FCC Hinders IBM Dominance Over Intel/AMD

I read nothing about the FCC. Please enlighten me.

Just poking fun at why IBM never figures into the AMD/Intel battles yet when you look at the benchmarks they are off the charts. Must be someone holding IBM back from just taking over. Perhaps they are afraid of what happened to the Bell group - who knows.

those are all fp benchmarks though

Wouldn't that be AMD's main strenth?

I think he meant the FTC as in Federal Trade Commission. FCC is Federal Communication Commission.

I wonder if IBM will try to compete with Intel/AMD in the desktop arena.

Because IBM's RISC based, while Intel and AMD are x86 based?

AFAIK, RISC processors are massively implemented in high end server markets where FP performance is needd. However, for desktop and smaller servers that require higher INT output, x86 still controls that market.

Comparing what IBM does to what Intel/AMD does is like comparing a passenger car to a dump truck.

Also, RISC processors are not x86 based and would require totally different software.

Intel dd make a RISC based Itanium processor that was awesome.
MS also wrote a version of Windows for it.
Nobody bought it because of software compatibiilty.

It's a little like wondering why Dragster's don't compete on thet Formula-1 race circuit. Sure, they are faster, but they can't run the course.

Its like cell processors vs. x86 processors. Cell processors are FP monsters , great for video decoding, folding, etc....

...but to tell Cell processors to run some everyday program is like handing a dragster a sedan.... they simply don't know how to drive them.

Isn't it all about answering to x86 commands issued by OS and software? If IBM added basic x86 instruction set to the cpu, the rest of the cpu power could be used via a new instruction set, and software would come eventually. Maybe not all software, but where it matters, like the video encoding/decoding thing. The power of the CPU would not be wasted as there are just so many professional applications that could use multiple execution threads.

Yes rightly so - the things we write when we fight sleep . . .

Let's not forget that Apple was on the IBM bandwagon up until 2 years ago. I think if they had stood pat for a while IBM would be doing something interesting for the Macs right about now . . .

By far the coolest analogy I've seen all month. haha. +1