Slashdot Mirror
Intel's Anti-Athlon Campaign
levendis wrote to us about Ars Technica, who is currently running a feature piece about Intel's FUD-like attempts to bash down the Athlon. The chip-wars have gotten pretty bloody this time around, with all of the hype behind Coppermine and the Athlon - what do you folks think about all of this?
tomshardware.com has an editorial on the same thing...
http://www.tomshardware.com/blurb/index.html
I haven't read the Ars Technica article yet, but the tomshardware.com focuses on the idea that intel is strong-amring the tiawan board makers into not making boards for the athlon, lest intel withdraw their support for the company. Worth the read.
Well the chip market is expected to grow 15% this year. That is certainly less than previous growth rates, so I am sure they are starting to feel the need to be stealing some market share back.
I am of the opinion that Intel somewhat gave AMD a nice market share in the low-end/low-profit business last year just to keep the regulators of their back. They are pretty shrewd. Plus, when they started taking heat, they simply settled out of court instead of losing face like Microsoft in a drawn out court battle.
But it's well worth reading yesterday's opinion piece Athlon no threat to Intel World dominance, and today's follow-up story to get one's feet back on the ground.
Intel's market share is overwhelming. Albeit sadly, that isn't going to change any time soon. (With or without the "Itanic" :g )
See, the K6 design just wasn't very superscalar. For those who don't know what that particular buzzword means, it refers to how many stages the pipeline is divided into. More stages means the processor does less things in each clock cycle, which means you can fit more cycles in a second
.18 micron should help out their manufacturing prowess (smaller processes mean that you can fit more chips on a wafer. This means your yield of chips is better, since if the area is smaller it's less likely the part will contain a defect caused by material impurities.) This also means your cost of production goes down, so AMD's profits should be improved.
Actually, the word you're looking for is pipelined. Pipelining is the technique of dividing the processing work into several stages, so that you can decrease the size of a clock cycle (increase the MHz). The term superscalar refers to how wide the processor is, as to opposed how deep (pipelined = depth, superscalar = width). As in, if I can fetch and execute 4 instructions per cycle, then it's order-4 superscalar. If an instruction takes 10 cycles to execute, then the pipeline is 10 stages deep (actually, this is a simplification since superscalar CPUs typically have multiple, diversified execution units, and different execution units have different number of pipe stages) The width is pretty much independent of the pipeline depth.
So, say we have an order-two superscalar CPU (as a plain Pentium MMX is). Then you might have something like this (note this is not the actual Pentium, but a generalization):
Stage 1 - Instruction Fetch
Stage 2 - Instruction Decode 1
Stage 3 - Instruction Decode 2
--
Integer 1 | Floating Point 1
Integer 2 | Floating Point 2
---------- | Floating Point 3
--
Stage 4 - Writeback Results
In the example integer operations take one less cycle than floating point. The above processor is two wide (ie Stages 1 thru 3 deal with two instructions at a time), so is order-2 superscalar. The pipeline depth would probably be considered to be 7 (3 fetch/decode + 3 FP execute + 1 writeback)
You may be right about the K-6 pipe depth, I don't know offhand how many pipe stages it has. The P6 family (Pentium Pro, PII, PIII) is pipelined to the hilt, so you are correct in that Intel's chips are heavily pipelined. I just looked it up (I have a draft chapter about the P6 of my prof's book, the chapter was written by the P6 architects), and the diagram they give has 8 stages in the front-end (instruction fetch/decode), 3 on the back-end (instn retirement), and varying amounts in the middle (3 for basic ops, 6+ for multi-cycle ops, 5 or 9+ for various memory ops). So 14 is probably around a minimum as far as pipeline depth goes. I've heard Willamette is far deeper.
As far as how superscalar-ness effects the manufacturing, becoming more superscalar is unlikely to be helpful. It actually increases the compexity of the CPU by a large amount, and thus will require more silicon area. More area generally leads to lower yields -> more manufacturing difficulty.
It's more likely that AMD simply was inexperienced with manufacturing in the past, and had some bumps to get over. Their new fab, and the move to
One other quick note:
On the one hand, it happens to be true that the recent trend toward graphics cards with GPUs takes a good deal of the advantage off of the Athlon's superior floating point performance
True to an extent, but there are still a lot of FP calculations involved in games and other apps, that aren't handled by the transformation engine of the GPU. So floating-point performance is still very important.
AMD is important from an idealogical standpoint. I have two Linux boxes at home that have zero Intel or Microsoft components in them. And I like that very much. Every time I use those machines, I'm reminded that I voted for choice with my dollars, and that keeps me voting (like the $3500 ballot I cast when I bought the parts for my K7/600 system a couple weeks ago).
I don't like serialized CPUs. I don't like strong-arm, quasi-legal, neo-soviet business tactics. I don't like to be told what I want. I don't like paying a mint for CPUs just so I can fund some mindless "Our CPU makes the Internet better" campaign.
You like giving Micros~1 the finger? Well Intel ain't much better than them. So give them the finger too and get AMD and Via and Linux all together. If you do, you're casting your vote for freedom, choice, quality, advancing technology and lower prices.
P.S. The "major motherboard manufacturer" the Ars article mentioned is Asus and the mobo in question is called the K7M. Gamer's Depot has a review, as do many other sites. See AMD Zone for more news about all things AMD. And slota.com has a complete list of all the Slot A motherboards. Which makes it an interesting comparision to AMD's list.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I don't know if it's because I've followed the OS wars more closely than the hardware wars, but it seems to me like there's less impact to be had on the public with FUD. After all, the average buyer will only care about three things:
Price
Performance
A good household name they can recognise
It's not like the Intel chips have anything like fancy shmoozy GUI's or little singing paperclips. Right now, Celeron and Athlon are names people are beginning to recognise. Most people figure that they can go for a cheaper chipset if it's more or less the same quality, because they don't need high-performance machines, just something that can play Quake III reliably well.
Let's face it: Intel is seriously losing ground, and their last hope is to milk for all they're worth the people who want that silly "Intel Inside" sticker because they figure it means quality.
Cause otherwise, they lost already.
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"
You know, I really find it amazing how much people like to bash successful companies.
:)
First, the very idea that Intel could prevent every single one of the 150+ motherboard manufacturers from building an Athlon board is silly. A good portion of these motherboard manufacturers don't even use Intel parts (other than the CPU) on their boards making them completely independent from Intel. The high costs and lack of availability have more to do with demand and costs of building and producing the motherboards.
Second, I'd like to say that Intel is doing nothing immoral. They have a product which is no longer the fastest but they want to maintain public perception that it is. There's nothing wrong with this. They didn't pull an Apple and put out junk benchmarks that show their CPU 8x faster than the Athlon. In fact, as far as I could tell from their little search engine, their web site has no mention at all of the Athlon.
Third, marketing an inferior product heavily to drown out AMD is not evil. If the consumer is stupid enough not to do research when it comes to buying a very expensive little piece of hardware, then so be it, but Intel shouldn't be condemned for doing what every single other company on the planet would do in their place.
Sure, the underdog is always rooted for (at least in the US), but this sort of article posted to slashdot makes it sound like Intel is some sorta evil minion of satan using Microsoft-like business practices. Frankly, as far as I can tell, Intel is just trying to keep itself associated with quality & speed until the Itanium launch.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong...
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
I have to say, I really just don't get the PC hardware industry. That is to say, in my heart of hearts, I have close to no doubt that Intel seriously pressured all the mobo manufacturers not to make/market Athlon boards, and, gross as that is, I of course understand it.
.18u copper (i.e. like the metal) parts. From what I've heard, they'll hit 1 GHz about 2 months faster than Intel (I read that AMD'll prolly get there in 2/00, Intel in 4/00), and the gap should only grow. After all, unless you believe the Register that Intel's gonna launch Willamette in December (Note: Are they nuts?!?! On second thought, this wouldn't be the first time the Register has inexplicably been unable to understand the difference between taping out and being available from Dell...) then you have to accept the fact that Intel will be stuck with an amazing-for-its-time (remember, Coppermines have the same core as a PPro from way back in 1995) but still less scalable, not to mention not copper, core until probably next fall. Point is, it's a pretty safe bet that the Athlon will be the faster chip for the next 9 months. And even safer that it'll be better price/performance.
What I don't get is, if that indeed happened, why has none of them just come out and said so? Honestly, this isn't as stupid as it looks. Let's count the reasons why not:
1. The Athlon is a superior product. Yes, a 133MHz bus Coppermine on an i820 mobo is just about at parity as far as performance/MHz goes. (Benchmarks I've seen--a lot of sites had prerelease i820s they used for testing (with only 2 RIMM slots filled of course)--put the CMines faster at office type stuff, the Athlons whipping up on FPU benchmarks and rendering type stuff, and the two about even on Q3ish stuff, which at this point is not yet optimized for the Athlons new FPU pipeline and expanded 3DNow set.) But the only reason AMD's pausing at 700 or 750 MHz for now is because they're ramping up their
2. People know this. Certainly if there are enough people who know what they're doing and want speed for mobo manufacturers to build high quality boards specially for overclocking, and even dual Celeron boards, then there's more than enough market to justify making Athlon boards.
3. AMD is not having any production problems. While this may surprise the ignorant among us who just assumed that AMD was a bunch of blubbering idiots for not being able to keep the K6's up to MHz with PIIs, it's really no surprise at all. See, the K6 design just wasn't very superscalar. For those who don't know what that particular buzzword means, it refers to how many stages the pipeline is divided into. More stages means the processor does less things in each clock cycle, which means you can fit more cycles in a second. The downside is higher latency when a prediction misses, but as it turned out, branch prediction is good enough that deep pipelines/high MHz works better than low latency/low MHz. So anyways, the K6 designers guessed the wrong solution to that one, and ended up with a 6 stage pipeline in comparison to the P6's 13 (IIRC) stages. Hence, the fact that AMD was able to stay within one or two speed bins of Intel for all that time is actually a testament to the high quality of their manufacturing capabilities. As for that huge shortage this February...well, consider the fact that up until a couple months ago, AMD had exactly one fab, and a small one at that. Intel has eight. How much would you like to bet that, at one fab or another, Intel has problems just as severe as the AMD ones all the time, but you just never hear about it because they can shift production to another plant? Of course, now that AMD has a second fab, and, not only that, but a huge state of the art one, the all-eggs-in-one-basket problem is pretty much solved as well.
4. Intel has screwed the mobo manufacturers over big time. This i820 thing is a huge huge huge debacle, and it's all Intel's fault. Furthermore, no one in the industry can be happy that Intel insisted on switching over to RDRAM well before its time, either. Fact is, with proper economies of scale (that is, if the mobo manufacturers would just make the damn things), an Athlon motherboard and RAM could sell for about half the price of an i820 with RDRAM. Why anyone would be scared of burning bridges with Intel after what Intel's just done to them is beyond me.
5. Intel's under major antitrust scrutiny. I mean, if they were bullying mobo companies into shelving, overpricing, or undermarketing their Athlon boards, why on earth wouldn't one of them just pick up the phone and call the FTC? Or better yet, The Wall Street Journal?? And yet they appear to think they're in a better bargaining position if they just keep it to themselves and maybe grumble off a few anonymous leaks to hardware fan sites on the web?? Huh???
So what's going on here? I honestly don't know. On paper, and in the benchmark labs, and on the roadmaps, AMD has Intel blown out of the water for quite some time. On the one hand, it happens to be true that the recent trend toward graphics cards with GPUs takes a good deal of the advantage off of the Athlon's superior floating point performance, but you'd be pretty hard pressed to say that, from a theoretical perspective, things look anything but shitty for Intel. Except that, possibly due to nothing more than some well placed, and presumably illegal, intimidation (and not just directed at the mobo people; witness Dell and Gateway, the sort of names average people think of when they think of fast high quality computers, not offering any Athlon systems), things look just fine for them.
It's a pretty scary thought that this sort of thing could still go on right after the MS trial. But I just don't have any other explanation.
I've said for years that there are only two things that really matter in this industry: Marketing and installed base.
Computer technology is so complex, and is so often hidden in a black box that you cannot open, that marketing propaganda is far more powerful then it is in most industries. Do car commercials really convince anyone that Brand X is better then Brand Y? Nope. But "Intel Inside" has left a lasting impression on the average PC buyer. I know people who work in retail. When they go to sell a PC, everyone goes for the cheaper model with the faster clock rate, right up until they hear that it doesn't have Intel inside. Then they say, "I don't want any of this AM-whatever stuff, give me the Intel Inside thingy."
Marketing works in this industry. Quality and volume of marketing is a direct function of money put into it. And guess who has the most cash? That's right, Intel.
Moving on to installed base, AKA existing market share. Basically, the more market you have, the more market you gain. Part of it is network effects, part of it is economy of scale. Because Intel owns so much of the CPU market, they continue to own so much of the CPU market. AMD is doing their damndest to chip away at that wall, but it is rather like the sea breaking upon the shore -- it takes a loooong time to gain any ground.
Oh, to be fair, there are other factors. Intel has very deep pockets, so they can afford more research, higher pay for better workers, and the old fashioned "throw dollars at it until the problem is solved" approach. And, unlike a popular software monopoly I know and hate, Intel's stuff actually works pretty well in many cases.
But "sundling" is right. AMD has bet the farm on Athlon. The other x86-clones have already fallen to the irresistible march of Chipzilla. If Athlon fails, so will AMD's CPU offerings. That leaves a single player to control the future of the most popular computer architecture in use.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Chipzilla is far from dead.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
What they are concerned about is Playstation II. If Sony can actually mass-produce the Emotion Engine, it is going to give Intel (and other chip makers) serious headaches.
What does the average consumer want? A cheap, easy-to-set-up all-in-one word processor/game console/internet application. Playstation II fits the bill. There's no OS to hassle with, no IRQ's and memory conflicts. Just turn it on and it goes. It's what the iMac dreams to be.
AMD may have come out with a superior desktop processor just at the point when it doesn't matter anymore.
--
Everyone is still complacent and saying let them fight it out... The one thing we all need to remember is that if you like Intel dropping it's prices, you better buy an Athlon. Otherwise, you can forget the dropping prices as this stint of competition will be over. Don't forget that AMD has bet EVERYTHING on the Athlon. They went deep into debt on Fab 30 and they have been losing money for the last several quarters. They have even announced they are going to sell one of their non-chip divisions which is profitable for cash to continue to fund their chip business. AMD is doing well on the technical side, but if they can't succeed with the Athlon, AMD is history. If it weren't for AMD there wouldn't have been low cost Celerons available to compete with their K6-2. If it weren't for the Athlon, Pentium 3 prices would still be much higher. This is not the first round of this fight. This fight has been going on for years, so many may be complacent that it will continue. You think AMD will always be around? Trust me, you will miss them when they are gone. If they lose this round, there won't be another one. Paul