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The Near Future of Intel
wh0pper wrote to mention a Design Technica story about the near-term future of Intel. They've been getting beaten in the press pretty soundly by AMD of late, and at the Intel Developer's Forum they did their best to convince attendees they were on the comeback trail. From the article: "It wouldn't be IDF if there wasn't a solid performance message. This time, Intel clearly had AMD in their sights. By a series of their products' massive performance improvements, Intel hit the ball back into AMD's court. With Microsoft's Vista operating system coming out at the same time, Intel showed how they have the higher performing solution. Clearly, we won't know until final systems ship. But Intel presented their case strongly, suggesting they can match AMD, if not beat them."
Think of putting that network up for a hacking challenge on the web and having it totally violated in even less time than it took you to setup... Phew!! Good thing Intel isnt inside an Apple... ohhh shit. [ducks]
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
...and I, for one, am quite glad. The closer the two competitors are, the better products each releases. This will keep AMD from coasting the way Intel did in the nineties.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
hopefully this means AMD will revert to trying to compete on price and so i can afford to get a modern setup ;)
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Intel intel, he's our man
if he cant do it, I BET AMD CAN!
How is this news? Intel's BRAND NEW processor can outperform a 1+ year old AMD X2?
Hey did you know that I can slap a buncha logic chips together and create a faster processor than ENIAC? DEAR GOD SOMEONE GIVE ME A MEDAL!
So if you have not RTFA then don't worry your not missing anything!
Clearly, we won't know until final systems ship.
Need we discuss this any further?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I RTFA and it is severly lacking on substance.1 6
Here is Anand's updated benchmarks.
http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=27
Arbitrary thoughts and unfounded speculation is how we roll :-)
AccountKiller
Typical quote:What? What are you talking about? Are you suggesting manufacturers will ship games on flash chips? And what the hell do laptops have to do with anything?
Nothing I've heard about intel's plans to use flash technology would improve any system performace other then boot time.
My pics.
Competition => Innovation
Innovation => Faster/Better Chips
Faster/Better Chips => Faster/Better Comps
Faster/Better Comps => Giant Robots
And I for one want a giant robot.
I'm pretty sure processor development isn't just a matter of how determined the people involved are. Some parts of it depend on the building of new fab equipment. Some depend on the discovery of new ways to design things. Some depend on serious advances in physics.
The reason chip companies sometimes hold back on new product is because they can't always be certain of the exact time at which breakthroughs in these other areas will be made. Their companies depend on having a solid, reliable revenue stream, so they have to use release schedules to smooth out the apparent advances in chip speed. If they didn't do this, we'd all be sitting around, hoping against hope that this month would be the month the new chips come out, and worried about buying in case they come out tomorrow.
Which is more or less how Apple worked for a long time, because IBM wasn't able to smooth out its development curve. It wasn't pleasant.
Anyway. Overall chip development does not just scale depending on the moods of the employees at chip companies. Intel went off-track by being overconfident at one point, sure, but that was a five year thing involving a bad choice of roadmap. The idea that AMB is sitting on their laurels after a year is ridiculous.
The page showed me an AMD ad with this article. Was enough for me to know "near term future of intel" :)
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Let me guess - they demonstrated how Intel's top end chips can handle 10 way conference calls with Skype, while AMD's only handle 5?
While AMD has clearly have a better processor now, it looks very complacent now. Especially when they should be looking at being more menacing by aggressive Research.
... AMD please move on. We acknowledge you have won. But the next battle is starting this week.
Alas nothing of that sort is happening. Still resting on the glory of the on-die memory controller, the core is now 7 years old!
Every other chip company is doing interesting things.
1. Sun Niagra T1 is amazing
2. IBM Cell rocks!
3. Intel Itanic may have failed, but was no doubt interesting.
Well
But Intel presented their case strongly, suggesting they can match AMD, if not beat them.
My, how times have changed.
But Intel presented their case strongly, suggesting they can match AMD, if not beat them. Im waiting to see an independent head to head comparison. That Intel can beat AMD using 2 computers they set up is not a shock. Its possible to do all sorts of low underhanded tricks to make one computer run better than another.
I trust Microsoft as far as I could comfortably spit a dead rat
Boy, sure is a good thing AMD has decided to stand still and not come up with any further technology advances on their side.
Oh...they haven't?
Oh geez, this clown. For those of you who don't know, Rob Enderle is the troll of trolls. He will go on various forums and make outrageous statements seemingly to do nothing more than pick fights. I can't tell you how many times I've seen him make personal attacks on people. Then, once he's done trolling, will write articles on how vapid the open source community is. The sad part is he's supposed to be a "professional" with a consulting company. I wouldn't believe a single word that comes out of that mans mouth, whether true or not. Get a different source for your facts...
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
There seems to be agreement this article is a bit weak. Some very important things to note.
"By a series of their products' massive performance improvements, Intel hit the ball back into AMD's court."
These are products that are not out yet. Benchmarks look good, but you are comparing a product on the shelves (that's been there a while) with one that is not OK.
And by the time they come out, AMD will likely have moved on to. This is a fast paced space, so 6 month time gaps matter when doing comparisons. Product matchups in the actual market are what matter.
AMD's M2 platform looks good. The performance / watt issue matters a lot, and it will be interesting to see how that develops. Both companies are clearly chasing the power/watt area, so should be a lot of fun. The notebook space especially which is currently dominated by intel will be fun.
"Intel showed how they have the higher performing solution." This should read intel MAY have a higher performing solution sometime in the future.
I'm tired of the big announcements of victory on non-shipping parts. ATI with crossfire (lunched twice). The hype around the P4 "netburst" architecture. The itanium hype of course. PS2 movie like visuals (still a nice platform, but please).
Fun to watch, great it's a great race.
Independent lab testing proves Pirate Monkeys will beat Robot Ninjas 97.6 % of the time.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
AMD may have had the upper hand on processor designs for the last few years, and even Intel is practically admitting that by switching their mainline core architecture to the Pentium M derivative (which is a PIII derivative). But Intel has had them beat in one area and probably will for a very long time: production capacity. Intel's fabs can crank out processors in a day that matches AMD's production in a year (exaggeration, but run with it). There is NO way that AMD could meet the demands of the business world in sheer scale of orders. If Intel closed up shop, computer CPUs would triple or quadrupal in price overnight due to scarcity. Fabs take YEARS to build, and can take even more years to full ramp up to full production while shaking out the process bugs. Intel has a LOT of experience with this due to the shear number of fabs that they own and operate.
Competition is good, for everyone. Give props where they are due though. Intel is turning around after making a very bad roadmap choice many years ago, and I think it will only benifit consumers in the long run. AMD had very good designs and will probably have some more good ones in the future. But don't pick on or the other exclusively and wish for the other to disappear. That would lead to a VERY bad situation for everyone, even you.
Space for rent, inquire within
1) Floating point performance wars - Before AMD came out with the K6 processor, Intel had the floating point crown and neither AMD nor Cyrix could compete. Although AMD and Cyrix had inexpensive intel-compatible processors, most people used their cpu's for low-end desktops.
2) That all changed when AMD released the K6 processor with an excellent floating point unit. Then the war became a Mhz slugfest between AMD and Intel in which Cyrix was marginalized. Intel reached the 1000Mhz mark first with the P3 but AMD wasn't far behind with the Athlon.
3) AMD changed their approach with the Athlon focusing on P3 crushing performance regardless of the actual clock speed. Intel kept the Mhz focus with the P4.
4) AMD released the hugely successful 64-bit Athlon that dominated the P4 even though the 64-bit Athlon operated at a much slower clock speed. Intel lost much market share in the desktop and server market to the new 64-bit Athlon and the new 64-bit Opteron processors.
5) Intel finally realized that the educated consumer didn't care about raw Mhz anymore, they switched to their own performance number rating scheme.
6) The latest oil crisis hits the world and consumers become more energy conscious. Many computer enthusiast websites point out how much energy Intel processors demand and how little AMD processors demand in comparison. Intel and AMD respond by making their processors more energy efficient and cooler running.
7) Dual-core processors are released from both companies trying to squeeze more performance out of their aging cores. The Intel processors can't scale as well with multiple cores due to the already high energy and cooling demands of their processor cores. AMD gains further ground in this area.
And that's where we are today. AMD has seriously damaged Intel's marketshare with some excellent products. Intel is feverishly working on new products to get that marketshare back. The benefit is that we will see very good products from the 2 companies over the next 12 to 24 months.
ConsultingFair.com