Did you noticed [sic], that they managed this BIN with 90nm, which is "years" old?

Have you noticed that AMD's "new" 65 nm produces little or no speed improvement over the "years" old process? Even then the 65 nm process is not able to produce commercial quantities.

AMD innovation at its finest.

HSDPA is a technology for 3rd generation mobile wireless -- WCDMA. Wi Max is a competitor technology and is not harmed by this development.

Gordon Moore is one of most credible voices on the semiconductor industry. He has the highest integrity and never exaggerates. When Gordon Moore -- a member of the Fairchild and one of the fathers of the semiconductor industry -- speaks, EVERYBODY listens.

The Intel press release on HiK/MG included a statement from Gordon Moore that this was the biggest advance since MOS transistors. I don't have sufficient knowledge of device physics to make an independent judgement about the significance of HiK/MG technology but Gordon's statement was sufficient to convince me the advance was revolutionary not evolutionary.

In that light, anyone with more intelligence than a potted plant can understand the revolutionary significance of the HiK/MG transistor. Your contention that Intel's HiK/MG technology will produce only a 3% is total, utter nonsense.

IBM and AMD implicitly acknowledge the merit of HiK/MG technology when they issue "we will have it too" statements so the world will not think they are hopelessly behind in the technology race.

Try again. The AMD cites a paper that discusses Hi K.

This may be hard for you to accept but Hi K does not equal Hi K and metal gates. You need to check the material from your company's propaganda a bit better.

Talk is cheap and that is all IBM has offered. Intel presented a paper on HiK metal gate structures about 3 plus years ago. IBM has not even presented its paper yet. However, a copy of a paper for presentation at an unstated future time was leaked to the Inquirer.

Those that can do and Intel demonstrated server, desktop and notebook systems running real software. The systems were not fragile show pieces and attendees were allowed to bang the keys. It seems that Intel is about 3 to 4 years ahead of IBM on having a production worthy HiK metal gate process.

Xilinx CEO says IC models under pressure

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197002159

only three chip-manufacturing business models in the future: Intel, memory and fabless/foundry.

Intel Corp., of course, will continue to build its own fabs and develop processes that are tuned for its processor lines. The memory makers will continue to build plants, although many are turning to partners to share the risks and costs.

Needless to say, the fabless/foundry model has been a smashing success, he said. Xilinx and a plethora of other fabless chip makers have prospered during the revolution.

This article from Extremetech has a lot more details on what Intel actually demonstrated.

Intel showed completely functional laptop and desktop and workstation systems running dual core Penryns, quad core Penryns (two die per package as per Intel's current quad core) and a Dual socket, quad core Penryn (Two Quads on a motherboard) - running Adobe Premiere Video Editing - showing 8 threads running!

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2087985,00.asp

Intel unveiled details of its next-generation Core 2 processors, code-named "Penryn," to the technology press on Thursday.

Just as AMD catches up with Intel by moving to a 65 nm process technology, Intel is poised to push ahead to 45 nm. According to Intel Vice President Steve Smith, Intel's new 45 nm CPUs are slated to begin production sometime in the second half of 2007. The company is readying three 45 nm fabs by 2008: The D1D fab in Oregon and Fab 32 in Arizona are slated for 45 nm production before the end of the year, while a third, Fab 28 will come online in Israel sometime during the first half of 2008. The 45 nm fabs will be added to the existing 65 nm fab facilities, and all are capable of using 300mm wafers.

Intel demonstrated five working systems, borrowed from its own qualification labs, running 45 nm CPUs of different flavors, including a laptop. Another pair of systems represented typical desktop PCs, including a dual-core and a quad-core system. Two additional dual-socket, workstation-class systems were also on show, including a dual-socket system with two quad-core CPUs.

...

Intel Senior Fellow Mark Bohr discussed technical details of the new 45 nm process, in particular talking about the company's "high-k plus metal gate" technology. Bohr stated unequivocally that he believes Intel has a substantial lead in high-k plus metal gate, suggesting that competitors won't be able to implement the technology until the 32 nm generation.

continued

The New York Times has an article today on Intel's metal gates. The Times had a LOT of help writing this article. The roll out by Intel is very well orchestrated.

Lots of Wall Streeters who don’t know Jack S**t about technology will pick up their daily copy of the NY Times, read this and think WOW.

****

Intel Says Chips Will Run Faster, Using Less Power

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/technology/27chip.html?th&emc=th

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, has overhauled the basic building block of the information age, paving the way for a new generation of faster and more energy-efficient processors.

Company researchers said the advance represented the most significant change in the materials used to manufacture silicon chips since Intel pioneered the modern integrated-circuit transistor more than four decades ago.

... Page 2

“It’s going to be a nightmare for Intel’s competitors,” said G. Dan Hutcheson, chief executive of VLSI Research. “A lot of Mark Bohr’s counterparts are going to wake up in terror.”

An I.B.M. executive said yesterday that the company had also chosen hafnium as its primary insulator, but that it would not release details of its new process until technical papers are presented at coming conferences.

“It’s the difference between can openers and Ferraris,” said Bernard S. Meyerson, vice president and chief technologist for the systems and technology group at I.B.M. He insisted that industry analysts who have asserted that Intel has a technology lead are not accurate and that I.B.M. had simply chosen to deploy its new process in chips that are part of high-performance systems aimed at the high end of the computer industry.

Intel said it had already manufactured prototype microprocessor chips in the new 45-nanometer process that run on three major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

***
Intel has an operating prototype and IBM will present a paper at a conference -- sometime, later, in the future. Who do you think has the Ferrari?

To clear things up about the SPARC wafers I was just being sarcastic. The serious question is where will Sun get its wafers in the future if its current source TI, stops process development.

TI manufacture is not an option as far as the future is concerned, for ATI... or SPARC.

Will Intel run SPARC wafers along with Itanium wafers? The thought presents interesting opportunities for speculation on the recent Intel and Sun deal.

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197000041

Texas Instruments exits process development race.

AMD almost certainly values its inventory at cost of manufacture not market value so the number of units has probably not changed very much.

Intel uses the cost of manufacture valuation for inventory.

Task Manager showed a load on all 4 cores.

Was the load the 64 bit screen savers that AMD used so proudly in the past to show the merit of 64 bit processing?

Intel reported earnings that exceeded expectations.

AMD warned after the quarter close that it would not meet expectations. The earnings consensus for AMD is that it will have a LOSS of 99 cents.

"Who dat" in trouble?

To run Task Manager means they booted Windows.

Not correct. It means that Task Manager was running and that is all. The system could have been jury rigged so that it would run Task Manager and generate the inference that it could boot and run Windows.

Deception has always been AMD's game and you have to carefully parse what AMD actually presents. For example, AMD once touted an increase in "desktop market share". A close reading of the claim showed that the metric was an increase in retail desktop share.

The retail limitation was real cute because it excluded online and business desktop sales. A check of total desktop sales by the sours sited by AMD showed that AMD had not gained market share.

Note how deceptively the $0 base line is presented. Because of the strange scale used, a ($10M) loss appears at first glance like it is a the break-even base line. To find the actual break even point, you need to extrapolate an imaginary line between plus $30M and minus $10M.

This is typical of AMD's metrics. AMD fiddles with the definitions of its metrics and graphical presentations so that it presents deceptive information. When the metric is no longer favorable AMD will then change to a new metric.

Anand includes the statement that the 65nm chips "won't be available until sometime next year" ie 2007. The concept of no commercial parts for months after an "AMD Launch" gives a whole new meaning to the concept of a product launch.

What tools do you use to replace Morton utilities? The One button clean up tool is particularly useful for me to clean the registry after uninstalling or installing software.

Knock on wood but Norton SystemWorks has not presented me with any problems. However several friends have reported problems.

The 2/3 ratio approximates the "outside the US revenue" to "total revenue ratio". That leaves only the US sales -- about 1/3 of the total -- subject to the US action.

The AMD processors are manufactured in Germany so only US sales are the subject of the US action. AMD stopped using the Austin fab to make processors before the statute of limitation cut off date.

kpf: Oh and btw this was end of September, 26.

The opinion was issued in Sept but the issue was discussed beginning when Intel filed its motion to dismiss -- 6 to 12 months ago. There were a number of people who could see that the law favored Intel and AMD was in deep trouble.

The news of the dismissal of AMD's foreign claims was widely reported. Are you truly unaware or are you taunting? Here is one quick link from Google.

http://reseller.co.nz/reseller.nsf/news/6F456B8A82FD8B63CC2571F6007B2D6F

You can also find a list of court documents on AMD's website and a link for the September 26 Opinion Motion to Dismiss is listed.

http://breakfree.amd.com/en-us/anti_documents.aspx

AMD may already have a patent license from Transmeta. During the development of the Hammer, AMD signed a deal with Transmeta for a Hammer emulator.

It is quite possible and IMO likely that there was a patent cross license between AMD and Transmeta that would cover processors and provide design freedom. In other words, don't worry about patents just go ahead and conduct your business.

Many think that AMD is pretty desperate for good news if it needs to publicize a discovery motion win to show success in its antitrust claim. If AMD had something better such as actual probative evidence they would use it in their publicity.

AMD would probably present the evidence in a court filing and then loudly cite the court document as containing proof of Intel misconduct. One can just imagine the AMD claims about a "smoking gun" given their current level of legal exaggeration.

At least the Rolling Stones concert would be a great event.

Perhaps you should take a look at the Federal Rules of Evidence and reconsider your understanding of what constitutes "evidence" in a Federal Court.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/

Hold on to your hat. You have seen nothing yet like the stock price decline that will occur in 2007 when the full effect of Intel's product leadership will appear.

AMD will just have to issue press releases on more discovery motions won.

You need to understand that "document discovery" search will not necessarily find "evidence". The American legal system is notorious for allowing onerous fishing expeditions on the theory that a party might possibly, maybe, find a scrap evidence some where, some how.

The American style of discovery makes the US legal system a laughing stock in the European community. The discovery decision specifically stated that legal issues of what contitueted evvidenc and the definition of the "global market" could not be decided. The decision that strippd about 2/3 of AMD's claim from the case still stands.

Only the discovery standard of "reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence" was at issue. Of course AMD said "Well yeah, we "calculate" that we might find something that at least provides a "lead" to evidence somewhere else. There is probably a little pony in there somewhere."

If AMD could find any actual evidence of Intel misconduct they would blast away with a press release, a press conference and a Rolling Stones concert. Instead, AMD issues a press release when they win a discovery motion or file a subpoena.

Motions to obtain discovery are almost always granted. Occasionally a Judge will have mercy on a party and reign in the fishing expedition a little bit, but that rarely happens.

The interesting part is that AMD will only receive Intel documents as the result of this discovery decision. AMD will have to go to the national legal system in other countries to get documents or testimony from foreign companies. No fishing expeditions will be allowed and AMD will fail to obtain permission for broad discovery requests in the global arena.

As an interesting point of reference for you Klaus, the German legal system is particularly strict in applying a tough standard for discovery requests.

It is a lot easier to lure the bear into the tent than it is to keep the bear happy once he is in the tent.

A hard lesson that AMD is now learning with Dell because it was too naive to figure that out in the first place.

RE: NY State approves $650M in aid for AMD microchip plant.

The AMD fab will generate about 1200 jobs. Therefore, New York is paying AMD about $540,000 per job.

A pretty astounding rate by any standard.

Those that can do.

Those that can't file law suits and whine and complain.

Intel is a major sponsor for the BMW Sauber F1 team. It takes big bucks to get a prominent display on an F1 car.

http://www.bmw-sauber-f1.com/en/

Will the photo of the 65nm chip run Task Manager ?

Apple vs. Dell price war

Ed Burnette: Macs simply cost more, right? Wrong. I compare similar configured Dell notebook and MacBook Pro systems. Guess who's the clear price leader.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=211&tag=nl.e540

A Great Week!

http://www.overclockers.com/tips01073/

AMD hasn't had a good week or so.

One, they released 2X2 cores that lost practically every meaningful test to Intel's Kentsfield with almost twice the power consumption. Everyone was so impressed that AMD cut the price before charging it.

Two, they "showed off" a 65nm 4-core running Task Manager rather than tasks. Guess it's better to be a manager than a worker.

Third, they "released" 65nm chips, and showed them off to nobody, and nobody seemed to mind.

Fourth, they found the need to "instant rebate" most of their dual-core processors about 10%.

Finally, it doesn't look like the 65nm CPUs AMD plans to release about a year from now will reach the raw GHz speeds Intel's current dual- and quad-core chips. We're seeing 2.5GHz max for quads, 2.9GHz for duallies. Given that AMD's current chips do rather less per clock cycle than Intel's chips, it's hard to see how these chips can be tweaked to exceed what Intel has today, much less the 3.5GHz/4GHz 45nm quad/duallies from Intel that will begin to show up around the same time.

continued...

Re: who won [the INSIGHT Award for Most Innovative Process Technology] last year?

No one won the award last year. But the award was a "Nominate Your Device" Award. This lame and contrived applause is another example of AMD's total desparation.

http://www.semiconductor.com/insightawards/categories.asp

Perhaps AMD can retroactively win the 2005 award by playing "Nominate Your Device".

A new metric for AMD:

When you don’t use our processor, it uses less power than Intel. Buy AMD when you want less.

Question: What is the only semiconductor manufacturing company in the world that is currently under investigation for violation of the antitrust laws by the United States DOJ?
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Answer: AMD

The claims are a lot like the Droidian inspired "Centrno is not pulling its weight".

Add item 3 for evaluating AMD's Quad processor estimate credibility: AMD also estimated that the Quack FX would take back the performance crown from Intel and would be a "killer" game machine.

AMD did establish a new metric for the evaluation of desktop power supplies. The metric is now Kilowatts instead of the abandoned watts.

Anybody Need a New Central Heating System?

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2065502,00.asp

Power Consumption in Quack FX

We decided to check out power consumption on the systems as configured for our testing. We ran four instances of Prime95, each assigned to specific cores through Prime95's affinity option. We used the In-place large FFT test, which doesn't consume a lot of memory. On top of the four instances of Prime95, we ran 3DMark06. Here's what we uncovered:

System Peak Power Consumption Under Max Load

Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 242W

Athlon 64 FX-62 298W

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 340W

AMD Quad FX 595W

Yes, that's 595 watts for a system with a single 7800 GTX and two hard drives, under full load—nearly double that of the Intel quad-core system. That's quite a turnabout over the situation of a year ago. Continued...

At last, benchmarks where AMD's Quack 4 exceed numbers for the Intel QX6700.

GeForce 8800 Needs The Fastest CPU -- The Athlon FX Platform Gets Dumped

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/29/geforce_8800_needs_the_fastest_cpu/index.html

To bridge the way for future reviews, we chose to run the same set of tests on a new Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 based system. We knew that the results would be night and day different, and so decided that a separate review of the advantages of moving the platform from AMD to Intel would be worthwhile. You should conclude from the results the same thing we did: you need an Extreme CPU to run next generation graphics.

I started this discussion with the comment that "I think" first silicon was announced even though the article was vague. You think differently and you may well be right.

However one thing is entirely clear: the statement that first silicon is "not possible" is wrong.

The quote from xbit is almost certainly a paraphrase and not the actual words spoken by Mark Bohr. It is not worth parsing the tense of processing vs processed with the level of confusion shown by the author of this article.

In any event, the electrons will hardly be dry on this discussion before silicon processing--if that is what is meant--turns to finished wafers. The time to run a hot lot is about 6 days and the report is already a several days old.