nanti mau bikin Workstation atau Server high-end berbasis IBM PowerPC G6.

Hanya pertimbangan yang lebih diutamakan adalah aspek marketing dan critical masses. Dengan menggunakan processor Intel, Apple dapat menikmati anggaran dana iklan gratis dari Intel, dan lebih dapat “diterima” oleh orang awam, karena biaya mengiklankan suatu produk seperti processor memakan anggaran yang paling besar dalam aspek nilai jual produk. BTW, sangking besarnya bargaining power Apple untuk menggunakan produk Intel coba perhatikan dua hal:

1. Apple satu-satunya perusahaan yang diizinkan membundle produknya tanpa logo Intel Inside

2. Diskon Apple paling besar, karena Intel menginginkan Apple berpindah ke processor Intel sejak 20 tahun yang lalu. Andy Groove (CEO Intel masa lalu) dan Steve Jobs (CEO Apple) merupakan teman baik (pola Bapak-Anak), sehingga produk Apple bisa bersaing (dan lebih murah) dibandingkan produk pesaing (HP/DELL etc).

3. Apple memperoleh produk pertama di industri (Intel Core 2 Duo etc) sehingga Apple bisa menawarkan spek yang lebih tinggi dengan harga yang sama dibandingkan produk pesaing (dalam satu dua kasus Apple menikmati keuntungan yang lebih besar).

Koment saya: Jadi bener apa yang saya ramalkan dulu ketika AMD berniat membuat processor baru berbasiskan teknologi 64 bit, sedangkan Intel sendiri masih merasa belum saatnya terjun di dunia 64 bit. Waktu itu Intel masih berkutat dengan Pentium 4 2,6 Ghz LGA sampe yang paling parah Pentium 4 EE (Extreme Edition atawa Error Edition).

Kenapa saya bilang Error Edition? Karena konsumsi watt dari P4 ini sangat besar sekali (watt yang dikonsumsi bisa mencapai 100 watt, bahkan ada rekan penjual komputer rakitan yang dikomplen oleh pelangganya bahwa saking panasnya P4 EE ini, soket processor sempat leleh sedikit sampai merekat erat di processornya so usaha untuk menjual kembali motherboard dan P4 EE secara terpisah gagal karena motherboard itu udah kadung cacat. LELEH GILA SOCKETNYA MAS!!!) dibandingkan Athlon 64 yang dimana AMD belajar dari seri Athlon XP-nya yang lebih panas dari Pentium 4 (tapi jauh lebih cepat)dan di seri 64 bit-nya AMD memasangkan instruksi-instruksi baru yang tidak boros listrik, sehingga tidak menghasilkan panas yang berlebihan.

Ditambah lagi memory controller yang biasanya di tempatkan di chipset northbridge motherboard, dipindah secara integrated di dalam core processor. Walhasil, aliran data dari memory ke processor bener-bener lancar dan langsung, tanpa harus melewati chipset northbridge. Tapi yang paling lucu, kenapa ya Intel kok ga bisa bikin instruksi 64 bit-nya sendiri. Itanium gagal, so minta lisensi 64 bit instruction (bayar ke AMD hehehe)dari AMD dan di aplikasikan ke processor mereka seperti Pentium D sampai Core 2 Duo Extreme... So buat yang Intel maniac, inilah fakta tentang processor tercinta kalian...

Sekali lagi enjoy aja

Intel, Transmeta Kiss and Make Up

Intel has patched up hurt feelings with Transmeta with a big fat check.

Share prices of Transmeta more than tripled following a ground-shaking settlement with CPU market leader Intel. Intel has just agreed to a $250 million USD settlement with Transmeta, perhaps the biggest financial event in Transmeta's rocky history.

Transmeta, founded in 1995, has had its share of ups and downs. It focuses on the design of power efficient architectures and its resume includes the Crusoe and Efficeon x86 architectures. The company at one time employed Linux legend Linus Torvalds. In the 1990s it tried to compete with Intel and AMD in the processor market, but could not become profitable and faced struggling sales.

The company made lots of headlines in October 2006, when it filed suit against Intel on infringement of ten patents. Not long after the suit was filed, Transmeta decided to do away with its engineering services departments in February 2007. This meant that Transmeta no longer would develop new hardware or software, but would exist solely to market its existing intellectual property. Despite this drastic shift, Transmeta showed signs of life when it received a $7.5 million USD cash infusion from AMD for use of its patent portfolio.

Intel countersued Transmeta in January, claiming Transmeta infringed on seven Intel patents.

Now that the pair has made up -- how exactly the massive settlement will effect Transmeta has yet to be seen. The effects on the stock were instant, though as prices per share jumped from $9.75 yesterday to $26.01 today.

In exchange for the settlement, Transmeta is getting cozy with Intel -- it will grant licenses to any of its existing patents, and any new patents it is granted over the next 10 years. It will also transfer some technology rights. Among these rights is LongRun2, a technology which reduces unwanted leakage of electrical current from chips.

Transmeta's President and Chief Executive Les Crudele was excited about the deal. "We believe that this arrangement will create value for Transmeta stockholders both by realizing immediate financial value for our intellectual-property rights and by supporting our technology development and licensing business going forward," said Crudele.

What exactly his comments on "technology development" allude to, if anything material, has yet to be seen because Transmeta currently has no real development resources.

Transmeta may have a rocky history and an uncertain future, but it has scored a major victory and has formed an unlikely relationship with a former rival.