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The Color Of Silicon: Page 2 of 6

Intel broke the 64-bit rack with Itanium back in 2001. But it was a weak break that left Intel behind the 8-ball. Itanium's IA-64 instruction set ran 32-bit applications slower than comparable x86-based CPUs, and few customers were interested in rewriting all of their code to take full advantage of IA-64. Even the much-improved Itanium 2 is limited to a small universe of very high-end server applications. The richest action lies in x86-compatible workstations and servers.

AMD introduced its Opteron processor with 64-bit x86 extensions in April 2003. Not until July 2004, did Intel match Opteron with a 64-bit x86 Xeon processor (formerly code-named Nocona). Did Intel lose that match or intentionally sit it out because the big money had yet to arrive?

A 64-bit processor without a 64-bit operating system isn't much use. Microsoft was supposed to release 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Server 2003 by the end of 2004. Intel's timing of Nocona seemed ideal. But just weeks later, Microsoft again postponed its 64-bit ship date, this time until mid-2005. Linux is still the only operating system that fully supports 64-bit processing with x86-based CPUs. While Intel sat on the sidelines awaiting a ship that hasn't come in, eager contender AMD honed its skills and earned respect among the other Vinces of the tech world.

"When (Opteron) was in early design, AMD provided simulators as well as contributing code to the Linux, GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection), and other open source projects, which engendered good will among the developers," says Jason Perlow, president of systems integrator and consultancy Argonaut Systems in Tenafly, NJ. "The 64-bit enhancements in those open source projects are commensurate with (AMD's) contributions and willingness to work with the OSS developers.

"On the other hand, the (Itanium) IA-64 Linux kernel was developed almost entirely in-house at Intel and HP, and the EPIC instruction set improvements in GCC are practically nil. So really, 64-bit code in Linux on Itanium is totally un-optimized." Argonaut recently procured 500 Opteron servers for a Linux cluster in a digital effects studio. "Itanium I never recommend," says Perlow, citing the need for expensive custom programming and proprietary compilers.