Pete, <Some of the best software has come out as freeware>
I'm using Mozilla (a.k.a. Netscape) as an example. When Netscape announced that they'll be going open-source, the advocates were cheering, hoping that the potential flood of brainpower and development from all over will make Netscape as ubiquitous as Linux or GNU. That flood never came, and the world has yet to see a real stable version of Netscape 6.0, much less a final release. One former Netscape exec commented that you don't just slap the label "open source" on your product and hope that will magically attract talent.
So right now, it's just over a year before the release of the first x86-64 processor, and AMD has yet to announce widespread support of the x86-64 extensions. Making their emulator "open source" looks to me to be a Netscape-like decision. In the past, AMD has resorted to the old "Build it and they will come" model of business. That has worked at times, most recently because of Intel's slip-ups. But it has hardly ever worked for software support. It hasn't worked for 3DNow, which is why AMD is going to support SSE in Sledgehammer. I don't see why it's going to work for x86-64.
<AMD and Intel said they match current capabilities of RISC>
Actually, it was AMD who said that, specifically Fred Weber. The way I saw it, AMD was also hinting that they can eventually match the capabilities of EPIC (VLIW).
I don't know of anyone at Intel who doesn't believe that dropping x86 compatibility would have taken us to new levels of performance. Of course, dropping it just wasn't an option, business-wise.
Tenchusatsu |
