Intel Corp (INTC)

[subzero]

Of course, the K6-III wasn't much of a success, either.

I agree.
And I liken AMD's often delayed-constantly-modified Barton as the next version of the K6-III.
Just look at AMD's roadmap - the Barton is an instaneous dead-end product - with no follow on.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_608,00.html

Further, Barton's specs keep changing. It was originally a 256K L2 cache device. AMD kept falling behind Pentium 4 - so Barton was delayed 6 more months along with the hammers and the cache was doubled to 512K.
Because the Barton was delayed, Intel kept spurting ahead in GHz and FSB.
So, Barton fell behind again.
Now AMD is trying to change the Barton FSB on the fly - from 266 to 333 - and now they are doing a Hail Mary and trying to get to 400 MHz FSB - all because Barton keeps falling behind Intel's CPU speeds and FSB speeds.
In the end, it will fail - Barton doesn't have SSE2 - so it is an architecture dead end.
AMD knows it.
Do the fan boys?

-SZ