Opteron Flies, but AMD Hits Speed Bumps  By John Taschek  | 
Posted 2003-04-21  Opteron Flies, but AMD Hits Speed Bumps  With
Opteron, the best we can hope for is that the marvelous 64-bit
processor wont be buried by AMDs marketing bungles.
Unfortunately, it looks like AMD is still bungling, much to the
chagrin of the IT community.  AMDs rationale for 64-bit
computing is in line with most industry thinking. Sixty-four-bit
systems are necessary because the volume of data that systems
must address is doubling each year while memory prices are
decreasing by half each year.  To succeed with Opteron, AMD had
to execute three tasks. The first was to cure the Intel-inspired
megahertz madness and still produce faster processors than
Intel. Just a few years ago, much of the desktop-processor-
buying public upgraded systems on a megahertz basis. If 500MHz
was too slow, consumers thought getting a 1GHz system would
double performance.  As youd expect, AMD says the 64-bit Opteron
will be faster than the 64-bit Itanium.Per