Entropy said:
Heh. Thought you guys would enjoy it. I was amazed at how straightforward and clear he was - very geek to geek, and with a strong sense of technology integrity shining through.
That's fine, but never lose sight of the fact that he's an Intel geek....
(Not an independent geek. Heh...
)
In the context of the B3D forum, for people involved in gaming (which includes all of 3D gaming) his comment that Intel is really attentive to that group must be gratifying. However, he immediately followed up with "but you can't base a 30 billion dollar company on them" which should be a warning.
I'm not really sure what to make of that comment, as it's never really been obvious to me that Intel has ever at any time in its history been a company "based on" developing products primarily for people who play computer games...
It's an interesting comment, though, and kind of an odd one, if we assume, which I do, that Colwell has not spent his time with Intel believing that the company was "based on" creating products for computer gamers...
I refuse to believe that he's just now found out that Intel was "based on" some fundamentally different concerns, and made these remarks out of his shock at this discovery...
Perhaps it's a back-door apology offered in advance for Intel being unable to push x86 performance much further, which he assumes will be of concern to computer gamers, and he wants them to know that while Intel appreciates their business it's important that gamers remember that Intel has other fish to fry...?
Still, I'm not convinced he meant to say that, either, exactly. Just an odd remark in this context, I think, as I really don't know a soul who's ever thought that Intel was based on creating products for computer gaming.
And the general gist of the presentation really told the story - the age of pushing performance forward at the cost of other parameters is coming to an close for general purpose computing. It's not over yet, and may never fully be, but other factors will get progressively more attention as soon as the marketeers figure out how to sell them, and they will find ways to sell those features, because apart from gradually loosing attraction value performance has already ceased to improve at the accustomed brisk pace.
Interesting that you'd use the word "age" in this context. It's actually like about "five years" from Intel's perspective as opposed to an "age," don't you think? Wasn't it 1999 in which the primary x86 workhorse for Intel was the PIII, which it stuggled mightily to bump to 1GHz in response to the cpu perfomance of AMD's K7, which was nowhere near as dependent on ramping MHz clocks for its overall processing performance? Prior to AMD's introduction of the Athlon, it's absolutely certain that Intel was in no MHz ramp rush whatever, as the company routinely released new models of older cpus clocked 50-75MHz higher than the last one, with somewhat large gaps of time in between, in a lazy, unconcerned fashion befitting a confident monopolist. Intel found it couldn't ramp the PIII much in MHz in response to K7, though, and then the P4 made its debut.
Remember in the beginning how Intel talked often in glowing terms about ramping the P4 to "10 GHz," eventually? And Intel was saying things like this without the slightest clue that it could take the P4 to 10GHz in the first place, and I found it amazing that people gave it any credence at all at the time. Interestingly enough, you never heard similar talk out of AMD at the time about the future MHz performance of Athlon, because AMD was too busy looking for ways to increase processing performance other than in ramping an architecture to 10GHz. It strikes me that Intel is only now apprehending the "core" notions AMD was working with when it was designing the original K7 prior to introducing it.
The thing about performance in cpus is that there are other ways to describe it apart from MHz...
It's heartening to see that Intel is finally acknowledging this publicly.
(It's also a bit silly and utterly facetious, too, since Intel has always known this basic fact--Itanium proves the premise conclusively. But then, so does Athlon, G5, etc., and of course Intel doesn't like to talk much about that.)
The Q&A session had a notable passage from 1.11.30 onward that made it very apparent that in Colwells opinion x86 really carries a lot of baggage, and that it may not be able to compete quite as impressively going forward with clean-sheet designs. That's probably not much of an issue in PC space for compatibility reasons, for consoles however other rules apply. What will stagnating CPU speeds mean for the development of future PC graphics engines? And does this have any short term or long term implications for PC vs. console gaming?
Is it really "notable" that he'd say this, considering that Intel opposed x86-64 from the start, and was busy publicly telling the world that "Hey! If you run x86 software, then relax! You don't need 64-bit computing. But the good news is that when you get to Itanium you're going to love it!"...? Also, there's no doubt in my mind that by far the biggest piece of "baggage" relative to x86 that Intel would like to chuck is AMD...
Also, the last remarks you make as to general "graphics engines" and "consoles" and what you term "stagnating cpu speeds" by which I assume you mean "stagnating MHz clocks"--which as I pointed out does not have to mean "stagnating performance" at all--sound very much like you assume that he's speaking for AMD and everybody else. I don't think it would be wise to view any of his remarks outside of an Intel-specific context.
"Clean sheet" just sounds so "clean," doesn't it? It surely sounds better than saying "An architecture wholly incompatible with the entire world- wide x86 software market," no doubt. That's the other kind of "baggage" Intel should have considered--the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, that companies and individuals have invested in x86 software in the last few years. That's definitely not the kind of "excess baggage" companies and individuals consider disposable, is it? Obviously not...
He also remarked on how graphics processors are getting more programmable, and how "this hadn't gone unnoticed at Intel", a remark that's quite intriguing, and a bit disturbing if you happen to be a grahics IHV. (And of course he let slip the amount of i-cache on a gfx-processor unfortunately without saying which one.) What could he have meant by that remark?
I have no idea what he meant by it--just as I had no idea what he was talking about in saying that it should be understood that Intel couldn't be a company "based on" making products for computer gamers...
(Since Intel never has been that--and he might be the only person alive confused about that, should he actually ever have thought that himself.)
Why should IHVs be concerned at all about an off-the-cuff remark which says, essentially, absolutely nothing?....
Intel talked about 10GHz for the P4, too, which was a lot more specific than this remark, and nothing came out of that, either. Intel similarly did a lot of talking about Rdram, etc. that proved wholly inaccurate. I think what will "concern IHVs" coming from Intel is when Intel introduces and markets retail 3d chips & reference designs competitive with theirs--that's when I think they'll be concerned. Intel got into the retail 3d-chip business a few years ago, briefly, in trying to prove the validity of the AGP bus's practical application for 3d gaming, got their socks knocked off by local-bus products from 3dfx and nVidia, and they took their marbles and went home as I recall.
First, I think that Intel needs to say something specific here , and then Intel needs to do what it said, and then it will be the proper time for any parties in the competitive landscape to become "concerned." I think you are stretching his remark here way out of context.
Anyway, I felt that if someone of Bob Colwells caliber speaks about the state of computing, in a way that was just recently backed up Intel scrapping their entire P4 roadmap (!!!), then maybe even the graphics nerds will take notice as his words weigh infinitely heavier than those of an anonymous "Entropy". Times they are achanging although to what degree remains to be seen. Maybe it would be smart to ask ourselves how this is likely to affect the graphics business?
Just goes to how show different people interpret things differently--as I didn't see it as "backing up" Intel's ditching of the P4 roadmap at all--I saw it as an apology for Intel being unable to bring it's original proclamations as to the inevitable MHz ramp for P4 to fruition, and an acknowledgement that the expectation had never been sound from the beginning. The problem with it, of course, as I point out in response to you remarks above, is that a whole lot of relevant information as to the innovations and directions of companies other than Intel have been of signal importance in the scheme of things, and Intel spokespersons almost always talk about what Intel is doing as if nobody else existed. It's certainly a convenient security blanket to wrap up in, but I doubt it has much substance in the way of effective insulation properties...
There's a whole world of technology out there aside from Intel, but sometimes I wonder if Intel itself won't be the very last party to realize it.
