Intel Corp (INTC)

[Wouter Tinus]

Power 7 will tip up in 2010 as a native quad-core clocking even faster with more threads and cache to continue the pain on the competition.

I think Power gets most of its advantage over the competition from two factors: 1) using 1.5/2x as much power and 2) having multiple times the bandwidth. Both are basic design parameters that don't require any particularly advanced smarts to implement, as long as you're willing to pay the price. Because of those two elephants in the room, the trade offs for the cores themselves become a secondary factor. It doesn't take much to be good when you've got 75GB/s and 180W to blow.

I personally like this brute force approach, but I don't think IBM is technically more competent than others for choosing it, it's just a matter of strategy. I would like to see Intel follow in their footsteps with Tukwila, but I fear even the most high-end incarnation of CSI will seem modest compared to the Power6 interconnect.