At Intel we’re very fond of starting sentences with the word ‘so’, particularly when we’re talking to each other, and even more so if we happen to be in conversation with people external to Intel. I think we use it to buy ourselves a precious second or two of thinking time before opening our mouths and going on the record.
So… I admit it is pretty pretentious to even consider the correlation between a cornerstone of one of mankind’s greatest thinkers and something so apparently mundane as a CPU, but there are times when an idea occurs that just latches on like a - insert your own simile here – and just will not leave you alone.
I’m not going to give you a mini bio of Aristotle the man; if you’re reading this you know how to use Wikipedia or Google. He was undeniably a very influential thinker, and in some respects, way ahead of his time, particularly when you consider he was writing/teaching in the mid 300s BC and that many of his world views were held to be universal until the enlightenment in the late 18th Century. Aristotle is also widely considered to be the father of logic, defining the need for, and the methodology of, deductive reasoning. He was the first person to really set down ways of structuring the process of thinking, of reasoning and it is not stretching the point too far that his work was the root of the subsequent developments on which computing logic is based, no matter how far removed it may appear now.
Among the most famous principles of reasoning is the set of rules he laid out in order to determine the inherent nature of an object. To fully understand it we must ask four questions, we must determine its four “causes”. The word ‘cause’ is one that seems to have resulted from translation from ancient greek, and clearly something has been lost in translation, as the word cause does not carry the same meaning as it does today, so much so that it defies succinct translation even today. Rather it is better to put it in the form of 4 questions which, if responded to help you to understand an object in a holistic fashion. Aristotle is said to have used the example of a statue, but these questions were designed to help us understand all objects. Of course, things were much simpler back in Aristotle’s day, but what sort of understanding do we get of an object that is more complex: an Intel quad-core processor for example.
The first question is: from what is it made (what is its material cause)? The main portion of the answer to this question is of course silicon. But we ought not to stop there. Take a modern day processor, it has silver, tin, hafnium (lovely hafnium!). For simplicity’s sake, let’s leave it as silicon. Next, the formal cause, or more simply put: what is it? Well… um… it’s a processor, a quad-core processor. Yes, we could argue it’s a microchip, a semiconductor or even - and I have a feeling Aristotle would like this - a logic device, but to me it is a processor pure and simple. What brought the object into being is the third question, i.e what is its efficient cause. As an Intel employee this is where you start to feel good about the company you work for. It was born out of one of the cleanest, one of the most advanced manufacturing environments in the world, an environment built to hugely exacting requirements that in some ways they are as remarkable as the devices that they are used to produce. I speak of course of a wafer fab, an Intel wafer fab. I’ve never been inside one of these buildings, so they still hold an extra mystique for me. So far, so good, if unremarkable: it’s a processor, made from silicon (and hafnium), in a fab. We probably all knew that.
So what of the fourth cause, or, as Aristotle called it its final cause? Well the answer to this is, like the device itself, infinitely complex. If we left our imagination at home, the answer to the question ‘what is it for’ could simply be left at ‘computing’, or ‘processing’. But that would be to not answer the question properly or fully. The real answer is, if you want to keep it short and sweet, “whatever you want it to be for”. It can help you do whatever you want with your PC, notebook, or server.
This is the crux of the matter. The choices are endless, or at least as endless as the variety of applications and usages that are out there. What is more, the world and its economy are more reliant on these devices than ever before. We are using them every time we search the web, every time we make an online purchase, and many do not have a so much as an inkling that we are using one. In March this year, Intel launched its latest quad-core processor, in the Intel® Xeon® processor family – the 5500 series for servers and workstations. It seems a shame that it is being introduced to a world that is not as ebullient as once it was. But in another way, these circumstances provide Nehalem EP with an opportunity. It is in times of strife that innovation comes to the fore, receiving more focus as we all count on it to deliver us from stagnation.
This is where such a processor, in tandem with a variety of applications can shine. It provides the means for obsolete hardware to be replaced at a cost which is recouped in less than a year, it provides the means for digital artists to express their ideas better and more immediately than ever before, it enables movies to be animated in 3D, it helps find new reserves of oil, and provides the horsepower to design machines that are more energy-efficient and sustainable than before. There are a wealth of documents on this site that will explain the compelling ROI in replacing old, single-core servers with new machines based on the Xeon 5500 series CPU. And what is exciting is that there are people out there who will take advantage of this supremely quick computing power combined with its intelligent performance and put it to new uses, providing a firm with a new competitive advantage. Then other firms will follow suit, and this pattern, as it snowballs, begins to haul us out of the mire. Don’t misunderstand me, not even Xeon 5500 is going to fix this economic situation singlehandedly or speedily, but history teaches us that technology comes to the fore when times are tough, and the better the technology, the more it stands out, and that those who make best use of it, establish themselves as leaders.
So to bring it back to that curious 4th cause: what is it for? Well, with so many possible answers, we can only stick our hand in to all of those notions above and pick one at random or just pick a favourite. Others will pick something that has not occurred to anyone else and will use that to build a business opportunity. My inclination is to say that it is for innovation, for IT to show its value to the business, as contributor to the bottom line. A little trite maybe, but it is true. It is also an answer derived from a certain amount of logic. Surely Aristotle would not want to argue with that.
