Re: I really doubt that an executive from IBM would be misled by Intel's positioning of IPF. Maybe this particular executive is out of the loop, but I would expect Intel to spend a great deal of time explaining the prospects of Itanium, and what would be realistic in terms of sales.
As for the market shrinking, I responded to this in an earlier post on this forum. I think the RISC market is due for a comeback, given that the performance has vastly improved over x86 in the last couple years, and availability of Power4 and IPF based systems has grown considerably.
Sorry, just can't resist - In all fairness, it was almost 2 1/2 years ago...
AMD's only selling point for x86-64 is that it will offer similar performance to their highly efficient 32-bit core, offer potentially less bloat in the code, and offer 64-bit addressing. Even AMD admits that there will be no performance gain from the instruction set itself. At Microprocessor Forum, Fred Webber only spoke about the potential to shrink the code by as much as 10%.
However, in order to even realize those kinds of gains, AMD will have to depend on someone else writing a very good compiler. Right now, Microsoft isn't interested. They haven't announced an x86-64 compatible operating system, they haven't announced x86-64 compatible development kits, nor have they even acknowledged AMD's 64-bit solution (with the exception of typecasts in the header file, but that hardly disproves my point).
I only see AMD possibly having some luck with the open source community, which only account for low end front-ends and workstations. The market for AMD's 64-bit instruction set barely exists.
Intel, on the other hand, would be idiotic to create another 64-bit x86-like instruction set. For one there is no need technologically, and for another, Intel is in no danger of AMD overturning the development community over night. In AMD's best case scenario it would take years to build up a decent software base, and at any time, Intel could change directions in the future.
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