test1

[Henry Cejtin]

The  AMD thing `only' has 8 more registers, so a `real' register allocator is
probably going to be ok, but not great.  I would think that it would just  be
at the edge.

Itanium  I  wouldn't even think about.  I suspect that the chip will never be
very available, and even if it is, it will be years from now.

The real alternative, I suspect, will be the Power PC.  I could  imagine  IBM
releasing a low cost reference design for clone makers.  The point being that
they would keep the high-end (and high margin) machines and chips,  but  have
lots of people generating software for their instruction set on cheap (Linux,
of course) boxes.

Until now there would not have been enough incentive for people to switch  to
an  incompatible  instruction  set,  but now (or very soon) 64 bits WILL be a
very very strong push.  Right now you can get 4 gig of RAM for  under  $1000.
The only reason more people don't is the problems of addressing it.

Any  way, that is my thoughts.  In the mean while we just bought an Athlon XP
1700+.  The machine has a nice case, 300 watt power supply, 256 meg  of  RAM,
fancy  video card, and 60 gig disk.  It cost $650 and in a real world test it
is exactly 4 times faster than my machine.