The Dual-Core War - Is Intel in Trouble? 411
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
And Furthermore... (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:And Furthermore... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wars aren't won or lost on the first shot. Wars go on for a long time.
Do you remember Cyrix? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Do you remember Cyrix? (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Do you remember Cyrix? (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
We'll know this is true when we find... (Score:3, Interesting)
True story. The early PDP-11/73 chips actually did that. The microcode for the '73 was so efficient that they had heaps of microcode space left, and used it. You could run the world's fastest 68000 or Z80 (by a very wide margin) if you didn't like being a PDP-11. I imagine that a very embarrassed Motorola and Zilog might have had something to do with DEC's prompt removal of the extra microcode from the second and successive batches.
Re:And Furthermore... (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:4, Informative)
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:And Furthermore... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And Furthermore... (Score:2)
In fact, the SECOND PARAGRAPH of the article says:
Although Intel may have won the race-to-the-launch game, they still lurk behind AMD in majority of the performance tests conducted by various media outlets.
Re:And Furthermore... (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is that right now we are just on the cusp of the whole Multi-Core processors 'era.' The fact is for CoolTechZone to say that Intel has already lost is foolish.
First off, Intel has TONS of resources to basically do whatever they want. Why do you think they were able to try forever and a day to make IA64 work and basically fail (or at le
Re:And Furthermore... (Score:3, Informative)
Disagree. AMD has had the lead since it first came out with its athlon XP line. Maybe not in "mindshare" but in terms of actual cost/performance. Athlon XP's totally schooled the P4. I know because thats the time i switched from intel fanboy to amd. After buying a 1.4ghz P4, and then goign to a LAN party and se
Re:And Furthermore... (Score:3, Informative)
"For example, even though Intel introduced 64-bit x86 chips midway through 2005--more than a year after AMD--it outpaced AMD in server shipments in 2004."
http://news.com.com/Intel+highlights+its+next-gen + dual-core+chips/2100-1006_3-5697088.html?tag=nefd. top [com.com]
They had been a bit slow because they willingly did other things (Itanium 2, etc.) but they should be able to squeeze AMD back to its proper size in x86-64 space.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I Disagree (Score:2, Interesting)
In short high risk project. But given Intel has it's back to the wall, maybe they will give one of their design groups a green light to expriment, like they did with Centrino.
If they get this right an Async processor can run quite a bit faster.
Does anyone know if Async processors are expected to use more or less power than equivalent regular processor ?
Re:I Disagree (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I Disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Data that moved from one register into another part of the pipeline operating at a much higher frequency would then eventually have to leave this higher clocked space into the register again. Thus, the high clocked registers would process data much faster than it could be fed, and would spit it out much faster than the rest of the chip registers could acce
Re:I Disagree (Score:2)
However, I believe the GP was referring to 'clockless' CPUs, though I might be wrong.
Re:I Disagree (Score:2)
Re:I Disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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:I Disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got that CPU. I've got supposedly 'similar' intel chips. P4 2.0-2.6 ghz. AMD 2200+, 2000+, 3000+, and a AMD64 3400+.
At any equivalent marking, the AMD is ALWAYS competive.
And in many applications, the AMD wipes the table with Intel.
Not too mention, the price is signifcantly better.
More than likely, if you aren't trolling, there is some other bottleneck in your laptop. Are you sure its a Athlon 2200+, and not a Semperon, or Duron?
Are you sure that your chipset is of reasonable qual
Re:I Disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
But in each case it was made pretty obvious that the products were hastily designed (if you could call them "designed" at all), and performed poorly compared to the competition.
I think part of this is due to the loss of resources from the hurricane-sucking ia64 mess. Intel is spending far too much on beating the ia64 dead horse, and
Re:I Disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
- 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 (Score:4, Informative)
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... (Score:5, Informative)
The best comparison of the dual core reviews I've read is over at the great anandtech [anandtech.com] site.
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.
-- :) [rimuhosting.com]
VPS Hosting on Dual Xeon Hardware - but just for the time being
Re:Better Review Over At... (Score:2)
Re:Better Review Over At... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Better Review Over At... (Score:3, Insightful)
AMD is faster and more expensive.
Intel is slower and cheaper.
Am I right?
Re:Better Review Over At... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Better Review Over At... (Score:4, Interesting)
Intel failures (Score:2, Insightful)
AMD is faster and cheaper.
Intel is slower and more expensive.
Currently, AMD beats Intel with pure performance in high-end market, AND wins over Intel with cost-performance ratio in other segments.
This is a BIG problem for Intel - they're losing everywhere. Their advantage is starting to erode in all three segments: market, technology, and mindshare. Their past failures are now cursing them back.
- Decision to go with clock-based marketing
- Failure to keep clockspeed up due to heat problem
- Seve
Re:Better Review Over At... (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
You do not rule the home/desktop market when every Dell ships with an Intel CPU.
you need vendors (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:3, Informative)
Hack! And not the good kind... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Silly? (Score:2, Insightful)
The 4000+ just dropped in price, presumably in anticipation of pricing the dual cores above that. That they offer single threaded performance that isn't too much further below the
Re:Silly? (Score:2)
Re:Silly? (Score:2, Insightful)
With AMD, if you are currently running a 939 mobo all you need to do is a firmware update when you buy the new chip.
Ah the usual /. overstatement (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
From what I hear, Dell has a sweet deal with Intel to *only* sell Intel and AMD hasn't or can't match the deal in a way to make it more profitable for Dell. Dell is about the sum(cheaper, better, faster). AMD will have to ante up to knock Intel down, but then Intel has billions of dollars that AMD doesn't. If the weaker of the parties starts a war of attrition, the weaker party will die first.
I mean come on. At this point, AMD is pr
Re:Ah the usual /. overstatement (Score:2)
No, they can probably do that already. What AMD really need to do is invest a gazillion dollars in Fab capacity so they can compete on volume and quality with Intel, then then market will come to them. Its the lack of a gazillion dollars and investor scepticism regarding AMDs ability to mass produce high yield chips thats holding them back.
Re:Ah the usual /. overstatement (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ah the usual /. overstatement (Score:2)
Intel 0-2 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Intel 0-2 (Score:2)
Democratization of tech (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Democratization of tech (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to believe that too, but nearly 25 years after the introduction of the PC, mainframes continue to sell.
It may be true for chip makers that the winner will be the one who can produce a processor that works over the widest range of applications, but at the system level you can't i
Or Intel 2-0? (Score:2)
Intel is also ahead technologically, with their mobile Pentium-M line having lower power use and higher IPC than AMD's Athlon 64 line, while running at slightly lower clockspeeds. Even the lower clock speeds may be due more to the desire to keep power low for notebooks than the abilities
Lost? Yeah right. (Score:2, Interesting)
Intel may have the poorer performing product but they will still win where it counts: profit.
Re:Lost? Yeah right. (Score:4, Informative)
Unbranded OEM PCs are still the largest group of manufacturers, accounting for around 40% of the global market.
Intel hasn't lost until Dell sells AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Intel hasn't lost until Dell sells AMD (Score:2)
True that! But because Dell sells Red Hat Linux (or Wal-mart sells Linspire) doesn't mean Microsoft lost either.
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.
Have you lost your mind?
If they did it would take them longer and cost more to upgrade the fabs each generation.
But if AMD had Intel's volume, they would also have additional revenues to retool.
As for "take longer/
Top Down vs. Bottom Up (no it's not dirty) (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The power of marketing (Score:3, Funny)
Only an opinion piece - don't bother reading (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Any dual core vs dual cpu benchmarks? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone?
Re:Any dual core vs dual cpu benchmarks? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Dual core with Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
I see 2.6.12rc3 has "full support", but what does that mean to me?
Re:Dual core with Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
You now have your answer.
Even worse -- AMD can't buy Intel's dual cores (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
It is all about the Memory! (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:3, Funny)
Because it packs a punch but is rather slow.
TWW
Why are we reading somebody's rant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second chance (Score:4, Interesting)
Suprise!? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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
CoolTechZone (Score:2, Insightful)
It amazes me how little people appreciate about business in the IT world.
Who wins when everyone agrees Beta was a technically better format, but only sell VHS?
Branding works, and Intel has that on their side for a little bit longer. They would have to lose several of these battles before they start to lose their branding advantage. And just because you think Prescott is atrocious, if it performs better than previous Intel chips,
Two-Faced Market (Score:3, Insightful)
TFA... (Score:3, Insightful)
However, he is of course correct - but it's a useless read without any references.
Bored with hardware? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bored with hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
[1]
When I was in my teens, I had more time and less money. That made it worth the effort to keep up to the minute on hardware and to tweak and overclock things as much as I could. I also had other people giving me their old hardware (or at least, hardware that was old to them), so I had lots of spare parts lying around.
Now, if I need a newer system, I can go out and buy it. It's more economical to me that way than to devote a week to assembling and tweaking a system to the Nth degree
Intel Ok, AMD Ok, Everybody Can Win (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I say this all the time, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, AMD's current domination has been in no small part in my mind because of the rock-solid stability of the NForce chipsets. The Pentium's early stability can be at
Dual Core performance comparisons? (Score:2)
Does anyone have any insight into the landscape of the emerging dual core market space - who is ahead and who is not (besides Intel)?
War? (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel has lost a little bit (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Brand Equity (Score:3, Interesting)
The Battle is not based on Dual Core alone. (Score:3, Interesting)
AMD, Cyrix, Via and others have had processors that were as good is Intel's for a few years, but Intel has beat them severely with the advertising. I, for one, do not believe that AMD, Cyrix, or VIA have a process to make a lower cost processor than Intel's process, yet AMD has always had lower cost. Now that AMD has started having processors with some technical superiority (and lower cost) the engineers are beginning to have more influence on managers and customers to convince them that suppliers other than Intel may be a better choice, and "Intel Inside" is a bygone logo.
Intel is at the point where their lead in microprocessors for PC's may be eroding, and "Intel Inside" is no longer a good enough reason for buying their parts.
Intel may be down, but don't even think about counting them out,(that's a boxing term for non USA people). The company makes a lot more components than just processors.
This dates back to several years ago (Score:3, Informative)
Assuming this is correct (memories are sometimes wrong), then what's happening now only makes sense. It might be something for people to point at when taking on the outsourcing/cost cutting fans.
Re:Troll.. (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it's a troll story. But saying that AMD's pricing for their dual core chips is "outrageous" just exposes your own biases. Because the only AMD dual core chips available at the moment are Opterons. Which are server chips. Which are always more expensive than desktop chips.
So please explain how, when a dual core Opteron is c
Re:Troll.. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx ? i=2397&p=3
Compare:
2x Opteron 248 (@2.2GHz) => $910
1x Opteron 175 (@2.2GHz, dual core) => $999
AMD's margins on their dual core Opteron parts are huge. On average, the second core costs customers over 3x as much as the first core for any of these CPUs. As you will soon see, the performance benefits are definitely worth it, but know that AMD's pricing is not exactly designed to drive dual core into wide
No, it is the GHz (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, I have serious doubts about the competence of any re
Re:Intel is winning easily... ? (Score:3)
Re:Intel is winning easily... ? (Score:3)
Conjecture on your part. Nowhere in that article is there a refernce made to Intels market share in comparision and further, it does not break down the markets, as my links do. I also provided you with links that show AMD's margins rising, as I noted and even your link states and Intel's margins lowering, meaning that most likely AMD is forcing Intel to play their game, not the other way around.
I never argued that Intel is making more money than AMD, onl
Re:Benchmarks are meaningless (Score:3, Funny)
For those who don't know, a heavy floating point is just like an IEEE floating-point but with the sign bit replaced by a deuterium atom.