>So first of all, you claim that AMD forced Intel to use AMD's
> 64-bit set. Is that really a great accomplishment?
Oh yes it is. For several reasons. First, and maybe most importantly, AMD64 has guaranteed the long term viability of x86. You might have forgotten, but not much more than 5 years ago, most people expected the world to abandon x86 in favor of IA64 (Itanium) as the need for 64 bit computing would make x86 obsolete. Intel can claim all they want, I'm quite certain their plan was to move IA64 down to the desktop where and when 64 bit became a requirement, and sooner or later, that will include pretty much all (non embedded) markets. If it wheren't for AMD64, and intel feeling the heat, we all would have had substantial less choice than we have now. You really can not overestimate the importance of this; its even felt in the high end RISC market where Power, Sparc, IPF and others are being more and more pushed into shrinking niches with x86 (64) growing into higher end every year.
If AMD had not successfully pushed AMD64, 5 or so years from here they wouldn't have a market to compete in anymore. x86 would have dried up, IA64 too patent ridden to make a clone. 32 bit cpu's just wouldn't sell anymore. Yes AMD64 *is* a significant achievement.
>What this means is that AMD had to spend the money, time,
>and work to get software companies to open up to the idea of
> using 64-bit software (which still isn't mainstream, and
>won't be for some time
AMD invested in it, off course, but it really wasn't that expensive. From a hardware POV, adding 64 bit extentions is almost trivial. Of course, it does require a very significant change of the core, but if you are designing a new one anyway, extending it is easy. From the software support side, AMD only did a minimal effort, simply because they can't afford much more, but Jerry going on trial in defense of Bill Gates was a very cheap way to get MS to support their ISA 😀
Then there is another relatively big feat about AMD64: server space. Its not only its performance than made Opteron crack into the tier one server market, it was also its 64 bit ability. Opteron now holds 10-15% of the server market, a highly lucrative niche AMD previously held about no market share in at all. It now has its chips sold and marketed by Sun, HP, IBM, Cray and other high end server OEMs. It gets motherboard support from companies like Tyan, iwill, supermicro, it gets chipset support by nVidia, ATI, Serverworks (!),... Contrast that with a couple of years ago, where taiwanese motherboard vendors would not even dare publically sell a desktop board for AMD chips, and we only had white box boards with either AMD chipsets or VIA crap. This change is fairly phenomenal, and AMD64 played a significant role in this change.
Nah, IMO, extending x86 to 64 bits really isn't much of a technical achievement; "anyone" can do that, but making it a success, and getting intel to adopt it achieved quite a lot for AMD:
-it ensured its core market (x86 cpus) will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.
-it killed off any hopes for intel to make Itanium, and their associated ~$10B investment mainstream and/or profitable
-it gave them a significant foothold in the lucrative high end server market
-it gave them the image of being an industry leader, not just a follower or cloner which is extremely important to get adopted by big corporations.
All that for no more than a maybe a (few) hundred million $ (my WAG) is a fantastic deal.
= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
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