Quote Originally Posted by Shintai View Post
You need to note a few facts we have now:
1. R&D budgets are declining.
You are wrong R&D expenses are constantly increasing. Particularly node shrinks.
2. People will not upgrade unless there is something better.
That is not true. Most ppl treat their computers like every other electrical appliance in their houe. It breaks or a new gadget comes out and they'll gat a new computer
3. Vista is NOT late due to lack of competition. Do some research. Vista was basicly abandoned and started from scratch again.
Actually no it wasnt restarted from scratch, they just dropped all the innovative features in order to not delay the release even further as it was quite clear they couldnt be sure they could finalize the new features in a timely fashion.
4. x86 compability is the ABSOLUTE reason we still got x86 CPUs. There is no technical reason for us to stay with it besides that. And nobody dares to change it because the competitor would run of with it all. IA64 was a bold move, now its isolated to bigtin because AMD just added x64 and gave us 20 more years with x86. Thats not development, thats stagnation.
Compatibility is not the only reason IA64 failed to become mainstream. Performance just wasn.t there. It took Intel ages to get the compiler to work as they wanted. You have to understand that to push for a new arch to get accepted Intel needed to overcome the resistance the lack of compatibility would create by offering substantial performance improvements. That never happened , so IA64 failed. AMD just saw the opportunity and grabbed it.


And remember, I didnt say a monopoly would be beneficial forever.

And if I can add the broadband part again. Monopolies gave us fiber, not competition.
There can be no temporary monopoly in the x86 market. If AMD goes out of business, Intel will be all there will be and im quite sure they'd start pushing IA64 again. The barrier for entry is just too high for any company to enter the market.