interesting intel rumor floating around x86 gets 86'd... interesting read...

[ozzlo]

well not completelly 86'd just the junk...

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25496

To reduce power you need to reduce the number of transistors, especially ones which don’t provide a large performance boost. Switching to VLIW means they can immediately cut out the hefty X86 decoders.

Out of order hardware will go with it as they are huge, consumes masses of power and in VLIW designs are completely unnecessary. The branch predictors may also go on a diet or even get removed completely as the Elbrus compiler can handle even complex branches.

With the X86 baggage gone the hardware can be radically simplified - the limited architectural registers of the x86 will no longer be a limiting factor. Intel could use a design with a single large register file covering integer, floating point and even SSE, 128 x 64 bit registers sounds reasonable (SSE registers could map to 2 x 64 bit registers).

Rumours suggesting the cores will be four issue wide sound
perfectly reasonable for a VLIW processor. At least two (Hyper)threads will almost certainly be supported but more would require more registers not to mention giving them something of a naming problem - Ultra- hyper-threading?

You can of course expect all these cores to support 64 bit processing and SSE3, you can also expect there to be lots of them. Intel’s current Dothan cores are already tiny but VLIW cores without out of order execution or the large, complex, x86 decoders leave a very small, very low power core. Intel will be able to make processors stuffed to the gills with cores like this.

One interesting aspect of an architecture like this is it gives Intel the ability to learn from it and change it in a way X86 never could.

looks like intel bought 2-3 other companies and is integrating all sorts of different things together... I can see it now "WE ARE INTEL, YOU WILL BE INCORPORATED, YOUR TECHNOLOGY WILL BECOME OUR OWN"

it will be interesting to see how much of this comes true... He did make a good point though... apple did choose Intel over cell... intel must have something good brewing... we shall see...

 

[speed bump]

Yep this is one of the reasons that Iltanic as AMD calls it could infact be the AMDestroyer that they dont see.

Ed wrote something about this not to long ago.

BTW alittle bit of trivia x86 ws chosen by IBM over the Motorala style structure becuase they already had a calculator that ran x86. So its about time to get back to something more effiecent.

 

[inkfx]

Their new slogan can be "Resistance is futile". Hmm, maybe I will wait after all for these new chips, decision decisions.

 

[CoreGamer]

Lol, I just hope these new processors work out well

 

[z0n3]

Intel=Borg. All I want to know is, where do I sign up?

 

[DanIdentity]

That article is over 3 months old.

Intel announced what the next generation architecture was going to consist of at Fall IDF and proved just about everything in that article wrong.