Re:No Biggie (Score 1)

"Who are you to say that the processor has problems simply because it has a large heat sink? Do people question putting in side impact beams in cars? "There must be something wrong with the car if it needs side impact beams, the doors must be flimsy". Do people question the fact that in order to drive your old Pinto with it's brand new Ferarri engine installed, you will probably have to upgrade the tires to drive at full speed?

You and me may not agree with Intel's design philosophy, but that doesn't mean that they are manufacturing a faulty processor... it just means that their design goals do not include cheaper, more efficient, cooler, lower power consumption for their main stream processors. They want to make the fastest x86 chip possible and because of many reasons, the solutions they come up with to create newer and "better" chips are not exactly going to be elegant.

I believe what he was saying was, excessive heat creates problems. Let me repeat that again. Excessive heat creates problems.

Now, even if Intel has this slated on the board (the PIV that has to have a 1lb heatsink), this is the preliminary stages of development. In the world of business... companies like to produce products at low costs to them for more profit. Have you ever seen the price they pay for each wafer? Very expensive when you mass-develop them. So, smaller they are, more profit. In the world of technology... there's always going to be the "newest and greatest supper computer" that basically needs lots of power and cooling. The interesting part is where these two meet... Consumer Products.

Now, these products intended for consumer usage will have some of the newest and greatest features, however, not all. Thus, the company can save on manufacturing costs and price the product where consumers are willing to exchange money for it.

As we saw with every other major improvement in the computer industry... bigger, bulkier technology becomes smaller and smaller, cheaper and cheaper with time.

This is what I see here. The new PIV will most likely need a new board, maybe a new case, however, it is unlikely that they will package it with a 454 gram (1 pound) heatsink.

To address the issue with a new motherboard. Backward compatibility only slows things down. This is a true but hard fact to face. But, sooner or later we will have to. And, we are already seeing the "phasing out" of some out-of-date technologies. Just to name some of them (and others in the first step - PC and Mac): parallel, serial, scsi, at, and more. And, what could replace these, I think you already know: USB and Firewire...even some of our internal connections can be vastly improved by incorporating Firewire technologies.

Best Regards, CDE_MK