It seems as if an eternity has passed since the excitement around AMD's Hammer technology took feverish hold of enthusiasts. However, the discussion has often been marred or confused by the fact that the all-embracing term Hammer applied to two completely different products - Clawhammer, and Seldgehammer.

Well, Clawhammer is now an Athlon, and will maintain that brand's recognition in the market. Sledgehammer has been anointed with a completely new brand to signal AMD's intentions of getting serious in the enterprise server and corporate markets. That name, the feature of the day, is Opteron.

Cue fanfare and fireworks.

At WinHEC 2002, Microsoft didn't have anything to say about AMD and 64-bit operating systems, but today the announcement finally came - Microsoft will of course support Opteron's x86-64 64-bit instruction set.