Intel Corp (INTC)

[Elmer Phud]

MPF update:

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Oct/bch20021017016865.htm

Krewell dropped a bombshell when he predicted that the 256 KB Clawhammer is dead. He argued that for the first half of next year, the 512 KB "Barton" Athlon XP will represent the high-end desktop CPU, and that AMD will concentrate their efforts on producing Opterons for the lucrative server market. This will allow AMD to substantially bump up the Average Selling Price (ASPs) of its processors. The Clawhammer will essentially be an Opteron with fewer HyperTransport links. I discussed AMD's difficult situation with him, and we agreed that if Clawhammer comes out with 1MB L2 cache it will indisputably regain the performance crown. This way, AMD will only be producing one core, which will reduce manufacturing headaches. However, it will then be imperative for AMD to transition smoothly to 90nm, in order to have substantially smaller die sizes than Intel. If AMD stumbles on the 90nm transition, then they will have to either cut the L2 cache to 256 or 512 KB and match (but not exceed) Intel's 90nm performance, or come out with a full 1MB Clawhammer and accept the huge die size penalty.