[geeks] New Itanium machines from SGI

[David Passmore]

On Wed, Jan 08, 2003 at 01:27:20PM -0500, Dave McGuire wrote:

>    So, let's say you blow a metric buttload of money on a computer room 
> full of <processor xyz> and invest a bunch of money (perhaps an 
> imperial buttload) in software development for those processors.  When 
> process technology hits the laws-of-physics-imposed barrier of ~4GHz or 
> so (by the last estimates I read) who's gonna be faster?

Wouldn't the complexity of a chip like, say, MIPS keep it from reaching the
same physical limit on clock speed with the same manufacturing process as a
simpler processor like x86? Otherwise, you would be seeing 3 Ghz UltraSPARC
IIIs.

David