Thanks Toxicfume for this old but very interesting article on the then dubbed AMD Hammer microprocessor. If you don"t understand the hype on 64-bit computing this article goes a long way to explain it and is well worth the read.
AMD"s new Hammer processor is expected to be the world"s fastest 32-bits processor and make serious competition to Intel"s Itanium. Unlike other 64-bit microprocessor architectures, "Hammer"´s is specifically designed to allow migration from 32-bit to 64-bit code while providing performance for both. AMD"s Vice-President and Chief Technical Officer Fred Weber held a presentation of the upcoming Hammer processors at Microprocessor Forum where he revealed several details concerning the Hammer-series. Here you can see a transcript of Weber´s presentation.