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Where AMD leads, Intel follows

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7keys

Member
Joined
Dec 12, 2001
Location
Montreal
Opinion One can't be a follower and expect to lead the industry

The INQUIRER
By Mario Rodrigues: Monday 29 March 2004, 10:34

PRESS REPORTS confirming that Intel is to introduce a model number nomenclature - like AMD did in 2001 - and the fact that the chip giant had embraced the AMD64 instruction set, got me thinking about AMD technology choices that the chip giant later adopted.
Back in 2000, AMD's vision for next generation PC memory was DDR SDRAM. Intel had a different vision: Rambus. You know which won the day.

In October of that year, the AMD-760 chipset enabled the world's first commercially available DDR SDRAM PC. Intel platform desktop customers had to wait over a year before the chip giant followed the leader's tune.

It's not just about adopting technology first though. It's also about supporting what the market wants.

Intel didn't want to adopt PC133 SDRAM, because it wanted its customers to use higher priced Rambus memory instead. But market reality forced the chip giant to get onboard.

DDR2 SDRAM is another case in point. Intel needs to adopt it to enhance its Netburst architecture. Unfortunately, its cost is prohibitively expensive, so market interest isn't strong. AMD, on the other hand, is doing just fine with the current technology. It will move to the next generation memory when the market is ready for it.

Because Intel's 90 nm Netburst processors are generating much more heat than their 130nm brethren, the chip giant needs to move its customers to the BTX PC form factor, which will help alleviate that problem. Of course, for Intel's partners, this platform change doesn't come for free. Again, because of AMD's technology choices, the chipmaker doesn't have a need for BTX today.

For x86 microprocessor innovations, AMD has shown the way as well.

First superscalar RISC - K5
First to use "Flip-Chip" technology - K6
First on-chip L2 cache - K6-3
First use of copper interconnects - K7
First fully pipelined, superscalar floating point unit - K7
First to extend x86 to 64-bits (AMD64) - K8

One wonders if Intel will use the other K8 technologies that differentiate it from its own designs - HyperTransport technology, silicon-on-insulator technology (SOI), and the integrated memory controller.

Of course, I'm sure Intel could provide a whole heap of firsts that the chip giant had delivered. But isn't that what one would expect from the dominant player in the market?

The point I'm trying to make is that AMD, a company that for last year had processor sales that were eleven times less than the 800-lb gorilla it competes against, is putting on a pretty good show.

Role reversal: How it might have been
If there had been a role reversal between Intel and AMD - that is, Intel had developed what AMD had brought to market and AMD had done the same with Intel's technology - AMD would have failed as a going concern long before this day.

Imagine some of the turkeys that AMD would have been saddled with. Rambus memory, Willamette P4 performance and its 217 mm^2 die size, the product recalls - Pentium, Caminogate, the 1.13 GHz Pentium III, and the biggest turkey of them all - Itanium.

If AMD had had the temerity to bring these albatrosses to market, it would have been buried alive with the birds. The only reason why AMD is still in business today is because its strategy has proven to be the best course of action for AMD. One can argue that its past monetary losses are no measure of success, but it certainly beats not being in business at all.

So where AMD has chosen wisely, Intel has definitely erred.

One small step for Intel, one giant leap for AMD
When you compare AMD's K7 and K8 platforms, and then adds to the mix Intel's technological progress, it really does look like one small step for Intel, and one giant leap for AMD.

The problem that this may cause Intel though is ridicule, especially if it's seen as a company that is dependent on AMD technology and strategy as backstops of last resort. If that should happen, what faith would there be in the chip giant's strategic technological planning?

As the sub-head says: One can't be a follower and expect to lead the industry. If confidence in Intel's ability to innovate were eroded, the opportunity door would be left wide open for AMD. It would give the pretender to Intel's throne an opportunity to turn silicon into gold.

Can the chip giant turn the
good ship SS Intel around?
It seems like all the concerns that former Intel chief architect Bob Colwell had about where the chip giant was going are all coming home to roost. There may be a lesson that Intel will learn from the Colwell experience: A strategic plan that goes against the advice of its chief architect may prove very expensive indeed.

At Intel's 2003 spring analyst conference in New York, COO Paul Otellini discussed the challenge of getting companies to replace their aging infrastructure. He shared a 1933 quote by Charles F. Kettering, founder of Delco, and then Director of R&D for GM: "I believe business will come back when we get some products that people will want to buy." Great quote, but are Intel's product offerings sufficiently broad and relevant?

Centrino has made great inroads in the commercial space, XScale was reported to be going exponential, and the P4 and its Celeron sibling are still bringing home the bacon. But when one looks at Xeon and Itanium, the enterprise world had been holding its breath.

Intel has partly resolved the Xeon issue by embracing the AMD64 instruction set. But Xeon MP won't gain that enhancement until sometime in 2005.

The other problem Xeon faces is eating Opteron's dust. For their dual Opteron offerings, Sun and HP are touting performance claims that are up to 45 and 57 percent better than Xeon. When these companies launch their quad Opteron offerings, their performance claims over Xeon MP won't be far off the three-figure mark.

On the Itanium front, the majority of IT decision-makers are still looking the other way.

When flagship products have question marks against them, it can change the whole perception of a company. Centrino, XScale, and the P4 are more than paying their way, but if Opteron and Athlon 64 make the sales inroads that their performance should allow, Intel's high revenue offerings could be in for a very rough ride.

AMD technology, strategy and
stock: Intel backstops of last resort
Because of the cross-licensing agreement that Intel has with AMD, when its strategy fails, it can look to AMD to get it out of a hole.

There are no quick fixes for the challenges that are on Intel's plate. But there is another backstop card that it can play - invest in AMD. Intel has bought AMD stock before. But if it decides to invest in today's climate, or has done so already, it will be seen as another AMD endorsement.

I know, very painful for Intel to do after embracing the AMD64 instruction set. And then adopting model numbers for its processors - after denigrating AMD and telling its customers it would never do such a thing. But if Intel is serious about looking after the interests of its shareholders, this may be one investment that could offset AMD market gains. Better to be safe than sorry.

Intel arrogance has already proven costly
Arrogance has already been costly for Intel. In Q402, Intel told its customers that it would raise flash memory prices by 20 to 40 in January 03. Some of those customers told the chip giant to get on its bike. For Q103, Intel's flash memory sales suffered a 29% sequential revenue decline.

Shareholders can be forgiving for one act of stupidity. But if arrogance should be the reason for another costly decision, Intel investors will want their pound of flesh.

Will Intel catch the green virtual giant?
An industry source has said it will take Intel 18 months to catch AMD up. If that should prove to be the case, Intel has been seriously caught with its pants down.

But let's not forget that as Intel works furiously to make up for its shortfalls, AMD won't be taking a vacation.

So for both performance and technology leadership, will Intel turn out to be the follower in 2004? If the chip giant can't get a handle on its challenges, and AMD executes smoothly to 90 nm, then yes, from AMD's perspective, Intel will most definitely be behind.
 
Intel is a giant compared to AMD - irrespective of Intels processor output, its marketing department will always ensure that the customer perceives it as a better product. Heck you just need to surf sites such as overclockers and people saying things like "well the Intel system runs smoother" etc to realise that their marketing people have done a damn good job in brainwashing.
I have said this before but short of a catastrophic Intel product recall - AMD will be in second place for many many years to come (even though they make the superior product!) lol.
 
7keys said:
Opinion One can't be a follower and expect to lead the industry

First superscalar RISC - K5
Pentium Pro, introduced in 1995 versus 1996 for the K5

First on-chip L2 cache - K6-3
Mendocino Celeron in 1998 versus K6-3 in 1999.
 
7keys said:
Opinion One can't be a follower and expect to lead the industry

Actually, being a "follower" is exactly the business strategy of some corporations. They wait until a new product is in the marketplace, and if the market reaction looks promising, they come in fast, producing a similar product faster, better, bigger, and supply more of it, at a lower price. They market the hell out of it, and establish the "industry standard." Intel has this even easier, because their name IS already associated with industry standard products.

Now technically they aren't a "leader" because they weren't first to do it, but they make their product the standard.

I'm not saying this IS intel's strategy, but it certainly CAN do that, and probably WILL do that.

In fact, its like a bonus for intel, as they don't have to spend so much time researching new technologies - other companies do it for them. Intel can then 'take' those ideas and run with them. Intel KNOWS AMD is no major threat, so it can afford to let them push the envelope.

Only when it is forced to or when the stockholders want to see more research will intel put its money into new technologies and try to be the technology leader again.
 
I agree with Albigger. Intel is a "wait and see" corporation right now. They have so much market share and money that they can afford to do this.

This whole thing with Intel copying AMD has gotten out of hand. Both companies use each others technology. But for some reason when Intel uses AMD's technology the world seems to stop.

i.e.
AMD uses SSE2 (The world says "about time")
Intel uses X86-64 (The world says "Oh my god AMD won!!!")

The RDram argument I feel pointless. It performed better than DDR, the problem was that the price never dropped and speeds did not ramp very well. This was most likely unforceen, and you can't blame a company on non-planned problems.
 
AMD does not have the marketing capital that Intel has but one has to wonder what would happen if AMD produced one single TV commercial challenging users to do an internet search for Intel v.s AMD (maybe they should say their competitor vs AMD) and read the performance reviews how much they might be able to gain. The general public is simply not informed although they have the information right at their fingertips. The smartest thing imo that Intel has ever done is to invest in their marketing propoganda. Oh and borrow tech. and follow AMD. :)
 
Cant blame intel? Sure you can. They signed an exclusive deal with rombus (sp?) and despite thier massive revenues and market share, they were not able standardize the technology. This was a failure for Intel on so many different levels. To my recollection, AMD has not made a similar blunder nearly as big.

People who think Intel dominates the computer industry with an iron fist, need to take a long hard look at what happened there.

The only person who said anything about AMD winning when Intel implemented 64-bit was Ed. I guess he felt the need to make up a group of people who said AMD won. Fact is, anyone who's older than like 8 knows business don't "win" anything. They're supposed to make money.

To anyone has a single positive thing to say about AMD, be careful! I started a thread saying similar stuff and was called a fanboy *shudder* Whatever you do, please don't let this happen to you. :rolleyes:
 
quentrm250
Agreed. All of AMD's market share woe's would be fixed overnight if they were legally allowed to call the Athlon64 a Pentium5. 99% of the population would think they were the best thing since sliced bread.

Dont believe me? Then why did so very few people care care when they were buying a 1.4ghz P4 that was SLOWER than a 1.4ghz P3?
 
Hmmm... fanboy well if that's what ppl want to call me tis cool with me. I myself don't look at myself or anyone else like that as a matter of fact...

I like AMD and install them into 95% of my customers computers, why?, because I have faith in a company that gives my customers good service at a good price. Most of them don't care about overclocking they just want to turn on their computers and have it do what it was built to do for at least 3 years before the must do a major upgrade of MB and CPU. AMD has given me this by keeping thier socket design standard for long periods of time and just pushing the CPU up. Some of you will say well what about the 64 and the change is sockets? Well if you read at all the Opteron will keep the socket 940 and the Desktop 64 will be going socket 939 in May. I can put a bet that AMD will keep this standard until the next great leap in processors come out(Any takers?).

Remember the 64 were first designed not as a desktop CPU but for servers, to compete with intel, but to keep desktop users happy AMD gave us this great power to. I can understand the small lag in the development of the FX line and the change in sockets while thing were being finalized for desktop use. Anyone that can say after looking into it that AMD's FX-53 is not the single fastest desktop processor on the planet has Intels site as their home page :p (Note: I do not have AMD's as mine, Googles if you must know :) )

This is the kind of fanboy I am, for instance ATI and nVidia. Not so long ago I would not install a ATI card in a customers computer yet my own. But then nVidia starter the FX line, untested, unreliable, driver problems, while ATI was starting to put out fast, reliable cards with stable drivers. So what do you think I did? Stay with nVidia... No. I install what is best for me and my costomers, ATI, because I don't want them coming back to me in a year telling me it will not do what I said it would. I would do the same with AMD if they showed me that they could not hold their own.

Thank for looking :D

Edit: Please don't bring slot CPU's into this, I left them out for a reason. They were a mistake by both companies and thank God they came to their senses.
 
sappo said:
Cant blame intel? Sure you can. They signed an exclusive deal with rombus (sp?) and despite thier massive revenues and market share, they were not able standardize the technology. This was a failure for Intel on so many different levels.

if i remember correctly rambus didn't work because their modules over heated and were a liability to the oem's.
which would be rambus' fault for making a faulty chip. not intel's for trying to standardize a faster ram solution.
 
iD10t said:


if i remember correctly rambus didn't work because their modules over heated and were a liability to the oem's.
which would be rambus' fault for making a faulty chip. not intel's for trying to standardize a faster ram solution.

Where did you hear they overheat?
Up till the P4 c"s came out i ran Exclusively RDRAM. I only used PC800 Samsung modules and when the 533 fsb cpu's came out i even used them for these chips. They always overclocked just fine 33% over making PC800 run at PC1066 speeds. You can't say that for DDR.
 
meh, that's the word from my a+ teacher.
i know not the most reputable of sources. but i thought i could take his word for it.
 
iD10t said:
meh, that's the word from my a+ teacher.
i know not the most reputable of sources. but i thought i could take his word for it.


lol ;) /OT/ I've talked to a lot of "A+" people, and I even saw one try to put a heatsink on once. it was backwards. Sat and watched him for 5 min try to stick that thing on. He finally gave up, and asked if I wanted to give it a try. I picked it up turned the indented side around, and popped right on. =P

I hope AMD keeps the 939 as long as socket a.. will make things a LOT easier. :) Presshot is a sad excuse for "competition" and when the 90nm A^4's start poppin out, I bet AMD will have a hayday!
 
First to extend x86 to 64-bits (AMD64) - K8

IMHO, this isn't something to be proud of. Its more like who succumbed to the urge to slap another colostomy bag onto x86.

How about who was first to even make a 64-bit processor.
 
AMD will use 939 till they use DDR2. DDR2 has more pins so it will require a new socket.
 
AMD vs Intel (a little history as to whom was first)

Worlds first cpu was the Intel 4004 on November 15th 1971. This cpu ran only 740khz.

The first IBM PC in 1981 contained a 8088 Intel cpu running at 4.77mhz. There were no AMD cpu's in desktops for nearly 4 years later.

Intel made the first 32 bit processor being the 80386 in 1986 to which AMD reversed engineered to make their own.

The Intel 80386SL was introduced on October 15, 1990 being the first cpu specifically made for portable computers.

First superscalar RISC - K5
The Intel Pentium series was the first supscalar risc in March of 1993. Outside of AMD and Intel the IBM RS/6000 introduced in 1990 was the first superscalar RISC

Intels manufacturering plants have produced smaller core sizes first such as .18 microns, .13 microns and now .09 microns.

Intels produces an Itanium series cpu being a true 64 bit processor in 2002. On a side note outside of AMD and Intel the first 64 bit processor was produced by DEC called the Alpha in 1992.

Intel manufacturers chipsets and networking components while AMD does not.

Intel was responsible for many of the hardware innovations of the Personal Computer, including the PCI Bus, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), and SMP.
 
Worlds first cpu was the Intel 4004 on November 15th 1971. This cpu ran only 740khz.

You mean the first microprocessor, right? There were certainly cpus before.


Intel made the first 32 bit processor being the 80386 in 1986 to which AMD reversed engineered to make their own.

There were other 32-bit processors that had been around for a while. Very similar to the current 64-bit situation.


The Intel Pentium series was the first supscalar risc

You mean the Pentium Pro, right?


On a side note outside of AMD and Intel the first 64 bit processor was produced by DEC called the Alpha in 1992.

Sun, Sgi, and IBM also had 64-bit processors available quite a while before Intel, who themselves had one quite a while before AMD.


Intel was responsible for many of the hardware innovations of the Personal Computer, including the PCI Bus, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), and SMP.

Intel didn't invent SMP.
 
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