Daily Tech has an AMD roadmap extending through 3Q 2007.
In its own way, it’s rather gruesomely stunning.
If you thought AMD was going to throttle up to match Intel’s Conroe, forget about it. By the end of the third quarter next year, the fastest 65nm AMD chip will be only 2.8GHz.
Put another way, Intel will have a higher cranked Conroe by the end of this month.
This is not good for AMD.
Yes, there will be faster AMD chips than that, but the roadmap says they’ll be 90nm. That means nine months after 65nm chips go into production, the fastest AMD chip will still be a 90nm chip.
Outside of the hopeless fanboys, can there be any doubt AMD is having problems with making fast 65nm chips? By 3Q 2007, the “mainstream” Conroes should be at 3.2GHz (and EEs a bit better than that), and 45nm chips should be coming shortly after that.
Look a bit more closely, and in 3Q 2007, there are still plenty of 90nm chips, and there is something interesting about those: up to 2.6GHz, they’re going to be low-wattage 90nm chips, with a TDF of 65 rather than 89 watts. (Curiously, the 65nm chips have the same TDF.)
Well, if you have to keep making 90nm (and not so incidentally keeping Fab 30 in business), I guess that’s what you’ll have to make to keep the OEMs happy, though why someone energy-conscious and knowledgable would want a 90nm rather than a 65nm chip is beyond me.
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t look like a terribly competitive roadmap against Intel for most of next year.
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