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The Near Future of Intel 136

Posted by Zonk from the very-specific-crystal-ball dept.
wh0pper wrote to mention a Design Technica story about the near-term future of Intel. They've been getting beaten in the press pretty soundly by AMD of late, and at the Intel Developer's Forum they did their best to convince attendees they were on the comeback trail. From the article: "It wouldn't be IDF if there wasn't a solid performance message. This time, Intel clearly had AMD in their sights. By a series of their products' massive performance improvements, Intel hit the ball back into AMD's court. With Microsoft's Vista operating system coming out at the same time, Intel showed how they have the higher performing solution. Clearly, we won't know until final systems ship. But Intel presented their case strongly, suggesting they can match AMD, if not beat them."
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The Near Future of Intel

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  • Gets you thinking... (Score:5, Funny)

    by 0110011001110101 ( 881374 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:29AM (#14890363) Journal
    FTFA - Think of being able to set up a secure network in 3-1/2 minutes after you have plugged in the hardware.

    Think of putting that network up for a hacking challenge on the web and having it totally violated in even less time than it took you to setup... Phew!! Good thing Intel isnt inside an Apple... ohhh shit. [ducks]

    /ssharcasm

  • Intel has been catching up lately... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PFI_Optix ( 936301 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:34AM (#14890401) Journal
    ...and I, for one, am quite glad. The closer the two competitors are, the better products each releases. This will keep AMD from coasting the way Intel did in the nineties.
    • I'm a big AMD fan, but this is true.

      Lately AMD's development rate has slowed. Initially, I suspected they did this to hold better product back until Intel became competitive again, but after a year or so I believe they started to sit on their laurels.

      The new intel designs will push AMD to work harder, which is a good thing. AMD's developers are very, very talented. It's sad to see the business side of the operation (even though its very practical for them) to tell the developers to slow down a little bit.

      Expect AMD to start going full-tilt again.

      • You really think it works that way? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:48AM (#14890506)
        I'm pretty sure processor development isn't just a matter of how determined the people involved are. Some parts of it depend on the building of new fab equipment. Some depend on the discovery of new ways to design things. Some depend on serious advances in physics.

        The reason chip companies sometimes hold back on new product is because they can't always be certain of the exact time at which breakthroughs in these other areas will be made. Their companies depend on having a solid, reliable revenue stream, so they have to use release schedules to smooth out the apparent advances in chip speed. If they didn't do this, we'd all be sitting around, hoping against hope that this month would be the month the new chips come out, and worried about buying in case they come out tomorrow.

        Which is more or less how Apple worked for a long time, because IBM wasn't able to smooth out its development curve. It wasn't pleasant.

        Anyway. Overall chip development does not just scale depending on the moods of the employees at chip companies. Intel went off-track by being overconfident at one point, sure, but that was a five year thing involving a bad choice of roadmap. The idea that AMB is sitting on their laurels after a year is ridiculous.
        • "Some depend on serious advances in physics." last i checked, physics hasn't changed too much... I'll let you know if the apple falls up next time.
        • But in todays world where consumers either don't research or have access to good research the idea of having a huge performance diffrence being any diffrent from a small one?

          Intel and Amd have fallen into a game of releasing microscopic advancements to pass each other. It's easier and it offers the long term potential of selling chips.

          There aren't many doublings in power left before people just don't need anymore power.

          For the average user who doesn't need to compile code there is already way too much
          • Any time someone says 'people will never need this power', microsoft _will_ release a new windows edition requiring it. :p Seriously though, the more that is offered, the more ways we will find to utilize it. Statements claiming that in the future we won't need X power/drive capacity/whatever are usually short sighted at best, and just plain wrong most of the time.
    • I wouldn't place any faith in his prediction.

      • Re:Check the source its Rob Enderle (Score:5, Informative)

        by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:12AM (#14890662)
        Oh geez, this clown. For those of you who don't know, Rob Enderle is the troll of trolls. He will go on various forums and make outrageous statements seemingly to do nothing more than pick fights. I can't tell you how many times I've seen him make personal attacks on people. Then, once he's done trolling, will write articles on how vapid the open source community is. The sad part is he's supposed to be a "professional" with a consulting company. I wouldn't believe a single word that comes out of that mans mouth, whether true or not. Get a different source for your facts...

    • Re:Intel has been catching up lately... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Intel are increasingly developing technology that work *against* the customer rather than *for* them... and this is their future direction.

      Everything done by Intel in the last 5-8 years has been driven completely by Digital Rights Management, and ensuring that the PC platform is completely locked down -- even if they so desperately want to avoid talking about it publicly. Remember the fuss over the "Fritz chip" -- it was a bill intended to force all electronic manufacturers to include a security chip to gu

  • Price war (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ginger Unicorn ( 952287 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:35AM (#14890410)
    hopefully this means AMD will revert to trying to compete on price and so i can afford to get a modern setup ;)

    • Re:Price war (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zephiris ( 788562 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:58AM (#14890585)
      If I could get an Athlon 64 3500+ (Venice Core :D) with 1.5GB of DDR400 RAM, 200GB ATA100 HD, DVD+RW 16X, an insane number of USB ports, etc, for less than $600, and add two serial ports and a good hardware modem for about $14, reuse a Soundblaster Live! or Aureal Vortex 2 (yes, really), into the end of last year, after not being able to have any computer upgrades since 1999 (Yay for Pentium 3), I don't think anyone else would have any excuse for AMD's price point. The only lower-end point is the ATi IGP graphics (which don't have a hardware T&L unit), but that can be upgraded at some point once PCI-E cards are cheap, and it can play most newer games still pretty smoothly, including Half Life 2.

      Ironically, it is slower in Freespace 2 (the new open source engine with fancy effects anyway) and SWAT 4, mostly for the lack of hardware T&L. Especially with relatively basic lighting effects in newer games, you can "feel" it slowing down as the CPU has to handle it. But a system amazingly over the top for modern gaming and heavy programming and other usage, that's quite a lot cheaper than how much you could get even a slightly usable system in 2002. I wish they made an AGP to PCI-E or even AGP to PCI adapter so I could use my Geforce 4 Ti4200-8X, which has absurdly reliable performance.

      Plus there's the fact that it uses so little power, and runs about 32C stable, while under heavy gaming/compiling prolonged usage, with about 30C when not having to do much, amazingly quiet as well.
      • I love the freespace2 SCP although i wish they could've supported linux too. freespace2 had one of the most brilliant story lines and game engines i've ever seen. The babylon project, is admittedly pretty awesome but since you're a fan I figured you'd also be interested in the new battle star galactica mod that's due out soon =) http://www.game-warden.com/bsg/ [game-warden.com]

        Can't wait! check out their video.

  • Yay go Intel! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:38AM (#14890429)
    Intel intel, he's our man
    if he cant do it, I BET AMD CAN!

    How is this news? Intel's BRAND NEW processor can outperform a 1+ year old AMD X2?

    Hey did you know that I can slap a buncha logic chips together and create a faster processor than ENIAC? DEAR GOD SOMEONE GIVE ME A MEDAL!

    • Re:Yay go Intel! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mapmaker ( 140036 )
      Intel's BRAND NEW processor can outperform a 1+ year old AMD X2?

      It's even worse than that. This isn't a brand new processor, it's a future processor that they hope to have out in 6 months.

      • Re:Yay go Intel! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Courageous ( 228506 )
        This isn't a brand new processor, it's a future processor that they hope to have out in 6 months.

        Indeed. This is a new situation for Intel. What they have done is given out copies of early silicon to reviewers, to publish reviews of a product that they don't plan to have out of their fabs at any significant production level for quite some time. Quite embarrassing that Intel has been reduced to this, really. We're getting reviews of a product that no comsumer can buy, and won't be buyable for quite some time
      • It's even worse than that. This isn't a brand new processor, it's a future processor that they hope to have out in 6 months.

        Were you talking about Conroe or the upcoming FX-62? (both due at about the same time).
        • Were you talking about Conroe or the upcoming FX-62? (both due at about the same time).

          Conroe of course, coming out in six months.

          Watch for it to be thrashed by the FX62 :). And intel, continue there never ending spiral downwards. If only Apple went AMD...
          • Watch for it to be thrashed by the FX62 :).

            Heh... the AMD machine was what the FX-62 is going to be...
          • Watch for it to be thrashed by the FX62 :). And intel, continue there never ending spiral downwards. If only Apple went AMD...

            Not sure if this is a troll or just a delusional AMD fanboi. AMD will not gain a lot with DDR2. A64 chips are not bandwith starved. The Conroe core looks badass and I don't beleive the benchmarks will have the gap the Intel benchmarks presented but Conroe will regain the performance crown, IMO not by much but Conroe will win. Of course, you fail to see if AMD is the only good CPU mak

    • Re:Yay go Intel! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Surt ( 22457 )
      Well, they've shown they can beat an overclocked X2 running at the clock speed that AMD predicts they'll have in their own roadmap in 6 months by more than 20%, running at the low end of their (intel's) expected clock range, using 6 month early hardware. This suggests that they'll be delivering a significant performance advantage over amd in 6 months, barring amd delivering a new architecture, which is not on the amd roadmap right now. AMD will deliver DDR2 at that time, which may have some small performa
      • So knowing that Intel will release this fabulous new chip in 3-6 months, why would anyone buy a P4 based computer from Dell now? Why would anyone buy a dead-end P4 from anyone that can't be upgraded to the new architecture?

        If you have an immediate need, it seems like an AMD chip is the one to buy today. In six months, that may change, but for today it's pretty clear.

        There's a reason Intel has never before released processor details this far before availability. Their next quarter sales are very soft an
        • Absolutely. With Intel sitting on a huge wad of cash, and AMD sitting on a huge wad of debt, hurting sales for both companies hurts AMD more than intel. And intel has the advantage of knowing that anyone who plays it safe buying dell will still be getting intel.
          • Well that is true, but I do think that Amd will continue to benefit from Intel's relaxed state. Intel will continue to sell their chips, but Dell may in that time frame start a product line up with Amd due to demand. Amd could very well push to 25 percent market share. And yes of course the world could end as well. But I am going to go with the increased market share by amd.

  • Fluff? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zebadias ( 861722 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:39AM (#14890441)
    I actually read the link and found it dull and lacking in any real excitment.

    So if you have not RTFA then don't worry your not missing anything!

  • Clearly, we won't know until final systems ship. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:41AM (#14890454)
    Clearly, we won't know until final systems ship.

    Need we discuss this any further?

  • TFA is weak, Here is Anand's updated benchmarks (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:42AM (#14890461)
    I RTFA and it is severly lacking on substance.
    Here is Anand's updated benchmarks.
    http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=271 6 [anandtech.com]

  • getCPUId() (Score:2, Funny)

    by OzPhIsH ( 560038 )
    I can't help but wonder if Vista won't be making any mysterious and unnecessary getCPUid() calls....

  • Article is drivel. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:45AM (#14890490) Homepage
    Do not waste time reading the article - it is stream-of-conciousness drivel. You will not get that 5 minutes of your life back.

    Typical quote:
    One of the technologies they showcased was the use of flash memory to increase system performance. By using flash, they can cut application load times dramatically; this has a huge impact on games (which load much more quickly from memory than from drives.) For us gamers, the game will load more quickly, we will be able to move between zones more quickly, and scenes pop more quickly.

    This could keep you alive longer and overcome the problem of teams breaking apart before all team members can get to the same zone. The biggest improvement would be with laptop computers; for those of us who play games on our laptops, this is a good thing.
    What? What are you talking about? Are you suggesting manufacturers will ship games on flash chips? And what the hell do laptops have to do with anything?

    Nothing I've heard about intel's plans to use flash technology would improve any system performace other then boot time.

    • Welcome to slideware (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ookaze ( 227977 )
      Heh, I guess this is another example of slideware, vaporware through slides, presentations, articles...
    • "Do not waste time reading the article - it is stream-of-conciousness drivel. You will not get that 5 minutes of your life back."

      I feel exactly that way after most of the times I've spent reading Slashdot...
    • > Nothing I've heard about intel's plans to use flash technology would improve any system performace > other then boot time. This really more a feature of Vista which lets you use flash memory (typically on USB2 I/F) as an intelligent, non-volatile cache. Apparently Vista will put frequently used applications and data onto the flash device to speed up application start times etc.
    • What he's talking about is a feature of Vista, called SuperFetch.

      The idea is that the OS predicts what pages of what files you're going to need based on it's analysis of your usage of your computer, and caches those on any faster-than-disk-but-not-RAM storage you may have, like a flash drive.

      So if a game occasionaly needed to load something up and the prediction algorithm figured this out, then it'd be cached on the flash drive where it can be read faster than going to disk to get it.

      It's a great idea, but

      • Re:Article is drivel. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by tpgp ( 48001 )
        What he's talking about is a feature of Vista, called SuperFetch.

        The idea is that the OS predicts what pages of what files you're going to need based on it's analysis of your usage of your computer, and caches those on any faster-than-disk-but-not-RAM storage you may have, like a flash drive.

        Yes, I figured out he was talking about SuperFetch, but it's still drivel. SuperFetch is unproven and overhyped

        • Re:Article is drivel. (Score:3, Informative)

          by Glock27 ( 446276 )
          Flash write time is still waaay to slow,

          Games read data WAAAAY more than they write data.

          and games manufacturer's are still going to want everything loaded off CD to attempt to prevent copying.

          Darned near every game I have loads all the big data onto the hard drive for speed. A few games require the original CD be in the CD drive during gameplay. That type of scheme is generally unecessary for online games, where you're authenticated by other means, so the situation is generally improving.

          The idea o

    • They are talking about using flash to cache hard drives. A large flash cache can load game data faster and with less latency than the hard drive. For laptop users this has an additional advantage of using much less energy, and so extending battery life.
    • Do not waste time reading the article ... You will not get that 5 minutes of your life back.

      You mean I have one?
           

  • Good (Score:4, Funny)

    by JRGhaddar ( 448765 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:47AM (#14890498)
    Competition => Innovation

    Innovation => Faster/Better Chips

    Faster/Better Chips => Faster/Better Comps

    Faster/Better Comps => Giant Robots

    And I for one want a giant robot.

  • Irony! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SolitaryMan ( 538416 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:53AM (#14890539) Homepage Journal
    The page showed me an AMD ad with this article. Was enough for me to know "near term future of intel" :)

  • Performance improvements (Score:4, Funny)

    by jrumney ( 197329 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:57AM (#14890570)
    By a series of their products' massive performance improvements

    Let me guess - they demonstrated how Intel's top end chips can handle 10 way conference calls with Skype, while AMD's only handle 5?

  • AMD - Time to wakeup (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10, 2006 @10:57AM (#14890577)
    While AMD has clearly have a better processor now, it looks very complacent now. Especially when they should be looking at being more menacing by aggressive Research.

    Alas nothing of that sort is happening. Still resting on the glory of the on-die memory controller, the core is now 7 years old!

    Every other chip company is doing interesting things.
    1. Sun Niagra T1 is amazing
    2. IBM Cell rocks!
    3. Intel Itanic may have failed, but was no doubt interesting.

    Well ... AMD please move on. We acknowledge you have won. But the next battle is starting this week.

    • Re:AMD - Time to wakeup (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hxnwix ( 652290 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:54AM (#14890920) Journal
      What the hell are you talking about? Quad core, DDR2 - this year. Same core for seven years? What? The last core was 32 bit with no integrated northbridge. Hammer was a complete revamp/redesign.

      Whatever criteria you are using to judge amd64 as the same core as k7 would also label merom a 686 core. And that is an old ass core.
    • Quiet, this is Slashdot, where everything Intel does is crap and everything AMD does is amazing, even when Intel's chips outperform AMDs, and AMD is an entire die-size behind. It doesn't need to make sense!
  • TFA was more a speculation on will apple utilize the Intel "toolbox" more stylishly than other WinTel companies. I'd better consult the Magic 8 Ball to answer this one.
  • In the near future, most Intel corp employees will be logging off and shutting down before having a relaxing weekend following a hard week's productive work. A variety of leisure activities may be pursued, but a spokesman refused to confirm rumours of beer drinking.
    Ah...may be not that near future.

  • interesting quote (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spiderworm ( 830684 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:04AM (#14890606)

    But Intel presented their case strongly, suggesting they can match AMD, if not beat them.


    My, how times have changed.

  • Improvements? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kilz ( 741999 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:09AM (#14890638)
    But Intel presented their case strongly, suggesting they can match AMD, if not beat them. Im waiting to see an independent head to head comparison. That Intel can beat AMD using 2 computers they set up is not a shock. Its possible to do all sorts of low underhanded tricks to make one computer run better than another.

  • AMD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mac123 ( 25118 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:11AM (#14890655)
    Boy, sure is a good thing AMD has decided to stand still and not come up with any further technology advances on their side.

    Oh...they haven't?

  • AMD? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd say AMD got trounced in the press by Intel yesterday. Is AMD going to compete on Microsoft's and Intel's Origami/UMPC platform?
    • Why bother, Origami/UMPC will be as "successful" as Tablet PCs were a few years ago. The PDA market seems to be drying up, and these things are too big to be PDAs, but too small to be laptops... and they have lame battery life, horrible industrial design, etc.

  • Some important things (AKA garbage article) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by augustz ( 18082 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @11:52AM (#14890902)
    There seems to be agreement this article is a bit weak. Some very important things to note.

    "By a series of their products' massive performance improvements, Intel hit the ball back into AMD's court."

    These are products that are not out yet. Benchmarks look good, but you are comparing a product on the shelves (that's been there a while) with one that is not OK.

    And by the time they come out, AMD will likely have moved on to. This is a fast paced space, so 6 month time gaps matter when doing comparisons. Product matchups in the actual market are what matter.

    AMD's M2 platform looks good. The performance / watt issue matters a lot, and it will be interesting to see how that develops. Both companies are clearly chasing the power/watt area, so should be a lot of fun. The notebook space especially which is currently dominated by intel will be fun.

    "Intel showed how they have the higher performing solution." This should read intel MAY have a higher performing solution sometime in the future.

    I'm tired of the big announcements of victory on non-shipping parts. ATI with crossfire (lunched twice). The hype around the P4 "netburst" architecture. The itanium hype of course. PS2 movie like visuals (still a nice platform, but please).

    Fun to watch, great it's a great race.
    • As far as I know, the only thing AMD is adding with AM2 is DDR2 800 support. The A64 isn't bandwith starved anyway. It would be awesome if AMD could bring out some secret weapon to keep Intel from grabbing the performance crown (hell, I'd buy that over a Conroe if it happened), but that is extremely unlikely. Keep in mind that, in the benchmarks, the FX-60 was overclocked to rumored FX-62 speeds, which is likely the fastest chip AMD will have at that time. There is no chance in hell they will be able to
      • Fair point. It'll be interesting to see how the power envelopes develop (both are chasing that) and how the cost is going (the FX series is one generation behind process wise, which if they've got it really ramped up might help keep costs lower).

        That said, good points. Given that AMD is not bandwidth starved, I can see them going the multi-core route, and so far I like the multi-core solutions a bit better then Intels. Next step would obviously be a quad core. Be interesting to see when their next process m
  • If memory serves correctly, the last time AMD was fairly absent in the processor market and "resting on it's laurels", they rocked the world with the XP-class processor

    Anyone who has been keeping tabs on AMD knows they are in the process of expanding their manufacturing capability/capacity.

    I think AMD is playing the part of "lion in the weeds"...... ....again.
  • Rip Van Winkel here. I haven't paid any attention to the processor wars lately, but what the heck happened to make AMD and Intel swap positions? I thought only in Bizarro world would people be wondering if AMD would rest on its laurels while Intel was trying to come up with a plan to unseat them from their throne.

  • Just a note for AMD fanbois (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Aadain2001 ( 684036 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @12:42PM (#14891274) Journal
    Just wanted to let all the AMD fanbois out there who always trash Intel whenever they show the slightest move in the right direction (for their company and consumers) that if Intel disappeared tomorrow, the world of computing as you know it would crash to the ground like a bowling ball.

    AMD may have had the upper hand on processor designs for the last few years, and even Intel is practically admitting that by switching their mainline core architecture to the Pentium M derivative (which is a PIII derivative). But Intel has had them beat in one area and probably will for a very long time: production capacity. Intel's fabs can crank out processors in a day that matches AMD's production in a year (exaggeration, but run with it). There is NO way that AMD could meet the demands of the business world in sheer scale of orders. If Intel closed up shop, computer CPUs would triple or quadrupal in price overnight due to scarcity. Fabs take YEARS to build, and can take even more years to full ramp up to full production while shaking out the process bugs. Intel has a LOT of experience with this due to the shear number of fabs that they own and operate.

    Competition is good, for everyone. Give props where they are due though. Intel is turning around after making a very bad roadmap choice many years ago, and I think it will only benifit consumers in the long run. AMD had very good designs and will probably have some more good ones in the future. But don't pick on or the other exclusively and wish for the other to disappear. That would lead to a VERY bad situation for everyone, even you.

    • What sort of argument is that? If Intel disappeared then AMD would not be able to cope with the gap? Well duh... things don't change that quickly, AMD are always going to have time to ramp up their production as market share shifts. For that matter, if AMD disappeared then I'd bet even the great and bountiful Intel would have a hard time filling that 20% or so.

      Plus if Intel closed up shop, suddenly there'd be lots of fabs and extra supplies up for sale...

      Nobody claims that Intel should not exist, but their
    • Maybe a bigger obstacle is branding. Intel is such a widely recognized name that higher ups who don't know any better keep buying Intel. AMD may be cheaper and faster, but Intel owns the mindshare. As long as Intel keeps billing themselves as they have been for the last 10 years, there will be a market for Intel.

    • But Intel has had them beat in one area and probably will for a very long time: production capacity. Intel's fabs can crank out processors in a day that matches AMD's production in a year (exaggeration, but run with it). There is NO way that AMD could meet the demands of the business world in sheer scale of orders.

      Completely untrue, and I can't imagine how this complete bullshit got started.

      Even with AMD taking more and more business away from Intel, it's still Intel that has been having real problems makin

  • excellent competition (Score:4, Informative)

    by slackaddict ( 950042 ) <rmorgan@NoSPaM.openaddict.com> on Friday March 10, 2006 @12:47PM (#14891322) Homepage Journal
    I love this competition between AMD and Intel. They have been slugging it out producing excellent processors and actually being fairly responsive to consumer demands. Here's a brief description of the wars between the 2 companies over the last 10 years:

    1) Floating point performance wars - Before AMD came out with the K6 processor, Intel had the floating point crown and neither AMD nor Cyrix could compete. Although AMD and Cyrix had inexpensive intel-compatible processors, most people used their cpu's for low-end desktops.

    2) That all changed when AMD released the K6 processor with an excellent floating point unit. Then the war became a Mhz slugfest between AMD and Intel in which Cyrix was marginalized. Intel reached the 1000Mhz mark first with the P3 but AMD wasn't far behind with the Athlon.

    3) AMD changed their approach with the Athlon focusing on P3 crushing performance regardless of the actual clock speed. Intel kept the Mhz focus with the P4.

    4) AMD released the hugely successful 64-bit Athlon that dominated the P4 even though the 64-bit Athlon operated at a much slower clock speed. Intel lost much market share in the desktop and server market to the new 64-bit Athlon and the new 64-bit Opteron processors.

    5) Intel finally realized that the educated consumer didn't care about raw Mhz anymore, they switched to their own performance number rating scheme.

    6) The latest oil crisis hits the world and consumers become more energy conscious. Many computer enthusiast websites point out how much energy Intel processors demand and how little AMD processors demand in comparison. Intel and AMD respond by making their processors more energy efficient and cooler running.

    7) Dual-core processors are released from both companies trying to squeeze more performance out of their aging cores. The Intel processors can't scale as well with multiple cores due to the already high energy and cooling demands of their processor cores. AMD gains further ground in this area.

    And that's where we are today. AMD has seriously damaged Intel's marketshare with some excellent products. Intel is feverishly working on new products to get that marketshare back. The benefit is that we will see very good products from the 2 companies over the next 12 to 24 months.

    • Re:excellent competition (Score:4, Informative)

      by Visaris ( 553352 ) on Friday March 10, 2006 @01:06PM (#14891509) Journal
      2) That all changed when AMD released the K6 processor with an excellent floating point unit. Then the war became a Mhz slugfest between AMD and Intel in which Cyrix was marginalized. Intel reached the 1000Mhz mark first with the P3 but AMD wasn't far behind with the Athlon.

      That is not true at all. AMD reached 1GHz first by a couple of days. I hate the way these things get turned around. Next you'll try to tell me that Intel was first to dual core because they paper launched it two days before AMD, even though AMD was the first to have actual shipping parts...
      • It actually took many months (~6+) for Intel to start shipping 1GHz processors at anything more than engineering sample volumes...

        You could go out and BUY a 1GHz Athlon at retail within days.
      • And who can forget the recall of the Intel Pentium III chips at 1.13GHz that were defective because the clock speed was pushed beyond the capabilities of the die? Hurray for Intel, selling overclocked PIIIs and ripping off their customers left and right.

    • 1) Floating point performance wars - Before AMD came out with the K6 processor, Intel had the floating point crown and neither AMD nor Cyrix could compete. Although AMD and Cyrix had inexpensive intel-compatible processors, most people used their cpu's for low-end desktops.

      The K6, K6-2 and K6-3 (mostly laptop) processors all really sucked badly in the FPU area, integer wise they were better than similarly clocked PII parts. The K7 (Athlon) was the first AMD processor to trounce Intel in the FPU arena. I

    • That all changed when AMD released the K6 processor with an excellent floating point unit. Then the war became a Mhz slugfest between AMD and Intel in which Cyrix was marginalized. Intel reached the 1000Mhz mark first with the P3 but AMD wasn't far behind with the Athlon.

      K6 didn't have a terrible FP unit, but it was much worse than the equivalent P2 FPU. John Carmack is well known for stating as much at the time when glquake was making FP performance matter for the desktop consumer for more or less the fir
  • It's expensive to continually upgrade fab facilities, marketing material, etc. Sitting on a successful product with inflated prices is a serious profit maker. AMD is simply reaping the rewards for kicking the hell out of the P4. Congrats to them. I don't blame them a bit. They've been skating on razor thin margins for quite awhile. I hope that AMD has addressed the majority of their production issues in the last year (they're gonna need it).

    OTOH, Intel has been fattening (and has expanded into MANY oth
  • Hmmn, this has me all excited at the prospect of having a 2 major processor vendors. Look at all the good the Ati and nVidia rivalry has caused. I can only hope the same applies here. On that note the last decent workstation processor Intel has made was the Pentium 3.
  • There wasn't anything new in the article to justify a story on Slashdot. Yes, Intel held their IDF but they do that every year. Yes, Intel has AMD in their sights. Yes, Intel is focused on performance. Prototype tablet machines. That's all the same every year, too. Flash memory to run apps from. Not new and not even interesting. Where's the NEWS???
  • Frankly, I dont care what Intel does in the near future. I regularly fire up Call of Duty 2 in 1600X1200 while burning a DVD in Nero, with Outlook running in the background and not notice any kind of lag, thanks to my AMD processor. (64X2 4400) If I tried that on my P4 box (which has been relegated to file server duty) the thing would have locked up in seconds.

    I think what AMD has done deserves some form of brand loyalty. Intel was giving us trash and charging us through the ass for it. AMD forced Intel t

  • Intel chips are still far inferior to AMD chips. They cost more to make for a given performance rate, offer poor performance to clock cycle ratio, and were also slow to embrace 64-bit technology, which is useful for server owners. The "Mhz" speed is an issue, as it is better to deliver more efficent performance at lower clock rates as it consumes less power and causes less heat. Intel may be stuck in a hole with this one though, as they have strayed down their own path too long from their common ground wi
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