Intel/AMD Battle Rages On

An anonymous reader writes "The battle between Intel and AMD has broken out of the cleanroom and literally into public view with AMD's public display CPU speed challenge to competitor Intel. Should the competition take place, the infamous chip makers will battle their best 2-way and 4-way configurations for the latest title as speed king." From the article: "AMD's proposed dual-core duel would be a live, public performance evaluation between server platforms based on the dual-core Opteron 800 Series or 200 Series processors and the corresponding Intel product. Should Intel accept AMD's challenge, the duel would take place at a public venue to be announced in the coming weeks, with testing conducted by a neutral, third-party testing lab. "

Comments

What software? What terms?

[fredistheking]

This is just marketing by AMD. There is no way that Intel and AMD would come to agreement on the benchmarking software to use. Both companies know their weak points and their strong points. Neither company is going to agree to lose.

Re:What software? What terms?

[ciroknight]

It's marketing that will work. Intel won't go through with the bout, and AMD will hold it over their heads for the next five years, and everyone on slashdot will troll about it.

Truthfully, AMD could do it, even without Intel's permission. Just go grab a chip off the shelf and let loose.

Lastly, parent's completely correct. There's no way they could settle on what software to use. Intel would argue Linux is made mostly by people with AMD hardware, whereas AMD will argue that Windows has been tailored to Intel for 10 years. Intel will argue that their compiler produces accurate x86 code, AMD will argue it's inconsistancies.

The only way I could see it happening is if they ran every single possible configuration of software and averaged the results, but I'm sure someone will point out some flaw in that even.

Re:What software? What terms?

[beelsebob]

You obviously don't get it -- AMD *know* this contest will never happen, because the conclusion could be called either way, no matter what the results. AMD *know* that Intel will not accept because they know no matter how it turns out it'll get spun off the planet. AMD *know* that this will be incredibly good publicity. It's as simple as that.

I'm not supporting AMD or Intel here, but I do recognise that all this is is a publicity stunt.

McDonald's VS. Burger King?

[gabecubbage]

I don't see where Intel would enjoy any strategic advantage in participating.

Burger King has in the past been fond of touting its #2 status -- as has Pepsi.

But the big boys, McDonald's and Coke, generally like to pretend that #2 doesn't exist. After all, it would only publicly legitimize their fear of a threat by doing so. AMD gets positive publicity whether they play and win, play and lose, or if Intel refuses the contest.

Whereas Intel can only AT BEST hope to win the contest and essentially say "Hey, it's actually true that there are viable alternatives to our technology out there, but just remember that for the time being we outperform the competition by 1.23%."

Intel already turned them down

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Intel's Paul Otellini has already publicly refused to take up AMD's challenge. He said he prefers such things "to be worked out in the market."

That's Intel-speak for "we know we can't beat you in any fair contest, so we're just going to outspend you ten-to-one in marketing and make everyone think we're faster, just like we've been doing for the last five years."

Yup, that's the way to do it. If you can't beat 'em, FUD 'em to death.