back to article Power6 meets Tukwila meets Rock meets SPARC64 in chip death match

The grandest chip unveiling in many, many years will take place this August on the campus of Stanford University. At the annual Hot Chips conference, the world's top chip makers including Intel, IBM and Fujitsu/Sun plan to show off some of their most ambitious designs to date. In addition, a host of start-ups dabbling in the …

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  1. Dunstan Vavasour

    On show or being talked about?

    Ashlee, the real question is: which of these chips will be on show, and which will be the subject of slideware?

  2. Ashlee Vance (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: On show or being talked about?

    I thought the real question was will Dave Ditzel wear his "I tried to kill Intel and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" shirt.

  3. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Happy

    Ho-hum.

    So it'll be like having six vendor slideshows in a row? Painful! The ony value would be in getting access to the lab techies. Sample silicon and slides mean nothing, I had a Sun presentation years ago where the excited Sun exec waved around an UltraSPARC V CPU and told us how it was going to rule every datacenter in the Fortune 500, and within two weeks it had been cancelled.

    What would be a lot more interesting is if the vendors were given some sort of performance challenge. Something like bring two of your shiny new servers with the advertised chips, some storage and some management gubbins, and then from bare metal build a cluster with your preferered database and OS and run it through a clutch of SPEC tests, all in front of the public. Ony minimal OS tweaking would be allowed between different SPEC tests. Winners would be decided by time to get up and running, overall benchmark performance, and bang for the buck. Now, that would be interesting!

  4. amanfromMars Silver badge
    Alien

    Respect .....

    "What would be a lot more interesting is if the vendors were given some sort of performance challenge. Something like bring two of your shiny new servers with the advertised chips, some storage and some management gubbins, and then from bare metal build a cluster with your preferered database and OS and run it through a clutch of SPEC tests, all in front of the public. Ony minimal OS tweaking would be allowed between different SPEC tests. Winners would be decided by time to get up and running, overall benchmark performance, and bang for the buck. Now, that would be interesting!" .... By Matt Bryant Posted Saturday 19th July 2008 08:47 GMT

    What a Good Idea, Matt. That would allow for Pukka Processor Chip Architectures from Fab Processing Facilities to Flex their Virtual Reach Right into the Heart of Weak and Enfeebling Operating Systems. And Chip Architecture Teams* will be the New Masters of the Universe Championing Applications for their Foundry's Model Architecture.

    But to make IT worthwhile and germane, the SPEC tests could be Red Team Assaults upon Systems which are in Dire Need of TakeOver and/or MakeOver.

    And to be perfectly honest with you, Godson 3 is one Mother of an Enigmatic Chip Design and leaves Intel and AMD as pale and pasty Walled Flowers in the Shade of AI Chill Darkness.

    * Sounds just like AI Network InterNetworking Robot IQs tome/to me. Global Operating Devices for Virtual Dummies.

  5. Colonel Zander

    ServerPrime guys?

    Ashley, have you heard if the ServerPrime guys will be there? I don't have many (any) details, but I've heard that they're a startup working on 3, 5, 7, and 11 core processors...have you heard anything?

  6. Ashlee Vance (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: ServerPrime guys?

    I'm under NDA with ServerPrime, so not able to comment. We usually try to avoid NDAs, but I wanted the inside scoop on this thing. You'll be hearing from them soonish. That's all I can reveal.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Surely the REAL question is...

    how well they can run Crysis?

    Sorry, couldn't resist

  8. Eddie Edwards
    Pirate

    NDA?

    "I'm under NDA with ServerPrime, so not able to comment. We usually try to avoid NDAs, but I wanted the inside scoop on this thing. You'll be hearing from them soonish. That's all I can reveal."

    Since you're under NDA what we'll be hearing soonish is what they'll let you print, correct?

    w00t

  9. Adrian
    Paris Hilton

    ServerPrime

    Is this Optimus Prime's computer chip of choice ?

    Paris, always good for a photo oppertunity (that's a Lego-hint ElReg!!!)

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