Replies to post #25622 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[alan81]

There were many reasons for Itanium...
Certainly, one was the fact that Intel owned all the IP, and nobody would be allowed to copy it.
I think the original driving force was a belief across all the industry experts that CISC would not scale and RISC, or something like it, would take over with a significant performance lead. Apple sure bought into this as they converted their entire customer base from 68K to PPC at a fairly significant cost. Many apple folks still believe the original marketing nonsense that RISC provides better performance for less power.
I view part of the big $$$ spent on Itanium as a contingency plan, and part toward penetration into the server market. With the success of superscaler OOO CISC, I think Intel gave up on Itanium taking over the desktop.
--Alan

[SemiconEng]

Joe,
Merced was a proprietary ploy by Intel and nothing else.
They knew AMD couldn't use the instruction set.
Mysef


You're right, AMD can't use the IA-64 instruction set. So, it appears, that if AMD wants to make a full blown 64 bit chip at some time in the future, they will need to develop their own proprietery design. If they're working on it, How far along do you think AMD is?

Semi