The Dual-Core War - Is Intel in Trouble?

michaelMSFT writes "Cooltechzone has a column stating that Intel has already lost the dual-core war against AMD. From the article: 'From the performance numbers published on numerous online publications, Intel has lost the Dual-Core War. The only competing factor that Intel has right now is the possibility to keep their prices low enough to attract those with strict budget...I would like to forward a special note to Intel: Please make sure your next generation of processors aren't as atrocious as the Prescott, as AMD is making you look pretty silly right now.'"

I Disagree

[mfh (56)]

Intel has not lost anything. They might be getting their asses handed to them by AMD -- but remember that it often takes huge losses before a company changes its approach to doing business. And that kind of change really is needed at Intel.

Re:I Disagree

[liquidpele (663430)]

If Intel wants to beat AMD, how about some asynchronous chips? I remember that being such a good idea back in the day because it would spead up the chip for the most part, and now that clocking across the chip is so complicated, it seems like even a better idea.

Anyone know why this never really took off, besides the fact that it's more complicated?

Re:I Disagree

[bsd4me (759597)]

As for difficult to test... not really, or at least I don't see why it would be worse than clocked chips. Have a test signal, put a stream of data into the chip, then see what comes out. Async should work the same as sync in that case...

The problem has to due with the variations in timing due to temperature and voltage changes. In general, synchronous logic is simulated at the speced max temperature and lowest voltage (this is typically the worst case (*)). With asynchronous logic you have to test over a range because you have to worry about things happening too soon rather than just too late, and as you add more parallel and sequential circuits things get really complicated.

(*) I'm not positive this is the worst case combination...

Re:I Disagree

[kpwoodr (306527)]

"It's simply not fair for those with limited computing knowledge that buy these systems to pay high prices for underperforming products."

The best thing that could possibly come from this is lower prices for the consumer. I personally ditched intel years ago as a poor college student who desperately needed a computer but couldn't afford the high prices of the wInTel boxes everywhere. AMD has shown consistently that they can make products as good or better than Intel for less money, and pass the savings on to consumers.

Intel has grown to large for their own good, and often get to caught up in marketing and buracracy to do any actual innovation.

If AMD sticks to their guns, the next few years should turn out some very strong advances for the home and business users.

Side note, I'm out of college and making good money now, and I still won't throw down the scrint for an intel machine.

Re:I Disagree

[Sj0 (472011)]

You'd be the first to find an Athlon XP slower than a similarly clocked P3. The Athlon design removes several critical flaws of the P3 design, such as the dreaded partial register stall, while putting the processor onto a faster bus. These features add up to a processor which is, in every task I've ever seen thrown at it in a real or imagined situation, faster than the similarly clocked Pentium III.

Of course, you're probably ignoring that most cheap laptops have piss poor subsystems which will cripple even the best processors on the market -- the chipset is very likely made by the lowest bidder(ali?), your video card is very likely eating up memory bandwidth, and the software on any given OEM machine will drag it to a standstill regardless of the hardware.

Re:And Furthermore...

[bwalling (195998)]

And furthermore... since when is it whoever ships first wins? What about quality? Cost? Yes AMD beats Intel on both of those now, but that is what I mean when I say that changes at Intel could make them far more competative, far more agile.

Wars aren't won or lost on the first shot. Wars go on for a long time.

Do you remember Cyrix?

[YU Nicks NE Way (129084)]

And the first Intel Celery's? I do. Cyrix and it's ilk won every perf/price war, and the early Celerons were a complete joke. Scroll forward a few years...Cyrix is gone, and Intel rules the low cost microprocessor roost. Remember Via and Transmeta, and the 1W processor war? I do. Via and Transmeta were handing Intel its head -- blades, this, that, the other; low power was king. Errr...oops. The Mobile Pentium chip (and the associated platform strategy Intel used) won the day. Again.

So now we've got AMD and the Athl/opteron. AMD has done better than any other competitor, so far, and has managed to maintain a narrow performance gap for several years. On a couple of occasions, they've opened a wide performance gap for a short time, but Intel has always closed it to a narrow one.

Neither great technical merit for a short time nor slight technical merit over a long time is enough to establish a market. The competition can always work around that by starting a skunk-works project, as Intel did to Cyrix, and Transmeta, and, more recently, with their implementation of x86-64. To catch up with AMD now, all Intel needs to do is build a dual-core x86-64 chip with a smaller power envelope.

Didn't I hear that x86-64 and dual cores were coming to the Mobile Pentium class soon? Hmm...I wonder why?

Re:Do you remember Cyrix?

[Wdomburg (141264)]

Eh? The Via offerings are a wildly different market segment from the Intel. Bare minimum buy-in cost for a desktop solution is going to be over $300, and that's for a cheap motherboard and absolute bottom barrel Celeron M. You can pick up a full Via solution for around $100, including board, chip, case, and integrated everything - video, tv out, firewire, ethernet, blah blah blah.

And that's just looking at the desktop offering. Via hands Intel it's ass on a platter for embedded solutions. Not only are Intel's Ultra Low Voltage solutions more expensive, they draw more power. A 600MHz Celeron ULV draws 7V typical. A 1GBz Eden-N draws 7W peak.

Re:Do you remember Cyrix?

[MBGMorden (803437)]

Cyrix chips were a complete joke. During the regular Pentium days they had decent performance at best. They could do OK on office apps, but their floating point units was horrendous. You'd have a part with "P-rating" of 200 (saying it's equal to a Pentium 200) that could be outrun by a Pentium 120 on anything requiring FPU work.

Then came the Pentium II/Celeron days. Cyrix really hit rock bottom here. They put out chips rated as a 300 (the M-II series) when the FPU still hadn't been addressed. That "300" could be beat by most Pentium 150's on FPU performance. Then there was the whole issue with how they handled the performance rating. Even on Cyrix's own website (where the tests are going to be setup to favor their equipment) they had tests showing that their M-II 266 came very close to a Pentium II 266 and that their M-II 300 came very close to a Pentium II 300 (and this was only in the straight business stuff). The Cyrix part came in slower, but hey, it was close right? When you looked at the actual benchmark results though, you could see that the Pentium II 266 was pretty close to the Pentium II 300. As a matter of fact, the Cyrix 300 had the EXACT score of the Pentium 266. Why the heck was it rated as a 300 (actual clock 233mhz) when it could only match the 266 and then even on Cyrix's own biased benchmarks.

Cyrix chips also ran very, very hot, for their time.

Now this is from someone who has owned a lot of Cyrix chips (a 586 100mhz, a 686 P200, and an M-II 300): they were junk. AMD was a far better choice than Cyrix even back then. I also had an IDT Winchip 225mhz for a while which also wasn't a very good performer but at least it ran cool.

With AMD though, things are different. AMD is beating Intel where it has always count: straight up performance. They're usually beating them on price too. Now it's no longer "settling with a little less performance because the chip is cheaper". Instead you're actually getting a BETTER chip for cheaper. AMD has been constantly making headway. They'll do far better than Cyrix, IDT, or Via (Via actually bought IDT and Cyrix which became their processor division).

Re:And Furthermore...

[Slack3r78 (596506)]

Intel actually shipped dual core first (by a couple of days) to pick up bragging rights, but as you said, it was rushed and we're seeing the results of that now.

Intel's problem is that they're tied to the inefficient Netburst architechture for the time being, and it's really just hit a complete brick wall. The move back the the P6 architechture of the Pentium M is in the works, but that's going to take time.

In the meantime, AMD has the K8 which absolutely brutalizes Netburst in performance per clockcycle, and which, at this point, also seems to have plenty of headroom left.

The biggest problem Intel has is that, in the processor business, you can only be so agile. Yes, they've hacked in x86-64 and dual core support to Netburst, but their implementations are just that - hacks and bandaids. The result is what we're seeing now - AMD with a highly efficient and what's looking to be scalable (at this point) architechture, while Intel is limping along with Netburst that's really been on its last legs since Prescott was introduced 14 months ago.

The Pentium M shows some promise, and is probably Intel's best processor design to date, but has problems of its own (ie: its relatively weak FPU performance compared to K8 and Netburst both). It's entirely possible that Intel will come up with something in the long run that will straighten them out, but as it stands now, I wouldn't expect it in any time frame less than 18 months from now. The first dual core Xeons will likely be Prescott-based, and suffer all the same fundamental flaws Intel has been fighting for the past few years. By that time, AMD may have already had a chance to entrench itself in data centers, which would be a huge loss for Intel. That's why this is big news.

Re:And Furthermore...

[Slack3r78 (596506)]

Agreed on the P6 core being Intel's best work. When Netburst was first introduced, Intel tried to reassure everyone with promises of a heady 5-6GHz within a few years and eventually numbers as high as 8GHz. Well, we all know what happened now - Netburst never broke 4GHz.

On the SMT issue, it's the deep pipeline nature of Netburst that makes it as effective as it is on the P4 in the first place. Netburst was launched with a 20 instruction deep pipeline, Prescott extended that to 31 stages. For comparison, P6 was 14 levels, K7 was 15 levels, and K8 is 17 levels. This means that relative to other chips available at the time, Netburst takes a seriously penalty for a branch mispredict, and the entire pipeline has to be flushed out. SMT helps it make up for this by allowing one thread to continue running while the pipeline is being flushed.

While K8 or the Pentium M would probably benefit some from SMT, it wouldn't be to the level that the Pentium 4 does. Therefore, Intel and AMD are both focusing on other ways of improving performance in these processor designs that should yield better results for the resources invested.

Re:I Disagree

[SunFan (845761)]

Intel isn't losing money, but talented engineers are a limited resource. They would have bought the farm on Itanium if they weren't making money on Pentium.

What is interesting is that in spite of being so wealthy, their main Pentium line is suffering. It uses more power, it's stopped advancing in MHz, it doesn't scale in SMP well at all, and it loses benchmarks to chips in the same price range with 1/2 to 2/3 the clock rate.

I think what has happened is that HP/Intel got into a rut with Itanium that will take a long time to recover from. Intel won't go anywhere, but they will have to accept getting trumped by their competitors for a few years, now.

To add insult to injury, Opterons are benchmarking faster than even the Itaniums, and in floating point, no less!

Itanium comment

[jmichaelg (148257)]

You might want to watch this talk [stanford.edu] Bob Colwell gave at Stanford. Colwell was one of the Pentium architects. It's clear from the talk
- that Itanium was having problems early on and
- it wasn't an internal secret and
- there were groups within Intel that were pushing for other architectures and
- legacy support can bog alternative projects down and
- Blue Crystals (marketing) can drive a company into making the wrong technological choices.

It's an interesting video, well worth watching for the insight Colwell displayed.

Re:I Disagree

[warrior (15708)]

Here are the top fp results from www.spec.org, showing the best Power5 system, best Itanium 2 system, and best Opteron system. All are single-core chips. The Itanium 2 beats the Opteron by a huge margin. The columns after the system name are the max/sustained fp results. There's an even faster dual-core I2 (with an "elegant" dual-core design) on the way, and it has some crazy power-management system on it that enables it to use less power than the current single-core I2. The Itanium 2 is wildly successful in the HPC segment, a niche product nonetheless.

IBM Corporation IBM eServer p5 595 (1900 MHz, 1 CPU) 2796 2585 1 core, 1 chip, 1 core/chip (SMT off) Feb-2005 HTML PDF PS Text Config

Hewlett-Packard Company HP Integrity rx4640-8 (1.6GHz/9MB Itanium 2) 2712 2712 1 core, 1 chip, 1 core/chip Nov-2004 HTML PDF PS

Fujitsu Siemens Computers CELSIUS V810, Opteron (TM) 252, Linux 64-bit 2045 1867 1 core, 1 chip, 1 core/chip Mar-2005 HTML PDF PS

Better Review Over At...

[rimu guy (665008)]

The best comparison of the dual core reviews I've read is over at the great anandtech [anandtech.com] site.

AMD's push with dual core into the server markets half a year before Intel's dual core Xeon arrives is going to tempt a lot of IT departments out there.

On the desktop side, we are extremely excited about the Athlon 64 X2. The 4400+ that we compared here today had no problem competing with and outperforming Intel's fastest dual core CPUs in most cases

The real problem is that AMD has nothing cheaper than $530 that is available in dual core, and this is where Intel wins out. With dual core Pentium D CPUs starting at $241, Intel will be able to bring extremely solid multitasking performance to much lower price points than AMD will. And from what we've seen, it looks like that price advantage will continue for quite some time. It all boils down to economics, and in the sense of manufacturing capacity, Intel has AMD beat - thus allowing for much more aggressively priced volume dual core solutions.

Conclusion: AMD have better chips. But they don't have the manufacturing capacity to bring them out in volume. So they focus on their higher margin chips. Meanwhile Intel keeps from losing face by selling at the volume, lower-priced end of the market. At least until AMD get some new fab plants up and running.

--
VPS Hosting on Dual Xeon Hardware - but just for the time being :) [rimuhosting.com]

Re:Better Review Over At...

[Beatbyte (163694)]

So what you're saying is, ignoring the cpu vendor, you are paying more for more speed? isn't that the way its supposed to be?

AMD is faster and more expensive.
Intel is slower and cheaper.

Am I right?

Re:Better Review Over At...

[MindStalker (22827)]

Not nessesarly, Intels Xeon chips are still more expensive. Really in all cases but this one the opposite is true. It is funny though how history has switch the twos position. Luckly prices are now based upon supply/demand and not the monopoly pricing that intel had at one time.

Re:Better Review Over At...

[Ubergrendle (531719)]

I find this all very amusing actually, since until recently AMD ruled the desktop/home PC market based on price/performance, whereas Intel maintained its market share because they were so datacentre friendly. When I'm buying racks of enterprise 2, 4, and 8-way x86/x64 processors, a price difference for $100 per CPU is a small component of the overall cost, and frequently is worth the up front capital cost for a 10-20% performance boost.

What I'm seeing is AMD is going to begin kicking ass in the enterprise space for enterprise rack servers and blade configurations, a traditional domain where Intel has ruled. And as for dual-core on the desktop, I don't think the market is really there for that level of performance yet... not many desktop apps can take advantage of those features, just like x64 is just future-proofing your destop for the time being.

So the immediate price difference between AMD and Intel offering doesn't tell the whole story. Intel is going to get hit where it hurts the most -- enterprise markets.

Re:Better Review Over At...

[westlake (615356)]

I find this all very amusing actually, since until recently AMD ruled the desktop/home PC market based on price/performance

You do not rule the home/desktop market when every Dell ships with an Intel CPU.

you need vendors

[flaming-opus (8186)]

Neither consumers nor enterprises buy intel or amd. They buy hp or ibm or dell or gateway. Sun has come out strong for AMD, HP put them on the list. The fact of the matter is that the performance differences are small enough that it doesn't really matter. People are still willing to pay big bucks for SPARC processors, and they are complete dogs compared to either intel or amd kit. It's the entire system, the level of support, the performance of peripherals and storage that matters to most buyers.

IBM has one product that uses opteron, dell hasn't started selling one yet. Before opteron can really take off, I think one of those guys needs to turn around on the issue. These guys aren't going to give up on intel chips because they've been unimpressive for the last couple of years. Intel would have to foul things up in a REALLY BIG way, or keep screwing up for five or six years before many enterprises would change direction.

As for dual cores, AMD was quite wise to release a server product before the consumer product. I already know that multiple CPUs work well for my server. I'm not really sure what I'd do with them on my desktop.

Re:Better Review Over At...

[Anarke_Incarnate (733529)]

please post your experience with anything CURRENT in that arena. AMD has opterons at circa 30W. Show me a Xeon that does this. Your data is old, your argument is weak.

Hack! And not the good kind...

[egregious (16118)]

I had a root cannal done yesterday, so it might be the Percocet talking:

This article is total hackery. Any two comments will have better background and more insight than TFA.

It's just a "AMD is better!" article that mentions dual core CPUs for some reason. No context, no information.

Re:Hack! And not the good kind...

[cbreaker (561297)]

It ain't your medication - I felt the same way.

The guy says "I think" and "I feel as though" too many times for me to take it any more serious then a forum or Slashdot post.

It's some dude that thinks he can be an online "journalist" by posting garbage like that on a web site.

Silly?

[Marthisdil (606679)]

as AMD is making you look pretty silly right now.

Yeah - but the thing is - is the performance worth twice the price? Being that's the only way you can go with AMD right now - paying twice as much (if not more) for their dual core chips compared to Intels.

Funny that.

Ah the usual /. overstatement

[Timesprout (579035)]

Massive, multi billion dollar corporation suffers small setback and so doom is imminent.

Intel will only be in trouble when Dell, HP, Fujitsu and every other major manufacturer drop them in favour of AMD. Until that happens its business as normal.

Re:Ah the usual /. overstatement

[Bedouin X (254404)]

Exactly. I'm a huge AMD supporter but all you have to do is look at last quarter's financial reports to see the bottom line here. The Athlon 64s have pretty much been kicking Intel's ass all over the place in the applications that most people use for the past couple of years and they still make a small fraction of what Intel makes.

I would agree with other posters that right now AMDs largest issues are capacity and marketing (people need to ask for AMD) as the technology is there.

Intel 0-2

[0x461FAB0BD7D2 (812236)]

It lost out in 64-bit acceptance and dual-core, so it seems. But apart from tech-aficionados, the world is 32-bit x86, which is Intel's domain.

What does that mean for the future? Absolutely nothing. Until and unless the world switches to 64-bit or dual-core computing in droves, Intel still has time to catch up where it matters.

IBM is playing it smart, however. It's investing in consumer electronics with the Cell. That is growing faster than the desktop or server market.

Even if AMD is beating Intel, it has nothing in the consumer electronics domain.

Democratization of tech

[G4from128k (686170)]

IBM is playing it smart, however. It's investing in consumer electronics with the Cell. That is growing faster than the desktop or server market.

The mainframe makers had their lunch eaten by the minicomputer makers. The minicomputer makers had their lunch eaten by the PC makers. Now the PC makers are going to see their lunch eaten by the consumer electronic makers. Everytime someone comes up with a way to find more customers (on the low-end), they create tech that eventually supplants the tech of the

Intel hasn't lost until Dell sells AMD

[Mustang Matt (133426)]

I seriously consider that one of the biggest factors in this so called CPU "war".

The other thing is volume. I believe one of the reasons AMD is able to create superior processors is because they don't crank out nearly the volume that intel does.

If they did it would take them longer and cost more to upgrade the fabs each generation.

Top Down vs. Bottom Up (no it's not dirty)

[fbody98 (881072)]

Intel and AMD's approach to the dual Core (and to chip production in general since the A64) producion has one fundamental difference that will shape their incomes and profit margins.

AMD produces their chips Top down, they introduce dual core in the professional space first. In this case the 8xx series, then 2xx then finally 1xx and the desktop space. This allows them to take advantage of the increased profit margins and lower volume of the professional space. While their chip producion is ramping up they don't have to worry about demand outstripping supply. Thus they maximize their profit on their smaller fabrication abilities. The con to this is market penetration is smaller and validation "should" take longer.

Intel OTOH goes bottom up (and don't get me started on whether the pentium D is really dual core) producing first their desktop chips, and then when they're properly validated and their market presence and fab capabilities have been fully leveraged, then they move the chips into the professional realm, this allows the to maximize their profits as a fab that caters to volume.

Declaring a winner at this point is silly, as neither one has actually completed their cycle let alone vanquished the other.

The power of marketing

[FeetOfStinky (669511)]

The only competing factor that Intel has right now is the possibility to keep their prices low enough to attract those with strict budget...

I disagree, and I say that as someone who hasn't built an Intel machine in years. There are a lot of regular Joe consumers out there who are barely even familiar with AMD, primarily due to Intel's aggressive marketing (ding-ding-ding-DONG) and their partner relationship with major manufacturers (cf. Dell).

Good marketing will keep inferior products afloat for quite some time.

Only an opinion piece - don't bother reading

[inflex (123318)]

What a waste of 5 minutes of my life and a few hundered K of downloads :-\

Turns out this was nothing more than an extended opinon piece (yes, yes, I know that's perfectly fine) but I was looking for something with some hard-core comparisons, especially since they started out saying "we'll just compare the desktop scenario to keep matters simpler" --- *click to next page* Aw what!? nothing!

Sounds like someone was just after some slashdot publicity.

Did I miss the proof?

[dreemernj (859414)]

Am I missing where they actually include some information about the benchmarks? I suppose what he says could be common knowledge that doesn't require proof and I am just out of the loop, but it's still good to post something like proof.

If this is true it would make some sense. I get to use an AMD64 at home and a similar P4 at work on computers with similar specs and I enjoy the AMD's performance a lot more.

This whole thing sounds familiar though...

I seem to remember when Prefetching was hitting the adverts, and AMD was doing some hefty investing in those prefetching adverts just to have Intel turn around and produce more powerful prefetching technology. I guess it can go both ways.

Even worse -- AMD can't buy Intel's dual cores

[IronChefMorimoto (691038)]

The Inquirer points to an Info Week blog via Silicon Investor that basically says that AMD can't even purchase dual core Intel CPUs to benchmark them against its own offerings -- they're not available for sale anywhere:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23018 [theinquirer.net]

I agree that the costs of the AMDs are exorbitant right now as they migrate their production, but if and when they get their fabs worked out, prices could really drop and even things up on that level.

I guess the real concern, though, and some have already noted it -- so what? Until I see an AMD dual core CPU option on Dell.com's various stores, Intel isn't going to be hurtin'.

IronChefMorimoto

Yonah

[crudeawakening (867472)]

Intel still has the dual-core laptop chip (Yonah) coming out in the first half of 2006. This is the chip I am interested in. This chip is based on their Pentium M "Dothan" chip that I currently am running. The Dothan chip is quite impressive, I can run it at 1.8 GHz with only 1.068 V and 600 MHz at only 0.700 V. So a dual core chip based on this architecture might not be a heat monster at all. Wait and see on this one. As for one or the other "winning" the dual-core war, that's pretty lame an assesment considering neither company has even shipped more than a handful of these chips. As far as I can tell, the AMD chips perform a bit better but you pay more. If I had to buy one, I'd probably go with the Intel 2.8 GHz chip because its less than half the price of AMD's cheapest dual.

It is all about the Memory!

[mprinkey (1434)]

Dual Xeon systems (even with DDR2 RAM) cannot supply enough memory bandwidth to keep both CPUs running. We are lucky to get 80% of the single CPU performance when running two instances of a scientific app on two CPUs. Adding more cores just makes the situation far worse as now four CPUs will be competing for that same memory path.

Opterons are way ahead here with their built-in memory controller and dedicated memory banks for each CPU. Intel's SMP folks really need to pull a rabbit out of their hat and right quick. The last cluster (256 CPUs) I built used dual Xeons because they were still slightly faster on our applications over similarly priced Opterons in spite of the degraded SMP performance. Next time around, I doubt that will be the case.

Re:It is all about the memory...controller

[mprinkey (1434)]

I thought that AMD had just "scooped" Intel with the on-board memory controller and that they would scramble to follow suit by integrating all or most of the north bridge into the CPU. This just seems like the right thing to do. But, the Opteron has been out long enough now that the idea should have worked its way through the Intel development cycle. Now it seems like Intel is purposefully avoiding this route, not unlike SOI. Maybe for similar IP reasons. Either that, or it is a manifestation of the same Not-Invented-Here arrogance that kept them pushing Itanium and dragging their feet on x86-64.

Intel is going to start losing across the board very soon. Maybe in the next 12 months. At some point, Dell will have to jump ship to AMD in the server market at least. Xeon systems just cannot compete on performance, and Itaniums cannout compete on price.

I am a bit of an Intel fan. The deep pipelines in the P4 actually suit a lot of the code we run. Unlike common experience, our performance jump from P3 -> P4 was significantly BIGGER than proportianal to MHz. That 3-year old performance boost is still there in the Xeon, but the Opteron is closing very fast. I really hope that Intel roles out a Xeon rev with a on-board memory controller or at least builds a northbridge with two memory controllers and two memory banks...it doesn't take a PhD in Computer Engineering to see they are trying to push the Mississippi through a garden hose.

Article Summary

[TripMaster Monkey (862126)]

From TFA:

Personally, I think Intel has pretty much lost control of the enthusiast segment.

This nicely sums up the entire article...a two page personal opinion, berift of any real facts, statistics, or figures.

This 'story' was pointless.

Prescott

[Ford Prefect (8777)]

Please make sure your next generation of processors aren't as atrocious as the Prescott, as AMD is making you look pretty silly right now.'

I still haven't figured out why anyone would want to name a processor after John Prescott [google.co.uk], British Deputy PM and Eater of Pies.

What's next? The Intel Widdecombe [google.co.uk]? The mind boggles.

Re:Prescott

[nagora (177841)]

I still haven't figured out why anyone would want to name a processor after John Prescott, British Deputy PM and Eater of Pies.

Because it packs a punch but is rather slow.

TWW

Why are we reading somebody's rant?

[divisionbyzero (300681)]

There is no news in this article, just a splashy title. Intel will eventual build something based on the Pentium M. The Pentium M is much more efficient and will be more so in the future. The next generation of dual core Pentium Ms will be an interesting challenge for AMD. I still think AMD will win, but the war is far from over.

Second chance

[dtfinch (661405)]

They just need to jump a few steps ahead. Say, 4-8 cores, but unbalanced in order to optimize performance/price. Have one very good core intended for dealing with single-threaded workloads, with the rest of the cores being as stripped down as possible while still supporting the same instruction set.

Suprise!? No.

[bradleyland (798918)]

This is no suprise. The Athlon64 on its own is generally a better performing processor than Intel's offerings. Also, its oft-touted on-die memory controller means the chip was "designed from the outset" as dual-core friendly. AMD's marketing department is apparently shoving this down every reviewer's throat.

What's making Intel look silly is not the fact that dual-core Athlons outperform dual-core Intels, but the fact that AMD has out planned Intel in the somewhat long term. Intel's short term goal of chasing GHz into oblivion is biting them in the posterior.

None of it amounts to much if AMD can't gain ground on Intel in the market. Call me when AMD's market share moves by more than 0.1% per quarter [itfacts.biz].

This is Way

[vcbumg2 (592292)]

The reason that the AMD chip is so much higher is that it is harder to make and THAT much technically better that the Intel processor.

AMD
As many of you know AMD has decided to toss the old memory access system and access main memory directly from the processor.
This allows AMD to have a true dual core chip sharing memory resources with on chip Core-to-Core communication.
The real benefit is the direct memory access and on chip core-to-core communication.

Intel
The Intel dual core chip is as big of a marketing trick as hyper threading. Intel took to generic P4 processors ground off the edges and placed
them on a single die. I am not making this up!! this means that any communication processor to processor has to actual touch the system bus.
If you know anything about the way processors work you know memory management for SMP machines is not easy, but imagine trying to manage
a shared cache and shared main memory when the only core-to-core communication has to hit the system bus!

AMD did something very right but needs to bring the price down to ever get any reward.
Before anyone gets in a war about AMD kicking Intel down just recall the Intel marketing budget is more that the entire operation capitol of AMD.

Codeman

Two-Faced Market

[eander315 (448340)]

While the article is mostly pointless, I do find it funny that, with the exception of the enthusiast market, pretty much everyone has and continues to buy Intel chips no matter what the price/performance ratio beacuse the little sticker says "Intel Inside". Now that AMD has turned the tables and often has the faster chips and tries to charge a premium for them, everyone cries foul. Where have you people been the last 20 years?

Bored with hardware?

[nighty5 (615965)]

I remember when was I was in my teens (15 years ago) I used to love reading about the latest hardware advances.

These days you'd find me hard pressed to get excited about anything hardware related. I have a fast system with lots of ram and a decent GPU, and thats all folks.

Much prefer to pay a raging teen money to build the damn thing for me.

Do people find themselves as they get older more interested in software design, algorithms, and licensing debates?

Hardware just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Intel Ok, AMD Ok, Everybody Can Win

[blueZhift (652272)]

I don't think it's time to bury Intel yet, or AMD for that matter. If I've learned anything over the last many years, the better technical product doesn't always go on to dominate the market. But I would say that market domination is not necessarily needed to make a nice profit. AMD is making better performing chips than Intel right now, and with the dual core chips they should be making a nice profit with premium pricing. The market for such chips is currently limited to tech enthusiasts (such as PC gamers) and those with specialized computational needs. That's okay because with the right pricing that could be a very profitable niche. Apple is doing pretty well right now without being anywhere near dominant in the personal computer market due to a fiercely loyal user base, premium pricing, and some genuinely cool products. Apple is not the biggest, but they are profitable. AMD can do likewise.

Intel of course has nothing to worry about. They have the volume customers through deals with Dell, HP, and others. And they are picking up the low end of the market for dual core chips. These are not as good performance-wise as the AMD chips, but the lower cost is appealing to a more budget minded market. And with economies of scale, Intel certainly makes a nice profit. So it is unlikely they'll be shutting their doors anytime soon.

Everybody can win here. AMD has the harder job for now because their survival depends on continuing to produce better chips and growing their niche of customers. But as long as they make a profit, they can stay in the game.

Intel has lost a little bit

[WhiteWolf666 (145211)]

AMD leads in technology. And they have for some time.

Intel maintains market dominance, high-level industry connections, a huge advertising behemoth, and a vast amount of resources.

There is no possibl scenario for AMD to 'remove' Intel from the market. No company of that size can be defeated quickly, unless from within (corruption).

Intel isn't going anywhere, they've got the resources to play for a long time.
AMD isn't going anywhere, they've got the brain power to stay ahead, and they've proven over the last few years that they ready to push the envelope as many times as needed. They are no longer a 'one-hit-wonder'.

Competition is good, folks. Both companies work harder because of the current situation, and its a good thing that they hate each other.

Re:Lost? Yeah right.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Dell has approximately 18% of the market (largest single group). What other manufacturers do is of relevance. HP is at just under 16%, which is pretty close.

Unbranded OEM PCs are still the largest group of manufacturers, accounting for around 40% of the global market.

Re:Any dual core vs dual cpu benchmarks?

[mauriceh (3721)]

In the case of the AMD Opteron dual cores?

Pretty simple: Slightly better than two single cores, mainly due to the fact that the Opterons are close coupled, and teh CPU cores commun icate directly in the package over a Hypertransport channel.

In the case of the Intel dual cores?

They have no direct communication, no HT bus, and all messages and RAM access has go to the northbridge chip and face a FIFO queue to memory.

In the case of thermal/power performance?
At similar performance the AMDs are using about 60% the power, and making corresdpondingly less heat than the Intels.

Despite what the "Intel fanboys" are saying, Intel HAS lost this war at the first battle.

And Dell will keep selling Intel, for a while.
Until it start to hurt the bottom line.

In the meantime, the changes are already happening.
SuperMicro, who NEVER build boards for anything but Intel CPUs, are now selling a dual Opteron board.

The Emperor really does have no clothes!