So what is the best solution? Intel's Itanium/McKinley or AMD's K8? To be honest, we need them both. Intel's Itanium explores new territory and finally ditches the old, slow and complex x86 instruction set. Intel is currently the only one in the x86 market that can get the necessary software support for a new and better instruction set.
AMD's 64-bit x86, thanks to clever and innovative workarounds, will make sure that Intel cannot ask exorbitant prices for its new processors and that the customer has an alternative. Many entreprises, developers and home users will not be able and will not want to make the necessary investment in expensive new IA-64 software. The K8 and its succesors will offer superior performance for 32-bit x86 programs. This will protect the huge investment people have made in 32-bit x86 programs.
If IA-64 does take over the market, it will do so because it is superior and offers real added value, not because customers are forced to move to IA-64. The customer will have the last word in the CPU market. If only that were true in the software market…
By Johan De Gelas of Ace's hardware
Sources :
"Inside Intel's Merced: A Strategic Planning Discussion"
The AMD Athlon™ Processor: Future Directions. Presentation by Fred Weber Vice President, Engineering Computation Products Group