Analysts: AMD Beating Intel in Chip Design
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Analysts&#39; assessments came after Intel announced last week that it was scrapping plans to develop a 4-gigahertz version of its Pentium 4 chip.
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Will the chip maker ever overcome Intel's advantage in the notebook market?
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Advanced Micro Devices has given out more details on its fortcoming dual-core microprocessor chip. The Opteron-based design is said to be 30-55 percent faster than AMD&#39;s single-core chips, but it will fit in existing server designs.
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Peter Glaskowsky analyzes the potential benefits of AMD's new quad-core Opteron processors for data centers.
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Throughout the past five years, AMD has stated Intel has been unfair in the way it measures its CPUs' power consumption, and presents those numbers to the public. But it hasn't come up with an alternative method...until today. Beginning with the Barcelona generation of quad-core CPUs, AMD will utilize what it calls average CPU power (ACP), which unlike Thermal Design Point (TDP) is not based on how much power is required to cool a chip, but rather to run it.
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AMD provides a sneak peek at how its pending quad-core chip will improve performance and save energy.
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After a bout of good fortune, AMD finds itself coming to grips with a resurgent Intel. Plus: Can software keep up with multicore technology?
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(InfoWorld) - The leading quote from this weekâs news comes from Intel CEO Paul Otellini: "We're doing product refreshes every two years, which is the model we invented and then stopped doing after Pentium 4, shame on us," Otellini said. "We fell off it -- mea culpa, we screwed up -- and now we're back on that pace." Otellini was speaking at a Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, but regardless of the venue, every time a CEO speaks, he or she is using analysts and journalists as a conduit to shareholders. When a CEO takes a podium to apologize to shareholders, it tends to be the board of directorsâ idea. This is an obtuse, though profuse apology. The screwup to which Otellini refers is his decision to clear Intelâs shelves of x86 property and dump it on AMD in one drop so that Intel could end the year with a bang, having had the last volley in the CPU wars. It did that. But one could liken Intelâs strategy in latter 2006 to a massive spread of fireworks thatâs sent up simultaneously. Everybody goes nuts at the spectacle of it, but after that brief rush, all thatâs left is silence and smoke, soon followed by the glow of taillights. As tacky as it is to quote oneself, I put Otelliniâs present bind succinctly in a column I wrote last August: âIntel shot its entire wad on Core microarchitecture. From here, the only place Intel can go is bigger cache, more cores, and faster clocks.â Indeed, that sums up Intelâs plans for 2007, and thereâs no swaggering spin, distraction, or buzzword bending that can make up for the enormous technology gap between Core 2 and AMDâs reengineered Barcelona quad-core Opteron. It isnât likely that Intel can play engineering catch-up, given that Otellini has pink-slipped 10,500 workers. Otellini will have more than empty cupboards and empty desks to apologize for. He set a strategy to bulk up Intelâs manufacturing capacity and to jam up AMD by forcing prices down and leaving AMD unable to meet spiked market demand. Market demand is sagging, and if it returns, AMD has the capacity advantage: It has third-party foundries standing ready to stamp out AMD CPUs if need be. Another example of poor judgment is Otelliniâs fixation on CPUs and chip sets. AMDâs acquisition of ATI put Intelâs rival in the high-margin peripherals business as well as a growing role in high-performance chip sets for Intel desktop and notebook PCs. Intelâs hostile attitude toward chip-set makers drove graphics and chip-set giant Nvidia to make surprisingly close ties with AMD despite its purchase of Nvidiaâs sole competitor. If only it ended there. Recently, Intel informed the Delaware Federal District Court that it cannot produce relevant e-mail messages that were exchanged after the filing date of AMDâs antitrust suit. Intelâs letter to the court blames individual human error while heaping detailed praise on executivesâ document retention plan. Buried in the text is the Nixonian counterpoint, âSome of the tapes appear to have been recycled.â Itâs not that Otellini hasnât done anything right. He did put the brakes on NetBurst. He won an exclusive with Apple and got Sun Microsystems to add Intel to its product line. But in the minus column, Otellini lost the companyâs gold medal exclusive PC maker, Dell, and people will wonder whose inboxes those recycled tapes might have contained. Intelâs CEO should be gilding his parachute. If he lasts out the year, it will be because Intelâs board wisely takes its time to choose a replacement. My litmus test? Find someone who believes that Intelâs yearly sponsorship of the A. M. Turing Award matters more than convincing a judge in Delaware that evidence really, truly got lost. And find a CEO who, when he or she apologizes for lousy decisions, uses the pronouns âIâ and âme.â
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The introduction this morning by AMD of new dual-core desktop processors, including the Athlon 64 X2 6000+, and the company's subsequent lowering of prices of existing processors, may have nearly or completely equalized the price/performance balance between AMD and Intel processors.
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Intel's new Centrino platform and 45nm fabrication process, AMD's innovative new CPU design and hints from both companies about quad-core mobile CPUs mean the mobile chip wars are hotter than ever.
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The scuttling of the chip raises the risk that Intel might fall behind AMD in the race to create the fastest processors. Some saw the move as desperate attempt to deal with the fact that
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Investors not impressed Strong notebook and server chip sales carried Intel to a second quarter that neared the high end of previous forecasts. Investors, however, seemed unmoved by the results, as Intel noted strong pricing competition in the desktop market and a reliance on cost-cutting measures to gloss its results.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices is undaunted by rival Intelâs recent headline-grabbing announcements of 45-nm (nanometer) processing technology and a deal to supply Xeon chips to Sun Microsystems. Interviewed at the DesignCon 2007 conference in Santa Clara, Calif., last week, Steve Polzin, chief platform architect in the Computation Products Group at AMD, said his company would, in time, also use 45-nm manufacturing technology through its alliances with Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. âWe have access to very similar technology that weâll be able to use in 45-nm,â Polzin said. âItâs a weapon in our arsenal.â Intel sent tremors through the hypercompetitive chip market last week when it made good on promises to begin producing 45-nm chips by the second half of this year. More concerning for AMD, Intel said the new chips would consume less energy and generate less heat than existing chips, thanks to a new material dubbed âhigh-kâ that is used in the insulating material for transistors. Polzin would not commit on a time frame for when AMD would use 45-nm, except to say that the company would do so âwhen it makes sense.â AMD currently uses 65-nm processing technology in its Opteron CPU line. âPushing technology for technologyâs sake is not what we do,â Polzin said. The 45-nm technology will be applicable from systems ranging from laptops to datacenters, he said. Intel does not have a big jump on AMD, said analyst Mary Olsson of Gary Smith EDA, and 45-nm systems will not be heavily used for three to four years. As for Sunâs deal to use Intel CPUs after having relied on only AMD for x86 chips, Polzin said the arrangement was not unexpected, with Intel now leveraging AMD-championed technology in Xeon. âWe knew that one of the key factors that attracted Sun to AMD was the 64-bit extensions to x86,â Polzin said. âAMD64 is great technology. Intel decided to copy it, so what the heck.â Sun, as an AMD customer, is free to choose whichever suppliers it wants, Polzin said, adding that Sun is one of its âvery valued customersâ and that the companies still work closely. At the conference, Polzin cited the evolution of processors, which have grown from 16-bit to 32-bit and 64-bit units. Multicore processors also have arrived, he noted. The company plans its quad-processor Opteron offerings for a midyear release. Eight-core chips are on the drawing board as well. In 2009, the company plans to offer graphics processors and CPUs on the same chip as part of its Fusion initiative. This technology will be offered in the mobile Turion chip, Polzin said.
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SAN FRANCISCO - As expected, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s (AMD's) third-quarter revenue came in a little under the company's earlier predictions, but strong increases in sales of its 64-bit desktop and server processors led to the company's fourth straight profitable quarter.
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Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are revving up for what they see as the next big step in the evolution of x86 processorsâthe introduction of dual processing cores.
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With the market for quad-core chips still in its infancy, Advance Micro Devices has an alternative that might help bridge the gap: tri-core chips. As a bonus, this strategy can't easily be imitated by Intel, AMD executives say.
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If canceling the Pentium-4 4GHz processor was not enough, AMD has come up with fresher set of problems for Intel. Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices renewed the claims of being the maker of the fastest PC Microprocessors