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New Xeon CPU Hot and Underpowered
Kasracer writes "Web Sites The Register and GamePC received several of the new dual-core processors from Intel, dubbed 'Paxville', and ran a battery of tests on them. What did they find? From the article: 'There's no doubt about it, Intel's dual-core Xeons are their most power hungry Xeons to date ... Even when idling, two dual-core Xeons consume nearly 400W of power at any given time, which is amazingly high, even by Intel's standards ... their new dual-core chips (while powerful in their own right) simply are bested across the board by AMD's dual-core Opteron processors. Even worse, the Opterons typically perform much better while running at slower clock speeds and only having half the amount of on-die L2 cache to utilize.'"
The _last_ intel CPU a few days ago was already found hot and underpowered by gamePc.
That means this _new_ intel CPU really must be craptastic...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Dell wants dualcore to sell, so they have it.
how long before they realize that it was a fatal move?
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Paris Hilton looking an Intel Inside sticker and saying "That's hot."
That's going to be the SUV of its category. Big, ugly, inefficient design catering to those who desperately need the ego boost.
It will hopefully die (yeah, bad pun) a very prompt death.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
So they're a little bit hot, I see that as a good thing. Now you can cook breakfast on your case, without ever having to move!
The Register didn't test anything. They're just providing a short and more to the point commentary on the GamePC review, who appear to have adopted a more diplomatic tone so as to receive Free Crap To Review in the future as well.
These things are apparent when you Read The Fucking Article, you know? The thing you're supposed to do before submitting? Gah.
The situation (Intel's, not necessarily the difference) should change RSN when Intel's 65nm process comes online. Looking at the huge lead AMD has right now, I don't see how Intel can beat them in both power and performance anytime soon unless they're willing to add a few hundred more pins to their sockets to accomodate on-die memory controller(s). I doubt Intel will do that. I also doubt they'll come back a bit from the 150W/CPU these Paxville chips crank out, so they'll be using the process headroom for higher clocks and/or larger caches.
Ultimately an on-die memory controller is the only way to bridge the increasingly large gap between the CPU and RAM. Intel's managed amazingly low latencies to RAM given that they've got an entire extra bus and chip to run through, but they're still ~50% higher than AMD's. The netburst architecture was supposed to be insensitive to RAM latencies but Intel is not keeping up in the bandwidth department either, and it's clear that these CPUs are suffering from a lack of RAM bandwidth (twice the processing power per chip, but no increase in bandwidth).
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Sweet zombie Jesus, the heatsink must have fins like a '57 DeSoto! At 400w and using it 24/7 will make the cops think you're running a grow-op.
Apple will most likely be using Pentium M's, as they are currently planning on phasing in the Intel chips from the ground up, whilst leaving the Power Macs to run on the G5's for the moment IIRC.
So there is a good chance they already know that Intel has something far better in store for them to use in 2007/2008
This new xeon Chip is sucking down more juice than the three macs I have In my house , It is 100W less than my server and PC
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Parent post should be modded "funny", as it refers to the fact that the story has been already posted on Slahsdot a few days ago, i.e. it's a dupe.
Sigged!
God do I love it.
IBM and their killer dual core chips powering the new quad PowerMacs and Cell chips are starting to show up doing fucking amazing shit from a variety of companies.
And Intel continues their processor trainwreck...
But Steve told me about this fantastic roadmap! The Intel Roadmap!!!
That's TWO Xeons, PLUS everything else eating power in the system. No doubt a good chunk of that is an ineffecient power supply, etc.
I still say buy AMD, but those figures aren't extreme at all.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Rules of successful businesses. 1.) Listen to consumer 2.) Don't lie to consumer 3.) Make decisions based on companies largest comodity, not companies largest stock holders 4.) Don't ignore competition
Yet another slashdot duplicate.
(Disclaimer: I haven't read the entire article in depth yet, and I don't know **** about chip design)
/.) promoting the Pentium M as a desktop chip (IIRC passive cooling was possible with a reasonably-sized desktop heatsink).
I assume that this chip is basically derived from the Prescott P4, which (in spite of all the hype) has been considered by some commentators to be a dead-end in chip design and a mistake on the part of Intel.
There are rumours that Intel are now using the Pentium M (ironically, a chip which supposedly owes at least as much to the Pentium III design as to the Pentium 4(*)) as their "reference" design instead of Prescott. Bearing in mind that the Pentium M has been praised for providing performance approaching that of the P4s with *much* smaller power requirements and minimal cooling needed, this wouldn't surprise me. In fact, I've read several articles (including one via
(*) And I don't know if that was the previous-gen P4; it's been said by some that Prescott was different enough to warrant the "Pentium 5" name. At any rate, the Pentium M isn't simply a power-efficient Pentium 4.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
you could run 20 mac mini's and consume about the same amount of power, now if it were utilised what would be faster 20x 1.42GHz G4's or four 2.8GHz xeons?
I cant see how Intel is going to catch up without a redraw of the whole CPU structure and mem controller. Simply going for smaller die wont solve the performance problem. I really think Michael Dell was wrong in thinking that 65 nm is going to get Intel in par with AMD. This is really and interesting moment, will dell stick to Intel and deliver less performance than HP/Intel/Sun etc? At some stage they will have to start selling AMD and i suspect it will be a horrific moment for Dell. To date they always state that they use Intel because they are better but really how long can they put that charade up?
HTTP/1.1 400
Two hot processors twice as hot as one? amazing!
Intel is just biding time until they can release their new core. To bad the only tricks they have left are crappy tricks. Intel isn't going away anytime soon though. AMD had to underclock their chips for dualcore to work on the same socket, but they have built this core from the ground up for multiprocessing and to a lesser extent power saving. So being able to run two cores on the same power you know it's going to be powerfull.
Those aren't rumors, they're confirmed fact by intel itself. Did you miss all their marketing on future low-power cpus all across the board?
dupe dupe dupe... ack! get this off the list
You're right thta they didn't measure the power of just the CPU, but they also didn't benchmark just the CPU, because you can't run the benchmarks with out memory, buses, IO etc. Duh. Besides, CPU power is not an apples to apples comparison - one CPU integrates memory controllers and high-speed CPU-CPU connections, the CPUs require different types of RAM...
The power the system draws is the more relevant to the system owner than the CPU power is. They used comparible systems.
I realize that 400 W while idling isn't typical of Intel processors, but still, didn't Apple choose Intel because of their supposedly low power consumption?
apple who?
yuppie etch-a-sketch
But Apple chose Intel because of power requirements and heat dissipation... Should Apple be reconsidering their decision?
But can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these?
actually intel processors are known to consume *lots* of power for quite a time now, so it is no wonder that the new Xeons don't perform better. I wonder how intel could drop the new Xeon on the market. It will be a huge blow for them.
One man, one word.
Yes they did, and if Intel ONLY made Xeon processors, then Apple may be quick to regret their decision. But Intel makes other products, and their Pentium M line of processors which have much better power/performance ratio is what will eventually make it into the Apple Macs.
So, be a little more open minded.
Asside from that, this is a big blow against Intel especially after having realized they can't keep releasing power hungry and underwelming processors anymore. Coming out with a CPU that consumes more power idling then most home desktops PSU can provide is greatly discouraging for the Xeon lineup. I can't imaging anyone wanting these processors, in either a server or workstation environment, these kind of stats are uncalled for.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
How long till CPU power requirements become a buying factor? Like many people I leave my main PC on most of the day, and also use a laptop which a distressingly short battery life (sony vaio). These days, apart from the old game of battlefield 2, I rarely find any need tor a maxxed out CPU. I'd be much more interested in a PC that would consume noticeably less power. 400W is like having 4 brightly lit rooms all day long, its just wasteful.
For laptops its already a big issue, as anyting that can stretch out the meager battery lfie is good, but even for desktop PCs now, we should be hitting the point where people start asking how much it costs to run a new PC all day.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Whatever happened to their new mantra 'Performance/Watt over Clock Speed'?
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
FFS. I've got enough speed in my P4 2.6GHz. What I need is a lower (by today's metric, but still damn fast) clock speed with much less power consumption and heat production. Where is it?
I don't understand what all of the fuss is about. With systems that generate this much heat, I want to buy one just because it will probably be cheaper to heat my house with a dual Xeon system than with heating oil, considering current fuel prices! I can simultaneously have the benefit of running one hell of a Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2, or SETI@Home system! Then when summer arrives I can switch back to my cooler AMD X2 system, thus saving money on cooling bills as well!
AND after playing BF2 for an hour or so the top of the case will be ready to cook up some chicken and steak tips! Introducting the new Intel, dual-Zeon, charcoal-less hibachi system!
Come on! You guys need to look at the positives of having such hot CPUs!
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
But Intel released details of there future plans for much lower power processors accross the board earlier in the year, so... what's the big deal?
Are you kidding me? I bet you aren't even aware of your own ego (which is so large it's coming out of your ass). Do you actually think that we humans could destroy the planet in a lifetime? The earth has been here for billions of years, and I'm pretty confident that it will get rid of us long before we humans could get rid of it.
(BTW, it wasn't the crab people, I broke the dam)
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
It provokes the desire, but takes away the performance!
Stuck down a hole! In the middle of the night! With an owl!
The big deal is that Intel, the market leader by a country mile, is way behind AMD on power consumption and performance. They may be ahead in vapourware, but you can't buy (or run software) that.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
In other news, the sky's blue, the sun's hot, and Soilent Green is people.
AMD isn't short of customers; Dell is long shitty products.
They may be shit, but they make Dell money. That's all that matters.
AMD make nice CPUs, but that's because they want to make money, not because they're pure of heart and want to destroy the evil Intel.
If I were AMD I'd tell Dell to go fuck themselves
Yeah, but you're not AMD. You're just a screechy little fanboy with a cliche name who's fighting some juvenile phoney battle.
AMD know what side their bread is buttered on; they might never sell to Dell, but they wouldn't go tell them to fuck themselves. And that's why AMD are doing pretty well these days; nothing to do with you. They're in business. You'd run them into the ground with your deluded adolescent crusade in about 3 seconds flat.
In your own words... you are a twat.
It's probably next to impossible to destroy the planet intentionally, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the power of accidents and/or misjudgements. Also, the goal is to keep the world habitable, not just a rock in space.
so what exactly is new here? i personally think this isn't newsworthy since that's all intel has been for the past 5+ years.
anybody who doesn't use an opteron for their servers or an athlon 64 for their computers has some serious issues - because intel's main competitor has faster, cooler, and cheaper processors.
That stupid hyperthreading.
Next up: The George Forman Lean Mean, super-processing, grilling machine!
It knocks out the fat, and your breaker switches!
"With my new machine, you can cook your food in half the time--and compile your kernel in no-time flat! My new Lean Mean, Super-Processing, Grilling Machine knocks out the fat, and the compile time!"
But seriously... What the hell is wrong with Intel? They have a perfectly good model (AMD) to base their business model off of... What do they do? They take one good part, implement it half-assed, and then forget all the rest of the improvements.
call this flamebait, but Intel doesn't seem to be making a lot of good judgment calls here lately. Basically, I see the same-old Intel, back when AMD and Cyrix chips were out on the market.
"Our chips are the fastest! See? Ours have 200 Mega-hertz! And MMX! Games have sound now, so were going to put some sound-bits on the chip! See? SEE?!?"
Sorry Intel. The cat is out of the bag: MHz don't mean much. Our computers are so overpowered now, why do we need more speed? Games? ok, I'll bite: Isn't most of the processing is done by the videocard these days... So what's your excuse now? Windows Vista? Again, that's going to use your videocard more than anything.
Intel, your overpriced and inefficient. It's time for a paradine shift. Innovate or get out.
As a small-time, low power switch-mode power-supply designer, I would like to object that it is very difficult to accurately measure the power draw of a modern desktop CPU, unless you design a whole motherboard specially dedicated to power measurements.
;-)
These beasts have peak current draws in the range of 100A @ 1.5V.
If you were to allow for a maximum of 1% voltage loss (15mV) across a measuring shunt resistor, this would mean 0,00015 Ohm Resistance - the equivalent of a piece of copper Wire with a cross-section of 1.0mm^2 and a length of 7mm. Good luck attaching a 1% accurate kelvin sense connection to this. You will also have to design a high performance multiplier circuit to make accurate RMS power measurements in the MHz Range.
But even then, and not considering mechanical difficulties like buried traces/planes, you cannot place this shunt betwwen the cpu and the Power supply (i.e. 1.5V switcher and bulk 1.5V capacitors), because the added inductance and skin effects would probably cause the CPU to malfunction.
So your best bet is to place shunts between the multiple switching coils and 1.5V Caps, which would probably work. But then you are only measuring the sum of the CPU current draw + the dissipation losses in the traces and the capacitors - which arent neglible, as a lot of people learned recently, as the overheated low-quality organic caps died on their motherboards.
But what is it worth ?
As a computer user, I care only for four things :
- The reliability
- The noise coming out of the box
- The cost of the power going into the box
- The cost for extra air-conditioning, or the savings on heating -
depending on the season and where you live
For all of these, the amount of power drawn from the wall plug is a very suitable indicator.
Well, the dupe times are improving. This time, only three days.
4 0&tid=118
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/19/14262
I used to take the hypertransport bus to school, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Especially when you have two(!) hypertransfers.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
future plans
Ahh - vaporware. We all know how stuff always gets delivered on time and lives up to all the marketing hype. And of course after issuance of the preannouncement the competitors are not allowed to improve their products.
Feh.
Didnt I see this story sometime mid last week?
The big deal is this: to build a computer you need parts, not press releases. Xeon is what Intel is selling, and Opteron is what AMD is selling, today. We'll see how next-generation parts (from both sides) measure up when they are in production. Many changes can happen between the marketing plan and production silicon.
As the article notes, it seems that the main reason they released this chip is so business oriented writers on the Wall Street Journal will stop complaining about Intel/Dell's lack of dual core CPUs. Those writers aren't all that likely to care that much about the power/heat issues so much as keeping up with the Joneses.
Intel is missing the boat. They need to market this chip to students in dorm rooms, as a dual use product. It is a Hot Plate / set top Media Center PC.
You can prepare a gourmet dinner while you watch a Tivo'd Food Network.
That my friends is dual use and dual core!
Dr. Retarded Check out what they have done now.
You don't know what "cold war" means, do you? The arms race, the politics, the spying et c. didn't affect the planet.
Get worried about the destruction of the Earth when the cold war turns into Hot (=Real) war. Even then it wouldn't be destroyed, but some currently inhabited parts of it would become inhabitable for hundreds/thousands of years. On a geological scale stretching over billions of years and unfathomable natural forces, it would be a piss in the ocean.
Read this article:
p eak_at_intels_65nm_pentium_4-11.html#power_consump tion
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20051007/a_sneak_
In short, decreasing the die size has allowed Intel to reduce power consumption a bit, but it's also increased thermal density to such a degree that they can't clock them as fast as even the current crop of 90nm processors. Why upgrade to these chips?
What the heck is with the game pc thing? It's showing some dude's crack!
Please do not post links like this. Thanks
But if you do, and especially if you plan to eat it, make sure you do NOT RTFA!
Though usually the "smiling man" is a little bit faster to show up...
I'm sure all of you that complain about this Intel system using 400W when an AMD system would use perhaps 200W are also energy conscious in other ways, right?
i ere-SMUD.html
You turn on power saving nodes (Intel's Speedstep, AMD's Cool n Quiet)?
You use 55W fluorescent torchiere lamps instead of 300W halogen ones, right?
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/torch
You could easily save as much power on lighting in your house as you do on computing costs.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
It's time to drop the gamepc link. Apparently they don't like the extra page views that /. is sending them.
This is covered in the gamepc article, right at the first page, second paragraph (Yes, they did compare the new Xeon to the G5)! Why is Slashdot posting links, if nobody is going to follow them anyways?
Come on. I have an absolutely terrible memory, but even I can see that this is a dupe.
Depends on what you are running. Tasks like Seti@Home are well suited for large clusters of computers, but I sure wouldn't want to run HalfLife 2 on 20 Mac Mini's.
After you've read the gamepc article, you really won't feel like eating, believe me!
As a PC technician that works on multi-cpu Opterons day in and day out, I can tell you that despite the performance and lower cost of AMD (which gets all the limelight), they are far less reliable than intel processors and the motherboards on the market tend to be unreliable as well. Anybody who has dealt with the Rioworks HDAMB or Tyan S2875 can tell you that. The 32-bit Athlon MP motherboards were god-awful as well and the trend continues. Instability issues are rampant because AMD CPUs are so picky about the type of RAM used. My company is constantly having to order more expensive single-ranked RAM modules to solve banking limitations of the CPU memory controller, machine check errors, and ECC corrections. This also makes RAM warranty replacement take longer than it would normally. Even when you are talking about consumer level AMD-based systems, such as 3000+ up, nForce-based motherboards (by far the most popular chipset) have been historically picky about what RAM is installed. Believe me, people don't love their AMDs so much when they are down, they are often referred to as pieces of sh** by customers that experience these all too common problems. As AMDs are becoming more popluar these days, more small businesses are buying servers based on AMD, they don't have backup equipment, and they get really pissed off when their Exchange server quits because an Opteron just suddenly gave up the ghost. Seriously people, you can champion performance and lower heat output all day, but both platforms offer more power than most people utilize, and I would think that less downtime is what equates into real dollars saved, not faster CPU operations. Most people would rather drive a Toyota that gets them from point A to point B everytime than rely on a Ferrari that drives faster but breaks frequently. In some ways, AMD has already demonstrated my analogy for me. Acer-Ferrari overheat notebook anybody? Reminds me of Fiat-Ferrari...:(
The second page is safe
those pentium M cpus to perform on par with athlon64's.
their massive 2MEGABYTE l2 caches make up for the fact that they suck without them.
the turion64 and athlon64 cpus perform as well with 512KB cache, hence the much lower cost of those cpus in relation to pentium M's.
ever wonder why notebooks with "centrino" and PM cpus cost a whole lot more than equivalent systems?
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
We just didn't expect any better, so the disappointment was limited ;)
Read: http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=pax ville&page=1
*gasp* Someone has their panties in a bunch over this.
-Sam
"As a computer user, I care only for four things :
;-)
- The reliability
- The noise coming out of the box
- The cost of the power going into the box
- The cost for extra air-conditioning, or the savings on heating -
depending on the season and where you live
For all of these, the amount of power drawn from the wall plug is a very suitable indicator."
Then you're a very atypical user. Most other users would place a) the system's performance at their desired tasks and b) the systems cost above everything you mentioned above (except for possibly reliability). Remember, for all the emphasis performance/watt is getting in the media these days, most consumers are actually concerned with performance/dollar, of which power costs tend to be a remarkably small piece (in the home market, at least).
For most people's needs, a small car has enough towing capacity to pull a modest boat or camping trailer. I remember my grandfather towing his boat with his subcompact, and it seemed fine enough to me. True, you couldn't safely go at highway speed, but to tow the thing a few miles to the ramp, you don't need an overpriced SUV.
Even if you do have an SUV, to be safe, you should drive pretty slowly anyway on the highway, because you are very prone to jack-knifing. Your braking is limited by the tires on the trailer, not by the brakes on your car.
The original link is fine. However, the link in parent is not!
Ppl, don't click on that "page 3" link. It's goatse!
Looks like the website may have had an unwanted visitor!!!!!!!!!!
Unwanted? Goatse is always a welcome visitor to Slashdot and its linked sites!
10mins ago its was only the first page.
then it became first 2 pages.
now the first 3 pages are affected.
No, a PROPERLY designed dual core does NOT use twice the power, at the same clockspeeds.
s px?opn=OSA248BLBOX
s px?opn=OSA275CBBOX
.09nmSOI technology.
For example, look at the Opteron 248 REV E4 versus the dual core Opteron 275REV E6
85W for single core 248
http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/opteron/details.a
95W for dual core 275
http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/opteron/details.a
Both share the same
AND remember the Opterons contain the memory controller on-chip, so simple CPU power comparison to the Intels does not reflect that the Intel chips require a chipset on the motherboard with a memory controller that is also consuming power, and making heat.
About another 25W in the case of the new Intel chipsets that support Paxville.
The difference is dramatic.
Total of 95W on the Opteron side, versus around 350W for the same setup on a Paxville, 2.8GHz, which is still a LOT slower than the 275 in most tests.
The only fan boys I see spouting here are Intel fanboys.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
"vapourware" doesn't mean what you think it does. Vaorware is something that has been promised to be revolutionary, but which has missed schedule repeatedly to the point where people are starting to believe a.) it won't deliver its promises, and b.) it may never even be released. I love how it's now come to mean "anything that's been announced and not released yet".
can i fucking kill these guys? they fucking linked a page with a picture of a guy spreading his asshole wide. aside from being rude it's disgusting. luckily it's a saturday and i'm at home. had i been at work i wouldn't have a job anymore. so i would appreciate if gamepc wasn't linked to any more. they can all burn in hell
You are allowed to use the dirty word "goatse" instead of your overly polite circumlocutions for this gaping reality.
Isn't it easier to just put it in a styrofoam box, run it for 5 minutes, see how much the thermometer increases, then cool it down, insert a 100 watt lightbulb and measure how much the temperature increases, then calculate based on the ratio?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Actually, if you click on the link up in the original Slashdot article, you'll discover that the first 3 pages of the article have been hacked w/ the Goatse guy. At the time I posted, only the first two pages had been hacked. I imagine the whole article might get hacked eventually unless the guys running GamePC fix whatever the hole is.
Program Intellivision!
The planet will be fine, but if we use up all the planets resources, were gonna have a hard time living here, a 400 Watt server processor doesn't really get me worried though, china's projected oil demands get me worried :)
Hmm, maybe they can plug it with this (a mighty plug for a huge gaping hole...)
No man's a jester playing shakespeare
Round your throne room floor
While the juggler's act is danced upon
The crown that you once wore
And sooner or later
Everybody's kingdom must end
And I'm so afraid your courtiers
Cannot be called best friends
Caesar's had your troubles
Widows had to cry
While mercenaries in cloisters sing
And the king must die
Some men are better staying sailors
Take my word and go
But tell the ostler that his name was
The very first they chose
And if my hands are stained forever
And the altar should refuse me
Would you let me in, would you let me in, would you let me in
Should I cry sanctuary
No man's a jester playing shakespeare
Round your throne room floor
While the juggler's act is danced upon
The crown that you once wore
The king is dead, the king is dead
The king is dead, the king is dead
Long live the king
Most Athlon64 motherboards have a feature called "Cool and Quiet" which if you install the proper software, will on the fly underclock your PC. To give an example my cpu is an AMD 3000 which runs at 1.8ghz. Most of the time it runs at only 1 ghz using Cool and Quiet and only steps up the clock speed when needed.
AMD is so far ahead of Intel in so many areas: Cool and Quiet, perforamce per watt, on die memory access, dual core, etc. that is not funny any more. If marketing did not matter so much Intel would be in deep.
Re: Apple switching to Intel because Intel's future chips are going to be wonderful.
Apple's not the first company to take that bait. SGI, HP both did, then had to revive their CPU teams. Now that Apple has left the market, who is going to drive the high-performance end of the PowerPC market? Is Apple going to end up going to IBM in 2-3 years begging for a cost reduced Power6?
That said, I do think the Pentium M core will should do well against the K8 when the M gets its own memory controller.
Pity I've just used up all my mod points today in another article
I remember a large company capturing the heat from their IBM mainframes and using the heat to provide heat to the building. Aux heaters helped out. I guess Intel is planning on a servce called "Integrating your new computers into the company heating system." Cooling? Thats a problem...
Intel is not only planning to switch to a 65nm process, they also are working on a new line of products that are said to be based on the Pentium M. With that technology, they should get a much better grip on their heat problems.
A problem that will remain, however, is their SMP design with only one memory bus, as opposed to AMD's where each processor has its own memory bus. In the tested configuration (see the GamePC article), the AMDs won bigtime on memory bandwith. In a 4-way or 8-way system, expect this to become even more pronounced.
Bottom line:
The next generation of Intel products will probably catch up on the desktop, but I don't see how they can keep up with the Opteron anytime soon.
C - the footgun of programming languages