AMD set to steal Itanium's thunder
 
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AMD appears set to make some headway with its Opteron chipset when it launches the first half of next year.
The 64-bit chipset, which will run 32-bit applications equally as well, received approving nods from such industry heavyweight leaders as Michael Dell, Bill Gates and Scott McNealy, as a replacement for Intel's two-year late Itanium processor.
Earlier this year at Merrill Lynch's Hardware Heaven conference Michael Dell boosted AMD's chances in the server marketplace by saying that his company was very interested and looking at Opteron.
Sun also is rumored to be interested in using AMD's Opteron processor for the multiprocessor computers it will manufacture. And Microsoft has planned extensions to Windows that would allow it to run on 64-bit platforms.
Opteron, also dubbed SledgeHammer, is a one- to eight-way processor that will ship in the first half of 2003. It succeeds the AMD Clawhammer, the first processor with x86-64 technology, which will ship in the second half of this year.
x86-64 is a native 64-bit technology that supports both 32- and 64-bit applications without performance or feature compromises. AMD says that its Hammer platform with debut at speeds as great as 2 GHz.
Users polled by Network World on the HP/Compaq acquisition told us that they wanted to see an alternative to Itanium. While most of them would have preferred that that alternative was the Alpha processors, several mentioned AMD's Opteron or an unofficial project Intel is rumored to have called Yamhill, which uses x86-64 bit technology.
At least one company, Newisys, is known to be using AMD's Opteron chipset. Newisys, located in Austin, Texas, is made up primarily of former IBM engineers, and is developing 64-bit servers for Windows 2000 and Linux. It is making single- and two-way symmetrical multiprocessing servers through 8-way servers. Newisys is funded by AMD and Austin Ventures, as well as some private investors.
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Deni Connor is a senior editor at Network World covering storage, SANs, Novell and Novell-related products. You can reach her at dconnor@nww.com.
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