Intel Discusses Future Plans

heeeraldo writes "Tom's Hardware (unfortunately known for their one-page-stretched-into-nine articles, and endless ads) attended an Intel presentation about their future processor plans. The unsurprising bit: the endless march of additional cores. The surprising part: they're already focusing on 45nm processes." From the article: "Last week, Intel held a series of presentations at its Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, whose facilities represent the main pillar of product design and manufacturing. These presentations included a short tour to the top-notch 65 nm production facility Fab D1D whose specifics Intel is currently replicating to other locations. The primary purpose of this show obviously was to convince around 80 analysts and journalists of the substantial health of Intel's 65 nm fabrication leadership, which is outputting new processors in high volume for launching new Pentium 4 6x1, Pentium D 900 and Core branded (known as Yonah) processors in early 2006."

Comments

Surprising how?

[Ziviyr]

The surprising part: they're already focusing on 45nm processes.

Thats the only way to dodge their inefficiency problems. Outside of like, designing better chips.

Re:Surprising how?

[ciroknight]

Well I hate to burst your bubble, but the next generation Yonah and the "Core" technology is gearing up to be more effecient than anything AMD has ever produced.

You see, effeciency isn't a measure of raw speed, it's a measure of power verses the thermal production and power needed to run the chip. In this case, Intel wins flat out. While AMD's chips may be faster, Intel's Pentium M platform has been growing in the background. When Yonah is released, we will not only see speeds slowly being ramped back up to the previous heights, but you'll also see a very small jump in heat production. I remember from an article a few days back: "While the Yonah is slightly behind the Athlon X2 in performance, it outputs less heat under load than the Athlon X2 does when idling."

And yes, while Yonah is a laptop chip, the desktop version of it isn't going to be far above that; the whole platform was designed to tweak for effecienty.

So please, stop spilling your FUD. The 45nm process is the next logical step, and it shows that Intel hasn't been operating in a vacuum this last year when it comes to the Pentium 4. It also proves they have an exit strategy to get away from the Pentium 4 and the whole Pentium name and legacy (however tarnished it might have become due to the Pentium 4's inadequacies), and it shows that not only do they have the *entire* next generation of chips taped out, that they're moving on to the generation after the next.

If you'd have read the article, you would have been impressed. Even though it seems AMD still has the upper hand (especially if they'd hurry up and move to 300mm wafers and drop down to 65nm production ASAP), Intel's coming back into the game with a vengence. It almost seems they've taken a leaf out of the IBM playbook; Release a very expensive, mainstream platform to derive technologies for the next generation (think Power -> G5, Power -> [game consoles]). The most interesting part to me; Intel made a new logo for the Itanium, which means we might be seeing a smaller wavelength Itanium update, which a lot of the high end cluster machines might enjoy. Next year's looking to be a very good one in Microprocessing.

Quantity better than Quality

[obender]

If this proves to be more than vapourware Intel could beat up AMD again just by volume. I have been trying to buy a cheap dual core Opteron 165 and no shop seems to stock it. I will not preorder as I know this involves a price premium plus if things go wrong it will take even longer to get it replaced.

If Intel starts mass producing these then people will just buy what's avalable.

Suspicious article title...

[dtjohnson]

I'd be a little suspicious of any article that is titled "Top Secret Intel Processor Plans Uncovered" even if it wasn't from a long-time Intel fan-boy site. It's hardly surprising that Intel is moving to more cores with 65 and 45 nm. AMD started doing that two years ago and just opened their newest fab to facilitate quad-core and octa-core future cpus on much larger dies. Right now, AMD has at least a one-year lead over Intel in this technology and there's no sign that Intel is doing anything that will leapfrog AMD. The entire article could be entitled 'Intel says 'me too.' It would be much more impressive if there was some meaty info about the performance of actual products rather than a lot of stuff about 'xx will do this' and 'yy will do that.' As it is, it just reads like an expanded description of a roadmap which can quickly change with future developments or non-developments.

Re:Suspicious article title...

[Kjella]

It's hardly surprising that Intel is moving to more cores with 65 and 45 nm. AMD started doing that two years ago and just opened their newest fab to facilitate quad-core and octa-core future cpus on much larger dies. Right now, AMD has at least a one-year lead over Intel in this technology and there's no sign that Intel is doing anything that will leapfrog AMD.

If by "this technology" you are referring to process technology, you are wrong. Intel has a lead on AMD in processing technology, they were first on 90nm, first on 65nm, first on 300mm wafers, and I'm quite sure they'll be first on 45nm technology. AMD has a lead on Intel in multi-core technology, but you were talking as if it was the fab that was ahead of Intel. It's not, it is the chips that have a smarter design. If you could have AMD's chips on Intel's processing tech, they'd be superior to anything currently on the market.

Re:The PR War

[Malor]

Wow, you know Intel is hurting right now if they're using that argument. This is exactly equivalent to,

AMD: "Your car sucks! Ours is faster, more comfortable, safer, and gets better mileage."
Intel: "Oh yeah? Well our factories are better! Your factories suck!"

If Intel has pulled its head out of its butt and put the engineers in charge again, instead of the marketroids, it could easily come back and eat AMD's lunch once again. They execute better than anybody in the tech business. They are a fearsome competitor. They've marketed themselves into a significant bind, but if anyone can dig themselves out of that jam, it's Intel. 80% market share gives you some leeway for mistakes, even big ones.

However, that said, I don't think 2006 is looking too good for them. If AMD can simplify their lines a little and keep executing as well as they have, they could take a good chunk of marketshare next year. By 2007, I figure Intel is going to be back in the game, and I'm looking forward to whatever they come up with.

This competition is GREAT for us. When Intel isn't challenged, prices stagnate and chips go nowhere. And with the competition this intense, it will be harder for either company to push involuntary DRM hardware.

Re:The PR War

[darkmeridian]

The analogy you propose is inaccurate. Intel is saying, "Look, AMD factories are going to be unable to make the next generation of cars." Intel is telling the investors (stock analysts) that the Intel future is great because AMD cannot match the 45 or 65 nm process in large quantities with sufficient yield. Chip designs obsolete quickly, but fab facilities are relatively long-term. Whenever Intel decides to stick a dual-core Pentium-M based design onto the desktop, with or without 64 bit extensions, is the day it takes over the marketshare. Let's not forget that smaller circuits mean more cache on-die.