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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."
...will it fry my eggs faster than AMD's new architecture?
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
AMD exec says AMD is better than its competitor. Earth shattering news!
Well it's a good thing that Apple is using Intel now otherwise they would really be in a hole.
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?
Another perspective here:
1 3.html
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/tech/semis/102631
Allen: Absolutely
Don't you just love it when a corporation thinks our legal system is just another subsidiary of their marketing department.
Despite the postivie spin Apple is trying to put on being forced to use Intel chips, they must know the shambles Intel's roadmap looks like over the next five years.
With IBM telling Apple to get lost last year and AMD far from being able to supply Apple with enough chips, Apple has to be looking at using the Intel based Macs as a way to ease their way out of computer hardware and into a software only company on the personal computer side of the company.
Outside of the curious Windows users with a bunch of disposable income burning through their pockets, no one is in the market for Intel systems unless they have no choice - like corporate customers buying Dell systems.
The diehard Mac crowd seems to believe the fairytale where Intel is just about to release 'the good stuff' in six months. The problem is Intel is always just about to release 'the good stuff' in six months.
That depends upon what your goal is. The Pentium-M is superior in energy conservation. If this isn't your concern might I suggest: http://www.hypersonic-pc.com/FX7/
--Neth
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
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fact is, once the PHB's realise the "Intel inside" sticker is not an absolute requirement, Intel will have a hard time getting the cat in the bag again...
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
-William Brendel
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.
In all the flamewars that will ensue, i think the one thing to note is that the CPU industry is very much a cyclical one, especially for the big players. While a design mistake by a small company might potentially be fatal (or get taken over by a bigger competitor), big companies can afford some minor slip-ups and still come back strong. The only problem is, the cycle is usually big (at least in internet terms, which is more like dog-years), and it easily takes a large corporation a few years to do this. All said and done, both these companies have their traditional strengths and selling points that are fairly distinct (process technology vs architecture, features and stability vs performance and value for money) etc. Given these unique USPs and perceptions that these companies have developed and nurtured over the years, it will always be a see-saw battle, IMHO. Of course, these perceptions also change over time, but again, it takes time and even this is cyclical as well.
One more thing: Can we please have a genuinely unbiased discussion/argument, for a change, please??
I believe the mobile market is about to explode, if it hasn't done it yet, and Pentium M's laptops are an overhelming majority over the AMD's powered (Turion?). And now here are the Yonah... AMD has a long road to be the king of the hill.
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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
'Market share' is an idea that should be expressed in singular terms.
The Opteron strategy was a masterstroke and they have the edge in the technology battle for the fastest processor. But the company has a long way to go before it beats Intel.
I particular getting dual core onto the desktop first isn't going to be as big a coup as AMD thinks. Business generally doesn't seem to want dual core desktops yet and is certainly unwilling to pay a price premium for it.
So while Craig Barratt sidelined everyone with the Itanium processor AMD got the edge, but they may not keep it...
I don't mean the current Core-branded Yonah processors, but rather the forthcoming Conroe and the cores to follow. When it ships it will beat the X2 clock-for-clock and consume less power, and suddenly the things that have been novel about the K8 won't be. Instead of AMD having a clear leg up on Intel (the Pentium D is rather embarrassing at this point), AMD will have to compete on price with Intel having a clear advantage in process and volume.
something that you United States of Due to the troubles resound as fitting OpenBSD, 4s the a6o, many of you give BSD credit
The AMD fanboy salute: http://www.leapsbeyond.com/
/apologies, obligatory
Intel has beat on AMD by: 1 Dumping memory prices to hurt AMD's bottom line. AMD's working on corporate restructuring to fix this. 2 Having a proprietary lead in tech. AMD has a better 64bit option, so Intel lost this battle. 3 Advertising/Corporate mindshare. AMD's making significant inroads with the blue suits AND gamers. 4 Better Manufacturing/Better product delivery. Intel still beats out AMD. Even now, AMD is NOT producing enough Athlon64's in the 3000-3500+ speeds to keep up with demand. Intel retains a significant operational lead, but not design and tech. Having an operational lead does NOT justify higher prices and margins on the free market.
I am greatly outraged by the lack of decapitation porn currently avialible on the internet!
For one, Intel just won a major contract: Apple. Though Macs are a small minority of total systems sold when compared to all PCs, they are a reasonable player compared to other OEMs, and they've now decided they are all Intel, all the time. I suppose this could change, but not any time soon. Apple just cast in with a new provider, it'd be foolishness to switch again before they've even completed their transition (plus there's probably a contract involved).
Also Intel is allegedly releasing a new chip lineup in about 6 months. Supposedly not P7 (Pentium 4) core based. Given that the Core Duo/Solo line are targeted for low power uses, I'd bet that the new lineup will be performance chips. Will they beat AMD's offerings then? Who knows, but it's silly to think that Intel is just sitting on their thumbs.
Everyone with half of a brain runs on AMD (except if it's a mobile thing.)
Better interview with Henri Richard from AMD here instead:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=295
The TGP interview is OK, but that guy is just a mouthpiece.
HJ
While I am a strong AMD (and generally "underdog") fan and I have predicted 2005 as a good year for AMD , I am afraid that 2006 can still bring surprises ... some good but many potentially bad ...
My analysis:
1. AMD will probably remain the leader on desktop machines at performance/$ and maybe (but not so certain) on performance/watt and overall performance;
2. however AMD is still far behind Intel in the notebook market, and totally out of the picture in the "thin and light" segment - that should become an important target for AMD!!!
3. more important AMD seems far behind Intel in the 65 nm transition - and without that 2006 can be a bad year for AMD;
4. the problem is not so much the speed gain on 65 nm but more on the L2 cache (which remains far behind Intel) 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 !!!
The Turion 64 ML-40 is 1/2 the price of the Pentium 780, around 350-400 dollars more (via froogle and pricewatch) The core-due also has 2 megs cache per core of cache.
Also where is benchmarks and battery life when each cpu is clocked at its lowest power saving? If you are going to do a benchmark for batterylife, how about actually doing the most important tests..
And, AMD laptops are opendesign to OEM vendors, so they can use any hardware and save money. Intel wants to control this to more of a degree for the centrino name, thus higher costs.
Now, I'm not bashing Intel, I cant wait for the 900 chips with dual core and virtualization. But that article could use some more info and less "Intels new chip is awesome compared to Old hardware on different platforms, blah chipset etc.."
No, it's a case of "The Nuts and Volts of News for Nerds"
I do remember, Intel lists only 75% of the TDP while AMD tells the truth and lists the peak value.
Quote taken from: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/a
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...
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I never knew that having all the facts could be this simple! Thanks, Slashdot!
--S
-- sigs cause cancer.
I switched from Intel years ago.
And WHY did I switch from Intel? WHY did I choose to go with a processor that, at that time, long ago, was not known for being as rock solid as Intel?
Because it was about $100 less than the same chip from you that ran at the same speed.
It's quite simple Intel. If you want to gain back marketshare from AMD, all you have to do is sell your processors for less than they sell theirs for. I don't care if you make the fastest processors or the pocessors with the most features. All I care about is getting the most bang for my buck. I never buy the fastest processor available, because it is a waste of money. I weigh speed vs. price, and choose the processor which makes the most sense in that context. And gueess what? It's ALWAYS AMD, because pound for pound, their processors cost less for the same computational power.
The same goes for the motherboards Intel. The motherboards for your chips are always more expensive as well. I take BOTH chip price and motherboard price into account when upgrading, and you're alays more expensive.
I really don't care if you licensed music from the Blue Man Group. The commercials were cute, but they're not going to make me change my mind about what I want to buy. I already know your name. Who are you trying to convince anyway? Joe Consumer who doesn't know anything about PC's buys them pre built from Best Buy. He doesn't know or care what processor is in it. So who is it you are trying to lure in with a cool image? A few hardcore people with a lot of disposable income who are already loyal to you?
isn't the reason that Dell doesn't carry AMD is because they can't keep up with Dell's demand. it's great that AMD is growing but have they expand their capacity to keep up with the growing demand?
Intel=Nintendo.
Sony=AMD
Intel rules the portable markets, just as Nintendo does.
AMD rules the desktop markets, just as Sony rules the consoles.
Who said quantum computing was years away?
Might be a bit off topic but the name 'AMD' is not very catchy or impressive. I would change the name if I were running AMD.
How about something like "AdvanceChip" or "PowerChip" or something like that instead?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Inside Intel - Paul Otellini's plan will send the chipmaker into uncharted territory. And founder Andy Grove applauds the shift
In short, Intel has found themselves unable to keep up with AMD on the technology side and is now rebranding its products as "platforms" and elevating the role of marketing to be as important as engineering within the company. I've always felt AMD has been terrible at marketing, remaining largely an unknown to the general home user populace.
rooooar
AMD must be doing something right, there growing faster than intel, and they don't advertise, intel advertises as much as mcdonalds, AND intel got the mac contract. i personally think AMD is a much better brand.
I know that every time I read any article that mentions AMD v Intel that there will be people from the AMD side that come on and say there is not a single compeling Intel product and no reason to have a non-AMD processor in anything. I saw similar zealotry in the comments to anandtech.com's review of the processor - and they are a pretty unbiased and trustworthy source. Here is what they had to say...
... We continue to see that the Core Duo can offer, clock for clock, overall performance identical to that of AMD's Athlon 64 X2 - without the use of an on-die memory controller." And it accomlishes this with power consumption that is along the same lines at the previous generation high-end Pentium M chips.
"Our initial analysis still holds true, that for a notebook processor, the Core Duo will be nothing short of amazing for professionals. Looking at the performance improvements offered everywhere from media encoding to 3D rendering, you're going to be able to do a lot more on your notebook than you originally thought possible (without resorting to a 12-pound desktop replacement). In the past, power users on the go had to sacrifice mobility for CPU power, but with the Core Duo, that is no longer the case
I would think that as technology enthusiasts that we would be able to give credit where credit is due and recognize that, at the moment, Intel has a better processor lineup for laptops and AMD has a better line for desktops and servers - that it is possible for each to have strenghts and weaknesses as their produts evolve and change in different ways. Keeping an open mind and an up-to-date understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each helps us to choose the right tool for the job and the budget.
I just can't believe how many are unwilling to concede even one success for Intel in their belief AMD is always better... The competition is helping all of us in spurring on better products and prices and the variety of options allows us to choose the right tool for the job.
Firstly, not such an insightful article as it's obviously biased. Sure it helps us learn more about AMD who rightfully deserve more of a market share than they have, but at the same time it also plays to the ears of the parent poster to make unsubstantiated comments like this and be modded +5 for it! Sure the AMD desktop and server CPU's are better than Intel's offerings in this space, but if you take a look at the Pentium M and the new Core benchmarks, you'll see that they outperform anything else in the mobile market at the moment!
They only held of 64-bit extensions for Core because of power concerns. The Core processors already have virtualization technology and 64-bit will be coming with the new Merom technology later in the year.
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You forgot some!
7. Intel sucks! Intel has kittens for breakfast! AMD owns!
8. AMD sucks! AMD has a secret contract with Satan! Go Intel!
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
AMD is fully planning on transitioning to 65nm in 06. Also, many fanboys are speculating (hoping?) that prices will decrease with the new socket (M2) and the opening of Fab 36 in the next few months.
Itanium, the next gen 64 bit chip from intel, for all its promise has ended up a huge commercial failure.
As you probably can imagine, intel put alot of R&D resources into this project at the expense of x86 development.
Thats probably the real reason they've fallen behind on the x86 x86-64 chips is because they thought everyone would be using itanium PCs by now. AMD just kept the focus on developing x86 chips.
It was a mistake by intel, but at least they tried to get us off x86. If intel can't do it, I don't think anyone can. which is sad.
AMD should match Core Duo (reminds me of a superhero called Duo Damsel) by converting all their future names to common Esperanto words and terms. This way they can be Core Du, and look even trendier than Intel.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not that I would be opposed to it, but I really don't. Their last decent architecture was the Pentium 3. After that, they fell into the "Longer pipeline, higher MHz" trap that they're still in. What did they try to do to pull themselves out of that? Hyperthreading. Well, that didn't turn out to be much use. So what did they try after that? Another P4 variant that did even *less* per clock cycle. That didn't help much, so what did they do? They added more cache.
All in all, once they fell into the MHz pit, they haven't been able to come up with anything really useful to pull themselves out with - all they're doing is trying the same clubs that they've tried over and over. But wait - the Itanium! Another idea that didn't go very well.
In fact, the only thing they've got that still makes their chips worthwhile is the fact that SSE1/2/3 instructions are pretty speedy on them - so if you're encoding video, chances are that Intel will be a better offering than AMD. For most other types of work, however, AMD gives you more performance for less money.
Intel sure hasn't come up with anything good for quite some time. There's still a chance that they could come up with something decent, but they're really going to have to change their mindset if they want to turn themselves around.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Wincing and engaging in extreme histrionics, Kirk, on a time-travel mission and in the AMD executive conference room, emotes, "TELL me EXacTLY hoW iTEL crossed the RENdering BArieR AND redistRIBUted that inCUbus MYOOvie of MINE. THIS time in ESpeRANT-o..."
(Oops, he might pass another gallstone..."
word image: astute
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Um, why would Intel think we'd be using Itanium by now? If they'd release a good performing Itanium chip that was actually priced competitively with x86, I'm sure there'd be a lot of takers. The basic problem with Itanium (and most RISCS, btw) is that you cannot make one at a workstation pricepoint that competes with x86 in terms of performance. Without being able to offer that, how do they expect people to switch?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'm of the camp that says that the recent AMD Turion's are relatively close to a Pentium M in battery life, the #1 feature in a laptop for many people, including me. Six months ago, before Turions hit retail, Intel Pentium M's were clearly better than anything from AMD in the mobile space that was readily available for purchase -- which, IMHO, is why Apple choose Intel over AMD.
It's important to remember, though, that the Celeron M's are very hamstrung in power consumption compared to their Pentium brothers. They don't scale their CPU frequency -- so my cheap Celeron M laptop only gets 1.5-2.5 hours of battery life, whereas, a Pentium M chip might get me an extra hour or two (for light office / web work) of battery time.
Compare a Turion to a Celeron M and I'm pretty sure that the AMD chip will be miles ahead on power use, and at a similar price.
Itanium isn't risk. It's closer to VLIW.
I didn't say it was. My point was that Itanium, like the majority of other RISC architectures, have had limited success because they don't scale well down to smaller machines. Itanium is quite dependent on its huge L1 caches to offer competitive performance. Without those, its a very mediocre performer relative to consumer x86 chips. The same is true for Power5 or SPARC64 --- these chips offer very good performance partially because they can afford to have 400mm^2 dies with very expensive system interconnects. Strip those things away, by making the caches smaller and the interconnects simpler (eg: as IBM did with the PowerPC 970), and the chip that's left isn't that great relative to x86.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Unfortuneately lower speed can only last so long. Amd stuck with outside processor "HYPER TRANSPORT" that can't take much more than DDR 400, basic work in processor (before cache is even involved) can now reach much higher speeds than AMD works with.Higher speed pci express with 40 or 96 lanes leaves AMD confused & in dust bin. AMD has zram & other exciting pumps, besides going DDR-2, yet hyper transport bus won't do in its present speed, gAME cARDS ARE ABOUT TO GO ABOVE HYPER TRANSPORT SPEEDS.IT JUST WON'T WORK WITH THAT "CLOG". http://www.geocities.com/tsvondrashekmd/WASHINGTON .html
Signed:PHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.
WINDOWS XP Service Pack -X- 396 mb. http://www.geocities.com/tsvondrashekmd/WASHINGTO