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The site also has a 64-bit simulator for you favorite 32-bit processor based Linux system.

Thanks! It just seems to me that the terms are not always used correctly. Using these definitions, AMD's x86-64 simulator is an emulator, and dosemu is not (so it should be called DINE :-).

Expect it to look a lot like AMD's x86-64 architecture, although it will probably be gratuitously incompatible.

Newer, faster, wider, more-torque hardware is always great. But don't forget the software.

Linux already runs find on itanic, oops I mean itanium. Linux runs on AMD hammer even before it's out .

Actually I think that you mean x86-64.org

http://www.x86-64.org/

An AMD sponsored web site with the goal of porting free/open-source software to x86-64. Self-serving publicity stunt? Maybe, but it's nice anyway, and certainly more than we can ever expect to see from Intel.

I personally have had no reliability issues with Athlon systems, nor have any of my associates (with the exception of one faulty motherboard). While this personal point isn't going to prove anything for overall reliability worldwide, it makes me think when I see half a dozen systems running night and day in constant use with no crashes, freezing, or hardware failure.

• Rambus memory: I'm not against Rambus. Maybe on an intellectual-property standpoint, or on a corporate standpoint, but they make some good memory. However, Intel has done an amazingly mediocre job of taking advantage of such memory in their chipset offerings. They obviously aren't going to get the performance gains that have been seen in game consoles because they don't have a unified memory architecture, but the fact remains that Intel engineers have had difficulty pulling the possible performance out of Rambus memory.
• SSE Support: As you've stated, SSE2 code does some really nice tricks. For "heavy data processing algorithms" it doesn't really have any competitors in the x86 world, yet. However, this is really limitjng the scope of applications, as not every program is going to be able to take advantage of this functionality. In fact, most won't. Overall, SSE2 is nice but takes some attention to optimize for. Whether a lot of mass usage programs will take advantage of it is yet to be seen. I'm not going to say anything too negative about it, because it is something that can be used well.
• Commitment to open source: Amazingly poor naming schemes aside, I don't believe AMD has any less of a commitment to open source than Intel does. I have a friend who was employed at AMD over a year ago who was paid to optimize software like glibc and gcc to take advantage of the Athlon processor. AMD's x86-64 has public specs and x86-64.org is hosted by AMD to showcase ports of open source projects to this new processor.

How much x86-64 support will be in the
standard kernal release (and gcc) by summer
next year? (Which is Hammer time).

1. The article is not about providing a specially-designed chip that runs Linux. The article is about the fact that chip designers are now getting interested in making sure Linux runs on their chipsets especially now that it looks like Linux due to its Open Source nature will be quicker at supporting new chipsets than Microsoft's offerings as is witnessed by how long Linux supported Itanium versus Microsoft's recent announcement.
   
   Similarly it looks like Linux on the AMD's Hammer chipset is already way underway as a project while according to the article Microsoft has no current plans to support that chipset.
   
   
2. What exactly do you mean by the Linux architecture is too fragmented to ever allow for a chip that runs Linux?
   

I may sound like a troll of sorts or anti Intel, but when it comes to high end scientific engineering does anyone actually use anything outside the realms of Sun, Irix, and Alpha?

Recently, the Alpha structure was sold to intel. Anyway, if Intel continues on there we-need-a-new-socket trend, then the P4 will be outdated (in the realm of connectivity) soon. And with AMD's x86-64 technology coming out the end of this year from what I understand, it may become the processor of choice for most scientific computing, because it would easily be another low-cost, high-performance solution from AMD. I don't really know, but thats my $0.02.

You might want to check out the X86-64 project for a good read and lots of info about where Sledgehammer (now commonly known only as Hammer) is going.

Yes, it runs under linux. you can singlestep your cpu, peek at registers, etc etc.. if you feel like porting linux to a new arch, this'd be a good place to start.

"SimNow!" was just made available in RPM format. Definitely worth a download if you want to play around with their new 64-bit mode.

This site, supported by AMD, is dedicated to porting GNU/Linux to AMD's new x86-64 architecture. Eventually, you'll be able to download complete GNU/Linux distributions for x86-64 from this site. For now, there's technical documentation about the architecture and mailing lists for discussing x86-64 GNU/Linux. In the near future, there will be an architecture simulator as well as experimental versions of GCC and binutils that can generate 64-bit x86-64 code.