Intel Stepping Up to Combat AMD's 4x4

Grooves writes "Intel has said that the company is stepping up the pace of its Core 2 architecture rollout to compete with AMD's 4x4. Two "quad-core" parts originally slated for release in the first half of 2007, Kentsfield for the desktop and Clovertown for servers, will make their debut as early as the end of this year. The Ars article warns that per-core bandwidth problems could end up giving a performance advantage to AMD's 4x4 approach."

Comments

And so it begins

[Linkiroth]

The great hardware war heats up once again. Right now, the biggest advantage Intel has is that their chips are scheduled for an earlier release. If they wait on the Core 2s, they're screwed. They need to get the Core 2 Duos out before AMD gets out their 4x4s so that people have less of a reason to upgrade when AMD releases their chips.

Re:And so it begins

[vancondo]

They need to get the Core 2 Duos out before AMD gets out their 4x4s so that people have less of a reason to upgrade when AMD releases their chips.

Do most chip sales happen at the release date, or do most people wait for the competitors product to come out spurring price drops to compete? I know I seldom buy anything at the alpha-expensive stage, usually preferring to wait a few months for the inevitable price drop.

Re:And so it begins

[Mr. Flibble]

Do most chip sales happen at the release date, or do most people wait for the competitors product to come out spurring price drops to compete? I know I seldom buy anything at the alpha-expensive stage, usually preferring to wait a few months for the inevitable price drop.

It is not a question of inital chipsales, it is more a question of marketing. Back when both companies were trying to hit the 1 Ghz mark, AMD got there first. That was a big win for them, as consumers could now say 1000 Mhz! WOW! Even though intel quickly came out with faster chips thereafter. It was a win for AMD because the name AMD got into the minds of customers. The same thing with the 64 bit. Now, most people here on slashdot know what a 64 bit chip is, and does, and does not do. But the public does not. And since AMD had the 64 bit chip out first, consumers wanted it, even if it had no real benifit for them initally.

The same goes with this technology. Whomever gets it out of the gate first wins the "mindshare war" as we call it now. IIRC, the book "Predatory Marketing" covers how this works in detail - but they don't use the "mindshare" term in it.

Gotta love CPU wars

[ntxb229]

Consumers really come out on top. Better processors at cheaper prices.

Whichever... Competition is a good thing!

[ackthpt]

So I'm pricing a new mobo+CPU combo for a friend. I bought an AMD64 about 14 months ago for $350. Now I see I can't even get that model anymore unless I buy the parts separately as "replacements" A few steps up from what I run is now $150. It's a good thing.

Maybe in a couple years I'll consider a Conroe or AMD 4x4 type system if I need any heavy rendering done, but for now It's astounding the bang for buck we get.

AMD is winning the naming war!

[Trigun]

If the war is for who can make up the worst name. What stupid names, and not just AMD or Intel, Microsoft, Ubuntu, etc. Some execs with 8 year old daughters are naming these things. Why can't we get good names, like Project:Doom, or Omega Solution?

4x4 is an inaccurate name...

[CyberBill]

AMD apparantly cannot multiply. 4x4 = 16. The 4x4 architecture is two dual-core CPUs on a single motherboard (2x2=4 cores). This is pretty damn annoying and I wish they would rename it to something a little more accurate to whats going on... If you have a Dual 7950's (which are each just two 7900's), you wouldnt call it 4x4.

Re:4x4 is an inaccurate name...

[dslbrian]

AMD apparantly cannot multiply. 4x4 = 16. The 4x4 architecture is two dual-core CPUs on a single motherboard (2x2=4 cores). This is pretty damn annoying and I wish they would rename it to something a little more accurate to whats going on...

Well thats not the worst of it. Its actually part-time 4x4, so when your networking starts to get bogged down, you need to get out and lock the hub...

Latencies and more

[cnettel]

The fact that the two dies (with two cores on each) will communicate over the FSB is of course limiting, but we also have to remember that each of those dies will have 4 MB of L2, 8 MB in total. We've already seen what the Core 2 prefetching can do in hiding the memory controller latency, so if things are good it will work equally well in prefetching data from the L2 on the other die. Then, the memory bandwidth is irrelevant, while the FSB bandwidth is still relevant. I seem to remember reading that either Kentsfield or Clovertown would carry some kind of dual-bus solution (with support in chipset), but maybe that was further ahead.

Let's also not forget that the NUMA properties of the AMD solution, with less advanced prefetching, can actually be a more significant latency problem in latency-sensitive applications. The bandwidth, on the other hand, will absolutely be there.

Bandwidth will be a problem.

[default luser]

Intel knows this very well, they've been having trouble with bandwidth for years while stuck at 800 MHz FSB. The only dual-core Pentium 4 processors to show efficient use of the second core are the EE-series, with 1066 MHz bus.

Even if Intel can successfuly crank the FSB up to 1333 MHz bus, that's still significantly less than they need to feed twice as many processors as Conroe. If this were AMD, they'd just add more memory controllers and more HT links...but for Intel this is not an option.

Intel does offer a Dual-Independent Bus architecture, but this is designed for Woodcrest, and is extremely expensive to implement. DIP does allow Woodcreast to scale effortlessly to 4 cores, and that is why we've seen Intel encourage reviews of their 4-core (2 processor) Woodcrest platforms. Unfortunately, even this DIB architecture will not scale well into 8 cores (4 cores per bus), and Intel's cheaper-to-implement quad-core processors will really feel the squeeze.