Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[jhalada]

Jerry R,

What if the most important consideration is 64 bit performance and not compatibility? What if they want the best performing 64 bit machine, and 32 bit x86 compatibility is lower down the list of consideration factors?

- 286 buyers bought 286 primarily because of compatibility with 8086
- 386 buyers primarily bought 386 because of compatibility with 286 and 8086
- 486, Pentium 1, 2, 3, 4, K5, K6, K7, Cyrix, Via, Centaur, Transmeta, they all bought these CPUs primarily because of compatibility with existing code.

Do you think Itanium 2 performance is so compelling that this cycle will be broken? Hardly, as far as I can tell. less than 10% lead on SpecInt, and even that is mainly because of > 300 mm^2 die and 6MB of L2, not because of the miraculous Itanium core.

Was 286 the highest performance processor ont there? Not really, but it was picked because it was compatible. You get the picture.

Joe