A COLUMN by highly regarded c't journalist Andreas Stiller has a reference to the 64-bit mode of Intel's forthcoming, or should it be second coming server chip, the Nocona.
According to Stiller, a beta tester has told him that "it sucks". He suggests that could be because Intel's answer to AMD64 might be because it still emulates 64-bit in some cases. It's not properly got on the iAMD64 bandwagon yet.
Further, says Stiller, HP already realises that because it's opted for AMD Opterons.
He also says that AMD is competing vigorously against Intel on the codename front with names such as Venus, Troy, Athens, Odessa, Oakville and Palermo.
Like the INQUIRER, Andreas Stiller was struck by the number of Grantsdale/Alderwood boards on show at CeBIT. Like CeBIT, c't is also based in Hannover, so for Andreas it's almost a home town show.
He talks of future AMD processors using the now famous "legless" 939 sockets. Cool and Quiet, AMD's cunning throttling plan, has promise because of Prescott's Achilles' heel, which is heat.
There's another Achilles' heel for Intel too, and that's that you can probably only plop Prescotts into Socket Ts three or four times before the whole thing goes awry.
Much more on all of this here (
http://www.heise.de/ct/04/08/020/ , in German.
Source:
The INQ!