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Athlon 64: How AMD turned the tables on Intel

(dfarq.homeip.net)
331 points giuliomagnifico | 1 comments | 25 Sep 25 18:09 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bigstrat2003 ◴[25 Sep 25 19:20 UTC] No.45377613[source]▶
I remember at the time thinking it was really silly for Intel to release a 64-bit processor that broke compatibility, and was very glad AMD kept it. Years later I learned about kernel writing, and I now get why Intel tried to break with the old - the compatibility hacks piled up on x86 are truly awful. But ultimately, customers don't care about that, they just want their stuff to run.
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wvenable ◴[25 Sep 25 21:23 UTC] No.45379301[source]▶
Intel might have been successful with the transition if they didn't decide to go with such radically different and real-world untested architecture for Itanium.
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pixl97 ◴[25 Sep 25 21:37 UTC] No.45379461[source]▶
Well that and Itanium was eyewateringly expensive and standard PC was much cheaper for similar or faster speeds.
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Tsiklon ◴[25 Sep 25 22:48 UTC] No.45380251[source]▶
I think Itanium was a remarkable success in some other ways. Intel utterly destroyed the workstation market with it. HP-UX, IRIX, AIX, Solaris.

Itanium sounded the deathknell for all of them.

The only Unix to survive with any market share is MacOS, (arguably because of its lateness to the party) and it has only relatively recently went back to a more bespoke architecture

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1. cameldrv ◴[26 Sep 25 16:28 UTC] No.45388301[source]▶
If you're counting all desktop/server computers, Linux has way more market share than all of the Unices ever did. It's probably even true for desktop Linux. If you count mobile phones, Android is a Linux derivative, and iOS is a BSD derivative. The fundamental issue for the workstation vendors was simply that with the P6, Intel was near parity or even ahead of the workstation vendors in performance, and it cost something like 1/4 as much.