According to the Reg (page 2) Power8 is going to have some sort of memory coherence function for accelerators. Allowing the GPU to be just another first-class processor with regards to memory could be a big win, performance-wise, not to mention making it easier to program.

The latest version of CUDA (version 6) has also just added features in the same area (unified memory mgmt). Anandtech has some more info about that.

This thing will be beast!

It's was CPU tech that put IBM on top.

Sun couldn't get a new design out to save their lives and HP shit-canned PA-RISC to get in bed with Intel on Itanium, which has always been late and slow and difficult.

IBM on the other hand kept slowly be steadily improving their ppc CPU tech.

You can get the 'advance' toolchain. It's basically an upstream gnu toolchain, with a lot more optimizations and support for ppc chips.

Looks like LLVM is getting improved as well.

Power.org manages the ppc ISA.
The ppc ISA is and has been completely open. You can design and create your own chips based on it and people do.

This is about opening up, or decomposing, the development of the high end POWER chips that IBM develops. Large data center companies have an increasing desire for customized chips. Customizing chips is not what Intel is good at or want to be good at. The only game box win that Intel had was the original XBOX and that was a massive failure, partly because of the inflexibility of Intel and their precious margins. I really can't think of any other custom wins that Intel has had since.

If Google wants to cobble together a small 2-4 core Power Chip with exactly the parts they need, based on licensed pieces from IBM, and then go fab it at wherever is cheapest, I've got to think that will save them money versus being a mountain of retail Intel chips.

Impressive. You are wrong on just about *everything* you wrote:

>>POWER support is dead on all enterprise Linux distributions, Red Hat dropped support with EL5.
Nope and nope and nope

>>Furthermore OpenPower boxes are contractually prohibited from running AIX.
You are confusing this announcement with a previous attempt at the Linux market that was also called OpenPower. Those systems only ran Linux and could not run AIX. This announcement is about opening up the entire platform and licencing out parts or whole cores of the actual high end chips to companies like Google, who recognize that the single most expensive component in servers is the CPU - and they want choice and customization.

>>You've got a box of hardware with nothing to run on it and it can only deliver half the performance of comparatively priced Intel equipment.
The recently released Power7+ chip running Linux is the fastest thing on the market right now.

>> If you outsource support to IBM, their support specialists in the delivery centers will accidentally nuke your whole frame during routine maintenance, and you could be down for days
Umm..ok I'm stopping now

I like the idea of Windows on other hardware, especially cheap energy efficient hardware like ARM.

I don't understand why MS has both Windows Phone and Windows 8 RT, though. Both ARM-based touch-focused Windows OSs. But software won't run on both. Why? How many ecosystems can you realisitcally expect to create? MS obviously over-estimated their ability or their cache with users.

Creating ecosystems is hard. Even if you have the better product. And MS doesn't have the better product with either RT or Phone.

How was this supposed to work? Even if it sold, was it a "survival of the fittest" OS scenario? Kill RT if Phone did well? Or vice-versa? Eventually there could be just one, right?

Why not have one lightweight 'mobile/touch' OS that can run on ARM and x86; then have 'heavy' x86-only Windows for Surface Pro and Laptop/Desktops? Because it makes too much sense?

Perhaps RT was a play to get some leverage on Intel? Who knows. One thing that's clear is that the market has rejected it.

Sheesh..so maybe 'forced' was an overlly strong word to use.
But consider: EA may not have the clout they once had, but they are still one of the largest game publishers in the world and you still want them making games for your fledgling console, I think. And if 'the other console' may be giving them what they want, you are likely to consider the same.

But this is maybe more likely: MS and Sony saw 'online pass' and decided they want that money instead of EA. It's their network after all. The console guys give the publishers a small cut, which the publishers are happy with since it's enforced platform-wide and managed by network, which costs the publishers nothing. It's just free money. Everyone wins! Except for the gamer, of course, but they're probably filthy thieves anyway.

Still seem hard to believe?

On the surface this may look like EA is giving up it's quest to kill used games. I find that rather unlikely.

What this likely *really* means, is that 'online pass' will soon be redundant. With ps4 and the next xbox soon to be out, this moves all but confirms that there will be something similar at the system level on both consoles, likely with publisher-friendly terms so they can share in on the ransom windfall.

EA is shutting down theirs early to try and save face and let Sony and MS look like the jerks next gen, when in reality, it was probably their idea and lobbying that forced Sony and MS's hands.

So..yippie?

"...but we both can't have our margins in this fight against ARM. We've had a good run and all, but it turns out we like our margins better than you. Again, sorry. Good luck with that Windows RT thing, ya shmucks."

WebOS had an actual standard Linux user space. Everything was back level, but it was there.
Android does not. The user space is all locked down custom java land.

On WebOS you could actually load up standard ARM Linux repos and install whatever you wanted. Awesome idea, IMO. I'm still bummed it never caught on.

Intel is kind of a no compromise company. They want the power..and the margins. Look at the rest of their businesses:
  They own a huge chunk of the margins on PCs and servers, and basically dictate to OEMs what their products will be.
  They kicked Nvidia out of the chipset/motherboard market because, y'know, can't have that.
  They wouldn't budge on prices for chips in the original Xbox, which doomed it to failure and havn't sniffed the console market since.
  They're in and out of mobile, mostly because they can't line up any partners.

And now they're going to play nice with the content/distribution cartels? The path to their door it littered with the corpses of start-ups and wunderkinds that only needed the Ace of Content for the staight flush.

Don't blame me if I don't hold my breath there.

Did you RTFA?

All of what you said may be true, and AMD smokescreening is of course part of it, but DAMN, these guys are screwed.

I'm not sure how much innovation is being strangled, but one thing that's certain is the damage to Mickey's popularity.

When was the last time that a Mickey Mouse cartoon was released? Do kids today even know who he is?
Can you imagine if all the old Mickey cartoons where on PBS constantly? It would probably endear kids to him all over again and send a new wave of kids to Disney parks. How is there a downside? It seems crazy to me to pass up the value that those old 'toons have - to both the culture and to Disney in the form of free brand publicity.

Instead they rot in the 'vault' and Disney parks are full of old 'IP' that fewer and fewer people recognize.
Genius!

Intel like to throw claims like this out there to try and win mind-share.
It means nothing, but sounds impressive in a vague, buzz-wordy way. It's just marketing.

I'm not surprised their vague future predictions are aimed at mobile now. They desperately need mind-share in that segment.

"Look! We're relavent in mobile! We'll have FORTY-EIGHT cores! All with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!"