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Intel Unveils New Chips to Battle AMD
An anonymous reader writes "Reuters is reporting that chip giant Intel hopes to get back on track in their continued market share war with AMD when they unveil a new line of chips at their upcoming twice-annual developers forum. From the article: 'AMD, once content to mimic Intel's advances, has set the technological pace in recent years with innovations such as putting two processing cores in a single chip -- moves that have helped it gobble market share from its much-larger rival.'"
Of course, IBM had multicores years ago, so AMD wasn't really the innovator on that front.
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Where's the innovation? And I'm not talking about AMD, Intel is just as guilty for equaling innovation with "make that damn thing run faster". Instead of shifting gear, they just basically upped the engine speed. 100 MHz, 600 MHz, 1 GHz, 4 GHz... now that the ceiling is more or less reached and enough waste heat is generated to heat a medium sized home, they change the measurement. Instead of length, we compare circumference. One core, 2 cores, 4 cores, 8...
Where is that innovation?
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It's a fluff piece, but there was nothing mentioned in there to make me believe Intel is really doing anything new. All I saw was mention of 4 cores. Are cores the new mhz race? 2 cores is all 99% of people will see benefit from right now. The 4 core race is moot because it's like a race for automakers to produce the first production 16 cylinder family sedan. It's not going to really benefit anyone. Really only a marketing gimmick. I'd rather see Intel clean up their current 2 core chips.
Here's what most consumers need in a computer...
A low latency desktop that can handle about 2-3 running applications with no slowdown that runs cool and doesn't use a lot of power.
Here's what we are getting...
A high latency desktop with fat pipes that run hot, optimized for running 7-8 cpu intensive applications at once, and idles at 200 watts. Because it should take 10+ seconds to open a basic program on an out of box pc.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Dude, WTF?!? Are you saying that everybody who is going to buy a dual-core processor has already bought one, and next such CPU's wont be sold until 2007-2008?? What if someone decides to upgrade his computer in the summer (for example) to a dual-core machine? By your logic, he does not exist and/or he should wait until 2007/2008 because "that's when the next upgrade-sycle is in, you can't upgrade before that"?
People are upgrading their computer all the time. People are buying new computers all the time.
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I think the competition has been good for all of us. AMD's strength in the market has kept Intel on its toes, and advances from IBM's Power processors has kept many architectures running pretty well.
I (this is IMHO) believe that Intel has been doing some laurel-resting for a number of years now. I do believe that they will come to bear with better stuff on a gradual basis. My only fear is that Intel will allow itself to do like GM, Ford, AT&T... allow itself to be way too slow to be quick to adapt. I personally would like to see IBM, AMD, and Intel all have truly great, smokin' processors going way into the future - it seems that it would only be good for us in the long run.
A Passionate Independent Musician
Intel has a serious problem in that they are perceived, and rightly so that to be a technical laggard. They are bleeding market share and their stock price has dived.
As a result Intel is trying to revamp their product line to become more competitive - but to keep from losing customers they are trying to darken the sky with marketing. This will work for a while because Intel has some credibility amassed from its earlier successes.
But if they fail to deliver at least parity with the next round of designs they are going to lose market share as fast as AMD can build Fabs. And right now they are running the risk of the 'Osborne Effect' - promising new product so attractive that the company loses large sales volume on current sales.
So Intel is making some really big bets here. If we get into the same time frame in 2007 with AMD still having a clear technical lead we could see AMD and Intel all of a sudden having a 40/60 split in market share, and a duopoly where once there was a monopoly.