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AMD Plans Simultaneous Desktop and Mobile Chip Releases

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the everybody-skate dept.

wh173b0y writes "Tom's Hardware reports that AMD is planning to release both it's dual-core desktop and mobile chips at the same time. This news comes after AMD, who have been fairly quiet since the release of the Athlon FX-55, came up shorter than intel on the release dates for it's dual-core processors. Intel on the other hand has been busy planning more than a dozen different chips to release as well as pressing its software designers to embrace its 64-bit architecture."

11 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe it's just me... by Avyakata · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Isn't that kind of a bad strategy? I mean, won't they take away the attention from each other? I'd think it'd be better to make a spectacle of one, wait for people to invest interest in it, then, once the hype dies down, release the other to a similar effect. Won't this move minimize public attention?

  2. News flash by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Desknotes use the same processors as desktops, so of course they come out at the same time. And now that all the desktop chips have power management, the difference between "desktop" and "mobile" chips is very little.

    1. Re:News flash by GoatPigSheep · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well not exactly, my centrino notebook has a 75 watt power supply, for the WHOLE SYSTEM.

      A high ghz P4 can use 1.5 x that JUST FOR THE MICROPROCESSOR. The power management on the P4 is just to keep your electricity bill down...

      --
      GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
    2. Re:News flash by default+luser · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You'd be surprised. I certainly was.

      The numbers for the Athlon 64 Winchester core are quite impressive...but this is because they havn't cranked up the voltage to produce anything faster than a 3500+ core yet.

      But take this, for example:

      3200+ Winchester.
      30w full-load (2.0GHz)
      10w Idle.
      3w Idle with Cool N' Quiet enabled (thanks to half core speed and even lower voltage)
      ~10w moderate load (Cool N' Quiet clocking the processor at 1GHz most of the time, 2GHz when performance demands it).

      I have one, and this sucker barely tops 100F at full load (stock Antec Sonata with Zalman 7000A throttled down to %50). I have also seen no issues with the dynamic clock speed, only one of the games I've tried was affected (UT 2003).

      I imagine the notebook versions are even better, as they come with more than two levels of power management. The Pentium M has some serious competition when it comes to low power usage.

      --

      Man is the animal that laughs.
      And occasionally whores for Karma.

  3. Arr. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Intel on the other hand has been busy planning more than a dozen different chips to release as well as pressing its software designers to embrace its 64-bit architecture."

    Good luck with that.

    AMD already rules the x86 64-bit market. AMD chips are currently more power efficient and produce less heat (on average, let's not compare high efficiency chips to 'normal' chips on either side of the table). Not to mention, who needs dual core, when you can have eight eight-core Opterons*? Sixty-four cores! Mmmm, there's the beef.

    It's so nice to see Intel trying desperately to catch up to AMD. ;) Insert quips about mighty falling, tables turning, et cetera.

    * Yeah, yeah, they won't be here tomorrow. I can dream, damn it.

  4. Catch-22 by Luthair · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most have no use for dual cores and devs have no reason to implement support until their customers have them.

  5. Re:It is good we still have competition by Lehk228 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    actually IBM required there be more than one source for all their parts, so in order for intel chips to be used in the IBM PC they had to license the tech to AMD.

    --
    Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  6. So BRING IT ALREADY! by eWarz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've been holding back on upgrading for a LONG time. I Almost upgraded when PCI Express and DDR2 came about, but with the news that dual-core CPUs were just around the corner, i decided to wait for that. I'd prefer AMD over Intel.

    FYI running on an AMD Athlon 2400+, MSI K7T-Turbo2 (KT133a chipset), 3 GB RAM, Geforce 6800Ultra, SB Audigy, Maxtor 80 GB special edition. While this PC isn't exactly a slouch in it's own right. (tends to outrun every machine i've touched, and since i do freelance computer repair, i touch alot of them!) I feel that new technology has passed me by and it's FINALLY time to catch up!

    Bring it on!

    Windows XP Uptime: 11months 2days 17hrs 41mins 37secs

  7. Re:Who currently sells an AMD 64-bit laptop? by Jollyeugene · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Try HP zv5400 or Compaq R3000Z series, among many others.

    I am posting from my Athlon3000+ 64bit laptop with its sick 1.6 GHZ BUS. I purchased this a month ago for $950 dollars from Staples. Yes 64bit laptops are out there-- and they can be found for cheap.

    And, yes it is fast. And, yes it runs a 64bit OS-- debian pure64.

    I would HATE to think of what I would have had to spend on this machine if I had gone with a Pentium 4 with HyperThreading. Compairing compiles with a friends Dell Pentium 4 is truly hillarious-- this thing murders it. The Athlon64 runs fairly cool too-- idles at 98 degrees in Linux.

    64 is the way to go, IMO.

  8. Dual core used by what by smallguy78 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    To quote the intel article:

    Parallelism will allow to chip developers to speed up processors ten-fold between 2005 and 2008, the executive said. "By the end of the decade, mainstream desktops will handle eight threads, mainstream servers 32 threads"...

    Although great news for games players, developers and media users, how is 8 processors going to be any benefit to the average corporate desktop that uses MS Office, IE and handful of other non-processor-intensive apps?

    It seems like dual and multicore technology will be a complete waste for these machines, which probably make up the majority of the desktop market.

    --
    Nothing costs nothing
  9. Not quite Intel is selling more 64bit chips by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    AMD already rules the x86 64-bit market

    Actually, they don't. Copying from http://news.com.com/IBM+extends+lead+in+server+mar ket+-+page+2/2100-1010_3-5587722-2.html?tag=st.nex t:

    "AMD pioneered the addition of 64-bit extensions to x86 in 2003 with its Opteron. Intel followed suit halfway through 2004. Despite AMD's earlier arrival, more revenue came from servers using Intel's 64-bit Xeon chips, McLaughlin said: $1.3 billion for Xeon servers, compared with $838 million for Opteron servers"

    Notice that Intel has a huge market share in the x86 world so all people who bought servers before Opteron bought Intel, and they continue doing the same despite of the Opteron goodness. If you look at the desktop processor market, is going to happen the same: Intel has 80% of the market share, and as soon as they start selling 64-bit enabled P4s, most of the x86-64 installed base will be from Intel, not from AMD.