Intel's next generation a very long instruction word (VLIW) processor?
Tags: Apple, Intel, Microprocessors, Marketing, IDF
The Inquirer has a long and interesting speculative article on next week's Intel announcements claiming it will be a Very Long Instruction Word processor as a way to save power. I don't buy it -- adding more microinstructions doesn't really help the power problem. I think Intel is doing something much more straightforward, namely using multiple low-speed (i.e., 1-2 GHz) core processors, and shutting down cores when they aren't in use. The key for me is that power increases as clock frequency squared. So if you want to save power, you want relatively low frequency systems. That said, the devil is in the details, and we'll find out the details next week. But I think they got one thing right: Apple wouldn't have switched if this were a small announcement.
The Inquirer has a long and interesting speculative article on next week's Intel announcements claiming it will be a Very Long Instruction Word processor as a way to save power. I don't buy it -- adding more microinstructions doesn't really help the power problem. I think Intel is doing something much more straightforward, namely using multiple low-speed (i.e., 1-2 GHz) core processors, and shutting down cores when they aren't in use. The key for me is that power increases as clock frequency squared. So if you want to save power, you want relatively low frequency systems. That said, the devil is in the details, and we'll find out the details next week. But I think they got one thing right: Apple wouldn't have switched if this were a small announcement.
posted by Carl Howe at
10:02 PM
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