AMD is having a laugh

I would enjoy hoping that over 3 billion people would, in the next eleven years, have access to commodities like a powerful processor. That would mean that more than 3 billion souls would finally have regular access to such basic things as food, water, shelter, good health facilities, stable government, peaceful surroundings and some level of employement security induced by regular and controlled increase in productivity. I think that would be great, because it would also mean that the other 3 billion people left would be well on their way to finally accessing the same things.

As it stands today, you can count 3 billion people as the population of Europe, North America, India, China and Japan (give or take a few hundred million). It seems to me that these are the countries targeted by this wishful thinking. North America, Japan and Europe are pretty well on their way already, leaving China and India to catch up in the next decade. Well, it won't happen.

It will probably take most of this century just to get running water to all these people, not to mention electricity and Internet access. And, given that an overwhelming majority of the population of these countries is occupied by agricultural tasks, I hardly think that these people will need (never mind be able to afford) a PC to help them sow grain and feed chickens. That is good enough for our highly-industrialized production facilities, not for areas where the highest tech available is the shovel and the hoe (and maybe a phone at the local village square). This is nonsense in the most basic sense of the word.

Pascal.

Dark Mayor wrong about Multicores
Hi there

I write to Mike every so often so he'll know me if you mention it. While I've waffled over the FX vs P4 issue myself, I have to say the AMD part really does live up to its billing. However, AMD commenting that Intel's multi core is just smoke is idiotic. If the maker of 90% of the worlds desktop cpu's (or something like that percentage) decides to add SSE then programmers code to it. If they add multithreading and multicore on the desktop you can bet your very last dollar that they will code to that as well. Even the whole BTX thing, while you see vendors saying "no way are we spending on that" they still nearly all build a prototype or two just to see how it would go. The industry rarely gets to tell Intel flat out no, and certainly not when it comes to "do this and it will enhance performance on 50% of the machines out there right now". Those are powerful words and they work well.

Now does Intel have a dog currently? Yep! They sure do, but its a dog that people are still buying by the millions, so if they tell you that the dog's puppies are going to need a certain kind of dog food, you can bet there will be plenty of that stuff on the shelves. Now I go back to trying like hell to decide whether I'm going to build my next machine on a P4EE 775/1066 or on the FX 939.

Life is full of choices, and that's a good thing for us.

Best regards and hoping you have a good trip home,

Dave Fey

We all yell in a living submarine
Hi Paul,

In your article http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16325, Taiwan intends to spend some NT$610 billion (US$18.255 million) on submarines, aircraft and Patriot missiles , could that be US$18.255 billion with a 'b'??? US$18.255 million wouldn't buy you even one jet fighter.

Cheers,

Jonah Tsai

/As a matter of fact, Halesie is good on facts but not on figures. Ed./

Hector living in Lunatic Asylum, not House
Hello,

The article made me think. How come, if this technology is 'disruptive', AMD put support for dual cores into the opteron right from the start. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13344

And how come Hector seems to think it's the business? http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20040429105016.html

Kind Regards,

Matt

Dirk Meyer wears Mayoral Chain mail

Hi Paul,

Well AMD should be swaggering as they have felled the Satan or the Satan has felled itself... depending on how you view the World. Amazingly AMD has reached the same conclusion I did almost a year ago: Intel is DOA and has nothing but Pentium M to market. That IS REALITY, despite the SPIN by InHell. Opteron and A64 sales prove this.

And for the record 64-bitness is alive and well on the desktop and in servers thanks to LINUX. Nobody in their right mind would bet their future on MICROSUCKS and WINDOZE, no one !!!

The WinTel Cartel is going down and consumers will no longer be held hostage !

Randy Hubbard

China on wor Mind

In regards to this story: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16306 I must say that after having lived in China for the better part of the year, I'm rather convinced that companies who "want a piece of China" only do so because of raw numbers.

Well I'll tell you flat out, raw numbers are utterly worthless. Want some examples? Sure:

1) China has a 300,000,000 Armed service. True, but 95% of them or more ride bikes, and 80% or so of them couldn't make it to ShangHai in a week! They have no mobility, and to accord their Army on the status with almost any other in the world while racking up those kinds of figures is just a misleading statement. The bulk of their "Army" is really nothing more than police, or security workers you can see all over any city.

2) The average Chinese person makes less than $1000 USD a year. Possibly true, however this fails to take into account that a huge % of Chinese companies provide living accomodations for their employees. Many of them also provide meals (especially restaurants).

3) That China will be a huge world trading mecha in 10-20 years. Sad to say, but I've done a LOT of work on this one, and this is just never likely to happen. Oh China will build up it's industrial base, etc...but until their society changes and their business ethics can run in a fashion at least similar to other western countries, then it's just never going to happen. Things like time not being important, or contracts being more like 'guidelines', etc. These long standing traditions are often overlooked by western businessmen, but many, many learn to pay attention after a while in China.

AMD might think it wants a part of China, but in fact it probably doesn't. And it certainly doesn't want to be doing the 64 bit stuff here yet because there's little to no market for it. Most personal computers here run in the 'value' range around $400 or so USD.

China has a bright future ahead of it, but it's not because of economics. It's because the people are nice and kind. They're nowhere near as hard working on average as any western country I've visited (and I've visited France, so that's saying something!) because it's just not a cultural priority now, and I doubt it ever will be.

My guess is in 20-25 years the standard of living in China will sky rocket because many western countries won't want to do much business with them. What will come of their WTO association? Probably not much...eventually they'll start breaking contracts as they see fit because it's an accepted business practice in China and eventually either be expelled or just nobody will do business with them. Sucks since they usually like to be paid first ;-)

Chad Weirick