p.s. What were people's sales estimates for the Athlon before anyone had seen it? People around here ( like Yousef ) were writing the K7 off and even after the launch there was almost no support from OEMs but eventually it got AMD above 20% market share. I think the goal for the hammer is to double that.
The question is, does comparing K7, which was a product launched into a 32 bit x86 market that already existed, with K8, which is an extension into x86-64, a technology market area that doesn't exist, a good comparison to base investments on?
Oh yes, Microsoft has built code for the possability of x86-64 support into it's OS, MS covering their butts, as usual. But I think that it remains to be seen, if AMD can generate the type of industry support it would need to make "the x86-64 extensions" architecture successful in the WorkStation/Server market it's targeting. WorkStations....probably. Servers.......ummmm.
I'm just having a tough time believing it's going to be the certain Home Run that some people are expecting, regardless of performance. I think those people will be pleased with the performance, but not so pleased with the market penetration. I could be wrong, been wrong before....
Semi |
