wbmw,
And it seems that as much as Intel has revamped their design methodology, they are still optimizing for the client and proliferating upward with a weaker solution. Perhaps this will change in the Nehalem time frame, but right now their MP segment is very weak.
I would by no means call Conroe, Merom weak. These are strong cores sitting on an obsolete bus, making it next to impossible for these cores to compete with Opteron. Intel's absence from 4 socket market will persist until the launch of CSI.
For one thing, Tulsa may be a leap over Paxville, but it's still a distant second to Opteron.
I think Charlie said there is very little activity now on Tulsa. With all Tier-1s on Opteron, Tulsa may see the light of day in only 1 or 2 of the 5 of the Tier 1s.
power, and lower cost than a Xeon MP system through 2007 and most of 2008. And if AMD catches up in RAS, it will put them in a clear leadership position for the next 2 years at least. No wonder Dell chose to finally bet on two horses.
Well, AMD is planning several RAS related advances in the near future, but it appears that all that RAS stuff (that was supposed to keep Opteron in low end according to Intel investors) amounted to nothing so far. Price, performance, power consumption rule. RAS is distant 4th.
The only problem with this strategy is the sheer volume of the client market, and the cost issues in scaling a powerful MP optimized part into low cost markets, while still maintaining a competitive feature set.
It appears that for now, the strategy of optimizing whole different cores for target market (notebook, desktop, server) is kaput, and the one core strategy is the rule of the game at both Intel and AMD (with exception of Itanium). Looking at the roadmaps, and I see the next 2 years when both Intel and AMD have just 1 core serving all these markets.
I think most of K8L's optimizations, for example, won't translate very well into client side performance, but they may come at a cost.
Do you have anything in particular in mind?
The only thing I see is AMD introducing and "MP" version of Opteron with Directory based coherency, all the other versions without it, with various versions of Hypertransport links. That's as far as interface with outside world. Internally, I continue to see general purpose cores across the baord.
It might explain why Dell opened the door for AMD, but only in the MP segment.
Looking at the near term roadmap, Dell will just be using what look like the best processors in all segments. When K8L arrives, all bets are off, IMO.
The question is, will a low volume and high margin segment become more sustainable than a much higher volume and much lower margin segment?
As I said, it's the same core. What do you see as a problem for K8L not being able to address low end segments, just as well as K8 is addressing them currently?
Joe
