Soon after the worldwide launch, AMD Opteron was Launched in India on April 30, 2003. I was invited for that. After attending the presentations, I think AMD has a solid 64-Bit strategy. They plan to launch Athlon-64 in September which would the the first 64-Bit processor for the desktop.
Opteron outperformed all the 32-Bit as well as the 64-Bit processors of Intel in running 32-Bit applications. And thats important, since right now there are hardly any 64-Bit applications but in the years there would be. It doesn’t hurt to have a 64-Bit ready system specially because AMD’s pricing its 64-Bit processor the same as Intels 32-Bit.
My guess is that AMD will kill its 32-Bit processor line and replace them with 64-Bit. Intel will definitely feel the heat, if they do that because
1) Intel doesn’t have a 64-Bit processor which runs 32-Bit applications well. Itanium is slow at running 32-Bit applications.
2) Intel doesn’t have any immediate plans to have a 64-Bit desktop processor.
AMD’s strategy is pretty well thought out provided they can convince the customers about the benefits of 64-Bit and why they should be 64-Bit ready.