Replies to post #43749 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[CombJelly]

"My point is that suppose at 65nm Precott blossoms to 5+ ghz at 83 watts"

Could be. But Prescott would be facing a K8 that would be around 120mm^2 dual core running at close to 4Ghz in about the same time frame. And at about the same power consumption. If AMD has their K9 with superior characteristics and a design point of 45nm, then Intel would be in a bind. If AMD blows K9, they still could do a quad core K8 at about the same size as current K8s. If they can come up with a smaller cell size for their cache, like IBM has currently, so much the better. And that doesn't even begin to consider the effects of a Horus-like chip at the same technologies.

83 watts would be great for Prescott. But it wouldn't be a killer. At this point, Intel needs a killer.

[CombJelly]

"My point is that suppose at 65nm Precott blossoms to 5+ ghz at 83 watts, what happens to K8."

Again, I point to the history of the industry. Who were the big players, circa 1965? Who are the big players now? If 1965 is a big reach, try 1985. Most of those companies don't exist any more. It only takes a single big mistake to make a company a take over target. That is what Grove meant by his phrase "only the paranoid survive". When you are at near monopoly status, you are usually insufficently paranoid. That describes Intel to a "T". Will they survive? Probably. But remember, their original strength was in DRAM, a market they pioneered...

[SmallPops]

Confused Re - "My point is that suppose at 65nm Precott blossoms to 5+ ghz at 83 watts,...."
This is an interesting thought. How do you think Intel would
market a 5+ GHz chip? They are moving away from frequency with
there model numbering scheme.

Thanks,
Smallpops

[fastpathguru]

My point is that suppose at 65nm Precott blossoms to 5+ ghz at 83 watts, what happens to K8.

A) 65nm is a long way off.

B) Scaling the frequency of the netburst architecture will not provide anywhere near linear performance gains. An embedded memory controller is called for, but there's that development cycle time thing again...

Hammer performance scales with frequency far better.

fpg

[bobs10]

It's really ironic what your asking. It wasn't that long ago that AMD backers were saying those sorts of things about the K7/K8 and the INTC acolytes were deriding the notion. Now suddenly the INTC backers are playing the "what if" games. My, my how things have changed. Face it AMD is the here and now. INTC may have a future but so far it looks like Mr. Andersons.