Hardware-assisted virtualization, now available from both AMD and Intel, is not a breakthrough but the beginning of one. AMD’s SVM (Secure Virtual Machine) and Intel’s VT (Virtualization ...

Hitachi announced a peripheral logic chipset for the Itanium 2 processor that features a 667-MHz front side bus and combines Intel’s Virtualization Technology with its own.

The first fork was 64-bit: You cannot make a Pentium Pro run 64-bit code. In 2006 you’ll be buying PCs that do what even today’s 64-bit x86 processors can’t do: hardware-assisted virtualization.