tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9790304.post312944442555062960..comments2008-06-20T19:10:04.934-05:00Raquel and Billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14522551142545520413bbrv@genesi-usa.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9790304.post-75846247102132261792008-06-20T16:27:00.000-05:002008-06-20T16:27:00.000-05:00Amazingly Zippy is pretty catchy, they should buy that domain and market the iphone through it!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9790304.post-3671146837063600152008-06-14T15:48:00.000-05:002008-06-14T15:48:00.000-05:00BB & RV,<BR/><BR/>One thing that gets left out is that Intel has slowly become one of the top compiler design companies in the world. Due to the Itanium's design, Intel required better compilers. Fortunately, this "trickled down", so to speak, to the x86 compilers. I believe that many veterans of places such as SGI, HP, and Digital ended up at Intel after they stopped making their own compilers and switched to Intel's. Every time you look at a SPEC benchmark where Intel houses the competition (of which there are many), they're using Intel compilers. Apple is now using them too (http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2006q3/cpu2006-20060513-00010.cfg).<BR/><BR/>Due to this, and esp. due to the fact that SGI, who uses the Intel Compilers themselves (http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2008q1/cpu2006-20070918-02096.cfg), and who has a lot of FPGA-based accelerators (http://www.sgi.com/products/rasc/) that are used with said Intel compilers (hey, its what SGI supplies these days!), has already done this, adding it to OS X should not be difficult.<BR/><BR/>I think that the major reason for the switch to Intel on Snow Leopard is that Apple may have switched compilers internally to icc as opposed to gcc. This means that they're optimizing for Intel. This doesn't preclude the use of supporting chips with different instruction sets. As a matter of fact, due to the work they've done with SGI, it enhances it :).<BR/><BR/>It just means that Apple can package up what Intel has already worked on, add a decent API to it so developers can be empowered to use such devices just by virtue of them having a decent OS-level driver API, and let Intel's compilers and Apple's APIs take care of the heavy lifting.<BR/><BR/>Grand Central isn't anything 100% new. It's the first time its appeared in a consumer-level OS, however. <BR/><BR/>Apple is also infamous for maintaining their own Java port (as opposed to paying Sun Professional Services insane amounts of money to port it), and their own version of the Nvidia and ATI graphics drivers.<BR/><BR/>Something tells me that the next 64-bit APIs from Apple are going to include the ability to target GPU acceleration for vector math by linking to their libraries, and also will include the same types of acceleration for video, audio, and even basic I/O.<BR/><BR/>Intel also has a ton of ARM compiler experience as well.<BR/><BR/>I like the new iPhone, but I think PA Semi is going to make it 64-bit in later iterations :).<BR/><BR/>This is the start of a wonderful thing.Mitchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17282515307273115923noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9790304.post-26745373539497130882008-06-10T23:57:00.000-05:002008-06-10T23:57:00.000-05:00Is it just me or is biometrics (ie finger print) missing from these devices?<BR/><BR/>Who wouldn't want to keep their personal information to themselves?<BR/><BR/>I imagine the day will come when you have this built into the devices.<BR/><BR/>One person can use the device then hand the device over to another person can access their own personal account by touching the device.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9790304.post-66884175884970376012008-06-10T23:38:00.000-05:002008-06-10T23:38:00.000-05:00$199 is certainly comparable to similar products on the market. We might even see a $0 iPhone with 3 year contract.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com