ARMing Markets
You have to admire AMD. They know when and how to be agile, mainly when decks are stacked against them. AMD recently announced they are teaming with a different chip designer – ARM, the current darling of mobile and energy efficient processors – to make ARM’s products 64-bit. Those with good memories will recall that AMD practically invented the modern 64-bit processor industry when they released their Opteron chip and caught Intel sitting on their laurels (which must have been uncomfortable). This eventually forced Intel to license AMD’s 64-bit instruction set (which must have been uncomfortable). I was leading SuSE Linux’s North American strategy at the time and saw Intel staff faces wince when SuSE and Microsoft took the stage at the Opteron release event (which was obviously uncomfortable). AMD didn’t keep their momentum and have had a number of setbacks. With desktops dwindling in numbers as consumers buy slabs … Continue reading →