They'll be there. The usefulness of the instructions/architecture extends
way beyond desktop multimedia apps.
Ben
Most importantly they don't want to have to maintain two different
processor cores. The differences between the different flavors mostly come
down to the cache size and packaging. The three Opterons are nearly
identical except the 1xx doesn't do any coherency checking on the
hypertransports, the 2xx does it on 1 bus and the 8xx does it on all
three. I'd guess that the difference comes down to a couple of enable bits
which are configured either on one of the metal layers or possible even
inside of the package. The 754 only has a single DDR interface but it's
possible that it's the same die as the Opterons and that it's strictly a
packaging difference, or if it is a die difference it's the same basic
core with one interface ripped off. The 939 is a slightly tweeked version
but the changes are likely very small and will eventually appear in the
Opteron when they do the next spin.