Amd Vs Intel Part 2

[Guest LB]

lifted from >> http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/22051.html

Intel and AMD are lined up for another battle in the fall. The rival microprocessor companies have competing desktop chips coming to market -- Intel's Prescott and AMD's Athlon64 -- and with both chips, the companies are making strategic leaps in architecture and processor manufacturing.

Internet bulletin boards are already ablaze with debates over which chip will have the better performance, but the truth is that comparing the two is like comparing apples to oranges. The companies have different design approaches, so benchmarks like simple clock speed can be meaningless. Still, it is important to discuss the features of these chips, because choosing one design over the other can mean a difference to end users and OEM customers -- as well as coloring the ongoing competition between the two desktop PC giants.

Strategic Launches

"I think for Intel, anytime it launches a new core in its flagship product line, it is strategic," IDC analyst Shane Rau old NewsFactor. "For AMD, because [Athlon64] is en entirely new architecture, it is more fundamental to the future of the company."

Prescott, which may come out under the Pentium 4 name -- or not -- includes hyperthreading enhancements; 13 new multimedia instructions; an 800 MHz system bus; and 1 MB of L2 cache and 16 KB of L1 cache.

Increasing the memory sizes on the chip offers higher performance and help with the new hyperthreading features Intel is putting into the processor, George Alfs, a spokesperson for Intel, told NewsFactor. The chatter on bulletin boards suggests that the clock speed of Prescott will be as high as 3.4 GHz, but Intel is only saying that the clock speed will be more than 3 GHz.

But the most important thing about Prescott is that is uses the 90-nanometer process technology and 300mm wafers. The chip will perform better and run cooler with lower operating voltages. And 90 nanometer means Intel can squeeze more dies onto a single wafer. Intel will be the first mainstream producer of 90 nanometer chips and expects revenue shipments by the fourth quarter, Alfs said.

"The significance is played out in the cost of manufacture," Rau said. "Traditionally, Intel has led the way in process technology and changes in wafer size. [This] will drive down cost per unit significantly, by a third or more," he said.

AMD Takes On Memory

Clawhammer, or Athlon64, debuts on September 23rd and is built on a 64-bit extension of the x86 architecture. Athlon64 will be capable of running 32-bit and 64-bit code simultaneously, but the transition to 64-bit software is not happening overnight, so end users may not get concrete benefits from this capability for awhile.

The big advancement in Athlon64 is that the memory controller is integrated into the processor itself, Linda Kohout, desktop marketing manager at AMD, told NewsFactor. This translates into less latency when accessing memory, so such functions as video encoding run much faster.

"We have done away with the system bus as people know it," Kohout said. System bus bottlenecks involving the memory controller, peripherals, the hard drive, and graphics are eliminated, Kohout said. The system bus is replaced with "hypertransport," a chip-to-chip interconnection technology that connects the processor to core logic and connects core-logic chips to each other. The same technology is used in AMD's Opteron chip for multiple-processor communication.

According to Kohout, the new technology means chip performance increases on the order of 20 percent when the Athlon64 is compared with the Athlon XP at the same clock frequency. AMD has not said what clock frequency the chip will operate at.

The debut of the Athlon64 has had a series of delays, some of which outsiders have attributed to technical problems with the chip's new silicon-on-insulator technology, a substrate that prevents power leakage. But AMD said it wanted to concentrate on getting its Opteron processor out the door first, since the server market was one that was untapped by AMD. Kohout also said that the September launch date aligns better with the beta launch of a 64-bit version of Windows specific to the AMD64 technology.

Clock Speed vs. Efficiency

So, which processor is going to win the benchmark tests? Intel says its dual-channel memory capabilities -- already available on the Pentium 4 -- combined with faster clock speeds will give it an edge. (Rumors are that the Athlon64 could run at a clock speed as low as 1.)

"Ultimately, a difference in clock speed should not be a major concern," Rau said. "Clock speed alone is no longer an effective way to determine the performance of a CPU. It's better to have a measure that conveys both speed and efficiency." Although the Athlon64 might not have dual memory, the integrated memory controller increases the speed of the controller, which increases as the speed of the processor increases, because it uses the same clock, Kohout said.

It remains to be seen whether the integrated memory controller will improve the ultimate performance of systems, however, Rau said. "This change in the partitioning is usually invisible to the end user," he noted. On the other hand, by integrating the memory controller, AMD is taking on the responsibility of keeping the memory type in the processor up-to-date with industry trends. "There is an onus now on AMD to keep their systems up to date in terms of memory type," Rau said.

Despite Intel's move to the 90-nanometer process and 30mm wafers, AMD will still be able to compete on price, Rau said. Although the Athlon64 uses the 130-nanometer process and 20mm wafers, AMD has been able to design processors that are fast enough and highly efficient in a relatively tiny space, he pointed out. When a chip designer designs for efficiency, it means the ability to add more features. "AMD has been able to add cache with the Barton core without jeopardizing the die size and rendering its costs noncompetitive," Rau explained.

AMD's Window

AMD will have the highest performing desktop chip when the Athlon64 debuts in September, according to Kohout.

The window of opportunity between the Athlon64 launch and the Prescott launch in the fourth quarter may enable AMD to turn some market share back in its favor, Rau said, but he does not expect any change in the momentum in the desktop arena, which last quarter was in Intel's favor.

It will be important for AMD to demonstrate design wins and that it is shipping the Athlon 64 in volume. "You want to have customers on the stage with you and they should be significant-major tier one OEMs," Rau said. "You also have to prove that you can manufacture the product in sufficient volumes."

For both Intel and AMD, two to three years of dramatic price drops means that they will have to demonstrate significant additional performance from these chips to justify their higher prices. One thing they can not get away from, however, is that a single processor is just one of the many components inside a system. "Core logic chipsets, memory, graphics controllers -- they have as much or more to do with the capability and performance of the system," Rau said. "And that requires coordination with semiconductor partners."

Which chip will do better in the marketplace is a question still up for grabs. The only certain thing is that it the conflict will continue to generate passionate debate.

[Tankus]

So if you are thinking of upgrading then , its best to wait for the 64 bit and longhorn....plus one year so the prices become less stupid.......

Drag the last depths of speed out of your current rig and hang on..........!

Thing is will 64 bit optimised software be worth running on our current stuff....?

Big jump coming up methinks ....!

interesting post ....lived....!

[Guest LB]

it has the potential to be as big as the jump from the commodore 64 to the Amiga (thats going back some years)

I don't think that 64 bit optimized software will run on 32 bit machines but i guess we will have to wait and see, i have seen an alpha build of longhorn (milestone 5) and have gotta say that it is mighty impressive, even in its current infantile state (although i haven't risked putting it on my machine!!)

i think that memory could be a problem, think of the jump from the C64 (64k) to the A500 (512k)!!!!