Intel to Spend $2B To Stay In The Game 365
hexed_2050 writes "AMD has declared dominance in the gaming and server microprocessor market in 2004, and Intel needs to respond.. fast! This is why Intel has planned to spend 2 billion dollars to upgrade their eight year old, Fab 12 plant in Arizona. "Part of what I do is put the emphasis on how fast we respond," explains Robert Baker, Intel's top manufacturing executive."
"...how fast we respond" (Score:3, Insightful)
is Intel resigned to only "respond" to AMD from now on, never to lead again?
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:3)
As a side note, it's nice to see them pumping money into US fabs.
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:3, Interesting)
How is having more stock sooner of chips nobody wants going to give them dominance?
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:2)
I totally agree with you. Does anyone know how much chip production actually goes on inside the US these days? Is it not cheaper to do it all in China?
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:2, Insightful)
And with the value of the equipment and the cost of downtime, you don't want oppressive working conditions because mistakes from such practices will hurt your yield.
With out the traditional benefits of abusing laborers in sweatshops, I don't see the point to running a high-tech fab there.
Re:Freely working for a living is not slavery (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:that used to be... (Score:3, Interesting)
frontiers. If you have a viable frontier, immigration can be much more beneficial. If you have immigration without a frontier, and with a social welfare state, you have a giant contradiction [vdare.com].
The US elites have turned their back on frontiers-and have as you pointed out fallen in love with imperialism and slavery.
Re:big omission (Score:3, Interesting)
I looked at the link. It referred to a very simplistic "immigration good or bad" type of poll. The writer of the piece nicely mixes up the 9-11 terrorists with people from Latin American who come to America... to work.
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:5, Interesting)
Intel's problem isn't how fast they respond but rather something else entirely: a patent.
That patent is Silicon on Insulator [ibm.com]. It is owned by IBM. AMD has been using it some time now and it has allowed their processors to use less power than with conventional silicon. It is rumored that Intel approached IBM in order to license this technology but that IBM wanted to trade tech instead of making a cash deal.
So Intel is playing some cat and mouse with IBM. Right now, the IBM guys are probably laughing at the power consumption of Intel's processors - they're winning. So, in the near future, when you see that Intel has licensed a pretty bit of their technology to IBM, don't be surprised. Intel needs SOI and they're going to pay dearly for it.
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:2, Insightful)
Witness the Pentium-M as proof.
SOI is moderately helpful, but it's not the biggest factor.
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:2)
Anyone has a source?
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:3, Interesting)
I think they might respond by pulling legacy 16-bit support completely out of their chips (which I'm led to believe is costing them about 30% of their chips' "capacity" (as measured by power consumption and real estate) and replacing it with an emulator. While that might be a hugely controversial step, Microsoft took a similar leap when they jumped to 32 bit operating systems, and it proved to be pret
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:5, Informative)
Um
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:2)
Thanks for the clarification. I know there is still some kind of issue with legacy support, and I failed completely to research it before posting :-(
But my initial point is still that I think Intel will trot out s
Re:"...how fast we respond" (Score:2)
Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget that they do 60 to 70% of their business outside of the dollar zone and that a dollar losing 1% also means that they lose 1% of their purchase power on 60 to 70% of their imports.
That's one of the reasons why they let the oil prices go up this year (to compensate for the loss) and that's another reason for them to look into the switching to the petro-euro instead of the petro-dollar. That would be catastrophic for the US.
Read my sig to get further details.
Re:Nice (Score:2, Interesting)
Though i'm not sure how easy it would be to switch to petro-euro, because although the euro is attractive now, the EU is used to running at trade surpluses, but if the euro stays so high they will begin to have trade deficits, which would cause a larger european economic problem. Also the dollar is still the worlds reserve currency. Although your conspiracy theory in that link is interesting, I think you overestimate the oil-lobby vs all
Re:Nice (Score:5, Interesting)
This is changing too, and this is very bad for the US too. 2 weeks ago China said that they were now getting Euros along with Dollars as their reserve currencies.
Russia and North Korea did that too. If this trend amplifies, be ready for a huge inflation in the US.
Re:Nice (Score:2)
Can you please explain how a switch in the world's reserver currency
leads to huge inflation in the US?
Re:Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as the dollar ceases to be a reserve currency, banks around the world will sell off their US dollar reserves. That puts a large number of USD onto the international markets, pushing the price down.
Anything imported into the US -- or locally manufactured using imported parts or raw materials -- suddenly becomes more expensive.
Re:Nice (Score:2)
Re:Nice (Score:2)
Re:Nice (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nice (Score:5, Informative)
The moment the dollar loses that unique place, as a pillar of financial stability, economies around the world swap dollars for euros at an ever dropping rate. The dollar is 1.36 euros now, while two and a half years ago it was 0,85 or less, I cannot remember. Generally speaking, this trend has not been worse only because the Chinese (of all countries) are supporting the dollar buying enormous amounts of it on the markets.
The way your economy is going, and the way the euro guarantees its own stability through various WORKING mechanisms of the ECB, it is undeniable that in the next twenty years or so the Euro will be where the dollar is today. And since your whole economy is supported by outside economies, it is very probable it will collapse. Why? Well, its exchange rate will hit the floor and will bring huge price hikes to anything that is not made 100% in the US. Which is, everything.
So, when you vote for "less taxes", you put one more stone in the end of the great American empire. I, as a European, shake my head and wonder whether you Americans have any idea what is happening in your country...
Re:Nice (Score:3, Interesting)
Be ready? It has already arrived! Gas is 120% higher than in 2000, housing 15-100%, postage up 25%, milk up 30%, most vegetables up 20-30%, whole chickens are $2.00/lb... We're in an expensive war in the middle east and local taxes are skyrocketing...
Inflation is here already, but has been "adjusted" away in the CPI.
Soon enough it will become affordable to manufacture things in the US again, and the new Chinese industry will be bankrupted by cur
Re:Nice (Score:5, Interesting)
Of note to the conspiracy theorists is that prices didn't start dropping until well after the election was over, although many were predicting an October surprise with OPEC providing some massive drop in oil prices. In spite of their views, the prices continued reaching record levels, and it wasn't until news came that oil consumption in China was being slowed by additional tariffs Beijing placed on imported oil in an effort to slow consumption growth, followed by word that US oil use was down and that on-hand stocks were growing, that prices began to come down.
OPEC is happy when oil is around the $35 per barrel range. It's not so expensive that they get slammed in the press, and not so cheap that they make no money.
Re:Nice (Score:2)
Take a look there [americanprogress.org], you'll see that that makes sense. They have a nice chart showing the correlation between oil prices rising and the dollar falling. Interesting.
Re:Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree. It's the old setting your price point curve to maximize revenue. OPEC knows that if oil really got up into the $80-$100 barrel range people would start making lifestyle changes and start to be forced to find other energy avenues. They definitely don't want that happening.
Re:Nice (Score:2)
More complicated. (Score:3, Insightful)
That means they have a 3rd option. Re-peg their currencies to the Euro and let the US economy crash. It's a lot of short term pain for them, but a lot more short term and long term pain for us.
AMD must be loving this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now fast forward a year or two, and AMD is on top, and Intel is trying to play catch up. I never would have dreamed this would happen. I really have to tip my hat to AMD.
Re:AMD must be loving this. (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing that saved AMD in this regard is that AMD64 chips run 32-bit code faster (for most software) than any of the Pentiums. Microsoft seems to have helped out it's old partner Intel by delaying Win64 until Intel managed to clone AMD64. Heh, that is quite a switch - Intel cloning AMD. ;-)
At least Linux for AMD64 has been available for some time...and it's great to see Sun pushing Solaris for AMD64 also.
Now fast forward a year or two, and AMD is on top, and Intel is trying to play catch up. I never would have dreamed this would happen. I really have to tip my hat to AMD.
Yes, all this and lower power consumption (than P4) to boot. There should be some sweet notebooks and servers coming out over the next few months also, as the true low-power Athlon64s and Opterons roll out.
Re:AMD must be loving this. (Score:2)
Yes, all this and lower power consumption (than P4) to boot. There should be some sweet notebooks and servers coming out over the next few months also, as the true low-power Athlon64s and Opterons roll out.
While I agree that Athlon64 and Opteron are superior to Intels offerings in the desktop and server market, I have to say that Intel really hit the nail on the head with the Pentium M. While the P-M won't match a high clocked Athlon64 performance-wise, it's still plenty fast and uses very little power.
Re:AMD must be loving this. (Score:2)
Many "industry pundits" (ROFL) initially claimed that AMD64 would die unless Microsoft promptly shipped Win64. Needless to say, it didn't happen.
Re:AMD must be loving this. (Score:2)
Right, because even without its 64-bit potential, it has superior memory management and a shorter processor instruction pipeline, which is more efficient than a longer pipeline for most tasks besides media encoding. Since very few people do serious media encoding, this drawback doesn't matter.
Most pundits thought "no one needs 64-bit yet" and they were right.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AMD must be loving this. (Score:2)
I am well aware that Intel still probably sells 4x as many CPUs as AMD does, but where did you get this?
Sure, IIRC, Opteron's sales are just a small multiple of Itanium, but at least they can exploit the common die with Athlon64 (like Xeon relies on the same basic die), Itanium cannot.
Re:AMD must be loving this. (Score:2)
Where can I find these numbers?
Is that really the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/ [syslog.org]
Re:Is that really the problem? (Score:5, Funny)
PHB: "we're a large company an can't compete with these small, nimble companies. the good news is that at this rate we'll soon be the smallest company around."
Re:Is that really the problem? (Score:2, Interesting)
Read some of the technical documentation behind the two 64bit processors each put out. Intel's IA64/VLIW architecture is much more technologically impressive than AMD64's.
What made AMD64 so great was the fact that it stayed so true to the x86, it's almost like a souped up version. It's backward compatible and if you do any assembly/hardware stuff, it tends to be very similar. So much in fact that you still get many
Marketspeak (Score:5, Insightful)
1. AMD announces they're top dog.
2. Intel decides to minimize the effect of this by bragging about how much money they can spend.
3. Neither is looking at any immediate, dramatic, change in business because processor sales follow seasonal patterns more than Ad campaign release dates.
Fast? (Score:2)
Intel is not going to disappear (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intel is not going to disappear (Score:3, Informative)
In that case you should be rooting for AMD as long as it doesn't break 50% marketshare. It's currently at 15%. Competition is a good thing.
In the meantime, I say buy the better product - AMD. :-)
Re:Intel is not going to disappear (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to ask...how often do you multitask CPU-bound tasks? That's the only place that HT helps performance, and it actually hurts performance on some apps. Computers have been comfortably multitasking since long before HT, and AMD chips do fine at it. Lately I've been ripping CDs, listening to MP3s and programming on an Athlon XP 2600+. It works great, nice and smooth.
In short, you've fallen hook,
Re:Intel is not going to disappear (Score:2)
Their response always seems to be a marketing ploy (which doesn't benefit
the consumer at all).
Maybe AMD's strength will force their hand.
No, but Barrett era has been a failure (Score:2)
The 64-bit realm (Score:3, Insightful)
Gamers? Not a key market... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gaming is a niche market. The reason AMD can do well with it is that it's a botique market, and they produce so many less chips than we do.
Look, MY ego's been undergoing enough thrashing lately. Gamers, it's your turn: The reason AMD is dominant in the market segment is a past Intel decision to concentrate on MHz rather than FPS. There's money to be made in gaming chips, sure, but not all that much compared to corporate desktops and laptops.
Sure, the world of processors is changing, but Intel is adapting to the overall MARKET, not merely to AMD's strategies and successes.
Side Note: How come you anti-globalization folks aren't applauding Intel for expaning a facility in the USA? Hmm? Where are AMD's chips made again?
Re:Gamers? Not a key market... (Score:2)
I dunno.. AMD chips if ur lookin at speed vs money, seem to be a better deal.. isn't that what businesses should be looking for?
Re:Gamers? Not a key market... (Score:2, Insightful)
Businesses look for somebody else to blame. It's the first thing they "teach" you in MBA "school". Make sure somebody else can catch the blame. Hopefully you can blame a black, a jew, a gay, a woman, or some crippled person. Save the white straight male at all costs.
MHz rather than FPS (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: At Intel we decided to put our effort into having a CPU that had an insanely high clock speed, which we decided was much more important than actually getting the CPU to do a lot of processing, which would help contribute to higher frame rates for games and higher output for most users. Our evil competitor AMD realized that it was important to have the computer do something with the cycles they used, and built CPUs that not only did more, but did more at slower clock speeds. We are trying to figure out why this allowed them to win in a market we previously owned, but so far we've only come up with this MHz rather than FPS marketing phrase.
But gamers predict where the market is going... (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting to see how an Intel employee is now deriding higher-performing AMD CPUs as "about gaming" and basically implying Intel doesn't care about that "boutique" market.
And to admit Intel's all about marketing labels like MHz instead of true processing power (derogatorily refered to a mere "fps" here....).
Yeah, Intel's "adapting to the overall MARKET" - with an admitted marketing strategy centered on the fact their clock just happe
Re:Gamers? Not a key market... (Score:5, Interesting)
I call BS. Intel has plenty of resources to go after all kinds of different markets. Further, AMD chips do better at many other kinds of applications. Even further, Intel went so far as to rebadge very expensive Xeon chips (Pentium 4 Extremely Expensive Edition) to go after the "unimportant" gaming market. Finally, for most server usage, Opteron vastly outperforms Xeon, especially for multiprocessor servers.
Sure, the world of processors is changing, but Intel is adapting to the overall MARKET, not merely to AMD's strategies and successes.
I hope your company has a high rate of adaptation, it'll need it.
Side Note: How come you anti-globalization folks aren't applauding Intel for expaning a facility in the USA? Hmm? Where are AMD's chips made again?
Yes, that's nice, though I'm quite sure Intel made the decision based on dollars and cents rather than any warm-and-fuzzy pro America sentiment. Good PR doesn't hurt either - and Intel could sure use some. ;-)
It should also be pointed out that AMD could soon be manufacturing chips in East Fishkill, NY if Forbes is right [forbes.com].
Re:Gamers? Not a key market... (Score:2)
Yeah the dresden Germany fab is thier higher volume fab, but opening a new fab in NY could shift the ballence to made in the usa. I highly doubt this 2b fab upgrade for intel is going to shift margin, most likely it's just required maintenece costs to keep the plant running.
Intel's roadmaps from some 2-3 years
Re:Gamers? Not a key market... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's money to be made in gaming chips, sure, but not all that much compared to corporate desktops and laptops.
That seems to be Matrox's theory also (younger people here might be asking who the hell is Matrox?). I wonder if it's working for them.
Re:Gamers? Not a key market... (Score:3, Informative)
Just to point out, Fab25 is a FLASH plant now, not CPUs. Those are Fab30 in Dresden.
Story time (Score:5, Informative)
What is this "make shit up for the headline" hour? Lets see what a professional news organization has to say: http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type =technologyNews&storyID=6960222 [reuters.com]
wrong metric (Score:3, Insightful)
Opterons are dominating Xeons in 32-bit server performance right now and they will dominate them even further in 64 bit performance once Windows Server and Solaris 10 go 64 bit in the next couple months. Athlon FX processors are dominating Prescott P4's in 32 bit gaming performance right now and will dominate them even further in 64 bit gaming performance when XP64 is released in March.
And then there's the dominance in stock perform
Raising Arizona (Score:2, Funny)
bad slahdot (Score:3)
Can we just admit that both have a lot of strengths, and that Intel or AMD ain't going anywhere and be done with it. When you go to store to buy your next CPU, buy the one you like and leave the rest of us the fcuk alone.
Desktop CPUs are only a fraction of Intel (Score:5, Interesting)
Wake me when AMD provides complete solutions, chipset, motherboard, with integrated audio and video.
Intel is upgrading because 8 years is a long, long time for a modern chip fab. The "we'll make chips cheaper than AMD" crap is just investor PR.
AMD is only a threat to but one small fraction of Intel's business.
Re:Desktop CPUs are only a fraction of Intel (Score:2)
Um... (Score:2)
What you mention isn't relevent- really, it isn't.
Apples and oranges. (Score:2)
I don't think making chips necessarily qualifies a company to be a mobo maker. AMD is focused only on their core business: producing powerful chips. They've left the mobo market alone (other than to provide reference boards) because there are other manufacturers out there who specialize in motherboards.
I guess I don't see the relative advantage of singlesourcing the system boards. Having an Intel board in my machin
Money (Score:2, Interesting)
More Intel ideas... (Score:5, Funny)
I've been waiting (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong conclusion... (Score:5, Interesting)
Other thing besides competing in CPU prices Intel could do would be to remove overclocking cap (say, by overclocking you void warranty, if they want to protect themselves from people who burn their CPUs) and possibly limit other such monopolist practices that people just perceive as customer-unfriendly.
Re:Wrong conclusion... (Score:2)
second, you invets money to make money. Intel will invets into it's plant, and then recoup with a more competitive product. It will also be recoup over time, allowing them to recoup the moeny by selling more processors.
I wont by AMD, they have burned me twice, and they show very little in the way of RnD.
Re:Wrong conclusion... (Score:2)
Few doubt Intel makes -better- processors. Yes, better quality, better top speed, better reliablity. But worse bang for the buck. In times when AMD competed with Cyrix and such, and their CPUs were vastly worse than Intel, everyone had to think twice before buying the "cheaper" one. Now the differences are minor and buying Intel is a gesture of extravagance or paranoia - because all qualities of AMD are just satisfactory and what Intel gives
What standard is AMD usinng to declare "Dominance" (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus my system has been unstable for a long time and I am afraid my AMD cpu or motherboard may be to blame. Perhaps that fear is unfounded... I don't know... But peace of mind is worth something, and I have never had any reason not to have faith in an Intel CPU.
Dominance... (Score:3, Insightful)
AMD may declare what they want, but the numbers speak for themselves. I strongly doubt anyone can provide numbers showing that AMD is ahead of Intel in the server market (though I may grudgingly concede the gaming market).
Of Bytes and Men... (Score:5, Insightful)
And it gives me goosebumps just wondering what the other part of his important job is... Aside from the fact that you should have been proactively whooping AMDs cache to begin with, not responding to their dominance.
Things change .. (Score:2)
Look at IBM, or TI ( thats Texas Instruments, for you youngins around here. )
That said, when does our beloved microsoft get to that stage? I hope its soon.. Along with the 'media industry'....
In defense of Intel (Score:2)
But yeah in the desktop/server market in general I'd give AMD first pick now. Truly the innovator at this point.
Also I'd be nervous if I were AMD, a quick glance at the balance sheets shows Intel has a helluva lot more working capital then AMD, it's amazing what a
Re:In defense of Intel (Score:2)
Look out, you've been eaten by the marketing drones. Centrino is nothing more than a lame marketing name [wikipedia.org] for a laptop containing a Pentium-M processor, an Intel 855 chipset, and one of 2 Intel wireless chipsets. It's incredible how highly people esteem "Centrino", particul
Re:In defense of Intel (Score:2)
Don't be TOO ashamed. An article I was reading said that their campaign has been so successful, some people think they need Centrino in order to go wireless, others think that Centrino is the actual processor name - they said there was a demonstrable spike in demand for Centrino not
Re:In defense of Intel (Score:2)
Not quite as dramatic as CmdrTaco says it is (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless, one of the reasons why I prefer AMD is price/performance. Most of the benchmarks that I've seen in addition to my personal experience make AMD the clear winner in this scenario, particularly for gaming. AMD chips run cooler, take up less electricity, and cost less than their Intel counterparts. But that's only a small part of the competition's offensive against Intel. Intel now realizes that.
Neil Stephenson explains the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
fanboys (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe the fanboys should compare some basic financial statistics of Intel [yahoo.com] and AMD [yahoo.com]. This stuff doesn't change overnight.
Why is this news? (Score:3, Informative)
Plus, Intel had bet the farm on Rambus back then, and when that panned out they had to play catch-up. They eventually caught up. Then AMD hit a nive niche with the Athlon 64, but it's still a blip relatively speaking. Gaming is a niche market, and so are servers (though a bigger niche). Sure, AMD is the leader in gaming, but Intel has the volume, overall market share, and roadmap to compete where most of the dollars are. Plus Intel sells everything including the motherboard to vendors - AMD doesn't.
So Intel revamping a fab isn't really that big a deal. Heck, at the volumes they deal in, $2 billion is almost play money for them. We'll see how both companies manage the next transition - for market share to change appreciably towards either company will require either a major leap forward (not likely) or a major misstep (much more likely). Meanwhile, both companies will keep on pouring money into the fab for each now generation of chips, and continue until someone blinks.
Intel's problem. (Score:2)
AMD in comparison, puts the horse before the cart. They build
Complacency kills! (Score:5, Insightful)
When AMD began offering cheaper, but equally capable CPU's (Thunderbirds, Celerons), Intel chuckled about how they ran much hotter than their Intel counterparts. All the while AMD was eating up the low-end PC market.
When AMD began telling the world about their 64-bit plans, Intel chuckled about how the world wasn't ready for 64-bit. Additionally, they pushed their way-overpriced 32-bit Xeon's whenever anyone brought up 64-bit server CPU's.
When AMD began talking Opterons, Intel talked about their outrageously overpriced, and seldom utilized Itanium technology.
And when 64-bit AMD chips began to outsell Intel chips, Intel dragged their feet on adding 64bit extensions to their own chips.
Intels attitude seemed to be one that dooms nations, individuals, and companies: They were too arrogant and complacent!
They knew that they were the CPU kings of the world. They knew that the same company that had stolen the low-end PC market could never threaten their corporate market. They knew that 64bit CPU's were not needed yet, and they knew that they could basically put out what they want, when they wanted to, and that people would beat a path to their door, simply for the Intel brand name.
And now they know they were wrong.
Face it... Nations fall when they ignore the barbarians at the gate. People fall when they think they're more important than they are, and companies fall when they ignore the competition, and their target markets needs.
Intel wasn't developing what people wanted, they were developing what they thought people needed. There's a huge difference there. When creating art, you can do things your way. When manufacturing product, you do so to create what the market wants. Intel got it backwards, and their current state shows what happens when you do: Roadmaps tore up, lackluster sales, and a company that's now trying to re-invent itself, just to stay competitive in a market that it once owned.
Intel screwed up! It is the 21st century's IBM in a way, and as IBM had to do in its day, Intel must now change in order to stay alive in this industry it created.
Re:Complacency kills! (Score:2, Insightful)
Intel CPU market is much, much larger than the "gamer" or "enthusiast" market.
In fact, Intel hardly gives a rats ass about that market. Only recently did they release a motherboard (Hey, when's AMD going to release a complete solution including chipset and mobo?) that supported any sort of overclocking. Even then it was a very half-hearted attempt at competing with other mobo makers, not AMD.
Intel's not going anywhere any time soon, in fact, I predict that Intel is still ar
Re:Complacency kills! (Score:2)
Er, no. AMD is also doing very well with it's server and workstation chip, the Opteron. Thus, it's ASPs (average selling prices) are rising, which is a good sign long-term.
Intel could undercut them and eliminate them, if they chose to do so.
At least if there weren't anti-dumping laws.
BT
Re:Complacency kills! (Score:2)
I've been advising people to buy AMD stock for several years... ;-)
I might wait for a pullback at this point, but if you're holding it for 5+ years you might as well start buying.
fast response is 12 years? (Score:2, Interesting)
Bank for your buck (Score:5, Interesting)
Intel's spending 2B to upgrade its facilities, but who's paying? We are, that's who. So if chipset prices go up again, AMD will still be on top for the cheapskates among us.
They're missing the point entirely (Score:5, Interesting)
Fab 12 = OLD News! (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting quote (Score:2)
Minion "But, Lord Baker, my men are working as fast as they can. The Emperor asks the impossible."
Dothan is key (Score:3, Informative)
Anandtech review on Linux performance on Dothan:-
http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.
Yes, everyone agrees that Prescott is too hot and doesn't quite match up to the FX-55 and its descendants. Shut up already.
Dothan's a different cheetah though. With it's mind-bogglingly cool thermal envelope, a moderately overclocked Dothan holds up to a FX-55 (which is a pretty hot processor, albeit not in the Prescott level) in most cases. Best of all, Dothan delivers GAMING performance almost as good as the top of the line AMD offering: FX-55. There's also tons of headroom for overclocking a Dothan to further increase its performance. All this when Dothan is not even running DDR2, PCI-E, or a performance optimized (as opposed to power optimized) mobo! Come Alvisio, things will get even better.
If Intel sheds a bit of Prescott ego, and it's already showing signs of doing so, and adopts Dothan variants for its upcoming desktops, it will whup some serious ass. Believe you me.
The only sadness is that current Dothans and especially their desktop mobos are horribly expensive. I'm just waiting for the prices to come down in the next 6 months. Can't wait to get my hands on a passive cooled, super silent Pentium M desktop that delivers the same performance as all these over-hyped FX-55s and Prescotts. Heck, i'm even willing to take a 10-20% performance hit, as long as i don't need to use an industrial exhaust fan or liquid nitrogen coolant. I can always make up for the processor performance by spending more on a graphics card anyway.
I love processors, not brands, btw. Hats off to the Israeli design team that pulled the P-M rabbit out of their hat!
mod_speling considered mandatory (Score:2)
Sorry. my eyes were bleeding.
Re:Competition!!! (Score:2)
I think it's great they are investing $2 billion in America. I think it's great to see American companies invest for the future and compete with each other.