While the attention of the public is focused on gay marriage, let's talk today instead about a possible divorce. (The image is of an old movie poster, taken from a schedule of shows at San Francisco's Roxie Cinema.

The evidence is becoming overwhelming. Intel has deliberately made its 64-bit chips incompatible with those of AMD. Yet when Microsoft decided to secure its XP operating system at the chip level, it did so through an alliance with AMD.

So, I put the question to you. Has the WinTel marriage ended? Can this marriage be saved?

As is always the case in these affairs, there's another lover in this drama, a little penguin called Linux. (The picture is from Princeton, where user groups nurture and nuzzle the little guy like you wouldn't believe.)

Linux has gained share in large part because it runs on Intel chips. When you buy an Intel chip, in other words, you can run either Windows, or Linux, or both with it.

Microsoft has watched this dance between Intel and Linux with some alarm. So here is its answer, an alliance with AMD, tieing the smaller company's chips more closely to future service packs of Windows XP. Those companies that want a secure implementation of XP will find that AMD, for the first time, is a better choice.

This is not small news. Amazing it has gone unremarked. Until now.