Replies to post #24231 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Elmer Phud]

Sgolds -

Ok, I see what you are saying. What you describe all falls under the general category of defect density and you described it well. As for Itanium's core area, I have heard, but don't know for sure, that it is smaller than NorthWood's. If this is true than the area that can't be protected by redundancy is smaller than you are considering.

So to pick nits, I wouldn't say Itanium is more difficult to produce. It takes no additional "special effort", but it is obviously more expensive. If you want to call this more difficult then I won't argue the point.

[chipguy]

Also, Itanium has a larger core with more transistors than P4 or Opteron at the same geometry, as I understand it.

You understand wrong. A Northwood P4 core has about
29m logic transistors. A Madison I2 core has about 20m
logic transistors, probably less than 14m if you remove
the x86 compatibility features. The P4 core is over 100
mm2. The I2 core is about 80 mm2, perhaps 65 mm2
with x86 logic removed.