Intel to offer new architecture every two years | Reg Hardware

"Each new microarchitecture, he said, would be developed by separate design teams working in parallel and with specific process technology in mind. The goal: to win back the design leadership many observers and, judging by Otellini's words, Intel itself feel it has lost to AMD. "

This must be the "roadmap" that Jobs has recently been going on and on about. Great news for hardware companies that want to "churn" their customer base. What's that you say? These new "architectures" are still all compatible with all the previous architectures? Yeah, funny that. I used to think architecture meant something different (really). I guess I was wrong, it really means a faster bus and 3 new instructions that won't get into the compilers for 5 years.

Divorce courts are busy, planets are realigning, whatever metaphor you care to use. Microsoft stopped being a useful vehicle for Intel to force upgrades on their users. So they are going it alone, with a little, truly little, help from Apple. Meanwhile, Microsoft interestingly positions itself to leave Intel altogether if they can make the Xbox take off. Expect to read that as a Cringley or Dvorak prediction in a year or so.

Meanwhile, guessing that Apple might buy Adobe is not a bad way out of the predicament these companies (all of them, I'm not just picking on one) find themselves in. Who IS your daddy Adobe? You haven't really been all that loyal to Apple, preferring instead to just chase the money in the Windows empire, but now that Windows will include its own PDF style functionality they sure haven't cut you and slack have they?

Then again, Apple may abandon software altogether, or just go with software and abandon hardware, or may just sell iPods, or may go all media and merge with Disney. Who knows, who cares?

Good news is for consumers, and the Chinese of course, because us Americans can't be bothered with how all this technology works beyond the high level design, as long as they put US keyboards on the middle 20 percent or so the the gadgets they turn out we'll be happy, even if some of the "inovative" companies (see post below) here in the US of A aren't quite so happy in the long run.