DISQUS

Kyle · 3 months ago

SCARY 2: ..."Now it’s getting harder and harder to deliver performance improvements without generating excessive power."...

Change to: "...requiring excessive power..." or "...generating excessive heat..."?

Buck · 3 months ago

So, hardware engineering is now just some low-end job like working at a convenience store. I guess everyone in America should just become a banker now. Is it possible for Goldman Sachs to employ the entire US population? Or should ex-American hardware engineers just go into scavenging scrap metal from banker's houses?

Name · 3 months ago

I particularly enjoyed this part : Meant to power high-end data center computers known as servers, this chip is due to ship in 2010. It will be have 16 processing cores that can do for tasks, or threads, at a time.

computers known as "servers". And then the next bit which made almost no sense.

grumpus · 3 months ago

When games "journalism" and the semiconductor industry collide...

Sarwar Faruque · 3 months ago

In regards to "The complexity of parallel computing", not having a programming language capable of fully taking advantage of parallel computing shouldn't be such an issue. I personally believe that the chip should become "aware" of existing parallel chips and spread the computing among them without needing the intervention of the programming.

engagoteam · 3 months ago

Moore's laws slowdown ?
Maybe the industry is arriving at a sub-optimum, while the next new approach will be different.
This has happened before in other industries:
- propeller aircraft and jet engines
- tv-sets with a tube and lcd screens and plasma screens
- cars with engine in the back vs front wheel drive

martinschultz · 3 months ago

Goodbye custom chips brought back memories of the many uses of a break even analysis. As an early investor in a developer of ASIC in the 1980s we used break even analysis to map out our strategy. Development costs were high. So we needed high prices and significant volume to make any money. This pushed us to market hard to get them out the door during the early lucrative part of the price curve. Even then, the combination of high development costs and high fab costs made it a marginal to losing proposition, unless everything went just right. And something always went wrong, despite having superior designs.

However, if doing a break even analysis can keep people out of marginal business models, it is sure worth doing. For other better uses of break even analysis take at the free information at www. selling-a-business-without-stress.com under the break even analysis tab.

James Slager · 3 months ago

Dean meant to say: "It will be have 16 processing cores that can *each* do *four* tasks, or threads, at a time."

Ganesh · 3 months ago

Scary 10: Indian engineers are good, but are their lifestyle same as their counter parts in US? Researchers are taken for granted in India. They invent, conduct research, do all the ugly things (coding, debugging, analysis etc etc) only to travel in Tata's or Maruti's low budget Nano cars and live in economy flats. I am not sure if this is the case in US. Tech forums like this also should high light these issues. Researchers/technologists do have life. If they do the same quality of work as in US, they ought to have the same liftestyle as there too.