🚀 go-pugleaf

ak...@crux4.cit.cornell.edu (Allen Kim) writes:
>pde...@draper.com (PDeMaio) writes:
>>By the way, don't hold your breath for a P6 by next summer.  And if Intel goes
>>to RISC the damn things won't work right with half the stuff anyways, atleast 
>>game wise.

>Actually, oh skeptical one, Intel looks like they will make the P6 by next
>summer, or at the latest the fall.
>Meanwhile, Intel and HP are both working on the P7, and they are shooting for
>a very new architecture, not CISC or RISC (don't ask how), which will still be
>compatible with the Pentium and 486 chips of today.

	This is strange - I heard that what you describe above (Intel & HP
thing) will actually be the P6/686 chip.


>By the way, people are now saying that Origin is going to be "all Pentium."  I
>really don't see how this will exclude the 486 market, since the Pentium only
>has one instruction more than the 486.  In other words, what works on the
>Pentium also works on 486's.

	Not necessarily... if the Pentium's abilities are utilised fully, then
the 486 will NOT - because the pentium is like 2 chips in one, ie 2 general
processing chips in one, not a beefed up 486 and co-pro.


>Also, games optimized for the Pentium does not mean that it will not work on a
>486.  Optimization means that the compiler makes code that will utilize the
>strengths of the Pentium to full advantage, like the branch prediction, dual
>pipelining, and on-chip caches.  It just so happens that this kind of code can
>also benefit the 486, since it has its own on-chip cache.

	How can it benefit the 486?

>So us "scrubs" with the obsolete 486 systems don't have to worry for a while.
>After all, Intel is still developing for the 486 architecture; just look at the
>new DX4 Overdrive that they released a week ago.
>			- Allen "Ninja" Kim

	But do they have the motherboards to take advantage of this new chip
speed YET?  Here in Oz we are still waiting for something like that to become
available (in other words, what's the point of putting legs on a fish if the
fish is never going to walk on land?)

								- Falcon