The great leveling

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 12:40:07 GMT, Robert Myers
wrote:

George Macdonald wrote:

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 13:02:54 GMT, Robert Myers
wrote:


George Macdonald wrote:


snip


IBM sold Power 440 IP? Are you talking about the AMCC deal? Didn't look
like an outright sale to me - just a license of some IP with a takeover of
some responsibility for logistics & marketing.

quote

http://www.siliconstrategies.com/art...estid=20 8096

IBM to sell PowerPC line to AMCC for $227 million (Updated)

Silicon Strategies
04/13/2004, 8:35 AM ET

SAN DIEGO--Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) on Tuesday (April 13)
announced a plan to acquire intellectual property and the assets
associated with IBM Corp.'s 400 series of embedded PowerPC standard
products for about $227 million in cash.

AMCC has also taken a license for IBM's Power Architecture. IBM will
continue to manufacture the PowerPC products for AMCC. The agreement
also provides AMCC with access to IBM's advanced CMOS process and
systems-on-a-chip (SoC) design methodology.

/quote

In this article the same day:
http://www.reed-electronics.com/elec...d+power+and+ip
the headline is "IBM Adds AMCC to Power Everywhere Lineup" - same $227M but
a different angle on the same story. It also says "to license IBM
intellectual property and acquire a *portion* of IBM's 400 series of
embedded PowerPC standard products." I'd say, from this perspective, this
looks more like an announcement of a partnership with investment by the new
partner.

The fact that there are underlying required licencses associated with
the Power architecture is an important detail (just ask anybody who has
a Unix source code license), but short of IBM completely divesting
itself of the Power architecture, I don't see how much more of an
outright sale the deal could have been.

Looks different to me.shrug

I don't think their picture
is anywhere as bleak as you paint it and I don't see, with the IBM
infrastructure, why a processor group would have to show a profit on its
own.


"Bleak" is a pretty loaded word.

Power _doesn't_ have to show a profit on its own, and it could continue
indefinitely as the copestone of IBM's high end strategy. IBM has
really gotten smart about open source, and maybe it will be able to
sustain critical mass for Power with it's low-end Linux-only boxes. Or
maybe it won't.

But if it brings in services deals, who cares? I'm not sure what the
current situation is but just a coupla years back there were several *big*
corps who backed off on their "distributed server" initiatives and
recommitted to a "big iron" strategy. There's a certain comfort in having
a centralized computing glass house. Quite honestly I don't know how any
corp manages to run a corporate computing environment based on distributed
Windows 2K/2003 Servers - it's a bleedin' nightmare... plug 'n' play, point
'n click?... yeah RIGHT.

snip

The problem (as always, from my limited perspective) is that none of the
revolutions in microprocessor design have really been revolutions in the
sense that they answered questions there was a big payoff for anwering.
Intel thought IA64 was a revolution that answered an important
question (how to get significant parallelism without recoding
everything), but other architectures have been just about as successful
(or unsuccessful) in achieving the same goal.

It's not as if there were no important questions worth asking--latency
tolerance, moving data around as the virtual real estate gets larger,
and, of course, power consumption--come to mind, but the demand drivers
just aren't big enough to drive a real revolution. Maybe if (say)
google succeeds in its plans for world domination and needs a real low
power revolution the way HPC needs a low power revolution.


Revolutions are rare and I don't see why they'd be necessary as a sign of
success. Steady progress with the odd discontinuity works fine for me.:-)


You and Keith, except that I think, given the choice, Keith would
dispense with the odd discontinuity.

How many revolutions are at play here? Automatic computation, c. WWII.
The transistor, 1947. Integrated circuits, 1957. The microprocessor,
c. 1970. The personal computer, (as a real revolution, 1977-1981,
giving the Apple II and the IBM PC a tie). I think we're overdue.

From my POV, Apple was insignificant in the corporate sphere... and it took
a while for even the PC to gain real trust, creative P.O.s
notwithstanding.:-) Miniaturisation is great but other than
that....bah!... convenient but certainly not a quantum jump.


What will the Chinese do?... do they
matter?shrug

Of course they matter, but not soon enough for any but the most foolish
to speculate how.


So far they're showing signs of going in the wrong direction - unique
national standards for wireless could be just the start of something bigger
and more destructive... their version of "playing by the rules"?? It's
hardly a homogeneous culture so, with increased awareness of freedoms
enjoyed elsewhere, I expect lots of Chechnya type unrest and attempted
devolutions in the future. Many in the West who fear them economically
make the mistake of regarding them as a monolithic society - IMO no where
near as dangerous as they are painted.

Fortune magazine has a new article on Intel in China and on the
potential competitive threat from a Chinese semiconductor industry
(available on the net, but only with a subscription). The Chinese
apparently already have a home-grown chip that would compete with the
Pentium II.

I believe they've had that chip, or some development on it, for a couple of
years now - not really going anywhere fast. I'm sure they can do it but if
it's an indigeneous only solution, it's of little interest to me... unless
they arrive at something which fits your "revolution" criteria.:-) If they
think they can unilaterally carve out new standards to avoid licensing IP,
e.g. on connectivity, and turn around and impose them on the rest of the
world, they are in for some serious realignments of strategy.

The bigger picture for China over the longer haul? I have the same
skepticism you do: big, unwieldy society with adolescent ambition and
tremendous infrastructure problems.

They're already building suburban executive "residential parks" with themes
based on a few major western up-market "dormitories" - can't remember the
exact ones but they've cadged a design layout which resembles some toney
inner London area... and one from NY IIRC. When the peons get a glimpse of
how the other half lives - watching the Lexus, Cadillacs and BMWs sweep
past as they hack a piece off the lump of coal in the street to keep them
warm for the night - who knows... could bring back the little red books and
a "cultural revolution"... again.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

George Macdonald wrote:

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 12:40:07 GMT, Robert Myers
wrote:

George Macdonald wrote:


IBM sold Power 440 IP? Are you talking about the AMCC deal? Didn't look
like an outright sale to me - just a license of some IP with a takeover of
some responsibility for logistics & marketing.

quote

http://www.siliconstrategies.com/art...estid=20 8096

IBM to sell PowerPC line to AMCC for $227 million (Updated)

Silicon Strategies
04/13/2004, 8:35 AM ET

SAN DIEGO--Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) on Tuesday (April 13)
announced a plan to acquire intellectual property and the assets
associated with IBM Corp.'s 400 series of embedded PowerPC standard
products for about $227 million in cash.

AMCC has also taken a license for IBM's Power Architecture. IBM will
continue to manufacture the PowerPC products for AMCC. The agreement
also provides AMCC with access to IBM's advanced CMOS process and
systems-on-a-chip (SoC) design methodology.

/quote


In this article the same day:
http://www.reed-electronics.com/elec...d+power+and+ip
the headline is "IBM Adds AMCC to Power Everywhere Lineup" - same $227M but
a different angle on the same story. It also says "to license IBM
intellectual property and acquire a *portion* of IBM's 400 series of
embedded PowerPC standard products." I'd say, from this perspective, this
looks more like an announcement of a partnership with investment by the new
partner.


The Reed Electronics article does read quite differently. I knew I'd
live to regret getting all my education in trade schools. Can't guess
which is the more accurate rendering.

snip


Power _doesn't_ have to show a profit on its own, and it could continue
indefinitely as the copestone of IBM's high end strategy. IBM has
really gotten smart about open source, and maybe it will be able to
sustain critical mass for Power with it's low-end Linux-only boxes. Or
maybe it won't.


But if it brings in services deals, who cares? I'm not sure what the
current situation is but just a coupla years back there were several *big*
corps who backed off on their "distributed server" initiatives and
recommitted to a "big iron" strategy. There's a certain comfort in having
a centralized computing glass house. Quite honestly I don't know how any
corp manages to run a corporate computing environment based on distributed
Windows 2K/2003 Servers - it's a bleedin' nightmare... plug 'n' play, point
'n click?... yeah RIGHT.


Check this out:

http://www.platform-solutions.com/do...7rha.final.pdf

snip


From my POV, Apple was insignificant in the corporate sphere... and it took
a while for even the PC to gain real trust, creative P.O.s
notwithstanding.:-) Miniaturisation is great but other than
that....bah!... convenient but certainly not a quantum jump.


This is a bit of history I wouldn't have to count on google to find for
me...if only the details (like who and where) weren't so fuzzy in my
mind. It was, in any case, one of the principals to the story who
reported that "I (He) told him (me) that it [Visi-Calc] would sell if it
would run on the Apple II." The link between the success of the Apple
II and VisiCalc is a commonplace of computer legend, even without my
foggy memory.

_That_ makes a revolution? Well, yes. For a few thousand dollars, you
could buy a machine that, in many cases, would pay for itself quickly
merely by doing the monthly budget projections. It took only one
demonstration to sell just about anybody who had ever had to do a page
of numbers that had to add up as rows and columns. And that _was_ the
basis of the PC revolution. And that _was_ a revolution.

Nobody bitched that I left out the IBM 360.

RM

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:36:22 -0400, Tony Hill wrote:

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:02:54 -0400, keith wrote:

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 02:44:45 -0400, Tony Hill wrote:
ARM, of course, is probably the top selling ISA out there these days
(with the possible exception of some really low-end/low-cost stuff
like 6805 or 8051), and it will probably continue doing well on the
really low-power front.

ARM isn't low-cost? 8051 isn't low cost? I guess PICs aren't "low cost"
either then. ;-) I think you'll find rather a large number of PICs (and
8051s) out there. ;-)

Err, unless my eyes are deceiving me, I mentioned that 6805 and 8051
ARE the "really low-end/low-cost" stuff. PIC falls into this category
as well, even if the top-end PIC chips cost $20-$30 in volume.

You didn't mention PIC as a "top selling ISA", but did ARM. ...then went
on to name 8051 and 6805. I'd venture to say there are far more PICs and
8051s (Billions and Billions) served than ARMs.

x86, meanwhile, seems likely to continue dominating the desktop and
workstation market for the foreseeable future while constantly taking
away server marketshare from the traditional big-iron machines.

I don't see x86 dominating the "workstation market" today. I think it
easily could, but I don't see it today.

I'd say that it does, with the possible exception of certain high-end
niche markets. Certainly there are still 64-bit Unix workstations being
sold, but almost all of those are being abandoned. Sun is hurting in
this market badly, SGI is getting out of it altogether and HPaq is doing
the same with their PA-RISC and Alpha lines. I suppose there still are
HP's Itanium workstations, but from what I've seen they aren't exactly
racking up record sales by any stretch. That pretty much leaves IBM's
Power workstations as the last bastion of new, high-end Unix
workstations.

It looks like that's where thigns are headed, but today there are still
boatloads of Unix "workstations" around.

Of course, I guess a lot of this depends on just how you classify
"workstation" vs. "desktop". Depending on that classification the exact
marketshare for any one ISA could vary greatly.

Yes, I guess we're going to have to define "workstation" again (though I
don't think this group has ever agreed on what constitutes a
"workstation").

At least.. that's how I see things going. Now, if you don't mind
stepping aside, I have a few more darts to throw :

...never stand in the way of a Canuckistani with sharp weapons.
^
+-- see: even I can learn how to
speel.

And don't you forget it!

"Stand in the way", or spell? ;-)

--
Keith

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 12:24:12 -0400, keith wrote:

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:36:22 -0400, Tony Hill wrote:

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:02:54 -0400, keith wrote:

ARM isn't low-cost? 8051 isn't low cost? I guess PICs aren't "low cost"
either then. ;-) I think you'll find rather a large number of PICs (and
8051s) out there. ;-)

Err, unless my eyes are deceiving me, I mentioned that 6805 and 8051
ARE the "really low-end/low-cost" stuff. PIC falls into this category
as well, even if the top-end PIC chips cost $20-$30 in volume.

You didn't mention PIC as a "top selling ISA", but did ARM. ...then went
on to name 8051 and 6805. I'd venture to say there are far more PICs and
8051s (Billions and Billions) served than ARMs.

I did indeed forget about PIC, but it falls into that same category as
the 8051 and 6805, ie yes billions and billions are sold, but they are
REALLY low-end stuff and don't really play into the same markets at
all.

ARM at least sells in some things like handhelds, set-top boxes and
gaming consoles, putting at least in shooting distance of the high-end
CPUs.

The important distinction here is that you don't really see anyone
selling application software for 8051 or PIC, it's all pretty much
customer, application specific embedded stuff. With ARM, on the other
hand, I can go out and buy MS Word for PocketPC and that sort of
thing.

I don't see x86 dominating the "workstation market" today. I think it
easily could, but I don't see it today.

I'd say that it does, with the possible exception of certain high-end
niche markets. Certainly there are still 64-bit Unix workstations being
sold, but almost all of those are being abandoned. Sun is hurting in
this market badly, SGI is getting out of it altogether and HPaq is doing
the same with their PA-RISC and Alpha lines. I suppose there still are
HP's Itanium workstations, but from what I've seen they aren't exactly
racking up record sales by any stretch. That pretty much leaves IBM's
Power workstations as the last bastion of new, high-end Unix
workstations.

It looks like that's where thigns are headed, but today there are still
boatloads of Unix "workstations" around.

Sure, they are still around because 64-bit for x86 wasn't an option
until last year. I suspect that a lot of these will get replaced in
relatively short-order (at least as compared to the old Unix servers).

I haven't seen any numbers, but I would be quite surprised if any less
than 75% of all workstation revenue came from x86.

...never stand in the way of a Canuckistani with sharp weapons.
^
+-- see: even I can learn how to
speel.

And don't you forget it!

"Stand in the way", or spell? ;-)

Both! :

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 01:06:58 GMT, Robert Myers
wrote:

George Macdonald wrote:
But if it brings in services deals, who cares? I'm not sure what the
current situation is but just a coupla years back there were several *big*
corps who backed off on their "distributed server" initiatives and
recommitted to a "big iron" strategy. There's a certain comfort in having
a centralized computing glass house. Quite honestly I don't know how any
corp manages to run a corporate computing environment based on distributed
Windows 2K/2003 Servers - it's a bleedin' nightmare... plug 'n' play, point
'n click?... yeah RIGHT.


Check this out:

http://www.platform-solutions.com/do...7rha.final.pdf

Interesting. I don't play in that space so some of the terminology is
kinda cryptic and I'm not sure what the benchmarks at the end are saying.
I'm not sure what it adds to what is already well known about trying to
emulate one architecture with another which wasn't explicitly designed for
the emulation... and emm, EPIC would not seem to suggest itself as an ideal
solution but what do I know?:-) The only real question I have is: who's
going to build it?

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??