It is happening slowly and incrementally. These changes seem architecturally dirty, but don't rock the boat too much and so are feasible to deliver on time and

It is happening slowly and incrementally. These changes seem architecturally dirty, but don't rock the boat too much and so are feasible to deliver on time and on budget. Check out the population count and string compare/search instructions in Intel SSE4.2, and the upcoming Intel AVX which make SSE more useful by allowing more operands, more operator combinations, and wider vectors.