You mean it smelt ewe?

From what (little) I know, that's exactly what data warehouse appliances like Netezza and Teradata do. They have custom built FPGAs to do the SQL execution significantly faster than what a CPU can do.

I don't know enough about sword history, but I do know that the Indian swords or "talwars" during that time period were also damascus pattern swords. I also know that they were commonly made in India at that time. However, I'm not contradicting your point per se, I'm only adding to it. Sword making in itself is a highly evolved and nuanced art form.

To my knowledge, the real tricky part was in making the steel ingots which were made exclusively in India, and were exported by Arabian traders to the rest of the world. It is worth noting that the mystery behind wootz steel has been a topic of constant research for hundreds of years and has remained a mystery until a few years ago despite constant and repeated attempts to crack the puzzle. The first microscopic analysis of steel was done on wootz steel.

How utterly loverly. I hope they are not planning to charge people for not filling gas at all.

Reminds me of the old joke. The opera was so good, they charged me 100 bucks to sit in the balcony and 200 for not attending.

Not that it matters, but just to set the record straight, "damascus" steel, just like the "Arabic" numeral system, was neither invented in Damascus nor in Arabia nor in Spain. Both the numeral system and the steel was invented in India. It should be more accurately called Wootz steel. This steel making technique technique was mastered and perfected by ironsmiths in South India around 300BC. The original technique also died with the ironsmiths over time, and has was only recently replicated with success some years ago.

References:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9809/verhoeven-9809.html
http://archaeology.about.com/od/wterms/g/wootz.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647868/wootz-steel

The first article is the most informative and comprehensive of all.

To quote from the articles linked above,
"Wootz is the name given to an exceptional grade of iron ore steel first made in southern and south central India and Sri Lanka perhaps as early as 300 BC. Wootz is formed using a crucible to melt, burn away impurities and add important ingredients, and it contains a high carbon content (nearly 1.5%).

Although iron making was part of Indian culture by as early as 1100 BC (at sites such as Hallur), the earliest evidence for the processing of iron in a crucible has been identified at the site of Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu province, and possibly also at Andhra Pradesh. The term 'wootz' appears in English in the late 18th century, and is probably derived from ukku, the word for crucible steel in the Indian language Kannada, and possibly from 'ekku' in old Tamil.

Wootz steel is the primary component of Damascan steel. Syrian blacksmiths used wootz ingots to produce extraordinary steel weaponry throughout the middle ages. "

For the record, I'm not a steel expert by any stretch, but I do love Japanese cooking knives, especially AS sandwitched core ones, and was really disappointed to learn that my first flashy "Damascus" pattern knife was only chemically etched and not a true damascus pattern.

How biased do have to be to post this? You keep saying over and over again that the connector was not announced when the project was announced. So what? The connector exists today. Apple denied them a license because they do want their connector to coexist with another connector because in their special universe, only apple products exist.

This level of arrogance is staggering. On top of it, you are not only supporting their arrogance but also trashing a bunch of guys that just wanted to make a simple combo connector. Dude that is pathetic. Apple is a company that makes some great products but are also filled with hubris, and I don't know why you can't let these two thoughts coexist in your head.

Its them damn cosmic rays, I tell ya.

The death of Moore's law, they will be.

I can't make head or tail of what you are trying to say.

For the record, I'm not trying to be snarky *at* you or asking you to be - my comment was about the OP's comment being lame - which it was.

Yes, I agree with what you are saying about AMD, and definitely, AMD offers and has always offered better value for money than Intel. That is indeed their USP and how they compete. And it is a good thing for average customers like you and me.

My point was that this is a dedicated server CPU so ECC is to be expected. In fact, a snarky comment would have been appropriate if Intel had *not* supported ECC.

As far as the price goes, I simply searched Google for 8GB ECC RAM and 8GB RAM, and verified that Newegg price which was the first search result.
If you really don't want to believe, here are the links:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139262
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231297

And yes, I know Intel doesn't make RAM, and neither did I claim that they did. So your comment above is quite puzzling and I don't understand what I need to re-read *carefully*. It was in response to your previous comment, "It is quite significant that the Atom CPUs support ECC memory, and Intel do make you pay for a lot for it."

I was trying to say that paying an extra 12 bucks for ECC RAM isn't much, so what's your point?

Man, you are clutching at straws, just like the OP did with his snarky comment about ECC. The title itself says that this chip is targeted towards high density servers and you compare this to AMD's desktop CPUs?? By what stretch of the imagination is ECC not relevant to a server CPU? In fact, it would have been noteworthy if Intel had cut corners and just rebranded their mobile Atom CPU and not even added ECC support.

And Newegg sells 8GB ECC RAM for 52 bucks vs 40 bucks for non-ECC RAM. Even if you put aside the fact that this is supposed to be server RAM, an extra 12 bucks sounds a "hefty premium" to you?

And yes, for the record, the comment was not just biased (which is okay since this is /.) but was pathetically lame. You at least expect a certain standard when it comes to snarkiness. I mean, OP could have pointed out that this chip only supports up to 8GB memory which is actually a significant drawback considering this is a 64bit chip.

If I were to rephrase your statements slightly"
"The lion inches towards the hapless innocent doe, just about to pounce, while the doe cowers in fear trying to escape, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."

"Because there's no selfish reason to help."

Your line of thinking has destroyed our world because it is based on hubris - our collective notion that it is our moral or "human" duty to interfere, to rescue, to meddle, and we sleep well at night thinking that "we have made it right" and have "made a difference". Very often, we are just meddlers, and only sleep well at night because we just ended up fueling our egos with our self-righteous acts.

Why don't we just stop judging everything around us and just try to lead a life in which we are honest and true to ourselves - for a change? I argue the world will be a better place for all of us.

Okay, I get what you were trying to say earlier. Fair point too - because AMD64 was a vastly superior design and more importantly, a vastly more pragmatic design compared to what Intel was trying to shove down people's throats. Goes to show what hubris can do.

I'm not 100% sold on your recommendation of Intel dropping Atom and adopting ARM though. x86 is still very attractive to corporate clients and others who value legacy support and enterprise support. Business upgrade cycles are often very slow, and the only reason why iPads have even made inroads in the corporate market (and they are quickly doing so) is because there were no x86 and Windows alternatives. That's again why I say that the new wave of Atom Clovertrail Windows 8 tablets would be a very interesting battle in the business sector.

The other alternative - which is Intel adopting ARM would be a bad strategic move for Intel. Or perhaps I'm being too conservative in my thinking and perhaps it is a really bold idea.

What are you even talking about? Since when did Intel miss the "64 bit era" as you put it? Sure, Itanium was a failure and Intel sunk billions of dollars trying to make it work. However, Intel could afford that mistake and still continue chugging along. As things stand today, Intel absolutely dominates the 64 bit market. In fact, except for Intel, AMD, and the IBM Power chips, there is no other game in town as far as 64 bit is concerned, and in this market, Intel probably has 80% or 90% market share, and has the best performance and performance per watt numbers.

So, I'm not sure which 64 bit era you are talking about, and how Intel missed it.

As far as Atom is concerned, yes, Intel is struggling quite a bit. However, Intel is trying to scale down its power consumption while ARM is trying to scale up its performance. Sooner or later, the two shall meet and it will be a very interesting battle. I wouldn't write off Intel so soon yet. In fact, the upcoming Clovertrail based Windows 8 tablets should be a very interesting launch. Take a look at the Thinkpad Tablet 2 for example. It should be a very interesting tablet for corporate customers or for users who want x86 along with Windows 8 Pro along with 3G and LTE mobility and a full-size USB port and with 8-9 hrs battery life.

I'm not saying Intel will win or lose, and it needs be relentless in improving power efficiency to even be a viable alternative to ARM. However, to say that Atom has already lost the race is a bit premature.

I once read somewhere that a superiority complex usually arises from an inferiority complex. Something else I remember is that "we despise most in others that which we hate in ourselves". As I get older and come across more instances of arrogance and humility, I realized that these statements usually hold true even if they sound a bit glib.

This is not just true for ignorance but true for most vices and weaknesses, in my experience. If you find yourself having a really strong reaction at some quirk or weakness you observe in someone else, chances are that you either consider that a weakness in yourself, or you used to and now think you have overcome it. We only feel superior because we feel we overcame certain weaknesses so when we notice it in someone else, we feel they are inferior or less evolved or weak or something similar. It is just a way of patting ourselves in the back.

The problem is often worse in nerds and geeks because we often don't even have regular conversations. (I'm not even sure non-nerds and non-geeks do for that matter.) When we interact with others, it is mostly an information sharing exercise or an exercise in sharing trivia or exotic information tidbits, to show off our awesome information databank. How many of us truly try to listen to someone, try to understand someone? I've personally found that the hardest thing to do in my life. It is so much easier to mask ignorance by just talking a lot and sounding knowledgeable and opinionated. We build our careers and our lives inside these bulwarks.

Dont' be so quick to dismiss Intel from the race. Intel is already shipping Medfield at 2GHz which has the same peak and idle power consumption as other ARM chips. It still lags the very high end ARM chips in performance but is very competitive when compared to mid range ARM phones and chips - in terms of performance, price, power - everything.

You will soon see Clovertrail based Windows 8 tablets by the end of this month. Again, Clovertrail is able to hold its own against the top end ARM tablets, which is why so many vendors are using it.

Let's be clear - ARM is still the king when it comes to mobile phones and tablets, but while it is trying to dramatically increase processing power while slowly increasing power consumption, Intel is doing exactly the opposite - it is trying to dramatically decrease power consumption while slowly decreasing performance.

Let's also be clear about one more thing - Intel is the king when it comes to performance and sheer processing power. Even the highest end ARM chip doesn't even begin to compete with say, a mid-range Intel laptop chip.

Another thing to consider is that in most of these handheld devices, display power consumption is quickly becoming the biggest factor - CPU/GPU power consumption is a clear second - which also gives Intel a bit of an edge, along with its manufacturing superiority.

Who will meet in the middle first - is anyone's guess. All I am saying is that it is too early to count Intel out of this race. Intel is clearly worried and wants to own this space. The next couple of years will be extremely interesting.

What would make it even more interesting, is if Intel bought out a big ARM player or did a cross-licensing agreement to compete with Qualcomm.

A teacher - any teacher - has to undergo a state level certification before she or he can even teach. This is above and beyond their academic degrees. Do you hear them arguing and debating about egocentric parasites who created the system? Perhaps, but even though they argue about it, they just go and get the certification and then move on in their lives with the real act of teaching.