Intel's New Architecture Too Late?

rts008 writes to tell us that TG Daily has an interesting interview with Randy Allen, AMD's vice president of the server products division, about (among other things) AMD's recent stellar fourth quarter numbers. From the article: "Responsible for that shrinking lead is especially AMD's server products group. Intel's CEO Paul Otellini recently acknowledged that Intel had to give up market shares to AMD and will likely be forced to hand over more shares until the next generation of server chips arrives. [...] AMD's Randy Allen explains in this conversation with TG Daily why he believes that Intel will need much more than a new processor to be able to slow AMD's growth."

Comments

question

[B3ryllium]

I heard from someone that the Pentium-M is better than any of AMD's offerings for mobile CPUs; is there any truth to this?

I know that the new MacBook is running on the Core Duo line, and I understand that's a whopper of a mobile CPU, but I thought that AMD had a strong competitor to the Pentium-M?

Re:question

[man_of_mr_e]

All the statistics i'm seeing show that the Core Duo beats the Turion hands down by as much as 25%. Also, the Pentium M outperforms the Turion as well. For example:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/16/will_core_d uo_notebooks_trade_battery_life_for_quicker_respon se/page16.html

Re:question

[d99-sbr]

The only difference is the AMD laptop chips use more power, but you can always plug in somewhere and recharge so really this is no disadvantage.

Right. I take it you've never used a laptop? Power usage is everything in todays laptop processors, as their speed is generally more than ample. My ThinkPad has a 1.2 GHz Pentium M, but according to the Gnome CPU speed panel it usually hovers around 600 MHz.

Personally, I'd trade speed for lower power usage any day of the week, and I'm sure many feel like I do.

Re:question

[ponos]

In terms of absolute performance, I believe AMD's chips are fine. But in terms of performance per watt, they are absolutely horrible. Intel-based machines will run much cooler and quieter, and last a lot longer on batteries, simply because the CPU is enormously more efficient.

Works like "horrible" or "enormously" are a bit excessive, don't you think? It's not like the AMD notebooks run for 30 mins and the Intel ones for 8 hours. This review (http://www.mobilityguru.com/2005/09/06/the_turion _64_inside_story_part_ii/page13.html) for example shows competitive performance from a Turion notebook. As a matter of fact, the Turion has a longer battery life when playing games even though it carries a slightly smaller battery. I am prepared to accept that the "Centrino" architecture has been polished (and this includes the design of the whole notebook, battery selection, accessories etc) and Centrino notebooks may be better overall--not just because of the chip. Furthermore, I even expect intel chips to have slightly longer battery life (despite the review that I linked above!). But the difference is slight, not enormous, and may change in the future.

P.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'm a huge AMD fan but....

[theheff]

You have to give Intel credit for ruling the mobile CPU market. AMD doesn't even come close in this area. And with everything becoming lighter, smaller, more portable, and dependant on lower power consumption... you can't count Intel out at all. Perhaps we're starting to see two companies that used to compete directly with the same kinds of chips begin to specialize at what they do best: performance for AMD and mobility for Intel.

Re:AMD doesn't have a response to Core

[Lonewolf666]

Depends on how much AMD will gain from going to 65nm.
The Conroe is indeed quite promising. Assuming it will have the same performance per clock speed as the Core Duo and be clocked a bit higher, it will match the best AMD dual cores existing now in performance. And it might be cheaper due to the smaller die size.
But AMD also made a nice step ahead when they went from 130 nm to 90 nm. If they can repeat this with their upcoming 65nm process, they might be able to stay ahead.

price - not very important

[nido]

and MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL on the PRICE - AMD is slowly giving up the most important weapon they had against Intel and without some cuts on price for the X2 line AMD might seriously loose market share to Intel in 2006 !!!

Real world experience with marketing demonstrates that there are much more important things than 'price' in selecting a product. Wally World puts their cheapest "microwave" in the main trafficways. Mesmerized Customer says, "hey, good idea, I could use a new 'microwave', and damn, this thing's dirt cheap. But it's probably a POS, so I wonder what else they have..." Then they go into the isle and pick out a more expensive microwave, which has a significantly higher profit margin for WW, which is probably cheaper elsewhere (source: Frontline documentary on WalMart).

If price is all you push, your company will end up like General Motors ("We just lowered the sticker price on EVERYTHING!"), mismanaged into the ground, and have to give away your product at a loss...