Replies to post #33255 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[j3pflynn]

smooth2o - and your data on AMD's 90nm chips being frequency limited comes from where exactly? Or are you making an irrelevant 130nm - 90nm comparison? Well, relevant for a few months, perhaps. Not really worth even considering.
Paul

[HailMary]

Do you think that Intel has learned something critical in working with Prescott design and the 90nm process such that in the future parts like Dothan

My guess is the initial Prescott clocked very slowly, and on a subsequent revision they intentionally pushed the transistors to get more speed and thus blew out the power budget. What else could they do without a major redesign? They certainly would have trouble shipping a Prescott if it topped out at 2.4Ghz.

I don't think AMD is limited in frequency as you suggest. AMD's cores are more like Dothan, where they get more performance/hz by using less pipeline stages. More gates per pipeline stage means less frequency.

That said, I do think Intel has an overall transistor speed advantage in their 90nm process, but they blew it with Prescott by having a poorly optimized design and as a result have to operate the process on the bleeding edge. I think AMD may actually be better at designing and optimizing chips with a given process, but Intel still leads in many aspects in process development. I wonder what a combination of AMD's design + Intel's process would result in.