With last week's launch of the Athlon 64 desktop chip, AMD has completed its line-up of 64bit processors. But whether the firm will be able to compete effectively with Intel for corporate custom is still a moot point.
I won't bother getting into the sterile and often pointless debate about whose processor architecture is better or faster. Needless to say, both chip suppliers have shown that they can deliver the goods when it comes to multi-gigahertz processors.
AMD's decision to extend the 32bit architecture of its chips to support 64bit data while still allowing them to run 32bit x86 programs seems an eminently sensible approach. So sensible, in fact, that it is difficult to understand why Intel itself didn't do the same instead of building a whole new architecture from scratch for its Itanium family. Intel, more than any other firm, ought to understand the value of backwards compatibility in processor architectures, as the whole success of its x86 family has been built on this very attribute.
This leads on to the debate about whether we really need 64bit technology on the desktop. Intel is quick to point out, as its chief technology officer Pat Gelsinger did at the firm's developer forum this month, that 64bit support is simply not necessary for desktop computing - at least not yet.
But the chip giant can't expect to have it both ways. Intel needs customers to keep buying systems built with its chips, and so it has to find reasons why more and more computing power is necessary.
The current thinking is that background processing tasks, such as virus scanning, desktop firewalls and on-the-fly encryption, will soon be eating up more CPU cycles. This in turn means that users had better invest in more powerful systems now, or face the prospect of becoming more familiar with the Windows hourglass in the future.
This reasoning seems somewhat dubious to me. PC hardware has been outpacing the demands placed on it by business software for quite a few years now.
But if we accept the proposition that desktops will have to do much more work in the near future, then AMD's solution of a seam-less transition to 64bit computing makes as much sense as buying ever faster 32bit systems.
In reality, most large companies have come to view desktop PCs as commodity items - something to be bought in and replaced only as necessary, much as householders regard lightbulbs. They don't really care what is inside the box, so long as it gets the job done, and they can get it fixed easily if anything goes wrong.
This is why big organisations always buy their desktops from companies such as Dell, HP and IBM - vendors with the resources to provide global support and backup. And the big vendors have very cordial relationships with Intel, which they wouldn't want to threaten by, say, suddenly offering a range of corporate desktops based on AMD chips.
And this is the real reason why we are unlikely to see corporate desktops based on the Athlon 64 any time soon. If there's no demand, then vendors won't build them. It certainly isn't because AMD's technology isn't up to the task.
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