RE: Where is IBM?

[qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Tom Liotta)]

midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>   5. Re: Where is IBM? (James Rich)
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 5
>Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 12:50:28 -0600 (MDT)
>From: James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: Where is IBM?
>
>On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Pat Barber wrote:
>
>> Did Hector mention the little,teeny,tiny problem they were going
>> to have with the billions of lines of code written for 16/32 bit
>> machines ?????
>>
>Actually *all* the 16 and 32 bit code will run on the Opteron 64 bit cpu.
>As Mike Wills mentioned it is very special.  It can run all 3 types of
>code simultaneously with no performance penalty.  He didn't have to
>mention anything because it all already works.  This is as big of an
>achievement as the 64 bit conversion was for the AS/400.

I suspect there's room for debate there. IBM not only provided the 64-bit 
processor years earlier, they also simultaneously provided the OS and 
compilers. Beyond that, they provided functionality that could automatically 
convert compiled objects to run natively for 64 bit processing essentially as 
soon as they were called. Overall, I suspect it's not _quite_ as big an 
achievement for AMD though still impressive (if it works out).

OTOH, AMD got IBM on board immediately as a partner in getting these processors 
to the marketplace. That's nearly as big an achievement as Rochester has 
managed with the rest of IBM in terms of support for a platform.

Tom Liotta

-- 
-- 
Tom Liotta
The PowerTech Group, Inc.
19426 68th Avenue South
Kent, WA 98032
Phone  253-872-7788 x313
Fax    253-872-7904
http://www.powertechgroup.com


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