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Really Chipguy
When are you going to get another 8-track, I'm getting a little tired of hearing the old anthology of INTC's greatest hits volI, circa 1985, over and over. INTC has been promising a new release for at least 10 years now, ever since their last failed attempt with "Itanium Love".
You know all us Intel fans have been eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Last, Last, Final tour of the fab4. It should be a sell out, where ever it goes, with Noyce, Grove, Moore and Barrett all doing the ever popular hit "Bye, Bye INTEL". It's also being rumored that Noyce is being resurected to do a stand up rendition of his hit "p4 no more" also known as "hot for you", and "too hot to touch".
Anyway, if you could come up with another song, anything other than "Itanium Love", I'm sure the board would be most appreciative.
WOW! You must have REALLY left Intel under less than favorable circumstances! Was your HR jacket marked "Do not rehire"?
Me...
Quoting George Bernard Shaw, Jerry Sanders once said, "Don't fight with pigs. You get dirty, and the pigs like it."
Seems apropos.
Re: INTC is a whore
You've just insulted whore's everywhere.
Shame on you!
You should apologize at once!!
Me...
Yea, at least they’re making an honest living providing something of value to the public. Someone at the Mustang ranch must have watched the GodFather too many times (Otellini?). He's not from Sicily is he? Better bite my tongue or I might wake up with a horse’s head in my bed and an offer I can't refuse from the INTC whore. At least that's how I imagine some of the coerced OEMs probably felt.
I wonder how many shares INTC repurchased today? It's hard for me to imagine anyone buying INTC, given the news today. The SOXX was up so maybe it's programmed buying?
That's what I'm hoping for, this market strangulation through coercion BS has gone on for way too long.
INTC is a whore.
I know I’ve said this many times before, but the proof just keeps piling up. I’m sure the whore’s whores will just say that this is another “it doesn’t matter” thing, but if you look at all the “it doesn’t matter” things that have occurred over the last 5 to 7 years this one does stand out. Unfortunately, with biases bigger than their brains there’s no way they would ever admit that INTC has ever done anything improper let alone illegal.
Another thing I’ve said consistently is that for a monopoly to work everyone has to be having his or her back scratched. That worked very well for INTC when they had the best product as well as production and capacity, but ever since AMD gained design superiority with the Athlon cracks have been showing and growing. This has been compounded lately by AMD’s evinced superiority in production as well. All that’s missing is production capacity and that will soon go away as an issue. There’s just too much money to be made selling AMD products now for the OEMs to continue ignoring AMD no matter what INTC does. From that point of view the suit is just a reflection of a new reality whole-heartedly supported by OEMs tired of living under INTC’s jackboots.
Right now AMD can do very well with existing capacity by using pricing to curtail demand, but with fab36 the game changes completely. This coercion needs to be stopped now so that product coming out of fab36 will have a market. Given INTC’s dominant position in the market, it would be very difficult for any OEM to compete in the market selling INTC products without INTC’s rebates. So it is unlikely that without some outside force the OEMs would be unable to resist INTC’s arm-twisting by themselves. So far only SUN has made the decision to stop eating at the INTC trough, but they’re in a much different market than the rest of the major OEMs. It’s hard to see some sort of middle ground where the OEMs can remain competitive and yet reduce their INTC dependence without some sort of major change in the rules of the game.
All in all, this suit seems to be the right thing to do now.
No I don't agree, just got tired of arguing. We'll revisit this capacity issue as the year wears on.
Yea, and by the end of the year INTC will have a lot more capacity for a variety of reasons. See if you can figure them out.
What are you talking about? Where did that come from. Boy are you sick.
Was that on 130nm or 90nm that the chipsets were manufactured? I know INTC used to manufucture chipsets on its' older equipment. The form factor would make a difference in an apples to apples comparison.
Well, like I said you'll believe what you want to believe.
Last time I read anything about the number of plants INTC had the number was something like 12 or 15. Chipsets are much smaller than processors and wireless stuff can't be very large. Your arguments don't wash.
You believe what you want to believe.
The last I heard the market for processors was about 200m per year. Now if, as you say, INTC does 40M a q then that leaves 40m for AMD or about 10 m per quarter, but probably closer to 8.5 to 9m per quarter. This correlates pretty well with AMD having about 16 to 18 % of the market. Now if AMD can produce 9M chips on 90Nm and 200mm and still have extra capacity what does that say about INTC’s yields/ binsplits. Three 90nm, 300mm plants should be able to put out 4.5 times the number of chips AMD’s single fab does. But wait there’s more, all the INTC fabs are much larger than AMD’s 200mm single plant and INTC still has lots of 200mm fabs still producing chips. So you tell me just what are all those INTC fabs doing anyway?
How can INTC capacity be fully utilized? The only things that come to mind are lousy planning or terrible yields/binsplits. With INTC's number of fabs they should be able to supply the entire world market for processors a couple of times over.
Even the chipset shortage rumors smell of BS. Personally, this smacks of the usual INTC marketing practice of trying to get OEM's to over order by claiming shortages. Not to mention how rumored shortages can be used as a lever in keeping the OEM's from going elsewhere for their chips. I can easily imagine an INTC slaesperson saying something like; Gee I would like to help you out, but you know those chips are on backorder, but if you agree to buy more of these P4's I'll see if I can't help you out with what you want. Just typical INTC crap.
"Our customers have been asking for this technology for a long time. I guess we just figured that basically we didn't want to lose some of our customers."
Me...
Exactly, which is why the trickle of defections is going to be a flood by the end of the year. No OEM (ok maybe DELL) is going to want to be without at least a line of AMD server/desktop products. Once in the door and product starts selling AMD shouldn't have any problems expanding the relationship to other product lines. Every AMD sale reduces the ability of INTC to control the markets the way they have in the past. It's literally a snowball effect.
My only concern is supply. Not being able to support the expanded demand could very adversely affect the ability of AMD to take market share at a time when everything else is a go. In a way I hope demand doesn't outstrip capacity. Short run it would be great but longer term it could be painfull.
Your right; I'm getting my acronyms confused, should be CSI.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21736
Perhaps INTC should look at DSL it has to be a faster access than FSB. The point is still valid, INTC has gone from being a neurotic/paranoid to a safe follower chasing after AMD's tail.
You and Elmer, insist on using the rear view mirror to see where AMD's future is. I hope you don't drive your automobile that way.
Just think about it a little. How can all the new design wins from IBM and HP not result in significantly increased sales in the high end. I'm sure you're aware of it, but just in case, this is the part of the market where all the high-margin profits are located. Then there's the matter of SUN, which will continue to introduce even higher performance products over the rest of the year. And we haven't even talked about all the other products that will be hitting the markets this year.
I'm sure you've noticed that more and more of INTC's customers are getting further and further under the sheets with AMD in apparent disregard to the best efforts of INTC marketing. The days of INTC being able to dominate the markets are nearing an end. The simple fact of the matter is that INTC doesn't have competitive product outside of the T&L markets. Further, INTC is reacting too slowly; indeed the price/performance gap seems to be increasing rather than decreasing, something that will only get worse for the foreseeable future.
The only..only..only reason AMD hasn't been making money has to do with flash and that problem should now be contained and the picture improve over the rest of the year. AMD's CPG has been consistently growing faster than the competition and the indications are that growth will only accelerate. The biggest problem AMD is going to have for the rest of the year is deciding which markets to supply.
If AMD's HT is so bad why is INTC again copying AMD with DSL?
Is there an original thinker left at INTC?
That's the biggest piece of INTC PR I've read in some time. Gartner never fails to to show who pays the bills. I understand they now have an office right next to BAPCO's at INTC.
Well, it's pretty hard to know exactly what the reasons were for the JFTC investigation, but you can bet without some internal Japanese pressure (OEMs?) AMD pleas would have fallen on deaf ears. Undoubtedly there were other factors we haven't even touched on.
The important thing is that the AMD/INTC relationship has been changing in many not so subtle ways and it is no longer in the best interest of the OEMs to be INTC only. That fact would have expressed itself in the market with or without the JTFC action. The stranglehold INTC has had on the market is rather quickly being dismembered. It makes sense that rather than see customers walk the OEMs would rather remain mostly INTC and selectively choose to support AMD products that are in demand. All this does is get AMD’s foot in the door, INTC still remains their primary provider
No links, maybe eventually.
Governments generally work at an even slower pace than big business. Someone had to complain or nothing would have been initiated. And I doubt if any Japanese official would have listened to AMD, being a foreign company, without someone closer to home also complaining. Just as I'm sure the European investigation is being helped along by pressure from someone closer to home there.
Ending their brand loyalty to INTC was not an option, who else were they going to call for product? Certainly not AMD with its' incomplete product line at the time. Besides, as we've seen most customers, not OEMs, tend to stay with something if it works. So the OEMs had a choice, either stay with INTC or give up a large chunk of their business or cheat. Not an appealing list of choices. I suspect that most probably did what DELL did, namely supply those customers that demanded Opterons with them. But an easier long-term solution was to plant the right bugs in the right people’s ears. Of course the OEMs could have refused to sign with INTC and paid full retail for INTC product, but then that wouldn’t have really been an option.
Again, these proceedings were initiated a couple of years ago, about the time the Opterons were hitting the markets and it looked like they would be successful. So to me it seems reasonable that changes in AMD's competitive position led to the desire of the OEMs to be free to sell AMD products. But to do so unilaterally would have involved seppuku for the OEMs.
A couple of things.
At the time they first bought the Opterons they must have been 1 or 2 way, for the most part, and Itanium was a known INTC product. By that I mean INTC still had that aura of invincibility and going with Opteron for certain applications, at that time, would have involved a leap of faith. Remember, Sabre was one of the first large-scale adopters of Opterons.
I wonder, if Sabre had to do it today, just how many Itaniums they would purchase? With Opterons 2 years further down the road and 4 and 8 way machines getting common the picture has change enormously.
Last I heard, I think, Montecito was going to have 18MB of L3 cache which should make the chip enormous and a fire-breathing dragon. For applications that will fit into the L3 there might be some advantages, but for most applications Opterons lower latency and HT will prove advantageous. The last I remember it was due out in 05, is that still the schedule?
I think were we disagree is in the long-range market for Itanium.
With 4 and 8 way X86 based processors hitting the market how many people will opt for one of these instead of a big iron system, any one of them? To me it looks like IBM is getting the message with its' renewed commitment to Opterons but who knows? Besides the cost advantage the X86 platforms have over "big iron" one has to consider the investment already made in X86 programming. Then there's the matter of near or better performance of current X86 processors with Itanium. And finally with the Opterons there's the matter of significantly less power draw and the concomitant reduction in air conditioning. This is especially important as processor density increases and energy prices continue to increase.
Nothing new here, just the same old list of indictments. What seems strange to me though is the way all these things are frivolously cast off like water off a ducks back. I'm sure you will come up with your usual list of rebuttals, but one of us is dead wrong in this matter. Or more likely neither of us is right and Itanium won't die, but just disappear, metamorphosed into something else. Still I doubt that INTC will ever recover its' investment in Itanium or make money on it for that matter.
Yea, but what's the ROI been, and will INTC ever make any money on the incredible shrinking Itanium market. Don't get me wrong, I hope INTC continues to throw money down that rat hole, but someone is going to start asking questions soon, especially if AMD starts taking large hunks of server market share.
By the way, just how is INTC going to merge Itanium with Xeon. It sounds like a genetic nightmare. Cupilopes anyone? That’s what you get when you plant cucumbers next to canalopes.
Yea, that's the problem; INTC stopped becoming an innovator and decided to milk the market which was the sane rather than paranoid thing to do. Personally, as I've said before, I started investing in AMD back in 1998, which corresponded with Andy's retirement as CEO. INTC management since then hasn't shown me any reason to believe that decision was wrong.
I'm with you; with over 80% of AMD's business outside the U.S. one can hardly consider AMD an U.S. company. The same goes for all large international companies. Where manufacturing companies call home and where they do business or produce product are hardly ever the same. This is just a fact of life in a world with ever-more integrated economies. More and more, where a company calls home has to do with tax advantages and other things. It's not surprising that a huge number of insurance companies call the Cayman Islands home. The same could be said about manufacturing in China, etc. etc
From Si, eat you heart out Chipguy.
http://www.aceshardware.com/forums/read_post.jsp?id=115129046&forumid=1
How much longer will INTC keep up with this Itanium nonsense?
Sabre has long been an Opteron supporter, but this is the first I've read of a real world data center replacing Itaniums because they just can't cut it. Talk about your rat holes. Imagine the field day the media will have when reality finally bites INTC.
As far as I'm concerned everyone is missing the point. INTC didn't have to point a gun at anyone's head there were plenty of volunteers. Besides, until recently, INTC was the only game in town.
As I keep saying a monopoly only works when all parties are getting the backs scratched. As long as that was the case the OEMs were more than happy to play the game. That only changed when INTC designs and manufacturing processes started to trail AMD's. Suddenly, the INTC players started seeing sales going to 2nd tier players that they felt should have been going to them because they couldn't supply the products their customers wanted. Hence the complaints to JFTC.
As a corollary, I'm pretty sure there were no complaints from the tier2 players to the JFTC.
I'll have to look into that, but my understanding was that INTC can't do more thatn 2bit MLC which is where Mirrorbit is currently. So Mirrorbit is comprable to Strata flash at a lower production cost due to fewer processing steps. I know INTC made a big push into the 16Mb and below markets, but I thought that was ordinary flash. Last I heard AMD is manufacturing 3v 512Mb NROM Mirrorbit on 110nm and will soon have 1Gb. As far as high-end flash goes my understanding is that AMD and INTC are pretty comparable. With the explosion in multi-use cell phones I would expect the amount of memory required to be increasing at a rapid clip which should be good for all the players.
My impression has been that a good hunk of INTC's flash is used in stacked products that support the wireless business. So flash for INTC is just another shell game as far as profitability goes. As far as cell phones goes I know INTC introduced the Sibley? line earlier in the year, but I haven't heard how successful it has been. I still tend to view Samsung as being AMD's biggest threat.
Unless INTC has some unannounced product that they're developing, 2bMLC Strata flash is at the end of its' road. That doesn't preclude INTC from stacking memory ala Samsung, but then INTC will be going head to head with Samsung and I don't think INTC wants to go there.
Interesting article from SI.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-985432.html?tag=nl
I remembered most of the details, but definitely a good read from ago. Boy did INTC have it wrong, almost everything they expected has proven wrong and in contrast almost everything AMD expected has proved correct. Funny, the experts quoted, outside INTC, didn't have a clue either.
Not really
For the last 2 or 3 years we've been hearing about Samsung's move to stacked SRAM, Dram and Nand. Unfortunately for AMD they have been making lots of progress and the products they're aimed at are the high-density cell phones where AMD primarily plays. Serendipitously this has worked to INTC's advantage. AMD has been saying for quite a while that its' flash cost structure is much lower than INTCs, something that seems plausible to me given the way INTC runs in general. So with Samsung doing the heavy lifting INTC has little reason to stick more pins in the AMD VooDoo doll. INTC has enough problems trying to contain flash losses without taking on more pain. Another reason for INTC not to press the issue is that it gets progressively more expensive to hurt AMD as the easy targets are taken out. To gain more sales where they don't effectively compete means INTC has to reduce prices even more, and even then there is no guarantee the market will buy.
Not that INTC couldn't throw more $'s down the flash rat hole to further hurt AMD, but the bigger problem for INTC is finding a way to contain AMD on the processor side. Flash is a sideshow and that card has been played. That situation will become more and more contained as we move through the year. However, consider that things probably won’t be getting better for INTC flash either unless INTC is able to come out with some unannounced product that is more competitive than Strata flash.
Anyway I expect things to get a lot nastier all the way around. I'm sure Otellini doesn't want to be the CEO that was at the helm when INTC fell from grace. By that I don’t mean that INTC is going away anytime soon. But, should INTC’s share of the processor market fall to say 75%, most would view that as a disaster and quite probably INTC management would pay the price.
Yes, if INTC wants to play then they have to play by JFTC's rules, something JFTC said they weren't doing. Anyway, just a slap on the wrist, not a big thing. The real importance is what was unstated, namely that the Japanese OEMs wanted the rules changed so that they could play with AMD. The real inspiration for the investigation no doubt came from the OEMs tired of losing AMD sales to 2nd tier outfits. All that would have happened if JFTC had not acted is that the OEMs would have gotten more creative in the way they cheated. This could have happened in a number of ways.
Monopolies only work when all parties are getting their backs scratched. Because of the changes I've listed previously INTC no longer has the ability to control things like they used to so inevitably this means that things are going to get nastier and nastier for everyone, particularly if AMD starts taking meaningful amounts of market share. Undoubtedly, INTC will respond by coming up with other ways of keeping the OEMs inline. How well those things will work remain to be seen. But as INTC continues to lose its' design/manufacturing/ capacity advantages over AMD in desktop/server, inevitably the marketing playing field will level.
There is ample evidence of this in the T&L area where INTC has had no problems keeping AMD at bay because AMD simply doesn't have competitive product yet. I remain skeptical that Turion will display the sort of advantages that would allow AMD to seriously threaten INTC in that market. Turion, except for 64bit, sounds too much like a "me too" product to be effective against Dothan or Yonah when INTC's other advantages are taken into account. Perhaps another iteration or maybe a move to the Geode processor and sub T&L market will finally get AMD back into the portable markets? Basically it's just a matter of resources; AMD just doesn't have the funding to come up with non-K8 derivative products that could compete effectively. AMD is already spread prety thin doing flash, alchemy, geode, and k8/k9/ka work.
Frankly, in that case it doesn't matter a fig what INTC thinks, the only thing that matters is what JFTC thinks. INTC seemed to understand that better than you do.
Actually,
On a philosophical level I am opposed to monopolies because once having obtained that exalted position they tend to sit on their laurels and milk that position. INTC is a classic example having gone from a premier innovator to basically a marketer of 2nd class processors supported by overwhelming capacity, money and a death grip on its' customers.
Fortunately, from an AMD point of view, this myopic interest in the bottom line has resulted in huge displacements in what was once an invincible juggernaut of INTC products. Missing out on 64 bits and DC through misguided attempts at controlling the market by attempting to stifle innovation through proprietary products (Itanium) are just the latest in a long litany of mistakes made by current INTC management.
One only has to look at the 1998 AMD, of the desktop only K6, and compare it to today’s lineup to see how miserably INTC has failed to manage the gold mine legacy that current management inherited. The DC server love-fest last week was perhaps the broadest indication of just how far AMD has come.
I keep saying it; earnings are a trailing indicator that happen only when all other things are taken care of. From that point AMD is a lot closer to sustained profitability than it has ever been despite the Spansion problems.
As to those problems; I know prices on NOR flash continue to drop, but there are a few things that should be taken into consideration. First, there is a limit to just how much money INTC is willing to lost to keep AMD in its place. Basically, because of INTC's higher flash production costs it costs them more to hurt AMD on equivalent sales so they're interest should be in doing the most damage at the least cost. I suspect that point was exceeded last quarter. Second, If I were Hector and wanted to do a Spansion IPO in q3 I would want q2 to look as good as possible so it would make sense that q1 had as many costs dumped into it as possible. Third, the NOR flash market is not dying, but continuing to grow, albeit not as fast, but it is still growing at a pace faster than a lot of other semi segments. In particular, demand is increasing for the densest chips, where AMD has the most advantage. Fourth, clearly Hector has not given up on flash, nor should we. I still remember a couple of quarters where flash was the only thing that kept AMD alive. I would feel a lot less assured if AMD were to become a one trick company. That's one of the reasons I've supported the PIC initiative and the sub T&L moves of late.
My biggest concerns revolve around the 15% market share that Mirrorbit has. By this time I would have expected much more, but reasons for the under-performance seem hard to come by. In any case the progress on the CPG front seems to be more than sufficient to make up for the flash losses.
If one were keeping a tote sheet it might look like this; compared to say 1998 where INTC controlled chip design, manufacturing, capacity, marketing and money today INTC's overbearing position has been reduced to capacity, marketing and money. By this time next year capacity will have gone away as an issue and if the OEM love-fest of last week and the JFTC moves are any indication then the suffocating marketing tactics will be much less of an issue. Which leaves only money as a differentiator, and that might not take as long as some think to be eliminated as a factor.
So far my estimates of how long it would take AMD to reach critical mass have been woefully short. I attribute that to a lack of appreciation of the advantages INTC had. However, I continue to measure AMD’s progress on a 6 month to 1 year basis fully expecting progress to be a 2 step forward 1 step back sort of thing. The next 6 month installment of the never ending story should make for very good reading.
Thanks for the Info, I must have missed that Inquirer article. The description of the chip/chips seems to match pretty well what I've heard. I can add one thing about the time frames in which we should see it. Again, from what I've heard it should be out in about 6 months, but then you know how that goes.
I think so, but not yet.
The product I'm talking about supports XP. It does look like Hector wants to move Geodes into sub T&L products. Even though the Geodes have very good power requirements and speed they haven't yet proven themselves in those kinds of products.
I'm hoping the Dragon/Dragonfly will be the answer to what I see as potentially a very large market. In the meantime, other than the stock price, it hasn't been a bad couple of weeks. AMD seems to be carpet bombing INTC with new products that eventually must show up as increased earnings. The old timers have got to love all the OEM hugging and kissing going on. Seems like AMD is becoming the Raymond of processors(as in "Everyone loves Raymond").
That could be it, I may have heard wrong?
The good news is that AMD was at least asked to submit a proposal, even though they couldn't meet the requirements. Not too long ago only 1 call would have been made to you know who.
AMD seems very intent on X86 everywhere. To that end Geodes are probably going to assume a more prominent position in the product lineup over time? With cell phones doing digital pictures and MP3 besides accessing the WEB it seems like something small with a keyboard would be appealing, especially to the business crowd. Why do you need a cell phone if you can plug earphones and a mic into something a little larger than pocket sized and access the WEB? A decent sized screen and keyboard have got to count for something, especially for us older folk that are visually challenged.
Anyway, we'll probably have to go through the usual bumbling around until market decides what the universal communicator is going to look like, or maybe it will be more than one product?
Interesting
http://news.com.com/Why+100+computers+are+on+the+way+-+page+2/2008-1036_3-5684006-2.html?tag=st.next
Hector...
"So our intent is to continue to go down in power and cost so that we could see x86 used in places like automobile entertainment and consumer electronics devices, such as a portable media player, and perhaps potentially down the road a digital convergence device that has mobile and computing capability that's far superior to what a smart phone has today."
I know for a fact that AMD lost a contract for such a device to the Pentium-M because they didn't have a true T&L chip. The way I heard it, in the next 6 months or so we'll be hearing about a chip code-named "Dragon", from AMD, that will fill that market. This market is going to be very big and AMD is doing the right thing getting its' feet wet on products like PIC.
I expect the "Smarts" market to change radically over the next few years with hand held devices doing many of the chores now done on PCs. The concept of sitting down at a PC is going to change when all TVs are monitors and can communicate with the WEB.
I didn't see the CNet story, but yes I would expect AMD to go to a DC platform and do things like disable 1 processor or disable certain functionality to differentiate products. Having a common K8 core is one of the reasons AMD is able to compete with INTC. No way could AMD afford all the platforms INTC maintains. It's interesting that there just isn't that much difference in the chips AMD produces. Having to down-bin chips has been an ongoing theme at AMD at least as far back as the k6s. In that vein, the "E" steppings seem to be manna. I have a very hard time seeing INTC gaining on AMD, performance wise, any time soon. It's almost as if AMD can intro faster chips whenever they want, they certainly have the temperature headroom. Linking up with IBM has been a godsend in those regards. Nice to see AMD with clearly superior production processes for once despite what Mr. Fudd may say.
AMD just keeps taking care of business and the things that used to differentiate INTC from AMD seem to switch from being INTC assets to the AMD side of the score sheet. AMD has gone from being a petty nuisance to being a royal pain in the ass for INTC, and the pain is just beginning.
I still think AMD is going to be capacity challenged in q3/q4 so you could be right, it kind of depends on demand for DC's.
Another thing we'll have to wait and see about.
As I said I have problems understanding the positioning of Smithfield. Maybe the home encoding market is set to take off, but everything I read seems to indicate that the Opteron is the choice of the entertainment industry. Personally, I think MC PCs for the home are still aways off, but they are getting nearer.
Did we read the same review?
The only favorable thing I read in the AnandTech review was that Smithfield was good at media encoding, something carried over from the P4. Of course the heating problems and additional costs of the P4 are also carried over. Hardly a ringing endorsement for a chip that is supposedly going to turn the market upside down. When you add the prices INTC is charging for Smithfields and the apparent lack of third party enthusiasm, I expect the main result will be another INTC inventory spike. And this is before we even talk about the lack of consumer programs that can take advantage of multi-cores.
Even the argument about future proofing rings hollow, as real DC AMD products will be available long before the programming is. Better to stick with what you have, or if you have to buy something, buy a single core that will out perform Smithfield on almost every application and save the bucks.