Or, you know, maybe the headline should read: "AMD looking to ship 32nm chips
behind Intel. Rather than staying one step ahead of its
fiercest rival, it sounds like Advanced Micro Devices is perfectly content with being a few months behind. Based on words from CEO Dirk Meyer, the company is hoping to "ramp up" production of 32 nanometer processors -- which Intel has
already demonstrated -- in the middle of next year, with volume production hopefully starting in Q4. Of course, these chips will be among the first not actually built by AMD; instead, they'll be fabricated by the newly spun
Foundry Company, so we suppose the lag is little easier to understand. Oh, and there's also the fact that "AMD isn't in a race with Intel on all technologies," though the business bone inside of us thinks it should be.
posted Feb 28th 2009 11:57AM
AMD needs to get back in the race, otherwise intel will steal our money and not the economy
lets make a vote - Intel larrabee vs AMD Fusion - predictions on which is faster/better
I predictably predict that Intel will do well on the processor side of Larabee and blow with the GPU side of it. AMD for best all round performance and (even more predictably) pricing. Let us not forget nVidia who I predict would do well with the (GP)GPU side of things but not so well on overall processing.
I also predict that at least some of my predictions will be predictably correct... I predictably hope.
(p.s. just be glad I didn't start speculating)
Well, i would be tempted to say fusion - it's likely that AMD will make use of ATI to get the graphics performance. Processor use - in real life terms - won't be much of a difference. Pitting the latest AMD chips against the latest Intel chips (even i7) and unless you're finicky about a few seconds here and there you won't notice the lag. In gaming this is even less of an issue as all of the current processors are utter rubbish for graphics processing - the load is almost entirely on the card.
For that reason, i'll say AMD. It's the graphics performance that will make the difference here.
However, Intel seem very confident about Larrabee and i wouldn't be surprised if it comes up close - no matter how many cans of "whup-ass" Nvidia unleash.
I just built my Core i7 rig this weekend. Man, I already feel obsolete...
This is my first-ever Intel desktop. My first machine was a K6MMX and I've been a fierce AMD proponent ever since. But this time, I just had to face the facts and acknowledge that AMD was a year behind Intel.
If it can begin shipping meaningful numbers of 32nm chips in early 2010, that will be an improvement of their chip timeline. I figured it would have been late Q4 of 2010, based on their past schedule. This is good, means they won't be a whole year behind Intel, and the Fusion project will be that much closer.
I couldn't care less if AMD were behind on the release date. I just hope that they will make their processors better.
Come on AMD make us proud.
AMD is competitive on every level excluding the super high end desktop segment. The Opterons still scale marginally better than any Intel server chip. The PII surpasses the Q9x00 series and is about as good as a i7 920. They dominate the low end with the old, but still efficient K8 chips. The only thing they don't have is the 1000$ EXTREME chip. That segment of the market is negligible anyway. Don't kid yourself, the only thing that AMD has to worry about is their cost per chip/price point ratio, which is higher than Intel.
No, one MAJOR market they don't have is the 300$ gamer market. They have absolutely nothing on a Q9450 or Q6600 that easily OCs to 3.6GHz and above, obliterating anything AMD has to offer, as well as Intel's 1000$ chips. At 3.6GHz these few Intel chips DOMINATE the Price/Performance ratio. The i7 920 is technically in this category, but an OCable board for the i7 is 300$ too.
Maybe before the Phenom II chips, but now they're more than competitive in that sector. You can get a X3 720 or X4 940 that will easily overclock to 4.0ghz and beat a Q6600 across the board and any Q series chip in almost any benchmark, especially gaming benchmarks. The PII series was AMDs mark in regaining territory in that sector. Maybe you're just not up on the market.
My Q6600@3.4GHz destroys any Phenom out there in Games and benchmarks
Ahem, I need to redefine Overclock. I mean stable for AT LEAST 3 days running 64bit LinPack continuously. If you say a Phenom II @ 4GHz will pass the above test, you are plain bullshitting. I've got my Q9450 stable at 3.52GHz (due to lack of Northbridge cooling) with the above test. The machine should be considered stable for ANY kind of work, whether its gaming, encoding, folding or whatever.
Half the people's so called stable OCs will instantly fail a 64bit LinPack, even if they've Primed for 1 month stably.
Some of us don't give a flying fuck if it's stable for that long. If it works with no issues in a prolonged gaming session, it's good enough for me. If it doesn't randomly bsod when rendering a video in premiere or after effects, it's good enough for me.
my qx9770 obliterates any AMD in its path at 4.2GHz (with liquid cooling)
Well, at the moment I think that AMD is doing well in the budget range. I just bought a Phenom X3 8650 and motherboard for only £100! Its almost as good as an e8200 which costs about £120 for the CPU alone with the cheapest Motherboard another £30. I am not a heavy gamer and I don't need a fast computer for design/programming. The most intensive thing I will ever do is convert videos - and £50 (at the least) is not worth it for a few seconds saved on converting a video.
I am rooting for AMD, but man it looks tough. The good thing going for them right now is that software development has significantly lagged hardware development, and so most average people are content with nearly ANY decent processor at this point. A Phenom II processor is a great budget/mainstream CPU for desktops.. The real problem for them with this segment is the lack of an efficient K10 laptop CPU. Worse, Intel is pushing up the launch of the 32nm dual-core Nehalems for laptops and desktops. These chips will cut the bottom out of Phenom and whatever their notebook chip is/will be.
On the server front, although the 4-core Shanghai does compete very well with the Core-based Xeons, particularly in 4+ socket servers, the reality is that the dual-socket Nehalem-EP coming out in a month is going to pound it. Near the end of the year the release of the 6-core Opteron will certainly help but by then Intel's monsterous 8-core Nehalem-EX for 4+ socket servers will absolutely obliterate the opteron.
They will release it after because they always wait for Intel to then steal their technology which costs over 7 billion $ If you look back you see that AMD has copied nearly every technology that Intel ever released but than crappier and a different name. Oh and fan boys don't forget to mark me down
It's true that AMDs first processor was an exact copy of intels at the time, but it recent times you will see that the Core i7 architecture is almost identical to AMDs
The first AMD chip was built under license from Intel, AMD's founders used to work for intel.
However their Athlons have always differed to Intels P3 + P4s. In fact the Athlon XP was much better than the competeing P4.
With the launch fo the Athlon 64 AMD left Intel for dead from the first version of the Athlon 64 right through to the Athlon 64 X2.
At the time the slowest Athlon 64 X2 you could buy was faster than Intels Pentium D extreme edition.
The Core i7 chips totally rip off AMDs intergrated memory controller and serial interconnect (instead of an FSB)
So the question is are you just dumb or trying to start a flame war ?
Copying technology from intel? Like AMD64?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64
Shame on you AMD!
This kind of reminds me of this quote, when AMD was shipping their Shanghai processors:
"i reckon shanghai will drop out of the sky and land in the middle of the x86 highway, lie there for a second feeling like it was rushed to the market a bit quickly, then pick itself up and and look around just in time to get a split-second glimpse of a truck of nehalem traveling at 120mph hitting it right in the face."
Yep, and its going to happen again when their Istanbul 6-core part comes out at the end of the year. The Quad-socket capable Istanbul will hardly beat a 2-socket quad-core Nehalem, but it will keep them competitive because Intel's 4-socket platform is crap. But only a few months (or less) after it is released -- **BAM** -- quad-socket octocore Nehalem with 4x memory channels and 4x Quickpath.
I can't bare to watch...
In terms of bang for buck, AMD has and will always surpass Intel by a significant amount, I don't care if their processors get released 6 months or so later, they're always cheaper and often more innovative (they did release the first true quad-core processor). Every generation of AMD processors has delivered outstanding performance at a low price, I agree with Andrew that who cares about the super high end stuff that costs over $500 nobody needs to waste their money on that. I've been an AMD fan since the first K7s and I will continue to support them no matter what, with the current financial situation they're in, they need our support more than ever. I hope the creation of Foundry Co. turns out to be a successful move. AMD Pride! :P
"AMD looking to ship 32nm chips behind Intel. Rather than staying one step ahead of its fiercest rival, it sounds like Advanced Micro Devices is perfectly content with being a few months behind. Based on words from CEO Dirk Meyer, the company is hoping to "
is a very long title.
I'm amazed you realized that. I had to read it twice to see what you were getting at.
Grammar Nazis, unite!
another thing people forget is the all important motherboard. Most intel x58 motherboards cost about $300, almost the same price as an intel processor, making the complete package cost quite a bit over what you could get from amd etc. AMD still needs to pickup the slack if they want gamers to use their chips tho, q6600's and x38/48 are still cheaper to grab and give amazing performance.
A few MONTHS behind?! Oh, God! Why AMD? WHY?!
Is this the light at the end of the tunnel, I pray to god it is.
Here is a bit of advice; the enemy of my enemy is my friend. (nVidia)
you guys have ATI, let do someting in the netbook market and mediaPC market (think low profile or mini)
One of my desktop pc is running a 65nm 45w CPU thats simple the best.
AMD is not just a few months behind Intel if they're looking to release in Q4. That's more like a full year behind.
I think big problem for AMD would be when Nehalem EP releases. It will obliterate shangai and even beat 4-socket platform of AMD in certain benchmarks. 2-socket servers are high volume/high margin business.
Other segment AMD is ignoring is mobile which is flabbergasting. I wish AMD could release 25W processor at 2.5ghz.
Being competitive with phenom II is good but that is low margin segment. Their highest price cpu is $224 which is just not good enough.
I love AMD processors they are so much faster than Intel ones