R
Robert Myers
It hasn't said that you need to keep the slots around, just the bus.
That means GPUs can be soldiered onto motherboards using PCIe lines
directly.
I *knew* you'd say that. Let's see what happens.
Robert.
It hasn't said that you need to keep the slots around, just the bus.
That means GPUs can be soldiered onto motherboards using PCIe lines
directly.
What this is supposed to be a form of derision from you? News is always
about yesterday's news.
Even optical interconnects are yesterday's news. Why not just wait for
quantum interconnects?
I *knew* you'd say that. Let's see what happens.
Robert.
But you were just telling me that optical interconnects wouldn't
happen for ten years. How could that be yesterday's news?
Let's put it this way. AMD and nVidia have just built the Maginot
Line of computer technology, and you are offering tours.
At some point everything is yesterday's news compared to some other news.
Speaking of yesterday's news.
And yesterday's wars. Maginot Line was ineffective because it
prepared for a war that was already over.
I'll agree with part of that historical sentiment. The PCIe ruling was
mainly a sop to Nvidia because Intel was crippling the performance of
Nvidia GPUs within its latest PCIe chipsets. That's basically just a
little skirmish in a long drawn-out, multi-front war. It's a battle that
might have already finished, for all we know. However, unlike the case
of the WW2-era French Maginot Line, which was a lesson learned from a
previous major war, but this lesson made France complacent about its
defenses, this thing does the opposite. It takes a lesson from a
previous minor skirmish and completely surrounds and shackles Intel. In
other words, it's the reverse of the Maginot Line, it is an
over-reaction against Intel. As you said, Intel is now obligated to keep
carrying PCIe for several more years (which it probably would've done
anyways), but now it must clear its changes with its rivals (which it
would've never done).
Yousuf Khan
***
"Section V. is one of the most interesting, it puts some serious
handcuffs on Intel. All while forcing them to dig a hole deep enough for
light not to reach the bottom. And sit there. Smiling. What V. says is
that any time Intel makes a change, basically any change, that degrades
the performance of another competitor, Intel has to prove that it was
done for technically beneficial reasons.
Remember the part about PCIe changes that allegedly hamstrung Nvidia
GPUs? Well, if that happens again, the burden of proof is now on Intel
to show why they did it. Mother hen is getting jittery from all that Red
Bull, and is looking for someone to hit. Hard. Intel has to climb out of
the hole, feed the hen Valium, and then dance. Fast. And look pretty
while doing it, or WHAM."http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/08/06/more-intel-dirt-cleaned-ftc/
Yousuf Khan said:That's the way discrete graphics in laptops are done anyways. Have you
ever seen a video card for laptops, either from ATI or Nvidia? The
mobile video "cards" are really just part of the motherboard. Plus
Atom systems will still need PCIe lines, because all modern PC-Card
(formerly PCMCIA) peripherals are direct extensions of the PCIe
interfaces.
I thought PC Card was PCI, ExpressCard (which I've never actually seen
in real life) was PCIe?
Joe said:I thought PC Card was PCI, ExpressCard (which I've never actually
seen in real life) was PCIe?
Intel Guy said:If you've handled a video card made during the past 3 or 4 years, you've
handled a PCIe card.
One of the needs that fostered the development of PCI-X seemed to be
giga-bit LAN cards. But there are plenty of conventional PCI giga-bit
lan cards these days, so why was PCI-X needed for that?
Intel Guy said:One of the needs that fostered the development of PCI-X seemed to be
giga-bit LAN cards. But there are plenty of conventional PCI giga-bit
lan cards these days, so why was PCI-X needed for that?
In comp.sys.intel Intel Guy said:One of the needs that fostered the development of PCI-X seemed to be
giga-bit LAN cards. But there are plenty of conventional PCI giga-bit
lan cards these days, so why was PCI-X needed for that?
If Intel were to sell chips at a lower profit for just a few years I think AMDRobert said:One of the ironies here is that if Intel *did* keep prices
"artificially high," it would have benefited AMD, who has a hard time
selling chips at a profit.
Having 5-6 kinds of slots in common use isn't great sense, either.As to good news for me, I don't see any. A regulatory tax on Intel's
business. More obstacles to innovation. Holding on to PCI-X is *not*
good news.
Intel knows when to go the way blows, look at x86_64 vs. Itanium.Yousuf said:Actually, as I remember it, PCI-e was foisted on the consumers to avoid
them adopting AMD's Hypertransport as a standard. When AMD developed HT,
Intel had no answer to it for nearly 8 years. So it threw the
red-herring of a next generation, serial PCI in as the answer. AMD
didn't object, as it wasn't really a competitor to HT, and AMD itself
could use it. Video cards that could connect directly through HT
would've actually been much faster than PCI-e or AGP, since there would
a much smaller overhead, but it would've been proprietary to only AMD
systems as Intel would've never adopted it, even if it was free.
Bill said:If Intel were to sell chips at a lower profit for just a few years I
think AMD would vanish.
And, if AMD vanished, the EU and the US DoJ would attack Intel as a
monopoly. Intel needs AMD alive, but preferably on life-support.
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Robert Myers said:In any case, the idea that keeping prices "artificially high" harmed
competition is too laughable to repeat. We still have to endure to
all this brouhaha, no matter how ridiculous at its foundation.
In comp.sys.intel Robert Myers said:I think Intel expected its ultimate competitor to be IBM.
Intel had the financial wherewithal to starve AMD out of existence,
but, as you point out, then it *would* have had serious problems.
The strategy was to move the battle from Intel x86 vs AMD x86 to
Itanium vs.Power. Didn't work out that way, of course, but, in that
scenario, AMD would have been dispensable.
Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?
You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.