HP insisted on having 32-bit AMD 64-bit chips

AMD THINKS the customer is king, it has emerged, in a rare example of X86 semiconductor firms giving people what they want, rather than what they deserve or worse still, are allocated.

As Mario pointed out yesterday, our original story about AMD delivering a 32-bit K8 chip, which is really a crippled 64-bit chip was perfectly true.

And now we can reveal exactly what happened, according to a reliable source at AMD Taiwan.

HP told AMD that while it was suitably impressed with the performance characteristics of the K8, also known as Athlon 64 chip, it felt that its customers would be confused if they suddenly found themselves with 64-bittiness but without an operating system apart from Linux to run on it.

So apparently it said something along the following lines: "Look, we're having this chip, but kindly cripple the 64-bitness, we're not having any of that right now".

AMD rolled over on its back, waved its almost human like hands in the air, and waggled its almost human like feet, and said something along the following lines: "OK".

Which, we feel, goes right to the heart of why Intel has been so successful. Chipzilla doesn't really listen to its customers, it dictates terms to them, and if you don't like them, well you can certainly go take a hike.

We're on Intel's side on this one. If we listened to our readers, we'd get nowhere. Give readers what you think they want, and you end up in endless discussions going nowhere, labelled under the generic term "focus groups".

But seriously, AMD really has to get with it on the marketing front and reject vendors who demand unreasonable things, otherwise the Chimpzilla will have its brain eaten by the Chipzilla. µ