AMD joins MeeGo

Posted Nov 16, 2010 0:21 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: AMD joins MeeGo by martinfick
Parent article: AMD joins MeeGo

In the long run The most powerful computer people generally own is something that will fit inside a shoebox and cost less then a pair of Nike basket ball shoes.

This is just reflecting Moore's law.

Moore's law says that the amount of transistor's that can be economically put into one device doubles ever 2-3 years.

There are only so many general purpose CPU cores you need to run a computer. Sure you can keep stuffing them in... like 4 cores, 8 cores, 16 cores, 32 cores. But after probably about 4-8 CPU cores you run out of any sort of benefit a normal consumer device can benefit from.

But you keep having more transistors. Making the CPUs bigger and bigger makes them slower and slower. Pentium 4 proved that. RISC has won. x86 is just a thin layer of ISA compatibility logic over what is fast reduced instruction cores.

So you move the memory controller into the processor.

Then you move north bridge into the processor.

Then you move the GPU into the processor

Then you move the south bridge into the processor.

In a few years all a computer is going to be is just one big hunk of modular silicon clamped to a break out board that is little more then some voltage regulators and I/O ports.

It's going to be dirt cheap, fast, rugged, and very efficient.

Windows Desktop is just ill suited to small devices and Microsoft fucked up royally by not moving to NT for Windows Mobile.

As long as hardware vendors learn to work with one another and share developmental burden and resources, then they can compete very effectively on who is the cheapest, fastest, and most efficient.. even if they all use the same basic software.

Meego, however, is TOO F-NG SLOW.

They need to get a product out _RIGHT_NOW_. They should of been done with the initial release LAST YEAR.

They are losing time and time is the most precious resource they have. If they don't move their asses they are going to be dead on arrival.

This is the #1 problem with Meego.

AMD joins MeeGo

Posted Nov 16, 2010 0:34 UTC (Tue) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

> They need to get a product out _RIGHT_NOW_. They should of been done with the initial release LAST YEAR.

> They are losing time and time is the most precious resource they have. If they don't move their asses they are going to be dead on arrival.

I think that you are probably right for high end devices, but right now, low end device manufacturers will put anything that runs on their devices on it. So, perhaps Nokia and Intel (and AMD) will lose with MeeGo, but it still might have a chance to run on some low end imports. Of course, if MeeGo itself dies because it is only supported by these high end device manufacturers, you aren't likely to see it on low end devices either. These low end manufacturers are not pushing android development, so they are unlikely to push MeeGo development either. But, perhaps Nokia could figure out the low end reliable market (they are good at that), but I suspect they do not see MeeGo that way, I wouldn't hold my breath.

AMD joins MeeGo

Posted Nov 16, 2010 22:38 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

They are losing time and time is the most precious resource they have. If they don't move their asses they are going to be dead on arrival.

And right when they should be doing releases and putting their OS on devices -- and those devices in the hands of people, they switch both packaging system (to RPM) and graphical toolkit (to Qt). Even if it somehow made sense (it doesn't), they should probably just have stuck to their previous choices and went ahead with that; afterwards they might have transitioned away to whatever weird choices if they really wanted to, but not before they had polished the user experience.

I am not implying that RPM and Qt are bad choices, just that APT and Gtk should be good enough. I have tried a Nokia N770 and a SmartQ5, and the problems with both were not the packaging system or the toolkit.

Right now I don't know if there is anyone left excited by what MeeGo may have to offer. The last ones were probably the guys who tried to create a derivative and were told to change the name.