IDF CPU Report - Intel & AMD

The name Intel Developer Forum (IDF) would normally indicate a convention revolving almost exclusively around Intel, but our experience with this year’s Spring IDF was quite the contrary.  While it is true that we got quite an interesting look at what Intel has planned for this year we also got to see a microcosm representing the future of the x86 computing world as a whole, including a few interesting tidbits of information from AMD, the last face you’d expect to hear about at an IDF. 

The Spring 2000 IDF was held in sunny Palm Springs, California, but it will most likely be the last time that the IDF is held in Palm Springs.  The fairly small convention was home to over 3000 developers and a handful of the press for its duration, but the forum itself was very organized and it required quite a bit of teamwork to get as much coverage of the happenings as possible. 

We brought you live coverage of the Forum from the press room in the Wyndham Hotel which is where some of the sessions took place.  Our coverage was split into four parts, the first dealing with CPUs, particularly the Willamette and the Timna processors that were demonstrated at the Forum.  The second part focused on Serial ATA and USB 2.0, two technologies that were demonstrated (rather poorly demonstrated, but displayed nonetheless), the third part of our coverage focused on Intel’s workstation/server class Itanium processor and the fourth offered a summary of the show and some pictures of Itanium based servers. 

Now, two weeks after our initial coverage of the show we are bringing you a complete summary of all that we’ve seen as well as some unique insight into exactly what Intel and AMD have planned for the future.  So without further ado, let’s get to Intel’s first announcement, the Willamette.