Re: Will Prescott work on Win64?

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Dallman) writes:


>If Prescott had a real 64-bit mode, Intel might want to keep it quiet as 
>long as possible, but since the chip's due for introduction in a couple of 
>months and third parties are working on motherboards, one would feel it 
>would have leaked out by now, somehow. There'd be more information about 
>it than the Inquirer story.


Why?  They could have the 64 bit mode in there but not be planning on
telling anyone UNLESS Opteron takes off due to its 64 bit support, and
then magically a new motherboard rev (or possibly even BIOS rev) will
allow 64 bit operation.  But only for Xeon.  If Athlon 64 takes off, then
suddenly it'd be supported on desktops as well.

If Opteron and Athlon 64 are mostly sold as fast 32 bit CPUs, they'd just
keep it quiet because they know that 64 bit capability in x86 will kill
any chance for their plans to move Itanium out of its ever-shrinking high
end "replace PA-RISC, Alpha and MIPS" niche down smaller servers and
desktops.

<wild speculation>
My hunch is that when Intel found out MS was going to support AMD64 they
told them they were putting a hidden 64 bit capability in x86 "just in
case" and wanted them to support it as well.  MS said no, but agreed to
delay AMD64 support until Intel could get themselves ready for it "just
in case".  This latest Windows 64 delay until early next year seems a
mite suspicious to me considering they've been working on 64 bit Windows
for how many years now, and have it more mature on Itanium which is a
lot weirder architecture than the simple evolution of x86.  Comes just
when rumors appear that Intel is delaying Prescott from early Q4 to
sometime in Q1.
</wild speculation>

-- 
Douglas Siebert                          [EMAIL PROTECTED]

"I feel sorry for people who don't drink.  When they wake up in the morning,
 that's as good as they're going to feel all day" -- Frank Sinatra