Slashdot Mirror
AMD Says Barcelona Will Outperform Clovertown
Dysfnctnl85 points out a ZDNet Blog posting in which AMD claims that its upcoming quad-core "Barcelona" chipset should be 40% faster than "Clovertown," Intel's quad-core Xeon 5300 line. AMD says that the introduction of Barcelona marks a shift in their strategy from emphasizing price to performance. The post goes on: "Intel is eager to claw back some of the server market share from AMD, and this is where Clovertown comes in... The Xeon 5300 line will represent excellent value for money since Intel plans on pricing them the same as its dual core Xeon 5100 processors. That could make things tough for AMD."
While there are arguments both positive and negative toward the (somewhat) recent AMD/Dell alliance, this is one more indication that AMD is making even more progress in the processor market. Once considered the 'most bang for your buck' AMD is truly making a name for itself as a formidable competitor.
One of the fundamental principles of capitalism is that competition spurs growth and progress. This is a case in point.
Unless AMD employs completely incompetent morons as engineers, of course "Barcelona" should be faster than "Clovertown". Clovertown was released half a year to a year before Barcelona.
The tables have turned. Even though Clovertown is not a "true" quad-core (aka a single die), Intel has a huge head start on AMD on quad core. Intel will be pushing forward with their 45nm technology and pushing out yet more models by the time these arrive. With their fabrication prowess, I would expect the gap to increase over AMD. Since dumping NetBurst, Intel is finally battling AMD in an sport they can potentially win.
I am a sysadmin, and I've seen super weight systems taxed to the extreme. The best servers don't boast of the fastest clock speed; they have the best i/o buses, tight integration of the hardware and software, and more importantly, reliability. These are the reasons I've seen that amd makes a better choice than Intel. Intel is all about FUD, increasing the clock speed at any cost and in general, very unreliable systems that act strangely when pushed under heavy processor load.
I'd choose AMD over intel anyday - i've liked their strategies always, and in the server arena they are the best x86 player. But the bottom line still remains, sun's sparc line,ibm's ppc one and hp's rule. They have been in the business for quite some time, and they frankly know what they are doing.
Intel, its not late to figure out the economics. Corporations choose the best machine for the job while running their servers. No one chooses cheap when they are shopping for their new database server. The big bucks are in the hell expensive servers, and not in the mom-and-pop line. You can sell 1,00,000 cheap servers instead of 1000 expensive ones. But the margins are higher ony in the latter.
Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."
...if there was a similar competition in the OS market. You wouldn't need these mammoth processors in the first place. And having one would be a huge benefit, not a marginal one.