Replies to post #4694 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[chipguy]

FACS: When will Intel wisen up and recall Itanic2

Be careful what you wish for. IF Intel was to drop the Itanium...

Do you really think the purpose of this polemic was to engage in discussion?

[blauboad]

I agree, that AMD right now needs Itanium to chug along promisingly--if not ever actually deliver. If Intel drops their committment to that platform, then there will be nothing to stop them from implementing x86-64. I don't know how the cross-licensing works, but I'm assuming that Intel could do that without paying anything or very much to AMD. As we've seen with AthlonMP, the only chance that Opteron has of getting into corporate server rooms is to be a unique solution, because if Intel sells something comparable, they will buy from Intel. Alot of people speculate that Prescot is 64bit, and that's what worries me.

An article I read about Sun not to long ago mentions, in an off-hand way, an intel 64bit solution called "Ant Hill" (sounds alot like Yamhill) which Intel is pimping around to big OEMs while at the same time being secretive about. It could be FUD--"don't buy Opteron, we'll have something better, just wait till AMD folds.."--but it also could be something like Prescot-Xeon with the x86-64 registers which, right out of the box could run all the x86-64 software and OSs that AMD has been struggling to make happen.

To go with the "Ant Hill" codeword, Intel's strategy might be to let AMD venture out first, watch if it finds a market, then send out a swarm of chips to take that market away. Like the one ant you see in your kitchen Monday becomes an invasion on Tuesday. AMD takes the risk, Intel stands ready to benefit. But can it work?

Now, if Intel's 86-64 is not compatible with AMD's, and it does not arrive by Christmas, then I think AMD will win out because of the time it takes to develop software support and validate servers. The ant-swarm scenario would only work if AMDx86-64 is implemented in Prescot, so that a quick decision by Intel to activate it (and make chipsets available for it) would send--in a matter of weeks--all Intel's might into the space that AMD was so nice to clear for them. If it's a matter of fabbing new chips--that takes too long. If they don't already have a chipset for it, it may also be too late.

Many on this board know the business alot better than I do. Is this feasible?

[sgolds]

smooth2o, do not confuse 'recall' with 'cancel'. The bug that Intel documented can cause data corruption and crashes, and is not due to "hardware or software bugs" (I guess it means that the problem is in the processor, not the mobo). This is all by their own admission.

There aren't that many of them in the field (maybe 5000) - why not do a recall and replace them with fixed versions? Is the Itanium2 architecture so broken that it is unfixable for clock rates above 800MHz? Will Madison have the same bug? Will Madison be delayed for a rework of the layout, or perhaps be limited in clock rate also?

The fact that Intel is not doing a recall brings up a lot of questions about the health of the Itanium product line. If Madison does not have the problem, then Intel can well afford to instruct users to run Itanium2 at 800MHz and give them a coupon for a free Madison upgrade motherboard. Certainly the customers who trusted Intel enough to be on the bleeding edge deserve this!

The other shoe has not dropped.