Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
From: Delaware, USA
No, you're not the source of this confusion, minator does appear to say Titan has been killed and that it will reappear later. He seems confused.
His confusion over Intrinsity's part in the designing of Titam is understandable
If your follow Applied Micro's press releases, you would be under the impression that Titan's low power draw 90nm construction was a result of AMCC's licensing of Intrinsity's Fast14 Technology.
Intrinsity's own press releases lay claim to far more responsibility in the design.
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Intrinsity-Nets-2-GHz-4000-DMIPS-PowerPC-FastCore-733747.htm
Since the Titan core is not a stand alone product, and it has already been announced as part of an SOC to be produced this year, I don't think the core is dead.
Too much has been speculated based on limited information coming from sources that, primarily, appear to want to emphasize their role in developing the product.
Intrinsity's has a right to be proud of its innovative gating and timing designs. These schemes are unique and are responsible for allowing the 90nm processor to scale up its clock speed while remaining a low draw component.
However, AMCC and Intrinsity may be overplaying the actual changes in architecture. Except for higher clock speed, Titan doesn't appear to offer any radical improvements over AMCCs current processors. Their claim that "No other 32-bit PowerPC core even comes close to the 2.0 GHz 4000-plus DMIPS performance of this core" seems questionable in light of the MIPS figures you've posted.
The comparisons to AMCC's PPC460 core may turn out to be valid. The designers of this chip had to start somewhere and considering both companies past histories, an evolutionary design seems more likely than a completely revolutionary approach.
Just getting Fast14 incorporated into the design would have been difficult enough.
"Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"