Thoughts on the A1Lite and mainstream markets

[CodeSmith]

I don't think you're going to be able to fit an Athlon64 plus all its cooling equipment into one of those neat little mini ITX cases.  I know that AMD has been talking about low-power designs, but I don't think the current Athlon64s or Opterons are part of that plan.  Maybe the next generation?

[CodeSmith]

@Bloodline:

I think it's too early to tell what China really wants.  Just a few months ago they were all about their homegrown Dragon CPU, more recently we've heard Alan's story of how interested in PPC they are and we've also had reports, as you said, of their interest in 64 bit Wintel chips (I've also heard they're looking at Itanic2).  I think they basically want to see how to best grow their IT infrastructure, since they're effectively going from zero, and they don't want to discount anything.  Very smart move, I think.

[CodeSmith]

@DonnyEMU:

I disagree - XAML is basically a progression of DHTML, which means it's yet another huge MS security hole waiting to happen.  Sure, on the local machine it's a great idea, but how long before we see XAML support built into Outlook?

[CodeSmith]

@DonnyEMU:

Well, I'll believe it when I see it.  Windows XP has the same ACL-based protection system (for everything from files to semaphores) as Windows NT.  ACL systems are known to be inherently more secure than the "rwx" model Unix uses (or the similar Amiga "rwed"), yet there are lots more viruses for WindowsXP than there are for any Unix.

Microsoft has traditionally focused on giving their customers as many features as possible, considering security to be of secondary importance; only recently has security been identified as something important.  My hope is that the company will latch on to this as eagerly as it did to web browser dominance (since it's pretty obvious we'll all be using MS operating systems for a long time to come), making Windows (and other MS programs) as secure as MSIE is dominant.