“VA Linux Systems founder Larry Augustin majored in chip design
at Stanford, and so you couldn’t invent a more likely kingmaker in
the forthcoming Itanic vs x86-64 maul than Larry. VA is an
Intel-only company, but AMD’s evolutionary new 64-bit chip has
already got serious open source backing here this week. And if that
doesn’t ring the bell marked “inflection point” – you’re
deaf.“
“So when The Register caught up with him at LinuxWorld this week
we thought he could shed some light on where Linux servers would be
in, say, a year or two’s time. He did, but being Larry, he was a
model of diplomacy.”
“There’s a lot of merit in the concept of what AMD has done.
It’s made it very simple and safe to move to 64 bits,” he said.
“It’s just like what Intel did when it moved from the 286 to the
386. Um… OK… the 286 was broken – so let’s say when Intel moved
from the 8086 to the 80386. It’s a very natural evolution.”