http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/technology/19soft.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 16 — For more than two decades, Microsoft’s software and Intel’s processors were so wedded that the pairing came to be known as Wintel. But as that computing era wanes, Microsoft is turning to a new source of chip design: its own labs.
The design effort will initially be split between research labs at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., and its Silicon Valley campus here. Tentatively named the Computer Architecture Group, the project underscores sweeping changes in the industry.
One reason for the effort is that Microsoft needs to begin thinking about the next-generation design of its Xbox game console, said Charles P. Thacker, a veteran engineer and Microsoft engineer who will head the Silicon Valley group. Voice recognition may also be an area where the research could play a significant role.
“Voice is big,” Mr. Thacker said. “You can throw as much technology at it as you want to.”
Microsoft is exploring hardware design now in part because of a new set of tools that will make it possible to test ideas quickly, he said. The researchers will employ a system designed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, that makes it possible to reconfigure computer designs without the cost of making finished chips.
“We are at an inflection point in the industry,” he said. “Our friends say computers are not going to get faster, we’re just going to get more of them.”
As shrinking transistor sizes make it possible for designers to put multiple processors on a single chip, and computing functions are increasingly hidden in consumer devices, Microsoft faces new challenges and opportunities.
In recent years, the computing model centered on the desktop PC has increasingly given way to new, more specialized markets like video games and cellphones. As Microsoft has moved to enter these markets, it has increasingly designed hardware, software and packaging that are made by independent contractors but marketed under the Microsoft or Windows brand.
At the same time, new coalitions have emerged, like Apple’s decision to use Intel microprocessors, or Microsoft’s switch two years ago from Intel chips to PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by I.B.M. in its Xbox system.
The explosion of chips with an increasing number of “cores,” or multiple processors, is bringing parallel computing — the ability to divide tasks for faster processing — into the consumer electronics market. That could give companies like Microsoft a competitive advantage by controlling both hardware and software and the way they interact.
“This is a historic time in the computer industry,” said David A. Patterson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re in the middle of a revolutionary change toward parallel computing that will absolutely involve both hardware and software.”
Mr. Thacker, 63, has been at the forefront of technology advances in the past, having been part of the group at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center that designed the Alto, the first modern personal computer, and the Ethernet office network during the 1970’s.
He said computer designers were increasingly able to do on a single chip what previously took an entire computing system.
“There is a wheel of reincarnation” in the industry, he said.
After working at Xerox, Mr. Thacker joined a Digital Equipment Corporation research laboratory where he led the design of an experimental computer called Firefly, a model for some ideas just now being commercialized in single-chip designs.
He joined Microsoft in 1999 to help design the tablet computer based on ideas he had helped pioneer at Xerox in the 1970’s in the form of an experimental notebook computer called the Dynabook. Several companies now make commercial products based on that design, and Mr. Thacker said Microsoft was working on a smaller education-oriented version that was not yet public.
More recently he has moved back and forth between research and the product development side of the company, as his expertise is needed. Several years ago he did a stint working on the current Microsoft game console, Xbox 360, when a key engineer on the project became ill.
In the chip design effort, another longtime Microsoft researcher, Rich P. Draves, who has worked in various areas including networking and security, will head the Redmond group.
Whether and how the project might affect Microsoft’s continuing relationship with Intel is not clear.
Mr. Thacker acknowledged that despite vast increases in computer power, ease of use still confounded computer designers.
“It’s pretty hard for a geek to internalize the experience of an ordinary user,” he said, noting that his wife still avoids computers.
Progress will be made there, too, he insisted.
“Like everything that Microsoft gets into, we’re in it for the long run,” he said.
============================================================================
마이크로 소프트가 직접 cpu 개발에 착수했다는 기사입니다.
차차세대 콘솔 즉, xbox720 에 써먹을려고 만드는것 같습니다.
ibm cpu 가 별로 맘에 안들었나 봅니다.
출처: 뉴욕 타임즈
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 16 — For more than two decades, Microsoft’s software and Intel’s processors were so wedded that the pairing came to be known as Wintel. But as that computing era wanes, Microsoft is turning to a new source of chip design: its own labs.
The design effort will initially be split between research labs at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., and its Silicon Valley campus here. Tentatively named the Computer Architecture Group, the project underscores sweeping changes in the industry.
One reason for the effort is that Microsoft needs to begin thinking about the next-generation design of its Xbox game console, said Charles P. Thacker, a veteran engineer and Microsoft engineer who will head the Silicon Valley group. Voice recognition may also be an area where the research could play a significant role.
“Voice is big,” Mr. Thacker said. “You can throw as much technology at it as you want to.”
Microsoft is exploring hardware design now in part because of a new set of tools that will make it possible to test ideas quickly, he said. The researchers will employ a system designed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, that makes it possible to reconfigure computer designs without the cost of making finished chips.
“We are at an inflection point in the industry,” he said. “Our friends say computers are not going to get faster, we’re just going to get more of them.”
As shrinking transistor sizes make it possible for designers to put multiple processors on a single chip, and computing functions are increasingly hidden in consumer devices, Microsoft faces new challenges and opportunities.
In recent years, the computing model centered on the desktop PC has increasingly given way to new, more specialized markets like video games and cellphones. As Microsoft has moved to enter these markets, it has increasingly designed hardware, software and packaging that are made by independent contractors but marketed under the Microsoft or Windows brand.
At the same time, new coalitions have emerged, like Apple’s decision to use Intel microprocessors, or Microsoft’s switch two years ago from Intel chips to PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by I.B.M. in its Xbox system.
The explosion of chips with an increasing number of “cores,” or multiple processors, is bringing parallel computing — the ability to divide tasks for faster processing — into the consumer electronics market. That could give companies like Microsoft a competitive advantage by controlling both hardware and software and the way they interact.
“This is a historic time in the computer industry,” said David A. Patterson, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re in the middle of a revolutionary change toward parallel computing that will absolutely involve both hardware and software.”
Mr. Thacker, 63, has been at the forefront of technology advances in the past, having been part of the group at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center that designed the Alto, the first modern personal computer, and the Ethernet office network during the 1970’s.
He said computer designers were increasingly able to do on a single chip what previously took an entire computing system.
“There is a wheel of reincarnation” in the industry, he said.
After working at Xerox, Mr. Thacker joined a Digital Equipment Corporation research laboratory where he led the design of an experimental computer called Firefly, a model for some ideas just now being commercialized in single-chip designs.
He joined Microsoft in 1999 to help design the tablet computer based on ideas he had helped pioneer at Xerox in the 1970’s in the form of an experimental notebook computer called the Dynabook. Several companies now make commercial products based on that design, and Mr. Thacker said Microsoft was working on a smaller education-oriented version that was not yet public.
More recently he has moved back and forth between research and the product development side of the company, as his expertise is needed. Several years ago he did a stint working on the current Microsoft game console, Xbox 360, when a key engineer on the project became ill.
In the chip design effort, another longtime Microsoft researcher, Rich P. Draves, who has worked in various areas including networking and security, will head the Redmond group.
Whether and how the project might affect Microsoft’s continuing relationship with Intel is not clear.
Mr. Thacker acknowledged that despite vast increases in computer power, ease of use still confounded computer designers.
“It’s pretty hard for a geek to internalize the experience of an ordinary user,” he said, noting that his wife still avoids computers.
Progress will be made there, too, he insisted.
“Like everything that Microsoft gets into, we’re in it for the long run,” he said.
============================================================================
마이크로 소프트가 직접 cpu 개발에 착수했다는 기사입니다.
차차세대 콘솔 즉, xbox720 에 써먹을려고 만드는것 같습니다.
ibm cpu 가 별로 맘에 안들었나 봅니다.
출처: 뉴욕 타임즈
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