Originally posted by: Viditor
Originally posted by: GFORCE100
Originally posted by: Viditor
Originally posted by: GFORCE100
AMD is really in no position to go throwing jokes at Intel.
It should rather insert its energy at thinking up how to survive more people opting for Intel Core 2 Duo's until they have a product to directly compete with it.
With the amount of money AMD has been throwing/indexing lately, they are in a volatile situation financially speaking. AMD is about 1/10th the size of Intel, too small to jump and critisize.
Unfortunately, a large percentage of consumers will eat such comments about AMD's take on Intel's quad core. In reality however, such opinion is nonsense. As long as it's a real quad core (4x 1 core), that's all the consumer wants/needs to know.
If Intel was as kid like as AMD, they could tell the public how AMD was caught without having an answer for a quad core system or 65nm production. Rebranding an Opeteron dual CPU motherboard is just that, a quick measure to have something on the market that correlates to the competitor.
The fact of the matter is AMD is mad it hasn't got 65nm because if it did, it would certainly do the same as Intel, i.e. take an X2 and put two of them on the same socket. AMD is also mad that within 6 months of it having 65nm Intel will be rolling out 45nm. Should they be paranoid? It would be the sensible thing to act, yes.
No disrespect GFORCE100, but you really have to understand how things work in the industry first...
For example:
1. I assume that it is general consensus that Core2>AMD>Netburst still...given that only 20% of Intel's shipments are Core2 (and even in Q1 next year it will only hit 40%), then you can understand why AMD is still gaining marketshare and will continue to do so.
2. Almost all consumers neither need nor want quad core at all...
3. If the definition is 4 x 1 core for quad core, then AMD's 4x4 is every bit a quad core...in fact more so as the 2 dual core chips are directly connected via HT rather than the common FSB. Of course a populated 4p single core mobo would be a quad core as well...
4. Intel won't be shipping 45nm till the end of next year (which makes it 12 months), but why should any of that upset AMD at all?
1) As long as there is enough supply to meet demand, then there's enough shipments to allow consumers to buy the processors should they choose to. There are no major shortages of Core 2 Duo's in the channel, it's there to buy today. Intel could make more Core 2 Duo's now but it's you who possibly has got the wrong end of the stick here. The reason to produce less of a new product is to allow all your partners to clear their inventory of older chips hence the Pentium D in most cases. If they ramped up production too quick, this would make it harder to sell off the Netburst CPU's, which for the average consumer are fast anyway. AMD on the other hand doesn't have the production capacity, which is recently best seen by dry spots in the channel. Dell is taking too many shipment for this not to translate into the consumer namespace via online outlets etc. Y
You're missing the point...I agree that Intel is doing the right thing. But it's your assumption that it's costing AMD that is incorrect! if there's enough supply to meet demand, and that supply is only 20% of Intel's output, then I don't think demand is anywhere NEAR as high as you are assuming it is...
2) That is beyond the point. If this is what's available, and for the right price, people will buy them, especially if the media do their bit to prove it's better than the dual core. Consumers also didn't need 64bit CPU's but they bought them simply because this is what was on offer. Multi-core technology is a much more guaranteed technology, guaranteed to bring immediate benefits, at least in how smooth one's system performs, even when not running specfically optimised software.
Ummm...64bit chips were the same or less expensive (at least AMD's were), quad core chips are 100% more expensive!
As to your use of the term "multicore", it's far too general...it won't help
anyone who isn't using it professionally, and in that case a 2P dualcore is easily as effective and reduces the effect of a defective chip for mission critical workstations. (being one of those professionals, this is an area I am quite familiar with...). Quad core won't speed up games, rip videos faster, multitask quicker, etc... It will render much quicker (but then so does dual-dual).
3) FSB or specifically GTL+ is really only a bottleneck on 4 or more cores all fighting for the same bandwidth. You must note that a) Intel's quad chip uses 2 dual core chips so at maximum, only 2 cores fight for the bandwidth. The other two cores simply talk to each other via the L2 cache, which is much faster than AMD's caches anyway. At worst this performane delta in comparison to Intel Vs AMD on the FSB Vs HT front is neglible. This would only be a hot debate in the server market, and only then in MP systems. You must also note that a lot of the talk about the limitation of GTL+ was at the time CPU's only had 256K L2 cache. Today CPU's have a lot more, plus it's faster too and so accessing the FSB is not as frequent as before.
Ummm...how is connection via the L2 in C2D "much faster" than the connection via crossbar of AMD?
I think you missed my point here...I wasn't trying to say that in a single quad core scenario one would end up being faster than another, I was saying that your
definition of quad core covers more scenarios (like 4P, and 4x4)
4) 2007 Q3 to be precise which means any time from July to September. AMD cannot reliably ship 65nm until Q1 2007.
I have no idea why you believe this, as shipments for November this year have been confirmed in articles all over the net...they've been in production for months now!
As to the 45nm in Q3 rumour, only HKEPC has said so...if you look at the foils from IDC, you'll note that 45nm is still scheduled for a Q1 08 launch.
AMD has bought ATI and invested in NY, a lot of money for a small company, or otherwise, a lot of money in proportion to its capital.
I'll take these one at a time, as they are common misconceptions...
In this case, while it's true that AMD paid $5B for ATYT, almost everyone forgets that they also recieve ATI's income as well...that was $2.39B over the last 12 months!
To allow 65nm AMD needs also a lot of money, and more fabs since its bottleneck is production capacity.
Again, most people forget that AMD has tripled their production capacity over the last year. They currently have sufficient capacity to easily supply 50% of the world's CPUs...and that's before any of the future Fabs are built.
Because it has to rely on IBM and others, this instantiates more delay to rollout production to a level satisfied by the Q&A department.
I frankly have no idea what you mean here...if what way does AMD have to rely on IBM?
If you are referring to their co-development of 65nm, 45nm, and 32nm at East Fishkill, that portion was done a very long time ago (AMD was testing their production level 65nm chips in October 05...).
Say what you want about Mike Dell, but there's is no way in Hell he would have made the move unless he were convinced of the viability of AMD's future...he's already lost a fortune to HP in marketshare by waiting for the proof, and I can't see him flip-flopping at this late stage without that assurance.
Whatever one wishes to say about AMD production, the bottom line is AMD is about 6-12 (conservative estimate) to 9-12 (more realistic) months benhind Intel when it comes to 65nm.
I would certainly accept 9-12 months for release on 65nm (closer to 11 actually). The question you have to ask is "why?"...this is important because it gives clues for the next node shrink.
If you have 2 guys who see food down the street, and 1 is starving while the other one is full (because he just ate the other guys lunch), then I would bet that the starving guy will get the food first.
Intel had absolutely no choice but to expend every resource they had on both 65nm and Core technology (remember how many projects they had to cancel to get there)...without both they would continue in a death spiral. The 90nm Netburst had hit a hard wall, and even at 65nm they weren't quite competitive. That said, it cost them dearly...for more on this, look very closely at their financials for the year (and follow the downgrades and performance of their stock) and remember that CSI was originally to be launched THIS year.
They absolutely made the right decision, and Otellini is to be congratulated...but it doesn't mean that they're out of the woods.
AMD didn't and doesn't need 65nm even now...don't get me wrong, it would be nice. But AMD is still gaining marketshare, they have new architecture coming in time to counter Intel when they are able to get larger volume on C2D, they have the ability to change-over faster to 65nm than Intel, and they have some very big irons in the fire like Torrenza as backup. They also continue to expand their markets (
from 5% to 20% in China alone).
AMD knows that if Intel gets to 45nm, it can start add to the architecture by increasing the transistor count without worrying about excessive production cost or heat dissipation. It can also go for faster clock speeds. All of these three aspects mean a faster/better product to the market, a market AMD wants to gain and hold onto, but not lose the market share it's been fighting for these past years.
Firstly, AMD is scheduled to ship 45nm ~6 months after Intel (end of Q2 08). But let's look at the things a node shrink can get you (I believe you listed 2 of the 3).
1. Savings (the one you didn't list) - AMD already has a leg up on this as Intel must spend half of it's die on a large cache in order to keep up with AMD's latency advantage from the ODMC and HT.
2. Space - in balance with the savings, the question is what does Intel intend to use this space for? The more that they put on the die, the more expensive it is...so it still needs to be cost effective. Larger caches mask the need for reduced latency, but there is a point of diminishing returns here...
3. Power/heat - I will certainly cede this as an advantage, but there are so many other variable here that predicting it would be very difficult at this point...
The situation now is kind of like back in 1997-1998 when AMD just had a complete flop with the K5 series (brought too late to market and wouldn't scale in MHz to the levels of the the then P54/P54C by Intel, (Pentium and Pentium MMX) and couldn't get good yields with the K6 either. To make things worse, Intel then already had the Pentium II what was faster. While the K6 was a good deal compared to a Pentium MMX, the Pentium II was a more advanced product. The same is today, Core 2 Duo is better, and at 90nm AMD cannot pull any more magic for the Athlon X2/FX line-up. 14 stage pipelines and 90nm at 3GHz just do not go.
If you will recall, AMD had a complete changeover in engineering and manufacturing staff at the end of this period...followed by a changeover in management. In addition, Intel controlled the market with an iron fist (reducing AMD's ability to get capitol for development). In fact, this is why Wells Fargo values a judgement on the anti-trust to be in the $4B range for AMD...
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