Future System Requirements

[GREG MILLER]

On my way to the cafeteria today, I had been thinking about future system requirements for software. Now the puzzling aspect in all of this is the Pentium 4 vs the Athlon processor.

We all know that the P4, and Athlon are now 2 totally different processors that do the same job. And we all know that at the SAME Mhz level, the Athlon does more work per clock tick than the P4. (funny how this item gets lost when comparing the 2 )

So when figuring the above statement, are the specs going to read something like this:

Required: 1.4ghz Pentium Cpu or 1ghz Athlon Processor

or are they just going to read along the lines as:

Required: 1.4ghz Pentium Cpu Processor

Ofcourse the later will mean that Athlon users will just have to know that their lower clocked CPU's will be more than sufficient.

In todays industry, I am banking on just the P4 listing, as Intel is the defacto standard; but you never know what the future holds, and things have been known to change.

Tell me your thoughts on this?