The Intel Assessment of Hammer, Courtesy of Anand
By Nils Dahl
Date: October 24, 2001
I skimmed Anand's Intel sponsored Hammer article. It is full of part truths, twists of viewpoints to favor Intel, and omissions that leave the reader wondering just what good it is to have poured so much effort into supporting an "old, archaic, obsolete ISA." If Anand knows anything about processors, I will eat my unwashed used socks.
I found one omission to be noteworthy. While Anand does cite the Alpha as a world class processor -- which it still is -- he fails to make the point about Itanium. Itanium is a server oriented processor -- and of absolutely no consequence to the world of individual computing tools. Alpha can be used in workstations rather nicely but may fall behind when compared with working Hammer systems. Intel has already shown rather dramatically that large, well-designed caches can turn a plain old obsolete PIII into a decent server chip - called a PIII Xeon. And the new dual Itanium systems are much, much better for serving up data. You can take that statement to the bank and deposit it. Yes, I have some inside information. See, I meet this guy in the supermarket parking lot and .....
So in a world where black and white are more properly recognized as absolute concepts that simply do not exist in the real world, we once again see massive slanting of details -- of a processor that isn't taped out yet -- by a kid who is famous for running Sandra and Quake 3 Arena on systems. Oh well.
nils dahl
You can read Nils' missive on the Hammer here.
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