The "clean slate" Itanium architecture was eventually discontinued by Intel in 2021, marking the final victory of AMD's "messy but compatible" x64 design over Intel's "perfect but incompatible" vision.
Most people assume x64 (or x86-64) was an inevitable evolution, but the architecture we use today in almost every PC and server (AMD64) was actually the result of a high-stakes gamble and a corporate "rebellion" in 1999. wub x64
When AMD released the (the first x64 chip) in 2003, it solved a problem Intel had ignored. Intel's Itanium was notoriously bad at running old 32-bit software—it was slow and expensive. AMD's solution ran 64-bit code and 32-bit code at full speed. Intel's Itanium was notoriously bad at running old
Intel was forced to humiliatingly adopt their rival's technology. This is extremely rare in the hardware world. Intel eventually licensed the AMD64 instruction set, calling it "EM64T" (Extended Memory 64 Technology) in their own chips. This is extremely rare in the hardware world
AMD began working on this extension (code-named x86-64 ) in secret. The project was led by a brilliant architect named Kevin favor (often credited along with Phil Rogers), but the implementation in the silicon was a masterpiece of efficiency.
I notice you've requested an essay on "wub x64" — but this phrase isn't a standard term in computer science, cryptography, programming, or gaming. It's possible you meant:
Here is where it gets fascinating: