AMD not feeling heat of Intel breakthrough
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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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There&#39;s been a fair amount of debate recently about whether AMD or Intel is winning the ever-present chip arms race. Based on the experience of this year&#39;s Intel Developer Forum (IDF), I&#39;m not sure that Intel can still claim to be in the lead.
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October unveiling alongside AMD dualie Athlon 64 FX
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On Tuesday, Advanced Micro Devices introduced its two fastest processors yet, a quiet slap at Intel&#39;s latest roadmap revision.
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Once more, with feeling: Why is AMD on the lam, and how can it get back up?
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In our lab tests, Intel's 45nm Penryn CPU didn't blow away the previous generation, but the tech behind it should keep Intel ahead.
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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) declined to comment Tuesday on a Taiwanese media report that more than 1 million re-marked AMD processors may have been shipped to Germany and China.
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To judge by the shift in the headlines, the processor war is nearly over. Who&#39;s in? Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD). Out? Intel (Nasdaq: INTC).
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Worldwide&#160;lawsuits against Intel&#160;and&#160;four straight quarterly losses&#160;have distracted AMD during its integration of ATI Technologies, but the merger remains on track, according to industry analysts.
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As Intel pursues a new path with improved multi-core chips, AMD says itâs already one step ahead. Intel told the world this week that there is no race to market the next generation of microchips.
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Intel Corp., the world's largest computer chip company, is not suffering from overcapacity and new areas are emerging that will increase global demand for microprocessors, its chief executive said Friday.
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There's been yet another product delay at Intel.
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No hard feelings. Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) has hired away hundreds of engineers from Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ). However, it is unlikely to cause friction between the chipmaker
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With its new low-voltage Athlon 64 3000+ processor, &quot;AMD is essentially going up against the Centrino in the low-end processing market, where 64-bit technology is not that significant,&quot; says Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff.
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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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With Christmas just 11 days away, you have to wonder what Hector Ruiz is going to find under his tree. It&#8217;s been a terrible year for Advanced Micro Devices, and the chipmaker&#8217;s analysts conference on Thursday did nothing to spread holiday cheer.Confirming what many in the chip world had suspected for some time, CEO Ruiz and other AMD execs fessed up that bugs in its new quad-core Barcelona server and Phenom desktop chips will&#160;delay these key next-generation technologies.The technical problems will delay general availability of the fastest version of the chips for three or four months. Customers willing to settle for slower clock speeds will be able to get the processors sooner; for example, AMD will ship a 2 gigahertz version of the Barcelona first, instead of the expected 2.5 gigahertz speed. In either case, the chips will be close to a year late; the original target date was the first quarter of 2007.AMD STUMBLES AS INTEL SPEEDS AHEADThe problem couldn&#8217;t come at a worse time. AMD has struggled all year to close the performance gap between its high-end chips and Intel&#8217;s. Barcelona, the company had promised, would restore its technical supremacy. Indeed some analysts said they had expected the quad-core server chip to do just that. &#8220;At 2.5 gigahertz it would have beaten any Intel products,&#8221; said analyst Nathan Brookwood of Insight64. &#8220;But at 2 gigahertz, it&#8217;s bringing up the rear,&#8221; he said.Intel, meanwhile, has corrected many of the problems that dogged it earlier in the decade. &#8220;AMD isn&#8217;t competing against the Intel of two years ago,&#8221; said Dean McCarron of Mercury Research. Intel has had quad-core chips in the market for about a year. To be fair, its chips are based on a somewhat simpler design; Intel gets to four cores by packaging two dual-core chips together. By contrast, AMD&#8217;s design integrates four cores on one chip, a more efficient solution, said McCarron. Except that AMD&#8217;s approach reduces yields and thus raises manufacturing costs, he added.There was earlier speculation that Barcelona&#8217;s problems were related to the ATI graphics chipset, but the problem turns out to be deeper, at the chip level. AMD has said it is related to the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) in the processor&#39;s L3 cache.DOUBTS ABOUT A QUICK FIXIn the Thursday conference, analysts had expected discussion of the company&#8217;s &#8220;asset light strategy,&#8221; which will apparently entail outsourcing more manufacturing to foundries such as Chartered Semiconductor or TSMC. But they didn&#8217;t get it, and the lack of details made CEO Ruiz&#8217;s promise to return to profitability in 2008 less credible to Wall Street. AMD&#8217;s financial performance has been terrible, losing money for four straight quarters. Part of the reason: Intel and AMD have engaged in a bloody price war, a struggle that has been very tough on the smaller company&#8217;s profit margins. But the Barcelona and Phenom delays are serious self-inflicted wounds.AMD&#8217;s stock lost another few points yesterday and has now shed about 40% in the last two months and a bone-jarring 56% since the beginning of the year. At $8.84 a share, Thursday&#8217;s closing price, the stock is at its lowest ebb since the summer of 2003. Ironically, AMD has so far&#160;rewarded Ruiz with pay raises.
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(InfoWorld) - Upcoming products and transitions in leadership buffeted shares of Advanced Micro Devices, Apple, and Yahoo this week. Investors have soured on AMD this year as IntelÂ has advanced its own multicore chip technology. The postponement of volume production of AMD's Barcelona quad-core Opteron server chip to the third quarter has not helped. But AMD got a vote of confidence Thursday when brokerage Stifel Nicolaus raised its rating to "buy" from "neutral." The brokerage said thatÂ bad newsÂ has already done whatever damage it could to company shares. On the positive side, the brokerage noted that the last half of the year includes a traditionally strong selling season and that the chip market has stabilized. In response, AMD shares jumped by $1.12 Thursday, to close at $14.77. Apple shares, meanwhile, jumped $4.59 to close at $125.09 Monday on news of improved features for the much-anticipated all-in-one iPhone mobile device. Apple said that the handset will have eight hours of talk time andÂ six hours of Internet use, andÂ that its screen will be glass rather than plastic. One criticism of the iPod screen is that it is prone to scratching. The iPhone's glass display is expected to be better. The company's share price fell somewhat during the week but is still historically high for the company. Despite great anticipation for the product, due out June 29, and recent surveys showing that consumer interest is high despite the high price (about $500), analysts have issued caveats. "This phone is more closely watched than any other cell phone, ever. That means any glitch will be covered," said frequently quoted Jeff Kagan, in an e-mail. "This is the biggest job ever in the history of the cell phone business." A big transition, though not to a new product, also moved Yahoo shares. On Monday the company announced thatÂ Terry Semel ended his six-year tenureÂ as chief executive officer and that company co-founder Jerry Yang will take over. Semel had been a lightning rod for criticism of the company. Though Yahoo is widely acknowledged to have some of the best services on the Internet and was an early leader in recognizing the importance of bringing Web 2.0 interactive features into its fold, it has been unable to keep up with Google in the most important revenue generator on the Web: search engine advertising. The news of Semel's departure was greeted with enthusiasm. Yahoo shares rose $0.81 to close at $28.12 on the news Monday. But the share price subsequently drifted down, despite getting a temporary boost from rumors that News Corp. would take a share in Yahoo in return for merging the MySpace service with the company. Yang's appointment leaves more questions than answers. It's not clear what new leadership he can bring to the company, which is much bigger and more complex than years ago and is in the middle of various transition efforts. Early results from its new search advertising platform, Panama, are good, but the jury is out on efforts to boost display advertising.