Historically, AMD always adapted its processors to maintain compatibility with Intel ones. It was true for the x86, but also for SSE instruction set.
While AMD is facing a challenging period, with Intel releasing CPUs which are often faster and not that much more expensive than those offered by the Texan founder, AMD decided to release a draft of the SSE5 as described in a document.
This instruction set is designed to further optimize multimedia tasks as well as multi CPU computing.
First CPU to support SSE5 should not be available before 2009, and AMD will need to wait for developers to integrate such instruction set in their codes before being able to really advertise it.
[translation by Linathael]
