Replies to post #12152 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[alan81]

Thoughts on your points...
Regarding performance, what Intel really needs to accomplish is to be at hammer level performance when AMD gets hammer in volume. AMD is still shipping over 75% of their volume as Athlon XP, which Intel has been competitive with for a long time. Over the past six months, Intel has pushed their performance envelop well above XP levels, but not quite to hammer levels yet. The new prescott with 1066FSB, 2M l2, and steady frequency increases will surely do that, and appear to be in time for volume hammer production.

I think a key issue with DDR2 is that they have lowered the DRAM operating voltage. Since the existing DRAM process technologies were optimized for the higher DDR voltage, the DRAM is essentially "under clocked", which explains the latency issues. If/when the DRAM makers develop a process optimized for the new voltage (and not able to work with the higher voltage DDR) we should see significant improvements in latency. I see DDR2 as enabling right now, but no current benefit.

PCI-express graphics are a big disappointment. Based on earlier presentations by the video manufacturers I was expecting improved performance, but what we got was a slight drop in performance. I hope this is due to software and driver issues and that performance will improve as the vendors optimize for PCI-express. I have always said there is no hope, but we will see.

The HUGE jump in socket 775 power consumption is very interesting, and very surprising. There is a pin on socket 775 that tells the CPU it is in socket 775 rather than socket 478. I assume this turns on some of the new functionality, which is probably increasing the power draw. The fact that Intel did not announce (or perhaps really enable) this circuitry yet it is there drawing power is puzzling.

As a final note, Intel really needs to get their act together before the new big 300mm AMD factory comes on line, or they are going to lose a significant amount of market share. They do have some time, but they also need to make faster progress.
--Alan

[The Duke of URL]

Thank you both for your cogent comments.

But Craig, whose last day as CEO is today, is a process guy. Are there economies in the manufacturability of Prescott?

And what's up with this new "low cost" Centrino with 2 MEGS!!! of L2? Did I get that right?

[Tenchu]

WBMW, PCI-Express and DDR2 are at best one step sideways and a step back in cost.

Won't the cost issue be solved with ramp-up of volume? After all, AGP, PCI, and DDR SDRAM have been in the market for how many years now?

As for the step sideways, well, what are we really expecting here in terms of performance? A sudden jump in the benchmarks? I don't recall many applications today really being limited by the bandwidth of peripherals like graphics and I/O.

Besides, the same arguments were made back when AGP was released, that no one needs the bandwidth, that PCI video cards were good enough (remember Voodoo2?), that it was another attempt by Intel to control the platform. It took a year or so before AGP graphics cards demonstrated real advantages over their PCI counterparts. And that was back when performance mattered more in the marketplace than it does now.

Relax, the only boneheaded decision that Intel has to live with right now is the power-hungry Prescott and its server derivatives. The sooner Intel can move Dothan to the desktop, the better.

Tenchu