Bij Voodoo Extreme is een klein interview gepost met George Alfs van Intel. Hieronder twee vragen:
VE: How will Itanium compare with AMD's K8? Are there any similarities that come to mind?GA: Well, as you heard, we are already shipping Itanium processor based development systems to high end developers. OEMs have had parts for months. You might want to consider comparing processors that are available in the same time frame. As far as the Itanium processor, we feel that to truly take full advantage of 64 bit address ability and reliability, you need to start from the ground up. Putting "extensions" on IA-32 to get to 64 bits in the big iron world is like putting new tires on a Pinto, you still own a Pinto.
VE: If I am not mistaken, programs must be made a certain way to take advantage of Itanium's 64-bit architecture. Am I mistaken? If not, what sort of support have you received from software developers?
GA: Yes, to take advantage of Itanium's 64-bit addressing, you will need to optimize your code for it. We are already working with a number of software developers on this, have made the spec public, and we have an IA-64 development fund to make sure things move along. Again, the focus is server and ecommerce back end applications, not games for IA-64. Itanium processor will be compatible with IA-32 code as well.[break]En dit vindt Voodoo Extreme er zelf van
[/break]Apostle: Billy, Do we need all of this power? Itanium this, Coppermine that, do gamers really need all of this?
Billy: Hell no! All you need is some cold brew (I prefer a case of Zima, a real man's drink), a 10MHz 286, and an old Trident VGA board (10 of them, you're gonna run 'em in parallel). Use the cold brew to chill your 286, overclock it by a multiplier of 100, and you're golden. I'm working on a special version of DOS 3.3 that will run dual processors, after I get that to work, then I'm going to work on making my own dual 286 motherboard. I'll keep you updated.
