By Tom Foremski in San Francisco
Published: April 29 2003 23:28 | Last Updated: April 29 2003 23:28
Intel is carefully watching the progress of a new type of 64-bit chip launched last week by Advanced Micro Devices. It will produce one similar if the market shows demand.
This is the first time Intel, the world's leader in PC microprocessors, has said it would challenge AMD's Opteron, which combines 32-bit and 64-bit technologies.
But Intel will not say if it has an Opteron-like chip in the works - a development process that typically takes about two years.
For Advanced Micro Devices, Opteron is a critical product it hopes will move the company out of the low-end of the consumer PC market, where margins are thin, and into corporate servers where fatter margins would help stem losses. In some ways, this is a setting for a David and Goliath struggle, with plucky AMD making barely one-tenth of Intel's $27bn in revenues.
Not surprisingly, Intel is confident in predicting Opteron's failure. "It has yet to be truly evaluated and there is a lack of all the software and tools that are needed to support a new microprocessor," Intel said.
The 64-bit chips are essential for critical business applications such as large databases. They have very few applications in desktop PCs, except in niche areas such as graphics processing.
Read all here ...
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentSe...=1051389612222
Linear Mode
