2/17/2004 » Tech

The most entertaining slow motion train wreck in computing finally comes to an end as Intel waves the white flag and agrees to offer a backward-compatible 64-bit CPU, just like AMD. It even made the chip AMD-compatible, a bitter pill, but very mature, and good for the industry.

Intel's earlier insistence on breaking its market-dominant architecture was precisely the same mistake made by major tech companies in the past (anyone remember Lotus Jazz and WordPro?). Its incompatible, expensive, 64-bit Itanium did not have market-disruptive characteristics, e.g. competing cheaply against nonconsumption, and created a large market opportunity for competitors. Intel was in effect shooting itself in the foot, and with this announcement Itanium turns into the Alpha, an exotic white elephant.

For all the hype around disruptive innovations, they're fairly rare. Companies which surrender to engineers' dreams of a shiny new internal architecture, if it breaks compatibility, are found surrendering in the marketplace a short time later. In the software world, when you hear the words 'ground-up rewrite,' run.