IMHO: New World Order [of the tech industry]

Extreme Tech ^ | 8-16-2002 | Nick Stam

[JameRetief]

It's in the air, big changes are afoot. Yeah, tech stocks remain in the toilet, but underdog companies and technologies are beginning to make significant inroads, and the established superpowers are feeling less secure every day. Is this news? Not really, because it's been happening slowly over time, and certainly many ET readers have been closely following and even promoting these changes. Big power shifts are underway. The signs have been subtle and cumulative, but the one that put me over the top was IBM's recent national TV ad pushing their enterprise Linux solutions in a big way (more fervently than any past IBM ads I can remember).

[JameRetief]

FYI Ping.

[Dialup Llama]

I thought Clawhammer was coming out in 2002, not first half 2003. ???

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The next few years are going to be very exciting!

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[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The note was in reference to Sledgehammer not Clawhammer!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I should have included this:

AMD has a huge opportunity to garner server design wins with SledgeHammer (Opteron), particularly in the 2-8 processor range, when it ships in the first half of next year.

[SamAdams76]

Nvidia is getting hammered as they've never been in recent times.

Call it the WIRED jinx. A few months ago, Nvidia was featured on the cover of WIRED as "The Next Intel." Almost everytime WIRED runs a puff piece like this on a company, they take a beating shortly thereafter.

[Nick Danger]

Does anybody remember the book The Soul of a New Machine? There are a lot of parallels in that book to what Intel is going through today.

Soul of a New Machine tells the story of the Data General MV-8000 "Eagle" minicomputer. This machine saved Data General's bacon in the early 1980's, when it was being clobbered by Digital Equipment's 32-bit VAX machines.

The parallel here is the transition from one size architecture to the next. In that case it was the transition from 16-bit minis to 32-bit machines. In theory Data General should not have been nearly as far behind Digital in reaching the market with a 32-bit machine. There was in development, at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, a truly magnificent machine that would have put Digital's VAX to shame. But it just kept slipping down the calendar because of technical challenges associated with its advanced design. Meanwhile, Digital was cleaning Data General's clock in the marketplace.

The MV-8000 "Eagle" was Data General's "Yamhill." As the Magnificent New Machine from Raleigh-Durham continued to march down the calendar, engineers at Data General's Southboro headquarters eventually got the green light from DG's president to begin work on a crash project to save the company's butt. Soul of a New Machine details the struggles of those engineers as they tried to do in months what their peers in North Carolina had been working on for years -- create a competitive 32-bit machine. They did that by essentially taking the 16-bit DG Eclipse line and stretching the damned thing to 32-bits... the same trick AMD has done with 'Hammer' and the same thing Intel reportedly has under wraps in 'Yamhill.'

The crash project worked, and DG announced the "Eagle" project as the MV-8000, and they sold a bunch of MV-class machines for a long time. One of the best things it did for users was run their 16-bit code, a feature which made it much easier to justify than an all-new architecture would have been.

The Itanium of this piece, the Magnificient Machine From Raleigh Durham, was abandoned by DG but did surface a couple of years later from a startup founded by the crew that had been building it. That machine fell on its butt and the company sank without a trace after burning through a few rounds of venture capital money.

If history is a guide, don't bet on Itanium.

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Want on or off? Just holla!

Got root?

[general_re]

Except there's one difference - Itanium and Itanium2 are IA-32 backwards-compatible. There's no need to ditch legacy code in moving to IA-64 on Itanium.

[RightWhale]

Pulitzer Prize, not bad.

[stainlessbanner]

Nice choice of peguin graphics, rdb3. That one is a keeper!

[rdb3]

I have a TON of 'em! Check your FReepmail.

[Drammach]

Put me on the Ping list, please.
Thanx.

[rdb3]

You got it.

[ShadowAce]

Where do you come up with these, anyway? Can you point me to 'em?

[rdb3]

Here, here, and here.

[ShadowAce]

Thanks. Got 'em bookmarked

[Slingshot]

About two years ago IBM stated that they were working with Linux to install and use it in EVERYTHING they made. They are only doing what they said they would do.

Thought on Microsoft: Cringely made a statement I agree with and it appears to be coming true.

For the Justice Department to have attacked MS the 'way' they did and are continuing to do will over the long term reduce the use of English on the internet. This will occur since most of computer users in the world use MS as their OS they needed to use English. To use Linux will allow the use of many other languages more easily.

Alexander the Great proved the value of one language when it came to trade. He designed his own language to be used for trade and taught it around the known world(Koina Greek). It produced such efficincies in trade transactions that great wealth was formed quickly.

We on the other hand are going in the opposite direction. Wonder what we will produce?

Well, it's only money.

[beckett]

I do remember that book. A good read, as I recall, although for the life of me I could never have recited the particulars as you have.