Article 6RQK2 Intel Could Have Beaten Amd To 64-Bit Transition But Wrongly Chose Not To

Intel Could Have Beaten Amd To 64-Bit Transition But Wrongly Chose Not To

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Intel had a solution ready to add 64-bit features to the "classic" 32-bit x86 ISA, but the company chose to push forward with the Itanium operation instead. A new snippet of technology history has recently emerged from a year-old Quora discussion. Intel's former "chief x86 architect," Bob Colwell, provides a fascinating tidbit of previously unknown information.

AMD engineer Phil Park was researching the history behind the x86-64 transition, when he discovered the conversation. Colwell revealed that Intel had an inactive internal version of the x86-64 ISA embedded in Pentium 4 chips. The company's management forced the engineering team to "fuse off" the features.

The functionality was there, but users could not access it. Intel decided to focus on the 64-bit native architecture developed for Itanium instead of x86-64. The company felt that a 64-bit Pentium 4 would have damaged Itanium's chances to win the PC market. Management allegedly told Colwell "not once, but twice" to stop going on about 64-bits on x86 if he wanted to keep his job.

The engineer decided to compromise, leaving the logic gates related to x86-64 features "hidden" in the hardware design. Colwell bet that Intel would need to chase after AMD and quickly implement its version of the x86-64 ISA, and he was right. Itanium CPUs had no native backward compatibility with 16-bit and 32-bit x86 software, so the architecture was one of the worst commercial (and technology) failures in Intel's history.

[...] Bob Colwell made significant contributions to Intel's history, managing the development of popular PC CPUs such as Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Pentium 4 before retiring in 2000. Meanwhile, today's x86 chips marketed by Intel and AMD still retain full backward hardware compatibility with nearly every program developed for the x86 architecture.

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