Intel Acquires Chip Designers From HP

The Associated Press ^ | Dec 15, 2004 | Matthew Fordahl

[general_re]

Nice chip, shame they couldn't commit to it.

[Yossarian]

Blah. The "Itanic". AMD kicks their butts. And when my chip gets out, watch out world!

-Yossarian (chip designer)

[Nachoman]

Did they say how many employees are going on the street?

[Yossarian]

Of course, I have to hand it to Intel for keeping a team together. Having a good working chip team, then having it be ripped apart and finding yourself needing to start the team from scratch, sucks.

But then again, you'd have to be working for Intel, one of the least-liked companies in the Silicon Valley - very compartmentalized, very secretive, and very stifling for good designers.

[general_re]

Dunno. Guess it depends on how many HP'ers they decide not to hire. Sounds like those that want to work for Intel will probably get the chance. Good for them - better Intel than sitting around and waiting for Carly to axe them ;)

[general_re]

But then again, you'd have to be working for Intel, one of the least-liked companies in the Silicon Valley - very compartmentalized, very secretive, and very stifling for good designers.

That must be why all those Alpha guys jumped to Intel last year - because it sucks so much to work there. Or is it because they're not good designers? ;)

[Abcdefg]

The Alpha wasn't a good design?

[Yossarian]

I'd have to guess that they gave the Alpha guys good incentive (read $) to go over as a whole team. That, and once you are in a good team, you know what others are good at AND YOU KNOW YOUR TOOLS & TECH WELL, you don't feel like leaving it.

I just see people very happy to leave Intel. Of course, I've seen people eager to leave NVidia as well (it's a notorious meat-grinder), but at least they say they respect their management, even as they are working them to death....

[Yossarian]

The Alpha ROCKED! Too bad that they were doing it for DEC....
Alpha and StrongARM are my two favorite chips, from a designer's perspective.

[Doohickey]

Itanium - the solution in search of a problem. I'm still waiting for those 64 bit apps. Notepad-64 gets a bit old after awhile.

[general_re]

A little bit of sarcasm, my friend ;)

[Nick Danger]

What's wrong with the 6502?

[general_re]

I've done a lot of contract work at a lot of places - every place I've ever been, there was someone there who was happy to leave. Sometimes the place really did suck, and sometimes it was the people leaving who sucked - you just never really know 'til you're on the inside ;)

[Yossarian]

If you don't need 64-bit addressing (i.e. if you don't need to access more than, say, 2 GB of RAM at any given time), I'd stay away from a 64 bit chip.

Why? Because all those 64-bit pathways make the chip bigger, and bigger chips are slower chips.

Of course, some media instructions are good to have as wide as reasonable, and operating systems will use more and more RAM as disk caches. But in general, it's like renting a limo when a Ferrari would do.

[krb]

What is your chip?

[Yossarian]

Can't say yet :-) But when it comes out, it will make waves, that's for sure!

[general_re]

Okay, who do you work for? ;)

[krb]

If you don't need 64-bit addressing (i.e. if you don't need to access more than, say, 2 GB of RAM at any given time), I'd stay away from a 64 bit chip.

It's not the address space that interests me, it's the 64-bit registers I would like to be able to use.

[Yossarian]

I shouldn't really say. Let's just say it'sa big monster of a company.