Quad-Core AMD Barcelona Interview

[Jerry Jones]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,133551-c,amd/article.html

Kevin Knox, the vice president of AMD's commercial business, recently sat down with IDG News Service to discuss preparations for Barcelona's upcoming launch. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[schmosef]

can you say vapourware?

regarding amd and barcelona: we'll see what we see when we see it. they've been talking up barcelona so much that i think they've blown their chances of ever recovering in the marketplace if they stumble, even just a little, in it's launch.

if going to quad core was so easy with their opteron chip, they should have done it as a stop gap until barcelona was ready.

they've pretended to be quad purists and have declined to release a quad core part until their fully optimized architecture is ready, but they are taking so long with it that intel has virtually kicked them out of the market. by the time amd is ready with their 'true" quad part, intel might be as well.

[Hulk]

Well the latest is that there will be an August release of parts up to 2.0GHz with higher speeds coming later. I guess that's when the (hopefully) get the new process ironed out. I read they will also be releasing low voltage parts. All of this sounds to me like they are having major process issues ramping up clockspeeds. The wafers that are producing working silicon aren't running at high speeds. To capitolize on what they do have it appears as though they will release low clock parts. Of course low clocks generally mean low voltage parts. I say "generally" because usually the great overclockers are great underclockers and they do it with undervolting.

I really hope AMD can conjure up some magic with Barcelona and show us IPCs on par with Core 2 Duo but with a native quad. Then at least they will have native quad over Intel with equal performance at equal clocks. Intel would still own the high end but AMD would be competitive with thier native quads since Conroe is not native quad.

They just need to get this done before Intel releases it's native quads...

When Intel cuts prices on July 22 and the Quad 2.4 is selling for under $300 it's going to be hard for me to resist one. And if I'm like a lot of other people unless there are some solid benches showing why native quad is better than dual-dual=quad then AMD is going to have a hard time pushing 2GHz quads when you can buy a 2.4GHz Intel quad for not a lot of money.

[schmosef]

I think that AMD is out of the enthusiast PC game for a least the next year.

My conclusions from attending their tech tour last month is that they are targetting the value market for their PC products and hoping to recover some of the server market with their lower voltage CPUs (they hope) when Barcelona comes out.

None of the AMD chipset motherboards they were touting at the tech tour (including the ones that were only announced and not actually available) were anything other than value market: 1 PCIe slot, 2 or 3 PCI slots, integrated video, etc.

[Jerry Jones]

Here's the latest press release from AMD:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543_15008~118193,00.html

EETimes.com did an interview and story, also.

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=O0XDRM0IOHOB2QSNDLSCKHA?articleID=200001712

Their interview suggests AMD believes the company can raise the chip's frequency by ten percent a quarter, reaching about 3 GHz by fall 2008.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

AMD is so far behind in process technology and architecture at this point it is hard to ever see them being competitive at the high end again. I just hope we aren't left with a one chip world.

[Jerry Jones]

Well, we haven't even seen any tests, yet.

If this Barcelona performs well, then I think AMD may be back in the game.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Technoid]

AMD is so far behind in process technology and architecture at this point it is hard to ever see them being competitive at the high end again. I just hope we aren't left with a one chip world.

We had a point where the same exact words could have been used to describe Intel.

They survived on name and cheap ass slow celerons for a rather loong while.

[Hulk]

We had a point where the same exact words could have been used to describe Intel.

They survived on name and cheap ass slow celerons for a rather loong while.

I don't want to start an Intel vs. AMD debate because I really am pulling for AMD. But I also have to be realistic in my analysis.

Even during the dark netburst Intel period they were doing quite well with process technology and they were producing some pretty great mobile chips in the Pentium M.

[schmosef]

Even during the dark netburst Intel period they were doing quite well with process technology and they were producing some pretty great mobile chips in the Pentium M.

Agreed. I don't think they were ever behind process wise.

And they were always the market leader, even when the didn't have the fastest chips.

[Nowhere]

They weren't? What about move to copper? (and misleadingly named P3 Coppermine to hide the thing that they lack behind?) SOI?
Also AFAI remember later incarnations of K6 remained competitive and comparable in Mhz even though they had much shorter pipeline than Intel CPUs at the time, so the process itslef at AMD "had" to be pretty good? (really asking here)

That said, yes, Intel is generally ahead, process-wise, most of the time. Even more impressive that AMD menaged to keep up/surpass them using older process/less transistors for the past few years...

[Jerry Jones]

New AMD price cuts this week:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134294/article.html

That should mean some pretty decent deals.

Intel will surely follow.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

They weren't? What about move to copper? (and misleadingly named P3 Coppermine to hide the thing that they lack behind?) SOI?
Also AFAI remember later incarnations of K6 remained competitive and comparable in Mhz even though they had much shorter pipeline than Intel CPUs at the time, so the process itslef at AMD "had" to be pretty good? (really asking here)

That said, yes, Intel is generally ahead, process-wise, most of the time. Even more impressive that AMD menaged to keep up/surpass them using older process/less transistors for the past few years...

K6-2 was a good chip but it had really poor floating point performance and speeds never ramped up fast enough for it to overtake the PIII. K6-3 was even better integer-wise but still poor with floating point and really never made it to market it fast enough or in great enough numbers to make a difference.

It wasn't until Athlon that AMD really put the heat on Intel and finally passed them by. But as I said before AMD angered the "hive" and Intel is striking back with a vengence.

By "process technology" I don't mean architecture but getting good yields from the wafers. Intel has always had the fabs.

[Nowhere]

Yes, I'm aware of poor FP performance of K6 (it had OTOH better integer performance? And lets not forget it competed in price with Celeron, not P2), but the point was about its pipeline depth and frequency at which it operated.
It seems that pipeline of K6 was composed of 6 stages. Pipeline of Pentium II was composed of 12 stages apparently. And it seems that "longer pipeline - higher frequency possible" applied also then (?). But still, AMD was able to make K6 at comparable frequencies to P2, which seems to show that their process was quite good even then.

Also I wonder...are we really sure that Intel never had problems with their process/getting good yields from the wafers? They've always had much more FABs than AMD, so perhaps if one or two had troubles, others could took over and it wasn't even noticeable in supply?

[Hulk]

Nowhere,

Again the IPC (instructions per clock... pipeline depth..) refers to architecture not process.

And you're right Intel might have been (and still is) getting good yields due to the fact they are larger. But the bottom line is they can get out lots of high clock parts in big numbers fast. I'm not saying who is smarter, but which one gets it done in terms of process.

If AMD had the fabs when it was on top for the last few years they would have grabbed a huge part of the market and I bet they still have a lot of it. They held prices to sell as many chips as they could produce. If they could have produced 4 times more parts I bet prices would have dropped so they could have sold them all. And in the process savaged Intel in much the same way Intel is savaging them now.