Ashlee, the real question is: which of these chips will be on show, and which will be the subject of slideware?

So it'll be like having six vendor slideshows in a row? Painful! The ony value would be in getting access to the lab techies. Sample silicon and slides mean nothing, I had a Sun presentation years ago where the excited Sun exec waved around an UltraSPARC V CPU and told us how it was going to rule every datacenter in the Fortune 500, and within two weeks it had been cancelled.

What would be a lot more interesting is if the vendors were given some sort of performance challenge. Something like bring two of your shiny new servers with the advertised chips, some storage and some management gubbins, and then from bare metal build a cluster with your preferered database and OS and run it through a clutch of SPEC tests, all in front of the public. Ony minimal OS tweaking would be allowed between different SPEC tests. Winners would be decided by time to get up and running, overall benchmark performance, and bang for the buck. Now, that would be interesting!

"What would be a lot more interesting is if the vendors were given some sort of performance challenge. Something like bring two of your shiny new servers with the advertised chips, some storage and some management gubbins, and then from bare metal build a cluster with your preferered database and OS and run it through a clutch of SPEC tests, all in front of the public. Ony minimal OS tweaking would be allowed between different SPEC tests. Winners would be decided by time to get up and running, overall benchmark performance, and bang for the buck. Now, that would be interesting!" .... By Matt Bryant Posted Saturday 19th July 2008 08:47 GMT

What a Good Idea, Matt. That would allow for Pukka Processor Chip Architectures from Fab Processing Facilities to Flex their Virtual Reach Right into the Heart of Weak and Enfeebling Operating Systems. And Chip Architecture Teams* will be the New Masters of the Universe Championing Applications for their Foundry's Model Architecture.

But to make IT worthwhile and germane, the SPEC tests could be Red Team Assaults upon Systems which are in Dire Need of TakeOver and/or MakeOver.

And to be perfectly honest with you, Godson 3 is one Mother of an Enigmatic Chip Design and leaves Intel and AMD as pale and pasty Walled Flowers in the Shade of AI Chill Darkness.

* Sounds just like AI Network InterNetworking Robot IQs tome/to me. Global Operating Devices for Virtual Dummies.

Ashley, have you heard if the ServerPrime guys will be there? I don't have many (any) details, but I've heard that they're a startup working on 3, 5, 7, and 11 core processors...have you heard anything?

how well they can run Crysis?

Sorry, couldn't resist

"I'm under NDA with ServerPrime, so not able to comment. We usually try to avoid NDAs, but I wanted the inside scoop on this thing. You'll be hearing from them soonish. That's all I can reveal."

Since you're under NDA what we'll be hearing soonish is what they'll let you print, correct?

w00t

Is this Optimus Prime's computer chip of choice ?

Paris, always good for a photo oppertunity (that's a Lego-hint ElReg!!!)