Intel Corp (INTC)

[tecate]

Not Good News For Woodcrest

http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/671480.html

The CFD and FEA benchmark results showed the Opteron at 79 percent and 86 percent, respectively, of Woodcrest's performance. The main problem here is that Intel made the comparison against the 2.2 GHz Opteron 275 not the newer, faster 2.6 GHz Opteron 285 model. Well, I suppose that's not really Intel's fault; the newer AMD chips probably haven't been benchmarked yet. But the fact remains that Intel compared its not-yet-released chip to AMD's older chips.

I have a feeling the Operton 285 would break even with Woodcrest for CFD and FEA -- or come pretty close. Not good news for Intel. Woodcrest is already using 65nm technology, while the 285 is on 90nm. As soon as AMD goes to 65nm later this year, they're likely to leapfrog Intel once again.

Also, some folks at AMD think that the benchmark results don't reflect the latest compiler technology for their architecture. From what I hear, the company intends to do some reality correction pretty soon. I wouldn't be surprised if the engineers at AMD put in some extra hours over the next few days to get their benchmarks up to speed.