Intel deals hammer blow to AMD

Sources within Compaq tell The Inquirer that a small group of engineers who were helping AMD out with its 64-bit "Hammer" project has now been dissolved.

And there are other anti-AMD elements in the move which mean that Intel has succeeded in doing far more than just ensuring VMS and NSK run on a future Itanic-like platform.

When Intel reached a settlement with the FTC before, there were some elements of the Digital technology they did not grab.

One such was the FX132 binary translation programme which allows 32-bit software to run on 64-bit processors.

As we know, AMD's Hammer has 32-bit backward compatibility built in, and when executives at the smaller chip firm talk about Intel's Itanic platform, it is invariably to point out the difficulties for corporations in making their 32-bit servers live with 64-bit servers satisfactorily.

Even HP, as we have pointed out before, can't create a bit of software that does this satisfactorily.

But senior Intel VP Paul Otellini's claim that the Compaq (really ex-Digital) engineers would be able to slip easily into designing for the Itanic platform is, at the best, disingenuous.

Sources within the affected groups have told The Inquirer that they are disillusioned at the deal, were hoping that IBM would save them from oblivion, and that some are contemplating walking, or in the words of one "working in a burger bar" rather than find themselves as stokers in the bowels of the great Itanic liner.

More importantly for AMD, it has lost a friend in Compaq, which has been sympathetic to the firm ever since Eckhard "Pfortress" Pfeiffer blew his top at the Intel Inside campaign seven years back.

The Great Satan of Hardware (Dell), the Great Satan of Software (Microsoft) and the Great Satan of Chips (Intel) must all be rubbing their hands in glee in the viirtual Hell's Kitchen where they regularly meet as they watch all the dominoes to their dreams fall away. µ

Mike Capellas has 166 days left to turn round Compaq