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

apple

[eobanb]

FTFA.

they're already focusing on 45nm processes

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

Now I think we all know why Apple did what they did.

Re:Yes but

[Anonymous Coward]

"but it's much more important to know what the technology leader is doing. Quad core CPU's next year, I understand, from AMD."

Meanwhile Sun Microsystems came out with 8 cores _this_ year.

The PR War

[yerdaddie]

I couldn't help but think that this is just the newest assult as part of a press-release war between Intel and AMD. Recently, it seems AMD has been taunting Intel about the performance of its dual core technology. So it appears Intel's reponse is to say "your manufacturing process couldn't lithograph its way out of a paper bag."

Re:The PR War

[Kjella]

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!"

Don't forget that an important part of better process tech is more dies/wafer, meaning lower marginal cost. Basicly, that tells the investors that margins will stay good, and that they can be cut if the competition forces them to.

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.

Pardon me, but doesn't both all the newer Intels and everything since Athlon 64 support TCPA, if the motherboard has the appropriate TCPA chip and BIOS? Basicly Microsoft made some hints about Vista and TCPA, and they both jumped to comply.

Kjella

Intel finally catching up ?

[tuxpert]

From TFA - "The introduction of the Merom design will be a turning point in Intel's product policy, because it will be the backbone for all processor families that go into the desktop, the mobile or the enterprise space. In contrast, the desktop and enterprise markets are provided with Pentium 4 and Pentium D NetBurst architecture processors while the mobility CPUs are derived from the more efficient Pentium M design"

Merom being the sucessor to the forthcoming Yonah. Based on the recent AnandTech benchmarks of Yonah against desktop chips , it seems like Intel may not have to play 'catch up' for much longer. Of course, we don't know what else AMD has up their sleeve :)

Re:How Intel Told Off The DCMA

[Groo Wanderer]

Your dates are a tad out of la-la land, but your heart is in the right place.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24638
It was linked here, but I can't find it.

The short story is that Intel's new VIIV boxes are crushingly DRM infested, and can load more. There is remote key revocation and all the things MS wanted, they are playing AMD off of Intel. Don't look to AMD to be any better, they are being screwed too.

I predict massive failure and egg on Intel's face here.

                  -Charlie

Pentium 5?

[ScottCooperDotNet]

When is Intel going to move to Pentium 5 chips instead of a billion models of Pentium 4s? Sure it may seem redundant (pent = 5) but it was at least easy to keep some of this stuff straight when the chips matched to their socket sizes and years somewhat well. P4s go back at least to 2001, when is Intel going to help the everyone sell new hardware?

And while we're at it, could AMD explain their CPU lines better (esp. to consumers)?

Re:Quantity better than Quality

[Lonewolf666]

AMD is getting close to starting its second fab in Dresden, Germany. Some time in 2006, it should reach full capacity. So I don't expect a shortage of AMD processors.

Re:It is mostly wrong

[Hack Jandy]

Don't bother replying to him, he writes for the Inq. He is just going to cite a bunch of cases when he was right, but he won't cite the ones where he was wrong.

HJ

Re:Nope.

[Hack Jandy]

Usually I don't feed the trolls, but what the hell... Let's start with just ATI stuff. Fuck, let's just pick ONE card and see if you can bat 0.500

The Inquirer on R520 Pipelines
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22202 ("ATI placed 32 pipelines inside, but there is a chance that it will enable just 24 for a start.")
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22345 ("IT'S STILL NOT crystal clear what ATI implemented in its 24 to 32 pipelines, 300 millions+ transistor beast")
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23648 (R520 has 32 pipelines, 24 workin)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24423 (It's either 24 or 32, but we ain't telling!)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25730 (16)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25730 (Ok ok, really it was 16 pipes, we lied)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26618 (16 again!)

The Inquirer on R520 Clock Speeds
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22486 (1400MHz is really close to 1500MHz, good for running 24 or 32 pipelines)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24423 (Nice estimate of the clock speed there -- so close)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24698 (Er wait,.. )
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25898 (I would have thought by now you'd get the clock right....)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26010 (Still can't get that clockspeed right...)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26378 (Let me get this straight, ATI TOLD you the clock speeds and you still got it wrong?)

The Inquirer on R520 Launch date
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20896 (May, October, close enough right?)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23097 (Getting warmer! Just one month away from the actual date!)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24203 (Oops that was one of your gems, Charlie. And I quote "mid-August for the lucky partners, and September for the real shipments." Nice pipeline estimates there too I might add)

The Inquirer on R520 Memory Controller
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26168 (Oh, remember this one before it was editted? 512bit addressing!!! Even after the edit it's still nonesense ... "I believe that you don't have enough interconnections on the PCB to take the full advantage of 512 bit memory controller.")

Other Various Inquirer Thoughts
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22894 ("At least, in 2005 you will get R520 in an AGP version as well")
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21413 (You can always count on the Inq to even get the fucking name wrong)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21699 (..."We don't know many details about it yet, but we are almost certain that ATI plans to bridge the R520 chip with its Rialto bridge chip"...)
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26543 (How do you cancel a chip that nev

Re:Suspicious article title...

[darkmeridian]

It depends on what you think is important. According to Anandtech, Intel has a one-year lead on shipping 65 nm processor parts because it has working Yonah parts now while AMD is not expected to have a 65 nm part until late next year. The smaller die size allows, according to that same article, for Intel to make a dual-core chip at the same die-size and cost as a regular single-core processor. Same price, higher performance, higher profit margins for Intel. AMD has always bettered Intel in chip design while Intel has always sat on its huge fab capacity and manufacturing process advantage. It will be fun to see how things shake out.