"Does Intel have enough clout to make embracing SSE-2 de rigeur?"
Do you mean soon? Outside of say drivers? I doubt it. At best, Intel will ship 500k units this year. Next year will be, what?, 30 million? 50 million? Out of the total population of x86 machines, that would be at best 10%. So what kind of incentive can Intel offer that locks a publisher out of 90% of the market? Okay, if you develop for the Mac, 10% may be attractive, but for most of the publishers this stinks. Sure, they may rope in some of the smaller ones, or maybe entice a publisher with the prospect of a future market to do a special P4 version, but if the sales aren't there, it ain't going to last. Remember that AMD is shooting for 30% of the market by Q4 of next year, even if it only gets 25%, there maybe as many Athlons as P4s in that quarter. Now, true, the Hammer family is supposed to support SSE2, and that pretty much leave SSE2 support open for 2002, but 2001 is a bit of a risk. |
