AMD is planning on extending the life of the x86 instruction set, which they claim will make it easier on  programmers planning on switching their code to run optimally on multicore processors. This is a good sign for that part of AMDs development team, they stole the thunder from Intel by being first with a 64-bit instruction set.  Read more about their plans at Slashdot.


There is also a brand new PC Perspective Podcast ready for your enjoyment, tune in to the 10th installment.
“It has been all over the news today: AMD announced the first of its Extensions for Software Parallelism, a series of x86 extensions to make parallel programming easier. The first are the so-called ‘lightweight profiling extensions.’ They would give software access to information about cache misses and retired instructions so data structures can be optimized for better performance. The specification is here (PDF). These extensions have a much wider applicability than just parallel programming — they could be used to accelerate Java, .Net, and dynamic optimizers.”

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