THE EXISTENCE OF Opteron and Athlon64 processors with support from Microsoft, and even apparently its thorough endorsement, will put some serious pressure on Intel to re-examine its desktop 64-bit strategy.
Publicly, Intel insists that its Itanium processor is not ready for the desktop and off the record people at the company say the Itanic is for big tin while the Opterons, if they have any effect at all, will bite into the 32-bit Xeon market.
That argument clearly doesn't wash any more. Microsoft's endorsement of an X86-64 version of Windows and the fact it appears to consider AMD chips are highly compatible with 32-bit platforms, means Intel may find itself left on a 64-bit island.
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