Intel Corp (INTC)

[wbmw]

Re: AMD pulled Copper, SoI, strains in Dresden, cumulating in a process orbiting Intels in the 90nm node. Spells not only competence. Spells excellence.

Copper they got from Motorola, and implemented in year 2000 at the 180nm. Intel was a year behind when they implemented it at 130nm in 2001.

Partially depleted SOI they got from IBM, implemented at 130nm, and is of highly debatable value. Intel has not yet chosen to implement any kind of silicon on insulator technology.

Strained silicon they got from IBM, and implemented into 90nm by the end of 2004. Intel pioneered this technology in their 90nm process that started shipping end of year 2003.

AMD's process engineers are competent, and they manage to partner with many highly skilled firms. Excellence, IMO, is a word better left for Intel's process engineers.

By the way, people used to claim that AMD's 90nm process outran Intel's (you use the word "orbiting") while dissipating less power, and the proof has traditionally been by comparing Intel's Pentium 4 processors with AMD's Athlon 64.

I've seen this myth perpetuate nonstop, in spite of Intel's other 90nm processor line (which uses the same process) that dissipates far less power. I'm of course referring to Pentium M. If you compare Intel's and AMD's mobile processor lines, you get the following top bin:

Pentium M 2.26GHz @ 27W
Turion 64 2.40GHz @ 35W

Actually, these look pretty comparable to me. You can probably debate which is ahead, but clearly one is not "orbiting" the other.