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Intel Delays Dual-Core Processor, Plans New Server Chip
Kajakske writes "Intel said Thursday that it is pushing back the release of its first dual-core processor by a year to 2005 and adding a new microprocessor for servers to its Itanium II lineup. On the other hand, Intel is moving forward in the area of new technologies."
Well this should make some maclots happy.
This may give Apple the time it needs to roll out that mysterious market shattering "g5" processor we keep hearing rumors about.
Maybe it's strategy to ride the tide and invest in long term goals rather than trying to get marketshare now will pay off.
Maybe not
The thing is, this isn't a chip technology race. It's a chip fabrication/distribution/pricing race.
Intel's chips are not technologically superior to AMDs (I know Intel has some major technology assets, but they mostly don't affect the chips in production now). On the other hand, Intel's capital, fabrication capacity, distribution, and market clout are far superior to AMDs. Intel is concentrating on the areas where it has the advantage, which are also the decisive areas.
If only this *was* a technology race. But that's market forces for you.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I don't think so. Remember they talk about the Itanium II type chip, not a Pentium. And Itanium could really need a speedup in the fight against sparc and mips
Martin
Intel principally produce products (chips), IBM don't they're a services company - that's the big, big change Gerstner made in turning the company around. Hope this helps with your confusion :-)
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Good point, but I would expect any (succesful) technology that appears in the server line to make it into the consumer line at some point. So dropping something from Itanium today means it's unlikely to appear in the Pentium tomorrow.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I think that largely depends on what the application is going to be. If you need bleeding edge numbering crunching performance or have such a need for an ultra spec 64-bit cpu cluster, this is obviously a let down. If you are more of the gormound mindset and are looking to upgrade/replace existing servers with more price competitive options, this may be a blessing in disguise(not even so hidden).
I guess the real question is how much research money goes into chip development? IBM sell many different products (including intel servers, Unix servers, software products, consultancy, mainframes etc, etc) while Intel sell (mainly) Pentium CPUs with some sidelines in graphics etc. So while IBM is 4 times the size of Intel, I'd imagine Intel probably spends more on CPU development.
A CPU with hyperthreading enabled will never complete a task faster than two of the same CPUs running parallel with hyperthreading disabled.
Well, of course 2 processors will outperform a single one. Processors have a finite pool of resources. The point of HT is not to perform like dual processor, rather to act like them, increasing the performance of a single CPU at a negligible cost.
Buying 2 processors would cost you twice as much as a single processor, even more when you consider the cost of a motherboard and enough memory to make dual processors a worthwhile investment. You would get roughly double (OK, 1.6x) the performance at double the cost.
Buying a single HT-enabled processor, however, would only cost you 10 or 15% more, and you would be seeing a 20-30% performance increase across the board. I think that's a better deal.
"The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?" -- Richard Bach, Illusions
I wouldn't count this too far. Unless it gets tested in the marketplace, new tech tends to get rather...inbred. Too many generations of "new tech held internally" and you'll find it simply can't be put to market, because it turns out to be irrelevant, or not well adapted to the current situation, or...
Been there, done that.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Except every machine IBM sells (excluding their x86 systems, which just buy in Intel chips) is based around a single CPU architecture - POWER, the heavy-duty PowerPC variant. So, everything IBM does in 'CPU development' is going into the POWER/PowerPC core, although they seem to share a lot of generic fabrication advances (copper interconnect, silicon-on-insulator etc) with AMD for the Athlon/Hammer line.
Granted, IBM do a lot more than just CPU design, whereas Intel are almost exclusively CPU vendors (although Intel divide their efforts between IA-64, x86, i960 and StrongARM/Xscale) with some sidelines (NICs, switches, chipsets). Overall, I'd say IBM put a lot more muscle behind POWER/PowerPC than Intel can behind IA-64 and x86.
The problem is that new fab lines cost billions of dollars and laying out a new iteration of a microprocessor is not cheap either, so the chip manufacturers need to be pretty brutal about producing money-makers on their fab lines.
Well, your point is very true.. intel has no competition at the low end (read: x86) market, their chips have much higher clock rates than AMD offerings, and are edging ahead in speed now, but the high clock is most effective in selling them to the masses.
Where they need to develop and compete, is at the high end market, where they have a rather lackluster product of their own, the itanium... which is being completely blown away by alpha in the raw performance stakes, i think sparc and power4 might be nudging ahead of it too.. But when you consider the poor compiler and application support for itanium right now, they REALLY fall behind the others...
And as has been stated before, itanium should never have existed... hp should be concentrating on the alpha, which already has the software support, performance and reputation that itanium is still striving for.
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Intel is acutally run not by business men so you are very wrong.
Andy Groove and Gordon Moore (two founders of intel) are by far two of the most prominent semiconductor scientists of the 20th century.
Dr. Grove himself has written over 40 technical papers and holds several patents on semiconductor devices and technology. For six years he taught a graduate course in semiconductor device physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
How many people here can say they have taught 6 years in a graduate course at Berkeley?
Craig Barrett the current CEo of intel himself is nothign to scoff at either. He's a fulbright fellow that received his PHD in material science at stanford. He has 40 technical papers dealing with the influence of microstructure on the properties of materials.
So before you knock on Intel about how businessmen is run by businessmen do your homework.
These guys are Far from business men. They are first and foremost incredibly talented scientist who happen to be good at business.
Intel has one of the world's LARGEST cost in terms of research and development along with GE, MS and AMD.
I'm sorry but you are sadly mistaken if you feel that Intel is run by businessmen.
> and the relative lack of success of AMD (I use an XP1800+ and think its great,
> the company just doesn't seem to do too well.)
Well, part of that is crappy management, but a large portion of their troubles are simple due to the fact that Intel is given the benefit of the doubt by the OEMs and the consumers. Even during the year or two when AMD consistently had faster chips with fewer bugs than Intel had, Intel made tons of money and AMD merely made enough to recoup past debts. People buy Intel because they're Intel. This will happen whether Intel is doing a good job or a bad job. Thankfully, they're doing a good, honest job and earning those buyers now, but from 1998 to 2001, they were not doing their customers honour.
> Intel doesn't need to keep spending money researching new chips
> if it's current generation are so far ahead of its competitors.
They aren't. Intel's Pentium 4 is pretty much on par with AMD's Athlon. But Intel has five or so x86 plants that they can leverage to test different ways to most optimally ramp their chip frequencies. You don't just throw a design and a fab process into a bucket, shake it, and come up with the resultant chip speed. You have to devote a substantial part of your manufacturing resources to the research needed to optimally match your current chip design to your current manufacturing technology.
In addition to this, Intel happens to be something like a year ahead in base process technology. They moved to 130nm six months before AMD did their equivalent move. This means they're very much ahead in that respect. So if their chips were a generation *behind*, Intel would be competitive in chip performance (this is was almost happened with the Pentium III and the early implementation of the Pentium 4). As it is, the current P4 is a competitive design coupled with a slightly more advanced manufacturing process, so Intel is a couple speed grades ahead.
Intel has to keep researching constantly. AMD does a surprisingly good job at ramping technology at approximately the same rate as Intel, despite having about a twentieth of their capital resources. If Intel stopped researching for just a few weeks, they'd lose the leverage they have to stay superior in the current climate. And that's not counting on the outside possibility that K8/Hammer might exceed performance expectations and outperform the top Pentium 4 upon release.
-JC