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Intel and AMD May Both Delay Next-Generation CPUs
MojoKid writes "AMD and Intel are both preparing to launch new CPU architectures between now and the end of the year, but rumors have surfaced that suggest the two companies may delay their product introductions, albeit for different reasons. Various unnamed PC manufacturers have apparently reported that Intel may push back the introduction of its Ivy Bridge processor from the end of 2011 to late Q1/early Q2 2012. Meanwhile, on the other side of the CPU pasture, there are rumors that AMD's Bulldozer might slip once again. Apparently AMD hasn't officially confirmed that it shipped its upcoming server-class Bulldozer products for revenue during August. This is possible, but seems somewhat unlikely. The CPU's anticipated launch date is close enough that the company should already know if it can launch the product."
They got shit done !!
People seem to be surprised by the delay and I have an exactly opposite reaction to that story. I remember when I was reviewing the first drafts of Buldozer (or actually Piledriver to be more specific) and I was surprised that the original date when it was planned to be released back than would have made it way ahead of the curve predicted by Gordon Moore. I was saying that it should be delayed some time so it actually is more accurate to the prediction and it has been delayed, however I will never know whether it had been done for that reason. The point is that in this industry there is something called "too good, too soon" which is not always desirable. Nevertheless, I hope both Bulldozer and Ivy Bridge will be available soon because they are both brilliant pieces of engineering.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Everyone loves idiots.
There might be good reasons on both sides, but the tinfoil hatter in me believes this might have more to do with fact that both companies might want to see a little more profit out of the R&D that went into the current generation of products before obsoleting them. The performance of the current generation is high enough that it is getting harder to introduce a new generation at a price point that could both recover R&D and provide reasonable value for the customer.
Gee those delays mean the brand new shiny chips will just hapen to come out with Windows 8. Coincidence?
Not only can you finally ditch that aging Vista or XP machine, with shiny Windows 8 but now you can have a shiny new CPU too!
http://saveie6.com/
The current situation is Intel is slaughtering AMD. AMD hasn't had an architecture update in a long, long time and it is hurting them. Clock for clock their current architecture is a bit behind the Core 2 series, which is now two full generations out of date. Their 6 core CPU does not keep up with Intel's 4 core i7-900 series CPU, even on apps that can actually use all 6 cores (which are rare). Then you take the i5/7-2000 series (Sandy Bridge) which are a good bit faster per clock than the old ones and there is just no comparison.
On top of that, Intel is a node ahead in terms of fabrication. All Sandy Bridge chips, and many older ones, are on 32nm. AMD is 45nm at best currently. Not only does that equal more performance but it equals lower heat for the performance, particularly for laptops. Then of course Intel is talking about Ivy Bridge, which is 22nm, another node ahead. Their 22nm plant is working and they've demonstrated test silicon so it will happen fairly soon.
The situation is not good for AMD. All they've got is the low end and that is getting squeezed hard by Intel too. They need a more efficient CPU and they need it badly. Delaying is not something they want to do, Bulldozer has been fraught with delays as it is. They've been talking about it for a long time, like since 2009, and delivered nothing.
They have every reason to want to get Bulldozer out as soon as possible and preferably before Ivy Bridge. Each generation that Intel releases that they don't have a response for just puts Intel that much farther ahead.
Now that said, Intel may well have decided to hold Ivy Bridge if AMD can't deliver Bulldozer because they don't need to. Sandy Bridge CPUs are just amazing performers, they don't need anything better on the market right now. However I can't imagine AMD colluding with Intel on this. They are not in a good situation.
we have known that ivy bridge will be released in 2012 since april... http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u69/sandy_bridge-e_roadmap_updated.jpg
The most naive question to ask if is this sort of delay is relevant to Moore's law and similar patterns. There are a variety of different forms of Moore's law. We've seem an apparent slowdown in the increase in clockspeed http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mother-cpu-charts-2005,1175.html. The original version of Moore's Law was about the number of transistors on a single integrated circuit and that's slowed down also. A lot of these metrics have slowed down.
But this isn't an example of that phenomenon. This appears to be due more to the usual economic hiccups and the lack of desire to release new chips during an economic downturn (although TFA does note that this is a change in strategy for Intel's normal approach to recessions.) This is not by itself a useful data point, so this is not further need to panic.
On a related note there's been a lot of improvement in the last few years simply by making algorithms more efficient. As was discussed on Slashdot last December http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/12/24/2327246/Progress-In-Algorithms-Beats-Moores-Law by a variety of benchmarks linear programming has become 40 million times more efficient in the last fifteen years and that only a factor 1000 or so is due to the better machines, with a factor of about 40,000 attributable to better algorithms. So even if Moore's law is toast, the rate of effective progress is still very high. Overall, I'm not worried.
While the consumer variants for SandyBridge-E are rumored to be delayed till Q4, this next chip to hit the 'high end' consumer sector--along with workstation/server variants--has yet to hit the market so of course Ivy is not going to meet the late 2011 launch projected 2-3 years ago.
From what's been 'leaked' or rumored already, SB-e will come on LGA-2011 and the X79 chipset for consumers, with 2 hexa core variatns and a quadcore variant , to replace X58 and it's high PCIe lane count & triple memory bus. The TDP envelopes for these chips and the Xeons have been made public now too.
In fact the Workstation/Server market is already putting info out in the public about the upcoming Xeon motherboard models (specifically Supermicro & Tyan) and it's rumored that on Sept 7th Apple may also announce the upcoming Mac Pro update based on the same cpu's & Xeon chipsets. While all of that may be paper launch at first, it does appear the workstation/server parts may have higher availability sooner than the consumer parts as well (especially since there's been nothing for a while that wasn't oriented purely at low voltage/efficiency servers in 1u & 2u packages.)
But surely once their Bulldozer is out the door they will bulldoze those sandy bridges away. Just the fact that Intel keeps changing their sockets while any AM3+ motherboard will be able to support the next generation of CPUs alone is a good enough win in my book. As soon as the box is delivered I can have my computer upgraded in under 10 minutes and be good to go for at the very least another year.
'but, but, if you run benchmarks at 3840x2160 then the CPU is irrelevant'
it is. it is quite irrelevant. anyone who is spending money to get good performance on the mentioned resolution vicinity you speak about, is either an extreme enthusiast, a hobbyist, or a moron.
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I really wonder how much profit there is anymore with these x86 processors. I personally have one fast machine for development that I tend to use remotely and a bunch of low power machines otherwise, including tablets I hold. I'm absolutely not interested in these burning infernos anymore.
It's time to take the whole PC down to sub 10W, and I believe there will be a push for this to be the mainstream within 5 years.
for something more useful than Starcraft. I agree you don't need 6 cores and 4G ram to read your e-mail, but today the workload of the average server or desktop, includes running virtual machines, virus scanners, full encryption, flash websites and whatnot. The laptop I was "given" 2 months ago has a brand new 4 core Intel, 4G ram, Nvidia quadro GFX and it's too slow to run my normal workload of terms, browser and VMs. Given the fact that I'm a contractor, spending a little extra on a faster CPU would probably pay itself back in less than a week for my employer. Sure, if they'd stop mandating W7 on the desktop with full encryption and on-access virus scanning, the world would be a better place for me, but most likely not for the company.
For servers, almost everything is running on VMs now. More power per CPU is very welcome there, since you can run faster/more VMs per box. The less heat you produce, the more servers you can put in a data center. Given the cost for real estate at prime interconnect sites, it's profitable to go green, even if you're not a tree hugging hippie.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I will continue to buy AMD. ive compared my sub $500 AMD rigs with comparable Intel rigs, I don't see why spending 2 to 4 times the amount of money for intel over AMD when AMD does a fine job. My Phenom II 945 has served me well, runs cool, runs fast, everything I put on it it takes like a champ. I have yet to stress out the Phenom. Ive run multiple games on it, audio and video work on it. The only 'advanced' thing I haven't done on it is CAD and seti@home. Why spend 2 or 3 times for the Intel, when all i'm buying is a name??? You intel fanbois go ahead, spend your money and feed the giant, duchebags
I have never been under the impression that sandy bridge was to be released in 2011. It's been known for a long time that it's a april/june 2012 release. I also cannot disagree more with the supposed reasoning being weak pc sales. Ivy bridge with its 22nm architecture is perfect for the new "ultrabooks" (macbook air pc's) that are set to start dominating high end laptop sales.
I have to wonder how much of this is due to the stagnating economy in much of the developed nations. My recollection is that the last time the economy went south, all sorts of projects were either postponed, put on hold, or simply ended.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
45 nm is correct for the AMD Phenom II series. But the "Llano" APUs for low-end desktops are already in 32 nm. So you could say Intel is half a step ahead right now. Overall, however, I agree that AMD is under pressure and cannot afford artificial delays in their products.
What they still have are some niches where Intel has slacked off or does not compete for other reasons. The most important one right now are the APUs. AMD's Brazos platform does well on netbooks, and IMHO the LLano is a good choice for cheap consumer PCs.
Another one is (desktop) CPUs with support for ECC RAM:
Intel does not support that feature in its current "Core iX" CPUs at all, Presumably because they want to extract extra money from customers who need it by making them buy the much more expensive Xeons. Well, I'm a bit paranoid about reliability myself and thus I just ended up ordering a Phenom II instead of a (otherwise superior) Sandy Bridge CPU.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Processor technology is at a state of gaining more by reducing die size than design. Because of SMP, sophisticated design changes are not needed to gain performance. Intel knows they can seriously move ahead of AMD if the next processor is successfully reduced to 22nm. They might as well wait. AMD isn't able to drop cash on reducing die size on every other release. If they can put off releasing their next processor at a point when they can afford smaller die production they will get a lot more out of it. Note: I'm not a fanboy of either company.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
A couple years back I built a Socket 1366 rig - Core i7 920 overclocked to 3.8ghz, 6gb tri-channel RAM that if I felt the need could head up to 12gb relatively cheap these days, and a nice X58 Asus RoG motherboard with great features. It has basically carried me through and surpassed the Intel mainstream 1156 and compares easily to the Sandy Bridge 1155 i7-2600 etc. However, its finally getting to the end of its life - after an unheard of 3 years - and I'm trying to decide what to do next.
My first idea was to wait for Socket 2011, which is to Socket 1366 as Socket 1155 is to 1156. Its the next generation of the "Intel Enthusiast/Workstation" platform. Unfortunately, it appears that Intel is determined to put a stop to the very thing that made them successful with 1366 last time by making moronic cuts in features while increasing price. The $300 part is a lowly Quad core, with less cache. Then you have the option of a $600-700 Hex, with a bit more cache, but a locked multiplier, and finally you have to buy the Extreme to get the full package not just in speed, but in everything else as well. For those of us with Core i7 920/930 rigs it isn't worth buying a $300 processor that's marginally better than one from 3 years ago! Where are the offerings that, aside from speed, have all the features of Extreme without the pricetag? I can't justify this, and it seems a poor decision to launch with this crap, especially requiring a new X79 board and Quad-Channel RAM kit, if Ivy Bridge is right around the corner. Thus, I worry that Ivy, which stands to be a real leap forward, is going to be pushed back even farther after Intel realizes that SB-E on 2011 isn't making them as wealthy as they wished. I'd much rather them have brought Ivy out and just waited to keep 2011 until then, and follow it with the mainstream Ivy, much like the first-gen i7 1366 release.
It would be perfect for AMD to push Bulldozer and Piledriver into this gap, especially if they can put forth reasonable real-world performance, to give those enthusiasts annoyed by Intel's pricing another option. Sadly, I worry that Bulldozer is not up to the task as they've been waffling on it save for the business-level releases; by the time its out it will be near obsolete. I'd much rather they just release immediately with the 900-series chipset and then bring Piledriver out for the holidays or January. I'd really like to be done with Intel, but if there's such a huge gap between an OC'ed SB-E or IB, and Dozer/Pile as there has been in the past, I'm not sure if it will meet my needs. I can't spend money to "upgrade" to a AM3+ chip that will be less powerful than my current 1366 setup.
Again Intel seems to be swinging their weight around as they always do when they basically remain uncontested at the mid-grade and higher, while we all suffer. I love what AMD has done with their platform - great integrated, nice high-end chipset features, great prices, excellent integration with high-end PCI-E AMD GPUs, which are pretty awesome in their own right (I have a 6970 on my current system. An excellent investment, and the drivers/experience is better than Nvidia in many cases), but if the power gap continues to be so large, I don't see how I can justify what may barely be called an "upgrade". Here's hoping that AMD pulls out the stops and forces Intel to understand they're not the only game in town.
A change to the ISA used isn't going to magically make your system use 90% less energy to accomplish the same task(s). Average PCs are over 100 watt because markets (ie, people) find them acceptable. There are obviously low power, high performance solutions to people that disagree. Most are expensive and efficient mitx systems like the Mac Mini. Stop using inefficient cheaper parts like 3.5" spinning disks, underclock then undervolt your CPU/RAM, disable most of your cache, and your get your energy usage way down by sacrificing performance and usefulness. The cloud you really want isn't for everyone.
Most of the current supercomputers are based on Opteron, which is an x86, or Intel's other x86 offerings. The only one who was offering an Itanium based supercomputer was SGI, but I'm not sure if they are any more. IBM's Watson is based on POWER7, while their Roadrunner is based on their PowerXCell8i as well as the Opteron.. But the ones from Cray are based on Opteron, and others on Intel's Xeon.
They may have been based on either DEC Alpha or HP PA-RISC, but those architectures do have to be current in order to be so used. Fujitsu's K-Computer uses the UltraSparc pretty heavily.
However, as far as servers go, you are right - high end RISCs are a third of the market. Wonder whether they'll gain marketshare as the reasons to upgrade x86s continue to get weaker.