Santa Clara, CA -- At a gala event for representatives of media, industry and religion, Intel Corporation officially launched the latest addition to its product line, the Deity processor, designed to be intuitive for many first-time computer users.
"The Deity processor enables people to interact with their computers just as they would with any supernatural being," said Pat Gelsinger, vice president and general manager, Intel Desktop Products Group. "It flattens the learning curve by performing like a real deity, so new users will be instantly familiar with its operation."
The Deity is a departure from Intel's historical practice of basing new processors on advances in the tried-and-true x86 architecture. The new chip incorporates an entirely new group of technologies, including virtually unlimited on-board ROM and two new instruction sets. Intel collectively calls the trio Omni3.
New Technology Indistinguishable From God
According to the company's promotional literature, "The Omni3 Digital Divinity System enables the Deity processor to mimic the three qualities most commonly considered divine: omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence. Developed in consultation with leaders of the world's major religions, Omni3 technology is the first to pass the supernatural Turing Test."
The Deity's omniscience is embodied in an on-board ROM module in which all knowledge in the universe is stored. Curiously, the information is neither complete nor accurate. "Our market research concluded that the intended demographic prefers to unconditionally believe what the Deity says, and they don't expect comprehensive or comprehensible information," explained Gelsinger.
The new chip's omnipotence is also crippled by an "undocumented feature." Although its new instruction set is capable of unprecedented power, the Deity never applies all of its resources to a given task. Instead, the computer crashes, and users are presented with cryptic blue screen error messages such as, "The requested operation exceeds the parameters of the current user's entitlement."
Similarly, the third component of Omni3 is an ethical protocol built into the Deity's second new instruction set. It is designed to mimic divine omnibenevolence, but it too suffers from cryptic crashes that display messages such as, "Attempted execution of program denied. Noncompliance with moral code detected."
Crashing, Compatibility Issues "By Design"
Anonymous Intel sources reported that during development the Deity's tendency to crash was called the "Mysterious Ways Function." Research on a patch was abandoned after the most promising work-around, the "Supplication Algorithm," turned out to be no more effective than a reboot, and market research determined that consumers would welcome the Deity's erratic behaviour.
Another unusual feature of the new processor is its inability to connect to the Internet. This incompatibility was rumoured to be due to the Deity's ethical protocol refusing to allow the transmission of immoral data, but Gelsinger denied this. "No, it's because the Deity won't acknowledge the existence of any other processors."
A surprise is in store for fans of computer games, too. Although the new chip is basically compatible with most popular titles, the computer opponents will behave differently from their original programming. Apparently, the Deity always wins games of violence, and it always loses games of logic.
Officially, Intel says all elements of the new chip's operation are intentional. "The Deity is flawless and unique. All of its features are there by design," Gelsinger said, adding, "If someone is dissatisfied with the Deity, well, obviously something's wrong with that person."
