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The problem to be solved here is not just software. How do you beat the economies of scale that standard designs have achieved? For most applications, the end

The problem to be solved here is not just software. How do you beat the economies of scale that standard designs have achieved? For most applications, the end user gets vastly more computing power per dollar spent when they buy an off the shelf design that's in large scale mass production. You could port BSD or Linux to your new architecture for a reasonable amount of money (though that's already an uphill battle selling that to a consumer). How are you going to even come close to the unit economies of scale that Intel and other large established players enjoy?

deleted 10y ago
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chongli 10y ago
The advantage Intel has built up is a tenuous one. They've had a lead in building up fabrication facilities for each new node. When we reach the final node - 5nm? whatever it is - the economies of scale will shift towards generic fabs. This will open the door to open designs such as RISC-V [0]. The future is looking bright for those who love freedom! [0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-death-of-moores-law-will-spur-innovation http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-death-of-...
- adrianN 10y ago
  Intel has a massive R&D budget. They'll probably be the first to achieve post-silicon tech if nothing dramatic happens. So the question is whether they'll be quick enough to innovate before generic chips eat their lunch.
  - chongli 10y ago
    I don't doubt that they are a front-runner for post-silicon tech. The question is whether they'll be able to sustain exponential growth in performance. I have my doubts. Radical new technologies are far less predictable than iterative ones.
gcb0 10y ago
do you need 40ghz with 32 cores or 2 cores at 1.5ghz and the garantee of full control? for personal computing, I'd take the later
- marssaxman 10y ago
  By far the latter. My computation needs have been satisfied for years now; paternalistic, insecure platform lock-in crap irritates me far more than access to cutting-edge technology would benefit me.
- zeta0134 10y ago
  For my actual day to day work? The latter, by far. I can get nearly all of my computing done comfortably on a raspberry pi. Most of what I need to do involves remote terminals via SSH, which I can run on any toaster. I do own a desktop gaming PC though. It's running Windows 10 on a respectable Intel CPU with a highish end nVidia graphics card. On it are my games. On it are only my games. If I need to do any development work, I boot that machine into Arch Linux. That's partly because I don't trust Windows, but it's mostly because the development environment is better on a Linux system anyway, for what I do regularly.
- gpderetta 10y ago
  I use daily an old core2 laptop. It peaks at 2.4Ghz, but I run it at 800-1.2Ghz when on battery. At 1.2Ghz I can browse the web just fine with JS disabled, but when I need to enable JS it starts to suffer. I can do light coding in emacs, but I wouldn't want to compile large codebases in it. So, yes, it would work fine depending on your needs, but be aware that a core 2 is not exactly a bad CPU. It is a 4-wide aggressively out of order machine with a pretty good memory subsystem. Is any of the open CPU replacements as good?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

chongli 10y ago

The advantage Intel has built up is a tenuous one. They've had a lead in building up fabrication facilities for each new node. When we reach the final node - 5nm? whatever it is - the economies of scale will shift towards generic fabs. This will open the door to open designs such as RISC-V [0]. The future is looking bright for those who love freedom! [0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-death-of-moores-law-will-spur-innovation http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-death-of-...

adrianN 10y ago
Intel has a massive R&D budget. They'll probably be the first to achieve post-silicon tech if nothing dramatic happens. So the question is whether they'll be quick enough to innovate before generic chips eat their lunch.
- chongli 10y ago
  I don't doubt that they are a front-runner for post-silicon tech. The question is whether they'll be able to sustain exponential growth in performance. I have my doubts. Radical new technologies are far less predictable than iterative ones.

gcb0 10y ago

do you need 40ghz with 32 cores or 2 cores at 1.5ghz and the garantee of full control? for personal computing, I'd take the later

marssaxman 10y ago
By far the latter. My computation needs have been satisfied for years now; paternalistic, insecure platform lock-in crap irritates me far more than access to cutting-edge technology would benefit me.
zeta0134 10y ago
For my actual day to day work? The latter, by far. I can get nearly all of my computing done comfortably on a raspberry pi. Most of what I need to do involves remote terminals via SSH, which I can run on any toaster. I do own a desktop gaming PC though. It's running Windows 10 on a respectable Intel CPU with a highish end nVidia graphics card. On it are my games. On it are only my games. If I need to do any development work, I boot that machine into Arch Linux. That's partly because I don't trust Windows, but it's mostly because the development environment is better on a Linux system anyway, for what I do regularly.
gpderetta 10y ago
I use daily an old core2 laptop. It peaks at 2.4Ghz, but I run it at 800-1.2Ghz when on battery. At 1.2Ghz I can browse the web just fine with JS disabled, but when I need to enable JS it starts to suffer. I can do light coding in emacs, but I wouldn't want to compile large codebases in it. So, yes, it would work fine depending on your needs, but be aware that a core 2 is not exactly a bad CPU. It is a 4-wide aggressively out of order machine with a pretty good memory subsystem. Is any of the open CPU replacements as good?