This a thousand times. Also, its usually Intel's policy to have a (very) strong backwards compatiblity. See the A20 line for a ridiculous example. But AMD has a

This a thousand times. Also, its usually Intel's policy to have a (very) strong backwards compatiblity. See the A20 line for a ridiculous example. But AMD has always been less strict on this issues, and I'm glad they aren't. This is good news. And despite all that, as you say, a new architecture is badly needed.