chipguy, I had an opportunity to read the second article, also. It does not address an important point - AMD's 64-bit mode corrects many of the ISA faults in that it expands the register set and drops earlier compatibility modes, depending on the mode chosen. (K8 architecture has those modes when the processor is run in 32-bit mode. In 64-bit long mode, the processor runs as a 64-bit processor, no compatibility. In compatibility long mode, 32-bit and 16-bit legacy code is supported. Legacy mode runs like existing x86-32 processors.)
This means that, going forward, it is 'goodbye segmentation' and hello to a simpler processor, perhaps with even more registers in future generations. This opens up the possibility of future optimizations for 64-bit code which would not be available for 32-bit code run with a compatibility selector. (I suspect that K9 will start introducing such optimizations.) The architecture can grow without many of the older limitations.
When you couple this with the article's conclusion, you see that even this IPF enthusiast gives AMD a long time to establish its own 64-bit solution:
Conclusion: At Best a Long Goodbye
Every military analyst knows that it is far easier to assess the technical and operational capabilities of a secretive entity than its intentions. Intel likely has plans for a number of contingencies, and the replacement of x86 is undoubtedly one them. But if Intel does decide to replace x86 on the desktop with IPF, and the technical scenario I have painted proves accurate, the overwhelming presence of x86 in desktop computing would not start to diminish until 2005 at the earliest and would remain significant during a long period of overlap, perhaps extending even into the next decade.
So there you have it: The beauty of the AMD64 approach is that is does answer the main issues this author addresses while providing full speed compatibility with older applications, and by the author's own timeline, AMD has time to establish their solution.
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