In conclusion, Intel's solution allows extension abilities to be added to any OS with minimal effort. Their claim that a learning curve of weeks instead of years seems justified. The new hardware compensates for many of the largest limitations seen today. Applications using these extended abilities need only include new opcodes directly in their own binary to begin using multi-thread programming and multi-core processing via multiple instruction streams on heterogeneous processors (say that three times fast).
very interesting read. Although i've loved AMD in the past for their best bang for buck performance, i think this could be Intel's Top Trump card.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32503/115/