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

AMD has a score to settle

[PsychicX]

Looks like AMD is going to really Stick It To The Man for this one. K8 has done a lot for them on all fronts, and thankfully they're not squandering what they've gained from it. If only they'd get a marketing department that wasn't completely incompetent. (When's the last time you saw an AMD ad on TV, hmm?)

I wonder though, it's interesting that this happens the same day that Intel announces the first details about their new line up. It's like they crash into each other every so often and both fire volleys of whatever they can get.

Re:AMD has a score to settle

[Aranth Brainfire]

'Yeah, because I'd rather subsidize advertising over research when I buy a processor....'

Yeah, I really wouldn't want the cash from those increased sales to go into the mix.

Why should they accept?

[weedenbc]

Accepting would only hurt Intel so there is absolutely no reason why they should take the challenge. I mean come on, they are in the business of making money, not proving a community of geeks right.

AMD has scored some points with this challenge but IMHO missed a huge opportunity. They should have started an ad campaign pointing out that all the P4 class products that Intel has dumped on the world were sub-par to their own.

Intel presentations today were full of hyping a per watt performance. I would have immediately launched an ad campaign that showed exactly where Intel stood with it's current desktop and server offerings in a per watt basis.

It really pisses me off how a company can talk up its products and convince a ton of people to buy them, then turn around and say that they really sucked and they just managed to sucker people in with marketing and brand name recognition.

Two Reasons

[popo]

Right now they have 2 objectives:

1) Ensure that the hundreds of millions spent on their new German production plant (set to open soon) was worth it by creating a media frenzy & consumer demand.

2) Cast a spotlight on Intel's unfair marketshare by once again proving that Intel's products are inferior and not capable of maintaining their position in the marketplace without unfair practices.

AMD could actually lose this one

[vlad_petric]

If Intel, for instance, chooses to pit a dual Itanium 2 system against the dual Opteron. Itanium 2s can have shitloads of L3 cache (like 6M, vs 1M in the Opteron), which is perhaps the most important performance feature of a server chip.

Keep in mind that server applications are a totally different beast from desktop/gaming apps/multimedia apps (things that most people here on slashdot are accustomed to). While a media application has a very high instruction throughput (say, 2 instructions retired per cycle, or more if you consider the SIMD part), server applications can be as slow as 1 instruction retired every 10 cycles. This is because they have poor cache locality, and they block on data from the main memory. In any case, for a server app you generally want as much cache as possible.

Say the magic word ... TCO

[flyingace]

I would not be surprised if somebody in Intel says the M$ magic word 'Total Cost of Ownership' next. Isnt that what M$ said after trying to run benchmarks against Linux.

I know this sounds like apples and oranges, but all they have to say is Intel processors have lesser TCO than AMD.

Its one of those things that nobody can substantiate or refute.

quakecon

[kronchev]

I was at Quakecon, which was sponsored by Intel. Saturday (i think it was, it's all a haze) an AMD guy came and in front of the center was passing out AMD shirts and tattoos. By the time he was out of shirts one of the Quakecon organizers came over and started yelling at him that he "couldn't be there", and AMD wouldn't be a future sponsor if he stayed. They went off to the side and yelled for a while. I went and got something to eat.

On the way back I see the AMD guy walking away from the center, with a huge stack of temp tattoos in his hand. I ask for one, he gives me THE WHOLE STACK and says "don't let them see these or theyll take your badge and kick you out".

Later that day I saw him and his coworker as they were leaving, they gave me about 10 more shirts, which I gave to all my friends. I personally put an AMD tattoo on my forehead and wore the shirt...my friend went and started passing tattoos out in front of the Intel booth and a guy literally ran up, pushed him, and started yelling "what the fuck are you doing, you're not allowed over here anymore!"

Good times.