Flow My Thoughts, The IT Professor Said

Snap! Goes The Intel!

http://eletters.wnn.ziffdavis.com/zd1/cts?d=75-125-1-1-618817-5926-1

After over a year resisting the 64-bit trend pioneered by AMD, Intel has announced that it has implemented 64-bit extensions to its 32-bit processor line. This gets them into the 64-bit market on nearly the same level as AMD, namely, offering CPUs which [unlike the ITANIUM] offer backward compatibility with 32-bit operating systems.

Intel is still insisting that 64-bit systems have no place on the desktop, and is currenly limiting this extension technology to its high-end 'Xeon' server chip. The move to 64-bit computing has been discussed at length in this blog, and I still think Intel is mistaken [but I acknowledge they make more money and have more expertise than I do].

An analysis of this development, indicating that Intel is well-positioned to take advantage of the deep factors pushing for the transition to 64-bit computing [increased security is one of them] as well as the problems to come in creating 64-bit drivers, can be found here:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1528428,00.asp

Another look at the 64-bit Xeon chips, and how they relate to the existing 64-bit Itanium can be found here:

http://www.esj.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=864

A page displaying a series of articles on 64-bit computing, discussing AMD, Intel, IBM, and the whole background of 64-bit computing can be found here:

http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,1738,1425416,00.asp

Rather ironically, an analyst has concluded that Intel's 64-bit processor extensions were reverse-engineered from AMD's:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1562294,00.asp

Posted by jho at February 20, 2004 11:23 AM