Replies to post #33219 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[sgolds]

Doug, the Intel folks seem to want to have it both ways. You are right - if the power curve is linear then Dothan has problems. If the power curve is not linear then Dothan could do fine while Prescott continues to cook. I have not heard anything magical about rev D so I'm not expecting miracles there.

From Pravin's reply I see that my surface understanding of this topic looks correct. Further evidence is that Intel is changing their whole x86 strategy to be based around Dothan derivatives, the end of NetBurst. Tells me that Intel considers the whole future of NetBurst concept to be a bust - undoubtably because of stubborn leakage/power problems.

Meanwhile, rumors on Dothan's power consumption seems to be all over the map. Believe nothing.

[chipguy]

Alan, you realize that if you're right, the horrid Prescott power (and it won't get *that* much better with D) implies that Dothan power dissipation will also be crappy.

What the heck do the Dothan and Prescott have in common
other than their process? These are vary different designs
in many ways. Process isn't destiny. DEC manufactured its
SA110 and EV6 RISC processors in the same fab using the
exact same process. These two chips ran at 3.1 W/GHz and
187 W/GHz respectively. How useful would power/frequency
data for one chip be in predicting the power dissipation of
the other at a given frequency on the naive basis they used
the same process?

[alan81]

Not sure how you get from my statement about leakage power being at "zero" frequency to some statement comparing prescott power to Dothan power... There are just way too many variables to draw any such conclusion.
-Alan