What is gonna happen in the somewhat near future?

[mikef208]

By the looks of it Intel is gonna beat AMD to market with it's 64bit proc. While some may say who cares since as of late AMD's somewhat older proc.'s are keeping up with intels new lines, but who knows, what happens if Intel makes a good chip in it's 64bit Proc. what will happen to AMD if it takes them several months longer to produce theirs? Also I just saw a story about AMD working with a company on the pure silicon wafers which are supposed to run very very cool, when are they supposed to reach the market? Will they be in time to help AMD reach the level of Intel?

Please don't turn this into a flame war. I am an AMD fan for life, but all of us have to admit that Intel still owns the CPU market especially in respect to the people that don't know about computers. Intel is just a better name. Who is the better chip maker is a personal opinion, but the future may change some of those.

 

[CurtOien]

I have no 64 bit software to run on IA64

 

[Hender]

The 64-bit CPU war has not even started yet, and I'm interested to see where it goes. You're right, Intel does have a better name. Almost 10 years of "Intel Inside" ads has left the American consumer with those 5 notes stuck in their head and lucrative deals with OEMs and retail chains has done wonders for their market share.

AMD is gaining steadily, though, and they could even reach 30% market share in the next year if all goes right. Intel has beaten AMD to the market with their 64-bit CPU, but there is very little software that runs at a 64-bit level, and what there is is not fully used yet, so it's not as if Intel will get the jump on AMD too much. The Intel 64-bit CPU has the distinct problem of running x86 software quite slowly, which means that there is little incentive to upgrade for the time being. It's admirable that Intel would take such a step to revolutionize the CPU architecture, because after all, you DO have to start somewhere. AMD, though, has taken the route of two 32-bit cores for a combined 64-bit core, which means that it runs 32-bit software as fast as any 32-bit CPU, and it also does 64-bit software. The way I understood it, it's almost like dual CPUs in a single processor that combine their efforts into a single data path. I'm still fuzzy on both 64-bit solutions, though, because they are a long time from market saturation in Intel's case, and a long time from introduction in AMD's case. AMD is bold for doing a completely different type of architecture for their 64-bit CPU, and only time will tell who comes out on top. I'd wager the title will belong to Intel simply due to their past history, but AMD could gain a lot.