AMD has the answer for Intel

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 13:39:39 -0500, Ed wrote:
Fast forward a decade or two, and some might say Intel is one bit short
of a byte. Itanium, its 64-bit processor, is selling slowly however you
count it. Like all chip manufacturers, Intel does not give out its own
figures, but luckily for us AMD is more than happy to oblige, and
estimates Intel has shipped around 16,000 of its 64-bit chips. Now you
can add a few to compensate for AMD's negative spin, remove a few for
the ones that Intel shipped gratis, and divide by four to get a figure
that represents the total number of servers out there (few are
single-processor servers) using Itanium. It's not very impressive by any
measure.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5083279.html

A touch off-topic for the main thrust of this article, but did you
read this paragraph? :

"Now compare AMD's approach. AMD appeared on the mainstream computing
scene in the early 90s with its own reverse-engineered version of the
386. After a bumpy ride through the mid-90s, caused largely by the
decision to forward-engineer its version of the 486, AMD emerged with
the Athlon and now the Athlon 64--its own 64-bit processor."

OUCH! Can you say "not doing your research"? AMD appeared on the
mainstream computing scene in the early '80s when they were a second
source for Intel's 8086 and 8088 used in the original PC. They were
founded only 6 months after Intel and had many products of their own
before the PC deal. And then AMD made a "decision" to design their
own 486 chip? I'd hardly call being taken to court a "decision" that
AMD made! Besides which they only released their in-house design 486
chip (the 5x86) a couple years after they had released the AMD486 that
was reverse engineered from Intel. The 5x86 was a pretty successful
chip too, it was what followed (the K5) that caused them a lot of
pain.

Of course, then the article goes on to say that the Athlon64 is really
like a modern 386SX, which "which had a 16-bit heart but 32-bit
addressing"?!?! A 16-bit heart?! Since when is a data bus the
"heart" of the processor? And just how does this in any way relate to
the Opteron/Athlon64, with it's integrated memory controller and
hypertransport I/O connections?

The article specifically goes on to say "Sure, AMD's chips are not
true 64-bit in the same sense that the 386sx was not true 32-bit."
WTF?! What is this guy smoking! The 386SX was very much a 32-bit
processor, it just happened to be saddled by a 16-bit data bus. The
Athlon64 and Opteron are in EVERY sense of the word a 64-bit
processor. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca