MMX and XMM ...
All throughout its history, the x86 Processor family has been featured with new Instructions. Nowadays, the set is more than 300 instructions long (not counting the variants and forms), but, if you take a look at any real Application, whatever Language, whatever size, you will see that it makes real use of 20 Instructions, sometimes 25, hardly ever any more. The very first goal of the new implementations is making money and in increasing its lead over competition .
Each time you make use of these newer Instructions, you are saying to your eventual users who might have an older Computer: 'Guys, my Application does not run?
Normal! Just buy a new Computer'. Old computers are now regularly destroyed and replaced by new ones, therefore following a similar path as the one invented by M$ to sell you several times over the same Operating System. I am not claiming that Computer evolution is not desirable, but forcing people to change every 3 or 4 years is preposterous. We can slow down this greedy spoiling with our own individual decisions.
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