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AMD gearing up for speed

post #1 of 54
11/9/03 at 7:37am
Thread Starter 
I read this article on http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...c_nf/22649&e=4 Which talks about the plans AMD has, and this part of the story caught my eye.
" Notebook Plans

In early 2004, AMD will release the first 64-bit chip for notebooks, a version of its Athlon64 now used in desktops. Later in 2004, the company will release "Odessa," a 64-bit laptop chip fabricated with a 90-nanometer design. The 90-nanometer design provides improved speed and performance over today's 130-nanometer processors.

AMD had hoped to transition to the 90nm design by the end of this year, but the revised roadmap indicates this was delayed. "We are on schedule to wrap up production of 90 nanometer by the end of the second half of 2004," AMD spokesperson Jen Trong told NewsFactor.

In late 2004, AMD will launch "Dublin," a 130nm chip designed for the entry-level laptop market.

In early 2005, the company will release "Oakville," and "Trinidad," 90nm 64-bit laptop processors fabricated with a smaller die than that used in the Athlon."

Eek... Apple has some big competition coming up at them, especially the 64-bit laptops...
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post #2 of 54
11/9/03 at 8:45am
Yep they sure do have some competition. This is one of the main reasons I believe that G5 Laptops are not to far away. If Apple isn't working to get a 970 derivative into a laptop real sone now they are absolute fools.

Between the very real competition from AMd and the Centrino, the only feature that Apples laptops will have to distinguish them in the market place will be MAC/OS. We have all seen what little attacrtion there is in the market place for Apples operating system. While OS/X is getting better you don't see people jumping over themselves to adopt it yet.

Apple always underestimates the importance of hardware performance. Hopefully this won't happen again with the laptop line. I would be just as happy to see a high performance G4 but we all know how unlikely that is.

Dave



Quote:
Originally posted by Ichiban_jay
I read this article on http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...c_nf/22649&e=4 Which talks about the plans AMD has, and this part of the story caught my eye.
" Notebook Plans

In early 2004, AMD will release the first 64-bit chip for notebooks, a version of its Athlon64 now used in desktops. Later in 2004, the company will release "Odessa," a 64-bit laptop chip fabricated with a 90-nanometer design. The 90-nanometer design provides improved speed and performance over today's 130-nanometer processors.

AMD had hoped to transition to the 90nm design by the end of this year, but the revised roadmap indicates this was delayed. "We are on schedule to wrap up production of 90 nanometer by the end of the second half of 2004," AMD spokesperson Jen Trong told NewsFactor.

In late 2004, AMD will launch "Dublin," a 130nm chip designed for the entry-level laptop market.

In early 2005, the company will release "Oakville," and "Trinidad," 90nm 64-bit laptop processors fabricated with a smaller die than that used in the Athlon."

Eek... Apple has some big competition coming up at them, especially the 64-bit laptops...
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post #3 of 54
11/9/03 at 9:47am
Quote:
Originally posted by wizard69

Between the very real competition from AMd and the Centrino, the only feature that Apples laptops will have to distinguish them in the market place will be MAC/OS.
Dave

put a pc laptop next to a powerbook........ there's a lot more to distinguish between them than OS.

nothing comes close to apple portables in terms of design, functionality, and how well it al works together.
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post #4 of 54
11/9/03 at 10:45am
didn't steve jobs say "something between four months and four years" as for the g5-powerbook timeframes? my personal opinion is that this sounds very good ;-)

www.apple.com/investor/ ... it's in the Q&A of the analyst meeting
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post #5 of 54
11/9/03 at 11:00am
What I think is more telling is that IBM Fabs AMD chips I think. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So, it therefore implies that IBM's 90-nanometer fabrication would be up and running and that the PowerPC 970 would also be utilizing 90-nanometer technology at the same time if not sooner.

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post #6 of 54
11/9/03 at 12:03pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Ichiban_jay
Eek... Apple has some big competition coming up at them, especially the 64-bit laptops...

Exactly. This is a review of a preproduction model of the upcoming 64-bit Athlon based notebook. Look at the power requirements. It is essentially a desktop processor in a laptop, but the point is that AMD will almost certainly steal the thunder of the first 64-bit notebook, even if this is more a deskonotebook. From a marketing viewpoint it is still a notebook and it will sell as such.

Only if IBM is well on schedule with the 90 nm process, we can hope for an early (that is, on or slightly before summer) G5 powerbook announcement. On the other hand, I really don't see what else can be put on powerbooks (and subsequently, on iBooks) to keep up with the competition for a year or so.
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post #7 of 54
11/9/03 at 1:14pm
Quote:
Originally posted by applenut
put a pc laptop next to a powerbook........ there's a lot more to distinguish between them than OS.

nothing comes close to apple portables in terms of design, functionality, and how well it al works together.

You are absolutely right. I putted my 17 inch alubook next to my father's Dell laptop, and the difference was amazing.

People tend to reduce computers only to benchmarks. Benchmarks are important but it's not everything.
For example i have now a 512 K modem, and it's great. I tried on both my G4 533 and my dual G5, and i can't tell the difference without benchmarking it. My user experience was the same : quite disapointing if we consider the different level of performance ot these two computers.
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post #8 of 54
11/9/03 at 1:54pm
Quote:
Originally posted by tink
What I think is more telling is that IBM Fabs AMD chips I think. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So, it therefore implies that IBM's 90-nanometer fabrication would be up and running and that the PowerPC 970 would also be utilizing 90-nanometer technology at the same time if not sooner.

This is partially correct. IBM and AMD have been rumoured to be working towards IBM fabbing some of the processors for AMD, as well as doing joint work on R&D. I'm not sure that I've seen an official announcement yet though.

The last time I checked, the majority of AMD CPUs were being manufactured at AMD's Dresden "Fab 30" plant in Germany, with their only other active fab facility being in Austin, Texas (not sure if the latter is still active). AMD put a huge amount of money into Dresden, with plenty of available room for future expansion, so IBM fabbing would supplement AMD's own capacity, as opposed to replacing it.

I'm personally interested to see if IBM will be manufacturing a 3rd model for us in laptops (i.e. Power4 for servers, 970 for the Apple G5 desktops, and a third variant for Apple G5 Powerbooks).
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post #9 of 54
11/9/03 at 2:01pm
Gearing up, or getting back in gear?

AMD released its 2.25 GHz Athlon XP 2800+ in October 2002.
AMD's fastest current Athlon 64 is the 2.2 GHz FX-51.

You'd think they would have been able to at least make some progress on the clock frequency front in the period of a year.
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post #10 of 54
11/9/03 at 2:22pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Eugene
Gearing up, or getting back in gear?

AMD released its 2.25 GHz Athlon XP 2800+ in October 2002.
AMD's fastest current Athlon 64 is the 2.2 GHz FX-51.

You'd think they would have been able to at least make some progress on the clock frequency front in the period of a year.

No one, not even Intel will be able to release higher clocked CPUs until the industry moves to 0.09-micron. Insane power requirements and electrical leakage are holding everyone back. Until these problems are addressed, the march towards higher clock speeds will continue to be slow. CPU makers are being forced to use other methods to make CPUs faster. Integrated memory controllers, larger caches, faster buses, and hyper-threading are the most obvious examples.
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post #11 of 54
11/10/03 at 10:14am
Quote:
Originally posted by Kecksy
No one, not even Intel will be able to release higher clocked CPUs until the industry moves to 0.09-micron. Insane power requirements and electrical leakage are holding everyone back. Until these problems are addressed, the march towards higher clock speeds will continue to be slow. CPU makers are being forced to use other methods to make CPUs faster. Integrated memory controllers, larger caches, faster buses, and hyper-threading are the most obvious examples.

this sounds very good for the PowerPC production... the advantage (clockspeed) of x86 will soon be gone
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post #12 of 54
11/10/03 at 10:39am
Quote:
Originally posted by Krassy
this sounds very good for the PowerPC production... the advantage (clockspeed) of x86 will soon be gone

Not really, it probably won't be long until the industry does move to 0.09 micron.
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post #13 of 54
11/10/03 at 11:51am
Quote:
Originally posted by Kecksy
No one, not even Intel will be able to release higher clocked CPUs until the industry moves to 0.09-micron.

Name one other company that has been stuck at one clockspeed for over a year. AMD's the only one. Maturation of their .13µ process should have yielded at least a marginal improvement. Intel at least moved from 2.8 GHz to 3.2 GHz in that same amount of time, and a 3.4 GHz .13µ P4 "EE" is pending.
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post #14 of 54
11/10/03 at 12:09pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Eugene
Name one other company that has been stuck at one clockspeed for over a year.

Motorola. The dark, dark days of 500Mhz towers...I remember them well.
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post #15 of 54
11/10/03 at 12:15pm
Quote:
Originally posted by ryaxnb
Not really, it probably won't be long until the industry does move to 0.09 micron.
P.s. Kecksy and Krassy! K and Y!


i think that IBM will go to 2.5 GHz with their 0.13 micron process. after this, the 970 will go 0.09. so intel: 3.2 GHz and IBM: 2.5 GHz
and after changing to 0.09 we could see intel at max 4.2 GHz and IBM at 3.3GHz with room to grow due to their easier architecture and high pipelines...

or am i completely wrong?


yeah cool

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kressy and
kreksy and
krcksy and
kecksy

that's life
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post #16 of 54
11/10/03 at 12:51pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Krassy
i think that IBM will go to 2.5 GHz with their 0.13 micron process.

Well there own documents (unofficial) say that that the 970 clocks to 2.5 Ghz. [Take a look @ page 23]
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post #17 of 54
11/10/03 at 1:24pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Eugene
Gearing up, or getting back in gear?

AMD released its 2.25 GHz Athlon XP 2800+ in October 2002.
AMD's fastest current Athlon 64 is the 2.2 GHz FX-51.

You'd think they would have been able to at least make some progress on the clock frequency front in the period of a year.


If you look at the specs you see that the new Athlon 64 2.2 GHz FX-51 is much more powerful than the old 2.25 GHz Athlon XP 2800+.

The Athlon 2800+ performed about as well as a 2.8GHz P4. The Athlon 64 2.2 GHz FX-51 is faster than 3.2GHz P4s.

It is the processing power of the chip that maters, not its clock speed.
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post #18 of 54
11/10/03 at 2:25pm
Quote:
Originally posted by 709
Motorola. The dark, dark days of 500Mhz towers...I remember them well.

Motorola was actually 2 years! But I was talking about the present state. In this time, Motorola had gone from 1.25 GHz to 1.42 GHz at least...with .18µ transistors even.
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post #19 of 54
11/10/03 at 2:26pm
Well yes intel is having troubles, but it is a mistake to apply that situation to the rest of the industry. It is very likely that IBM will be able to clock the current 970 higher. But I do think you have things a bit reversed anyways, current power requirements are pushing manufactures to 0.09um not away from it. Sure there are some engineering hurdles to clear yet, but all indications are that IBM is much farther along here than Intel.

Consider too that the desire for larger caches is pushing the manufacture to the new process as is some of the other technology.

Hyper-Threading is a way to increase processor power and would have evolved even if the switch ot 0.09um was pain free. Hyper-Threading is a way to extend current processor performance with a minmal investment in new logic in a current processor design. It is not a feature that came about due to an in ability to shrink a process. It is a rational way to provide a modest improvement in capabilities for some code bases.

Dave


Quote:
Originally posted by Kecksy
No one, not even Intel will be able to release higher clocked CPUs until the industry moves to 0.09-micron. Insane power requirements and electrical leakage are holding everyone back. Until these problems are addressed, the march towards higher clock speeds will continue to be slow. CPU makers are being forced to use other methods to make CPUs faster. Integrated memory controllers, larger caches, faster buses, and hyper-threading are the most obvious examples.
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post #20 of 54
11/10/03 at 2:32pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Res
If you look at the specs you see that the new Athlon 64 2.2 GHz FX-51 is much more powerful than the old 2.25 GHz Athlon XP 2800+.

The Athlon 2800+ performed about as well as a 2.8GHz P4. The Athlon 64 2.2 GHz FX-51 is faster than 3.2GHz P4s.

It is the processing power of the chip that maters, not its clock speed.

Let's not get into real-world performance comparisons of different processors here. My criticism only concerns intra-company gains, and AMD has really had none. The Athlon 64 is not as wildly different from the Athlon XP as you might expect. Because of this, it's not that surprising they are both similarly clocked. All I'm saying is AMD is experiencing difficulty pushing the limits of the .13µ process while neither IBM nor Intel are in a similar debacle.
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post #21 of 54
11/10/03 at 2:34pm
Quote:
Originally posted by ryaxnb
Not really, it probably won't be long until the industry does move to 0.09 micron.

True, they're in the process of transitioning now and most claim they'll be ready for volume production in Q2 2004. It's reasonable to assume then that IBM will be able to take the G5 to 3GHz by summer in time for an Apple update. A 50% increase in clock speed by summer is probably better than what Intel will be able to pull off. I doubt we'll see 5GHz Pentiums in the next 12 months. Prescott is supposed to dissapate over 100 watts at 3.4GHz, and that's on 0.09-micron! No way they're going to make it 5GHz without skrinking the process again.

PowerPC 970 is looking very strong, I think. The only thing Apple has to worry about is the Athlon64. It could could scale just as well.

Quote:
Originally posted by ryaxnb
P.s. Kecksy and Krassy! K and Y!

What the hell is that supposed to mean?
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post #22 of 54
11/10/03 at 9:23pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Kecksy
True, they're in the process of transitioning now and most claim they'll be ready for volume production in Q2 2004. It's reasonable to assume then that IBM will be able to take the G5 to 3GHz by summer in time for an Apple update. A 50% increase in clock speed by summer is probably better than what Intel will be able to pull off. I doubt we'll see 5GHz Pentiums in the next 12 months. Prescott is supposed to dissapate over 100 watts at 3.4GHz, and that's on 0.09-micron! No way they're going to make it 5GHz without skrinking the process again.

PowerPC 970 is looking very strong, I think. The only thing Apple has to worry about is the Athlon64. It could could scale just as well.



What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Just for interest sake, here's an unofficial Intel roadmap, courtesy of http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp (the site is not in English btw).

A couple of criticisms of the roadmap to consider though. It's doubtful that Prescott will ship 4th quarter of 2003, so we'll more likely see it 1st or even 2nd quarter of 2004. Given the problems that Intel is currently experiencing, I highly doubt that Intel will be shipping 4GHz by mid-2004.

If IBM and Apple are able to deliver on the promise of a dual 3GHz system next summer, it's going to be very competitive with the PC platform offerings. Not to mention that most PC desktops don't run dual-CPU configs, due in part to Intel's retarded marchitecture. In recent months, Xeon is the only option for dual-CPU and greater on the Intel platform, as you can't use the P4s for MP systems. This may change a bit soon though, as AMD Opterons have become a decent desktop alternative to the AMD Athlon series chips, as opposed to being strictly relegated to servers.

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post #23 of 54
11/10/03 at 11:18pm
I have read somewhere : but is it good infos ?, that the Prescott chip will be more deeply pipelined than the P4, and thus at equal mhz it will be lighty slower.

If this info is true, a 3 ghz G5 will kick the ass of a 4 ghz Prescott.
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post #24 of 54
11/11/03 at 12:06am
Quote:
Originally posted by Chagi

A couple of criticisms of the roadmap to consider though. It's doubtful that Prescott will ship 4th quarter of 2003, so we'll more likely see it 1st or even 2nd quarter of 2004. Given the problems that Intel is currently experiencing, I highly doubt that Intel will be shipping 4GHz by mid-2004.

The question becomes: Do you think Intel could have shipped a much faster P4s by now if AMD had been more competitive in the year before the release of the Athlon 64? I still think a 4 GHz P4 is doable by 2H04. The .13µ Northwood 3.4 GHz P4 EE will be out soon. That's not even on this roadmap. 3.6 GHz Prescott in February/March. 4.0 GHz in July/August sounds completely reasonable given the move to .09µ.
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post #25 of 54
11/11/03 at 1:13am
Quote:
Originally posted by Powerdoc
I have read somewhere : but is it good infos ?, that the Prescott chip will be more deeply pipelined than the P4, and thus at equal mhz it will be lighty slower.

If this info is true, a 3 ghz G5 will kick the ass of a 4 ghz Prescott.

It is true that the Prescott will be slightly deeper pipelined (more drive-stages afaik, to help accelerate clock-frequency), but Intel has also done efforts to make the Prescott more efficient (as in higher IPC). I don't know exactly what, but it will have SSE3 (minor upgrade, really), PNI (Prescott New Instructions), so I guess it won't be much slower per clock than the Northwood, if slower at all.

But I too think that a 3GHz G5 with 1MB of L2 cache would be more competitive with a 4Ghz (not that they'll reach such a high frequency in time) Prescott, than the 2GHz G5 is with the 3.2Ghz P4 today.

Now, if only Apple/IBM could reduce their damn cache and memory latencies with the G5.
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post #26 of 54
11/11/03 at 4:44am
With Intel in the 3 Ghz range (2.8-3.2) for quite a while that would be an opportunity for Motorolas G4 to acually cross that "half clock speed threshold" that they have been under since 1999 or early 2000.

Will they ever cross 2 GHz will anyone care
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post #27 of 54
11/11/03 at 9:59am
Quote:
Originally posted by Zapchud
It is true that the Prescott will be slightly deeper pipelined (more drive-stages afaik, to help accelerate clock-frequency), but Intel has also done efforts to make the Prescott more efficient (as in higher IPC). I don't know exactly what, but it will have SSE3 (minor upgrade, really), PNI (Prescott New Instructions), so I guess it won't be much slower per clock than the Northwood, if slower at all.

But I too think that a 3GHz G5 with 1MB of L2 cache would be more competitive with a 4Ghz (not that they'll reach such a high frequency in time) Prescott, than the 2GHz G5 is with the 3.2Ghz P4 today.

Now, if only Apple/IBM could reduce their damn cache and memory latencies with the G5.

The IBM engineers have claimed that the G5 core is build to deal with such latencies : the vast number of registers allow to feed continualy the beast without suffering from latencies problems.

Thanks for confirming the deeper pipelining. But even if Intel did some tricks to make the Prescott more efficient, a deeper pipelining means nearly always less speed, unless great changes in the design are made. For example the G4 7400 have 4 units and the 7450 7 units, and they have the same performance level per mhz only after optimisation of the code.
If the Prescott do not have more executive units than the P4, even with a larger cache, an improved BPU, the chip will be slower at equal mhz.
A optimist guess for Intel will be a 3,2 ghz P4 equal a 3,4 ghz P5 (prescott).

A last note :
The P4 EE are Extremely Expansive : near 1000 at least in France (if you can find one) for the 3,2 ghz model.
I think that AMD is still in the competition with his Athlon 64 bits.
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post #28 of 54
11/11/03 at 10:18am
Intel can lengthen it's pipelines as much as it wants. It's chips are still going to hit a brick wall because of heat. I heard somewhere at the current rate the heat density of chips is increasing, within a decade or so, they'll be as hot as a nuclear furnace.
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post #29 of 54
11/11/03 at 11:00am
Quote:
Originally posted by Powerdoc
Thanks for confirming the deeper pipelining. But even if Intel did some tricks to make the Prescott more efficient, a deeper pipelining means nearly always less speed, unless great changes in the design are made. For example the G4 7400 have 4 units and the 7450 7 units, and they have the same performance level per mhz only after optimisation of the code.
If the Prescott do not have more executive units than the P4, even with a larger cache, an improved BPU, the chip will be slower at equal mhz.
A optimist guess for Intel will be a 3,2 ghz P4 equal a 3,4 ghz P5 (prescott).

I seriously doubt the Prescott will be less efficient per MHz than the Northwood. The lengthened pipeline is only 3 stages longer, or 15% (IIRC). Since the Prescott do feature a larger L2 cache, double the L1 data cache, an improved BPU, and more, I would be seriously surprised if it performed as bad as you predict "optimistically"

If a 3.4GHz Prescott equals a 3.2GHz P4, it is terrible for Intel. Good for us mac fans
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post #30 of 54
11/11/03 at 1:30pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Zapchud
I seriously doubt the Prescott will be less efficient per MHz than the Northwood. The lengthened pipeline is only 3 stages longer, or 15% (IIRC). Since the Prescott do feature a larger L2 cache, double the L1 data cache, an improved BPU, and more, I would be seriously surprised if it performed as bad as you predict "optimistically"

If a 3.4GHz Prescott equals a 3.2GHz P4, it is terrible for Intel. Good for us mac fans

We'll have to wait and see what happens with Prescott. I'm trying to find the link right now, but there was a website with leaked preliminary Prescott benchmarks, and they were slower than the current model. Of course, this is pretty much moot when faster clocked models are shipped.

The Pentium 4 EE (Extremely Expensive edition) chips are little more than Intel attempting to pee on AMD's Athlon 64 FX parade. According to www.theinquirer.net, good luck getting your hands on the EE variant from anyone but Dell, and even then it may not be possible to get a shipping system before the end of 2003.
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post #31 of 54
11/11/03 at 1:44pm
Here is a link dealing with the benchmarks of a 2,8 ghz prescott chip : http://oc.com.tw/article/0309/readgo...le.asp?id=1974

Basically the chip is on par with the nortwood or have a little advantage. There is only an issue with CPU mark 99, but at the light of the others tests, we should forget this one.

An another article pointed it out the fact that the bigger L2 cache was the main reason for these good results.

SSE3 seemed fun also : i can't wait for SSE 4. Intel is bringing more and more instructions generations after generations : what's a pain for programmers ...
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post #32 of 54
11/11/03 at 2:05pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Powerdoc
Here is a link dealing with the benchmarks of a 2,8 ghz prescott chip : http://oc.com.tw/article/0309/readgo...le.asp?id=1974

Basically the chip is on par with the nortwood or have a little advantage. There is only an issue with CPU mark 99, but at the light of the others tests, we should forget this one.

An another article pointed it out the fact that the bigger L2 cache was the main reason for these good results.

SSE3 seemed fun also : i can't wait for SSE 4. Intel is bringing more and more instructions generations after generations : what's a pain for programmers ...

Thanks for the link.

I have to agree that the larger L2 cache is helping the Prescott benchmark, but if that's the case, it's just a smart design decision (aside from the added cost to manufacture). Of course, part of the whole reason to switch to 90mm fabbing is to reduce manufacturing cost, so griping about the cost of L2 is kind of moot...
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post #33 of 54
11/11/03 at 2:10pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Chagi
Thanks for the link.

I have to agree that the larger L2 cache is helping the Prescott benchmark, but if that's the case, it's just a smart design decision (aside from the added cost to manufacture). Of course, part of the whole reason to switch to 90mm fabbing is to reduce manufacturing cost, so griping about the cost of L2 is kind of moot...

I expect that the 90 nm G5 will feature a 1 MB L2 cache as well
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post #34 of 54
11/11/03 at 3:22pm
We also don't know of the benefits, if any, of recompiling and/or optimizing code for the Prescott. We'll indeed have to wait and see.
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post #35 of 54
11/11/03 at 3:53pm
Does anyone know how well these Athlon-64 CPUs are selling? And I mean selling as in actual systems going to consumers... We already know that the Opteron is the second slowest selling CPU right behind the Itanium. The G5s (aka: PPC970) have been selling like crazy. Anyone have any numbers?

--
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post #36 of 54
11/11/03 at 4:34pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Ed M.
Does anyone know how well these Athlon-64 CPUs are selling? And I mean selling as in actual systems going to consumers... We already know that the Opteron is the second slowest selling CPU right behind the Itanium. The G5s (aka: PPC970) have been selling like crazy. Anyone have any numbers?

--
Ed

I hate to critique you without statistics to back me up, but you're definately wrong about a couple of things.

I highly doubt that the Opteron is behind the Itanium (Itanic as it's been lovingly dubbed) in sales. Thor's Hammer (the forthcoming supercomputer built from Cray's new "Red Storm" product) alone would probably outstrip all Itaniums sold to date. Keep in mind that Itanium has been doing absolutely horrible in sales so far.

As for Athlon 64 sales figures, we're probably going to have to wait for at least one AMD fiscal quarter to go by, as the chips were just launched a month or so ago.
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post #37 of 54
11/11/03 at 6:12pm
One of the things I think is interesting about this whole thing is the lack of information from IBM. It seems that Apple must have some words in their contract so that IBM keep quiet about any chips designed for them. It was the same with Motorola. Both companies talk about their future chips in other areas but chips that will be going into Macs get very little advanced discussion.

Look at Intel and AMD. Both companies are touting (sp?) future designs while IBM and Motorola seem to only have occasional slips where information gets out.

There was a computer company from the early days of computing that preannounced its next product and ending up losing sales of its current product. It ended up going bankrupt. I think Steve Jobs remembers this lesson very well. (certainly better than I since I can not remember the name of the company)
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post #38 of 54
11/11/03 at 6:24pm
Lol, i doubt that apple will have problems with heat from the G5. The heatsink on those babies are crazy!
Ah yes, now I can breath!

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Ah yes, now I can breath!

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post #39 of 54
11/11/03 at 6:35pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Chagi
I hate to critique you without statistics to back me up, but you're definately wrong about a couple of things.

I highly doubt that the Opteron is behind the Itanium (Itanic as it's been lovingly dubbed) in sales. Thor's Hammer (the forthcoming supercomputer built from Cray's new "Red Storm" product) alone would probably outstrip all Itaniums sold to date. Keep in mind that Itanium has been doing absolutely horrible in sales so far.

Er, you've definitely misinterpreted his message. On a list of slowest selling processors, Itanium would be first and Opteron would be second. He didn't say Itanium was outselling Opteron. Whether that statement is true is another issue altogether.

Quote:
As for Athlon 64 sales figures, we're probably going to have to wait for at least one AMD fiscal quarter to go by, as the chips were just launched a month or so ago.

Athlon 64 sales will be abysmal until a major OEM actually starts selling machines with them. You know it won't be Dell. The only major OEM that sells AMD equipped PCs right now is HP, and they're probably waiting for Windows XP Pro 64-bit Edition.
I can change my sig again!
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I can change my sig again!
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post #40 of 54
11/11/03 at 6:57pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Eugene
Er, you've definitely misinterpreted his message. On a list of slowest selling processors, Itanium would be first and Opteron would be second. He didn't say Itanium was outselling Opteron. Whether that statement is true is another issue altogether.


Athlon 64 sales will be abysmal until a major OEM actually starts selling machines with them. You know it won't be Dell. The only major OEM that sells AMD equipped PCs right now is HP, and they're probably waiting for Windows XP Pro 64-bit Edition.

You underestimate the power of the enthusiast market. The original Athlon, never had huge success with OEMs. Most sales where made directly to hobbyists who built they're own machines and didn't have to worry about wrath from Intel. I don't see this picture changing with the Athlon64. Hobbyists will embrace it because of its great performance, but Intel will keep the OEM market because they're considered the standard.
14" iBook
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14" iBook
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640MB RAM

Kecksy's Korner
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