IBM... to Power or Not to Power, Opteron is the question.

[jamesm]

Considering that AMD and IBM have shared tech to produce the PowerPC hardware that us Amiga owners go raving nuts about, it's probably a logical step for them.

Hypertransport on PowerPC didn't come solely from IBM and Apple. Likewise, the Opteron didn't get a phenomenal FPU from AMD advances - that comes almost straight from the PowerPC. (But Mr. Lawyer, not *that* straight :>)

So, its kinda normal.

[jamesm]

How odd... IBM has chosen the Opteron for it's new Super Computer project, even though the original plans were for a Power based one!

Any thoughts?

Hmm.. IBM know what they are doing.

This isn't the IBM of 10 years ago - they know exactly where they want to be in the marketplace in a few years time, and they've realised that a lot of the server market will be opened up by AMD and the Opteron.

AMD are dying to get their server class CPUs into servers, and IBM are the ideal partners.

With the price/power ratio of the Opteron, their onto a winner.

Maybe one day, we'll see a native non-PowerPC based AmigaOS?

[jamesm]

Hmmm, The Athlon's FPU performance comes from the ex-Alpha design team that AMD hired when Compaq closed the section down...

Yep, and the Opteron is a better Athlon.

[jamesm]

No need to wait, go try out AROS. =)

Been there, done that