Microsoft hires chip expert
MICROSOFT has hired Sun's top chip man sparking rumours that Vole might be going into the hardware business.
Marc Tremblay, a Sun fellow and chief technology officer for its Microelectronics unit, is joining Microsoft as a "distinguished engineer". This is like an undistingushed engineer only the pay is better.
Tremblay quit Sun last week but was outed as a Vole yesterday by the New York Times. Normally in the small print of employment contracts there is a clause which prevents you working for a rival for a year or so.
Tremblay was the main architect for Sun's Sparc line of processors. He was involved in all of the recent developments, including Victoria Falls 1 and 2, Niagara 1 and 2, and the 'Rock' processor.
Vole has said that he will work in the Strategic Software/Silicon Architectures group, reporting to KD Hallman, the general manager.
His duties will be to "oversee cross-company technical task forces and strategic direction for the company's software and semiconductor technologies".
The question is, what semiconductor technologies does Vole need a strategic direction for?
The obvious target is Microsoft's Xbox 360 which does use a lot of semiconductor research. However, Tremblay is not working for the research division. Tremblay's focus has been Sun's Sparc processor, which is different from the x86 platform, so it begs the question what does Vole want with him?
It suggests that the Redmond Massive is up to something in the semiconductor line in the long term, and perhaps something at right angles to x86 development. µ
L'Inq
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Could this be the lead developer of the next generation XBox chippery?
Nah, they just want to make sure he's not working for anyone else.
They'll pay him a zillion dollars to sit quietly in the corner playing with little rag dolls.
:)
He's realised Sun's a dead duck and jumped for one of the few remaining employers on East Coast US that can't seem to stop itself from hiring people.
I mean, hell, Hallman joined Redmond from DEC, and used to run the Visual Studio division. What does that imply? Nothing, to me, at least.
Sure, he's a silicon hardware specialist, but he'd still have things to offer on endian maths, or 64 bit processing, for anyone writing a hardware abstraction layer, wouldn't he?
I certainly don't think he would have much to do with Xbox. Most of the reason the console makers wet for the PowerPC architecture was because the infrastructure was already written for it. Microsoft don't care how the insides of those things work. I mean who is it, actually makes the Xbox for Microsoft, again? Flextronics? If he was working on the Xbox, they'd be sending him to bloody Singapore!
Hm... Is anyone connecting the dots here? The IBM/SUN acquisition fails. Microsoft hires a top guy from Sun. Sun needs a buyer. Something more is afoot here than meets the eye. I am not suggesting anything! :)
Any news about Rock? It taped out and they had silicon back a good long while ago, but nothing has been heard since.
Hey INQ
you guys needs to go back to investigative journo school and do some digging. The Vole has had a many-core CPU design team on the payroll for a while now. I've heard that is can run anything via a new runtime complier tech. OS390 on a Vole chip, geddit?
Coming soon to a Microsoft-sponsored server room (there must be a few of these around, somewhere):
THE MICROSOFT XBOX SERVER: Slim, artistically-designed to appeal to younger MCSE IT managers, with only one central button required to control all functions, simply...oops...
RROD
RROD
RROD
RROD
RROD
(cue fire suppression system here)
I saw something a while back that gave me the impression midori (the replacement for windows) is not intended for x86, but instead some future architecture. Would be nice to see whats possible when the software company has direct control on hardware silicon and can build it around its own operating system (And from what I saw as far as structure Midori looks f**king supurb), tho I wouldnt like to see the prices if they succeeded and got monopoly lol.
He is being hired to architect the hardware side of the Azure platform.
One Thing sun Use Java &its Pretty Complexes, More complex than ?Microsoft, Its Definate Toe-In Towards InternationalBM+. So Just by PreCert, Must Be Quite qualified Guy, Probably Knew Symour Cray & Has Some Complex ideas.Probably Make Wheel Spinner Fastered W/ OutPut.quality outPut,too. drashek
we hit a hard limit as far as speed is concerned
( chokepoints in RAM and disk, so speeding up the core costs lots, but gains nothing ),
and now...
... are going for parallel processing.
( multi-core, hyperthreading/netburst, etc ).
AND .. are adding in asymmetric computing CPU+GPU, with super-many-cores available.
That requires re-architecting the software, big-time.
The Vole scored a guy who KNOWS the sea-of-cores world, inside & out.
You don't even need to invoke an instruction-set change,
to notice the *architecture* change,
going from 1-2 cores to 8+320 cores,
do you?
They need help pacing Linux
( which got from *nowhere* to nibbling away at The Vole, SCO, Sun, IBM, etc. in less than one single generation ).
They fear open-source with reason:
it evolves faster,
it fills all niches fast,
it shows innovation that The Vole can't out-compete,
in terms of innovation,
but CAN control/stomp through patents/copyright/ACTA etc.
But they've still got to get their product to optimize on the new CPU+GPU paradigm, and *FAST*.
You think Matlab could compete against Sage, if Sage suddenly got CPU+GPU capable, through & through?
Think about accelerating ALL GUI stuff, all AV stuff, booting, everything that can be accelerated, .. OR having FLOSS do it first...
It's a strategic requirement for 'em, now.