Re: AMD needs to differentiate its product offering from Intel.
Can't be done. Intel sees any AMD success as a deadly threat to itself, and will dump product into any market in which AMD makes money - as long as Intel remains capable of affording such.
While you talk about the IA-64, I recall arguments when Intel came out with the Pentium Pro
Utterly and totally different set of circumstances. First of all, Pentium PRO was considerably faster than Pentium on most current code when it was released. PPro only had IPC problems on a some older apps, almost no total performance problems of any kind - and PPro clocked higher than Pentium shortly after its release.
Itanium isn't just a matter of using a different internal architecture to execute the X86 installed code base, it's a different instruction set. Convincing customers to substitute Itanium for Pentium/Pentium III/Pentium4/Athlon is the same as trying to get them to switch to Apple, Alpha, SUN, or PowerPC - and even the mid-range and high end markets have been moving towards X86/IBM PC compatible instruction set processors like Xeon, PIII, Athlon, and Athlon MP.
The IA-64 line of uP represents Intel trying to leverage their dominance in the uP and making an attempt to attack the UNIX market
No, extending the huge X-86 installed base into the enterprise is what AMD is doing with its X86-64 design. Intel's Itanium strategy is a clone of DEC/Compaq Alpha's attempted attack on Sparc and PowerPC - and we all know how Alpha turned out. |
