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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.
I'm a big AMD fan, but this is true.
Lately AMD's development rate has slowed. Initially, I suspected they did this to hold better product back until Intel became competitive again, but after a year or so I believe they started to sit on their laurels.
The new intel designs will push AMD to work harder, which is a good thing. AMD's developers are very, very talented. It's sad to see the business side of the operation (even though its very practical for them) to tell the developers to slow down a little bit.
Expect AMD to start going full-tilt again.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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
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.
If I could get an Athlon 64 3500+ (Venice Core :D) with 1.5GB of DDR400 RAM, 200GB ATA100 HD, DVD+RW 16X, an insane number of USB ports, etc, for less than $600, and add two serial ports and a good hardware modem for about $14, reuse a Soundblaster Live! or Aureal Vortex 2 (yes, really), into the end of last year, after not being able to have any computer upgrades since 1999 (Yay for Pentium 3), I don't think anyone else would have any excuse for AMD's price point. The only lower-end point is the ATi IGP graphics (which don't have a hardware T&L unit), but that can be upgraded at some point once PCI-E cards are cheap, and it can play most newer games still pretty smoothly, including Half Life 2.
Ironically, it is slower in Freespace 2 (the new open source engine with fancy effects anyway) and SWAT 4, mostly for the lack of hardware T&L. Especially with relatively basic lighting effects in newer games, you can "feel" it slowing down as the CPU has to handle it. But a system amazingly over the top for modern gaming and heavy programming and other usage, that's quite a lot cheaper than how much you could get even a slightly usable system in 2002. I wish they made an AGP to PCI-E or even AGP to PCI adapter so I could use my Geforce 4 Ti4200-8X, which has absurdly reliable performance.
Plus there's the fact that it uses so little power, and runs about 32C stable, while under heavy gaming/compiling prolonged usage, with about 30C when not having to do much, amazingly quiet as well.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
But Intel presented their case strongly, suggesting they can match AMD, if not beat them.
My, how times have changed.