“AMD appears to be ready to recruit Transmeta to give its 64-bit
Sledgehammer CPU a clear lead over Intel’s own server-oriented
processor, Itanium.”
“The deal centres on Transmeta’s code-morphing technology –
software that converts chunks of object code created for processor
A into chip B’s native machine language. AMD’s plan appears to be
to use Transmeta’s scheme to map 32-bit x86 instructions onto
Sledgehammer’s own 64-bit code.”
“The upshot: rather better backward compatibility and
superior performance with legacy apps than Itanic can offer, or so
AMD hopes. For its part, Transmeta gets access to the
Sledgehammer instruction set, which it can, of course, emulate on
top of its own Crusoe CPU line should it wish to do so.”