Analyst Doubts Intel's Dual-Core Demo

bakeacake writes "At Xbitlabs they have a article on the possibility that Intel's Dual core Preview at the IDF was not real. Would Intel sink this low? "An analyst expressed doubts about demonstration of a 'real' dual-core microprocessor during an Intel's recent demonstration at Intel Developer Forum Fall 2004 in San Francisco, California. Insight's Nathan Brookwood believes that Intel was most likely to showcase a dual-processor system instead of a dual-core processor-based system during the show.""

Comments

Vaporware

[EggMan2000]

What Intel and Vaporware? Never! They have to compete with the likes of IBM:

In other news: IBM is preparing a dual-core version of its 90nm PowerPC 970FX processor - aka the G5. Codenamed Antares, the chip will be delivered - likely in sample form - to Apple later this summer.

News article here

From the article

[Max Threshold]

"Designing a unique motherboard is clearly less expensive and takes less time than creating a multi-chip package, and the resulting system would come close to replicating the performance of the eventual dual-core product."

So... why don't they just do that?

Yes, They Would

[00Monkey]

I was at a Microsoft OEM System Builder conference for the release of Windows XP and Intel just happened to be showing off the Pentium 4. They did a video encoding benchmark, the pentium 4 2ghz vs the Pentium III 1ghz. They had *1* stopwatch, started the Pentium 4 and then 15 seconds later started the Pentium III. Then when the Pentium 4 only made out twice as fast as the Pentium III, they started saying how great it was that it was 2x the performance. They never accounted for the 15 second head start that the Pentium 4 had... meaning it wasn't even twice as fast.

Regardless of whether the P4 is good or not, that was a pretty crappy thing to do and when about 20% of the crowd commented on it, the Intel guys merely say "that didn't happen".

Why not show it?

[hirschma]

AMD did a dual core demo the week before. They opened the boxes, passed around sample chips, showed enlargements of the cores, etc.

Intel did their demo with a closed box, presumably in response to AMD. Only when asked if it was really dual core did they say it contained "real silicon".

I'd say that there was some vapor in that closed box, too.

Running scared

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Intel has been caught off guard. They definitely have a lot of products in the R&D pipeline, but they spent so many years focusing on the Itanium future that they're really starting to hurt from the fact that nobody wants Itaniums.

Fortunately, even Intel's second-string is big and fast enough to keep pace with the rest of the industry, but things like this show that they really are having to make a huge effort to do so. I'm sure the dual-core demo was genuine, but as with so many demos of this type, it must have been very carefully scripted to avoid an embarassing crash.

hehe, wow

[ak3ldama]

i just read on thg their review of the idf held recently, and those intel fan boys didn't even say anything about why the chip wasn't physically displayed ... there is even a funny picture of a staffer hauling the case out of the presentation right away ( here )

Re:If I may flaunt my ignorance..Intel's other cpu

[Nom du Keyboard]

A dual-core Prescott will not be an easy thing...they have a fundamental bandwidth problem...Forcing the P4 into that same mold, on the other hand, is a move of desperation by Intel

Remember, Intel has a second P4 compatable CPU. The Pentium-M is much closer to AMD in instructions per clock (e.g. a Pentium-M at 1.5GHz performs close to a P4 at 2.5GHz). And it uses less power to accompolish this feat. Perhaps Intel will use their more efficient processor for dual core applications.

Google the authors name

[Anonymous Coward]

Google the authors name, the very first result is a link to AMD's website becasue Nathan Brookwood gave a keynote speech for AMD.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Weblets/0,,7832_8366_78 23 _8721%5E7827,00.html