Re: Intel vs AMD x86-64

[Davide Rossetti <davide.rossetti@roma1.infn.it>]

Linus Torvalds wrote:

>On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Sean Fao wrote:
>  
>
>>Linus Torvalds wrote: 
>>    
>>
>>>Now, I'm not above complaining about Intel (in fact, the Intel people seem
>>>to often think I hate them because I'm apparently the only person who gets
>>>quoted who complains about bad decisions publicly), but at least I try to
>>>avoid complaining before-the-fact ;)
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>It must come with the territory ;-).  Your message has already made it to
>>Slashdot so I'm sure this time will be no different.
>>    
>>
>
>Yeah, and that's unfair to Intel. They've done the right thing 
>technically, and I applaud them for that, but their marketing people are 
>pricks.
>
>Everybody else is "Intel-compatible" when they make x86 chips.  Intel is
>apparently a bit too used to _not_ saying "AMD-compatible".
>
>Oh, well. The marketing people are probably proud of their "branding", and 
>screw the confusion.
>  
>
actually, the real hungry peaple should be the Intel engineering staff 
who have been working on the first "ia32e" chip... they started working 
on it let's say 1, 1.5 years ago, maybe 2 or more??? I bet chip 
design-to-silicon time is not 6 months even for Intel...

I kind of see Intel marketing people pressing on them saying: "... in 
the end it's just a backup project, just in case ia64, which is more 
money making, does not take off...".

Maybe they already had a designed "x86 64bit" chip, only more different 
from AMD64 one, but they were forced to refactor it to make it x86-64 
compatible.