I agree, that AMD right now needs Itanium to chug along promisingly--if not ever actually deliver. If Intel drops their committment to that platform, then there will be nothing to stop them from implementing x86-64. I don't know how the cross-licensing works, but I'm assuming that Intel could do that without paying anything or very much to AMD. As we've seen with AthlonMP, the only chance that Opteron has of getting into corporate server rooms is to be a unique solution, because if Intel sells something comparable, they will buy from Intel. Alot of people speculate that Prescot is 64bit, and that's what worries me.
An article I read about Sun not to long ago mentions, in an off-hand way, an intel 64bit solution called "Ant Hill" (sounds alot like Yamhill) which Intel is pimping around to big OEMs while at the same time being secretive about. It could be FUD--"don't buy Opteron, we'll have something better, just wait till AMD folds.."--but it also could be something like Prescot-Xeon with the x86-64 registers which, right out of the box could run all the x86-64 software and OSs that AMD has been struggling to make happen.
To go with the "Ant Hill" codeword, Intel's strategy might be to let AMD venture out first, watch if it finds a market, then send out a swarm of chips to take that market away. Like the one ant you see in your kitchen Monday becomes an invasion on Tuesday. AMD takes the risk, Intel stands ready to benefit. But can it work?
Now, if Intel's 86-64 is not compatible with AMD's, and it does not arrive by Christmas, then I think AMD will win out because of the time it takes to develop software support and validate servers. The ant-swarm scenario would only work if AMDx86-64 is implemented in Prescot, so that a quick decision by Intel to activate it (and make chipsets available for it) would send--in a matter of weeks--all Intel's might into the space that AMD was so nice to clear for them. If it's a matter of fabbing new chips--that takes too long. If they don't already have a chipset for it, it may also be too late.
Many on this board know the business alot better than I do. Is this feasible?
