XPC Forum

May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini said his chips' speed will outpace Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s even after the company introduces new models.

``I expect us to have microprocessor performance leadership,'' Otellini said at Intel's annual meeting today in Santa Clara, California. Intel's lead will be ``substantial'' in chips for desktop parts, he said.
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Intel had 74 percent at the end of the fourth quarter, the lowest level in about 11 years. Otellini and Chairman Craig Barrett said Intel will prevent Advanced Micro from gaining back sales, and will keep adding designs and manufacturing techniques.

Intel is still following the dictum of co-founder Andy Grove that ``only the paranoid survive,'' Barrett said.

``There is still ample paranoia at Intel,'' he said. ``Dr. Grove lives on with his doctrine.''

A relentless arguer, Perlmutter has long questioned the Intel orthodoxy that speed is the best benchmark for measuring a chip's value. This has worked out well for his employer. Four years ago Intel's speedy Pentium processors were running out of gas. Intel couldn't push their design much further without sucking up too much power and generating too much heat. Computers and laptops seemed to be getting hot enough to double as hibachis--and Intel's business was getting cooked by rival Advanced Micro Devices

savantu wrote:Un articol de Ed , prietenii stiu de ce...

http://www.overclockers.com/tips01155/

Să luăm chiar exemplul actual. Majoritatea celor de pe forum recomandă aproape oricui sisteme Intel, iar la întrebarea "de ce să cumpăr un C2D când un X2 cu performanţe egale costă mai puţin?" li se răspunde "da, dar C2D se overclockează mai bine!".

Nu inteleg de unde concluzia aceasta ca un X2 are performante egale la aceleasi costuri.

As if the latest Athlon 64 X2 CPUs weren't energy-efficient enough, AMD plans to release 45-watt versions for these CPUs. One of the reasons behind this move is that AMD intends to reposition the entire Athlon 64 X2 CPU family towards entry level users, immediately after the upcoming Phenom processors are released. In addition, the new energy-efficient lineup of Athlon 64 X2 CPUs won't be figuring any performance rating in the official denomination. Thus, AMD is readying the Athlon 64 X2 BE-2000-series.
AMD claims that it has already begun sampling the upcoming Athlon 64 X2 BE-2000-series and these should remain based on AMD’s 65nm Brisbane-core. As far as energy is concerned, the 45-watt TDP ratings will make the Athlon BE-2000-series as efficient as the previous single-core processors. (...)

(...) we further find out that the company schedules new price cuts for its server chips. AMD makes "a strong value proposition against the competition and these new prices will enable (users) to offer (their) clients AMD based server solutions at competitive prices." This being said, Opteron 100/1000 CPUs are expected to be 10 to 50 per cent cheaper by June 4th.

Leslie Sobon - Director, Desktop Business, AMD provided us some updates on Phenom today. According to her, there is no special meaning for G, S and L. G stands for Premium where Phenom X4 will compete against Kentsfield and Phenom X2 will compete against Conroe. S stands for Intermediate while Athlon 64 X2 will compete against the Intel Pentium 2000 series. As such, there will be AMD Phenom X4 GP-7xxx, Phenom X2 GS-6xxx, Athlon X2 LS-2xxx and Sempron LS-1XXX. She mentioned that there will be both Socket 1207+ as well as Socket AM2+ Phenom FX for more platform versatility and the FX series will retain back their model naming eg. AMD Phenom FX-xx.

AMD introduces mainstream dual core X2s with a 45W TDP and that cost less than $100. How does that sound?

Increasing Talk Barcelona Server Chip Will Be Delayed
Last update: 6/5/2007 12:37:38 PM

By Donna Fuscaldo
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Speculation is mounting that Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s (AMD) much awaited Barcelona server chip will be delayed until the fall, which could pressure margins and weigh on its waning competitive position.
On Monday supercomputer maker Cray Inc. (CRAY) issued a revenue warning for the year, citing a delay in the availability of a component, which analysts said is likely the Barcelona server chip. Meanwhile, on Tuesday Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung said in a research report out of Taiwan's Computex Trade show, that "several sources," including server vendors, distributors and motherboard makers, confirmed Barcelona will be delayed to September/October from June/July.
Officials at AMD weren't immediately available to comment.
Barcelona is viewed by many on Wall Street as a saving grace for AMD, which has been pummeled by a fierce price war that's weighed severely on its gross margins. Barcelona is seen as a way for AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., to boost its gross margins and make further inroads into the corporate server market, where it doesn't have that strong of a position.
A delay, even for a few months, could hurt AMD's bruised reputation with corporate customers and open the door for Intel Corp. (INTC) to steal more market share.
"If you look at all the important product introductions AMD has done in the past 12 months, it missed every single one," said Hans Mosesmann, an analyst at Nollenberger Capital Partners, who has a sell rating on AMD. A delay in Barcelona would be a "significant" miss and could push out the financial benefit until 2008, the analyst said.
Mosesmann suspects the bigger problem for AMD isn't a delay in the timing of the chip's roll out, but that the chip may not be up to snuff.
"AMD's graphic processor was delayed a couple of times...and it was significantly below Nvidia's class of product in terms of performance power," said Mosesmann. "Being late is bad. Being late with potentially a lousy product could be a disaster."
In its research report Tuesday, Citigroup's Yeung said AMD is showing a sample at Computex, but that yield problems is the likely reason for the delay in the chip going into volume production. According to Yeung, the delay could hurt gross margins and gives Intel more opportunity to gain share.
"Barcelona is generally viewed to be AMD's best opportunity to stem server share loss to Intel," said Yeung in the research report. "While AMD's recent notebook win at Toshiba may balance any negative revenue implications to our current model. Barcelona's delay has negative implications for AMD's gross margin."
...

Meanwhile, on Tuesday Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung said in a research report out of Taiwan's Computex Trade show, that "several sources," including server vendors, distributors and motherboard makers, confirmed Barcelona will be delayed to September/October from June/July.

Computex 2007: Day 1 Implications for Semiconductors; Lowering Estimates for AMD

Barcelona Delayed — While much speculated in the press, several sources (server vendors, distributors, and board makers) have confirmed that Barcelona, AMD’s much-awaited new server processor, has been delayed. From an original launch in June/July, Barcelona is now not expected until September/October (although we did see a sample device at the show). Yield problems for the estimated 286mm2 die was most frequently cited as the source of the delay.

Negative AMD Margin Implications— Barcelona is generally viewed to be AMD’s best opportunity to stem server share loss to Intel. While AMD’s recent notebook win at Toshiba may balance any negative revenue implications to our current model, Barcelona’s delay has negative implications for AMD’s gross margin. We note that server processors carry as much as 1500bps-2000bps greater gross margin than do notebook or desktop processors. We currently model a gross margin recovery of 1250bps in 4Q07 from 1Q07 levels. We tweak our AMD estimates lower to reflect risk to this assumption. Our 2007 EPS is revised to $(2.59) from $(2.48), no change to 2008.

Door Opens Wider for Intel Server MPU’s — Meanwhile, Barcelona’s delay opens the door wider for Intel to consolidate its share gain, particularly as it prepares to launch 45nm server processors in 4Q07. Intel currently expects its 45nm Harpertown quad-core processor to comprise ~8% of its sales in 4Q07. ....

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Door Opens Wider for Intel Server MPU’s (cont). Interestingly, one boardmaker we met with suggested that their tests indicated that AMD’s 65nm Barcelona only bridges the gap between Intel’s 65nm Clovertown. The release of 45nm Harpertown is expected to re-establish the lead for Intel, emphasizing the importance of any delay by AMD. Moreover, we remind investors that Intel will lower prices of its 65nm Clovertown server processors on July 7th to drive further penetration of quad-core processors ahead of AMD’s Barcelona launch.

AMD took the opportunity at Computex to showcase server platforms running the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, codenamed Barcelona, with the help of MSI, Supermicro, TYAN and Uniwide.

The AMD quad-core processors are designed to drop-in (following a BIOS upgrade) with all existing AMD Opteron processor-based systems using DDR2 memory, while also enabling new platform capabilities such as those being demonstrated today.

One vendor demonstrated Barcelona to DailyTech running at 1.6GHz. Current AMD Barcelona samples are not scaling too well. AMD partners confirmed the highest running, POST and OS capable, Barcelona processor is 2.0 GHz.

A REPORT ON the Dow Jones wire confirmed that while the Budapest quad core chip will be delayed, Barcelona is still on time and will be rolled out this summer.

That follows earlier reports of Cray delaying a supercomputer because AMD was unable to ship a processor it was using on time.

But an AMD rep told the wire that Barcelona was still on target, despite claims from a financial analyst at the Computex show that this chip was likely to be delayed too.

One such change will be announced on July 9th, when the AMD desktop processor family will have a reduction in suggested prices. Savings for the AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 (dual-core) processor family will be about 20% and the AMD Athlon 64 (single-core) processor family will be adjusted by approximately 15%. If you are looking for a great value, look to the AMD Sempron™ processor, which will also offer savings of about 15%.

Cinebench completed the default benchmark in 27 seconds for the 1.6 GHz K10; 17 seconds for the Intel Xeon X3220. The Kentsfield Xeon was 58% faster with a 50% higher clock frequency for Cinebench.