> I wonder why this long delays are still necessary. In the old days yes as there were so many parties to coordinate but nowadays, in theory, Intel could releas

> I wonder why this long delays are still necessary. In the old days yes as there were so many parties to coordinate but nowadays, in theory, Intel could release hardware, the new ISA and compiler/OS patches and binaries on the same day. Most new ISA support requires at least minimal support from the OS to use correctly (e.g., something like saving state on context switching, or reporting hardware support bits correctly). Releasing patches on the same day you release hardware means the new features are literally unusable for all of your customers, and it generally takes several months to go from a patch to a usable OS release. You could in theory release the patches on the same day as the new ISA documentation, but in practice, it's likely to take some time because the people writing the patches aren't the people writing the new ISA whitepapers and approving their publication and it takes time to go from "oh, I can talk about this now" to actually doing so.