[obm @ Jan 7th 2006 5:06PM]

Intel p4 series is a bad line, they do sacrifice too much for higher clock speed. It generates heat equivalent to that of a nuclear reactor of same size (this is real, based on dye size), and yet it is no better than a p-m. AMD offers way better cpus for the desktop market.

But (and this is a big one)

Never underestimate pIII. It had a very good architecture but it was abandoned due to lower clock rate. However it can pull much more work per unit time, similar to amd athlon. It is no surprise that centrino (p-m) is a descendant of the p-III series not p4. AMD is still to work on cpu's with better power save functions to enter the mobile market. Intel does see the future on this, and they already dominate the super-computer and server market (not due to a "superior technology" but clever funding and marketing, for example you can get huge financial support for buying/creating an intel based scientific supercomputer). AMD is also trying to establish a strong presence in mobile market, but due to huge branding campaigns intel performed, it will be a hard process.

Remember, Apple will be gradually passing to intel begging this year. The cpu they will use is again a descendant of P-III, with a security "enhancement" in order to run "apple-only" programs. The reason they ditched IBM power-pc's is most probably marketing reasons, maybe smt related to cell. But this new cpu of intel's does provide more performance than dual core g5 in many applications. (based on development version of tiger)