Intel....more from Ten in response to Merlin:
If s/he had clarified in detail the basis of the opinion that "the x86 architecture is now an open architecture that Intel can no longer keep to itself like Microsoft can with Windows," my vote might have been swayed. That's because I assume Ten is saying that the architecture is no longer essentially proprietary. Is that because critical patents have now expired or is it because of Intel's reaction to market conditions?
I brought this question to Ten; Ten's answer:
"Apollo, I have very little knowledge about x86 licensing and all that. I do remember that there was a spat between AMD and Intel over AMD's act of copying MMX, an x86 extension that Intel developed. After some legal scuffles, I believe they settled with AMD agreeing to some sort of licensing deal.
After that, AMD decided to go ahead on a completely different path than the one Intel is taking. AMD introduced 3DNow extensions in the middle of 1998, hoping to get game developers before Intel introduced SSE in early 1999. However, SSE has won out, because of technical superiority over 3DNow, Intel's huge market share, and Intel's own efforts in software development (especially Intel's own compiler package which is fully supported and marketed by Intel). And now Intel is pushing further with SSE2 on the Pentium 4.
Now AMD is going their own route with x86-64, their version of 64-bit extensions for x86. This is in marked contrast to Intel, who is developing Itanium pretty much as a brand new computing platform. However, AMD also announced support for Intel's SSE and SSE2 in their first x86-64 processors. How AMD can implement this without Intel's blessing, I don't know. However, I can't imagine Intel would let this go by without a legal fight.
But I do know that neither SSE, nor SSE2, nor even 3DNow are considered "must-have" features in an x86 processor. I don't know of any software package which explicitly requires support for one of these extensions. It's because the software, drivers, and operating system can all work around the lack of these extensions. For example, there are many device drivers and software applications which will work better on an SSE processor, but all of them will still work on non-SSE processors. So in essense, these enhancements are only for enhancing performance, and only for certain software packages. Unfortunately, these days, performance isn't as much of a selling factor as it used to be. This, plus the ability to work around the lack of such extensions, is why none of these extensions are seen as "must-have."
Tenchusatsu" |
