Intel's main goal in designing the Itanium was to bring a brand new line of x86 technology to the enterprise world, in the form of 64-bit computing. This, in essence, brings datacenter servers to the power level of the Nintendo 64, a goal that has only been reached under terse and supervised conditions inside frigid IBM and Intel labs. Meanwhile, Intel has promised a brand new instruction set for the Itanium, dubbed EPIC (Enhanced Processor Instructional Computation), which theoretically allows a user to open up a file of up to 64 gigabytes in size in Notepad. The Itanium processor will also feature on-board L1, L2 and L3 caches, with an OEM optional L4 addition. The addition of L3 and L4 cache not only allows the simultaneous download of web pages up to 4Mb in size, but uploading as well. The new Itanium line of processors is clearly aimed at their largest enterprise consumers.

Meanwhile, AMD, having based their previous "successes" on Intel chips, decided to beat the market-leading Intel to the punch on 64-bit computing. But how, you ask? Clearly, they can't just steal five years of research from Intel. Well, clearly they could, because they have done it in the past. This time, however, they decided to implement a quick hack to their current line of stolen architectures. The Hammer, as it was leaked from AMD, was born. It does not take a brain surgeon to see what this code-name implies. Asian Manufacturing Devices has long been criticized for their sweatshop labor in small Asian factories, and as a slap in the face of the American way of life, they name their next chip after the Hammer and Sickle, the very symbol of Communism.

Enough about AMD's practices, as there are plenty of fraudulent factors in the development of the "Hammer" processor. Since AMD realized that they would be playing catch-up to the years and years of research spent on the Itanium, they cut corners in several crucial areas. The processor itself is merely a hacked 32-bit processor with 64-bit add-ons. The "system memory bus hub" will be running on a technology licensed from Motorola dubbed HTT (HyperText Transport). This technology is aimed squarely as a competitor to the Itanium's onboard L3 and L4 cache, as it also allows for simultaneous 4Mb uploading and downloading of web pages. The Hammer processor will also support DDR (Double Density RAM) of up to 2.7 gigabytes (2700 megabytes). This is hardly an achievement over the Itanium, however, as Intel's next offering supports up to 64 gigabytes of SSR (Single Sided RAM), the faster variant of the two for obvious physical reasons.

So, what is it about the announcement of Intel's latest "Yamhill" offerings that has AMD supporters up in arms? When Intel pledged to bring their EPIC chipset to the Pentium 4 line, many AMD zealots felt like they lost the only edge they have ever had in the processor arena. Never has AMD created something for themselves that is superior to Intel technology, it has always been second rate hacked technology that their engineers stole from secret Intel laboratories. So, imagine their giddy grins when they learned of the Sickle and Hammer, something that they could finally claim to be first to market with. Unfortunately for them, however, Intel has been porting their EPIC instruction set to the Pentium 4 core for two years, much longer than AMD has spent cobbling together their hacked x86-64 memory bus. Thus, to the shortsighted, it must be seen as "theft."

It's quite ironic how the tables turn, right AMD fans?