Advanced Micro Devices is celebrating the one-year anniversary of its 64-bit Opteron processor this week, but executives are looking forward to what may be a more crucial time for the upstart processor.
When AMD launched Opteron in April 2003, it represented a departure from Intel's approach to 64-bit computing. While Intel had been pushing a brand new 64-bit instruction set for its Itanium processor, AMD chose instead to extend Intel's existing IA-32 instruction set with its AMD64 design. This allowed AMD to build processors that took advantage of the larger system memory and superior performance of 64-bit computing, but which could still run existing 32-bit applications.
Intel initially rejected this approach, but in February this year it capitulated by announcing that it, too, would extend its IA-32 instruction set to support 64-bit computing, with its Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T). Intel's EM64T chips are expected to begin shipping later this year. AMD64 and EM64T processors are expected to be able to run the same software.
News source: PCWorld
-1 Comments - Add comment