[fpc-devel]Re: Latest status

[Florian Klaempfl]

At 13:24 27.11.01 +0100, you wrote:
[...]


>So don't put your bets yet.
>
>More of this stuff shows sometimes on hardware architecture newsgrouops and
>Web BBs...

I know all this discussions but here I see the iA64 from the view
of the compiler designer :) and here the iA64 is brilliant. But I don't think
that the iA64 will be important the next years, but it will get interesting
when the transistor count of processors reaches 10^9 to 10^10. Having SMT _and_
the variable VLIW concept of the iA64 will be probably the only the solution
to use a lot of execution units ...

Regarding x86-64: It sounds interesting but I can't believe that AMD has
the power to introduce it into the market. 3DNow wasn't a success either and
is dead though it was much more compatible with existing architectures than 
x86-64
will be and for certain applications it was very promising.

What I suspect what happens is if the x86-64
gets too big and the iA64 fails Intels extend the x86 architecture as well 
to 64 bit
(of course in an AMD incompatible way) with some "reused" iA64 concepts 
(references:
3DNow<->SSE and the i860/i486 story :) )

Keep the size of Intel and AMD in mind when discuss this issues!!