Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[CombJelly]

"Please, tell me you're not serious..."

PPC970 will top at 2GHz at 130nm, with a promised 3GHz next year at 90nm. Do you think they can ramp the clockrate over 50% in a little more than 12 months just by going to 90nm? Ok, they might add a couple of more stages, but...

AMD does a better job on the speed of their SOI process. They are currently shipping 1.8GHz with a processor that uses a 12 stage integer pipeline with several of those stages devoted to dealing with x86 stuff, which the PPC970 doesn't have. Yet the PPC970 is slated to top out at 2GHz at 130nm. AMD likely can do better than that with a considerably shorter pipeline.

Ok, I make several assumptions here.

1) Opteron is likely speed limited by the floating body effect. This is reasonable because

a) it doesn't appear to be heat limited.
b) I suspect it isn't because of some overlooked critical path in the logic. Surely they simulated the thing?
c) I doubt if their transistors are just slow.

2) I am assuming the problem is fixable. Probably this is why AMD forked over $10 million last year. Or maybe they felt really generous.