Re: If they had been able to keep it [Hammer] quiet and bring it out somewhere near the original schedule, they certainly would have jumped Intel with it.
That's exactly how Athlon was launched.
There is a faint hope remaining that Thoroughbred will suddenly appear, but there is almost no indication that such an appearance is imminent.
The sudden, rather drastic plunge Intel mobile part prices seems to indicate a strong, near term Thoroughbred release, but Palomino based Athlon4 has been making substantial progress recently, which could, by itself, force Intel to slash prices.
It makes sense for AMD to push Hammer early. They need to motivate software support, and the Hammer publicity may have contributed a great deal to the "osborning" of Itanium as a post 32-bit solution. Let's face it, whatever limitations Itanium may or may not have, if it were the only viable 64-bit platform out there, a migration to it would have begun by now. But with all the very, very positive publicity AMD has gained for Hammer, even users who really can't imagine buying non-Intel systems are waiting just to see. That Intel has been forced to leak info on Yamhill to slow the Hammer PR snowball, just slipped the knife a little deeper into Itanium.
Pushing Hammer's publicity early is AMD's version of Intel dumping chips below cost into market segments where AMD is making money. |
