Manufacturing Roadmap
AMD finished things off with a brief update on its manufacturing. By the middle of this year AMD's Fab 36 will be completely transitioned over to 65nm, which is just in time for Barcelona to ramp up production.
By the middle of 2008, AMD plans on bringing 45nm to market, approximately 6 months after Intel does. Fab 36 will continue to be AMD's most advanced fab, with 45nm coming out of it starting in 2008 and by 2010 AMD expects to move the fab to 32nm.
AMD showed off the same 45nm SRAM test vehicle we saw over a year ago in Dresden, which is a bit bothersome. We expected to see more than what we had already seen, but it could be that AMD continues to be a bit more guarded than we'd like; either that or functional 45nm CPU silicon just isn't yielding yet.
Final Words
Needless to say, there's more to come and this is just the beginning. The fact that we can say this about AMD is an absolute shock to us, and possibly to you as well. For the longest time it seemed like the only CPU articles we'd write were either disappointing AMD product launches or exciting new Intel announcements. AMD is changing, arguably later than we'd like, but at least it's happening.
For a while we had lost confidence in AMD, like many of you had as well, and although AMD's position in the market hasn't changed we are more confident now that it can actually bounce back from this. Intel seemed to have the perfect roadmap with Conroe, Penryn and Nehalem all lined up back to back, and we saw little room for AMD to compete. Now, coming away from these meetings, we do believe that AMD may have a fighting chance. Over the coming months you'll begin to see why; it won't be an easy battle, but it will be one that will be fought with more than just price.
AMD's Fusion strategy looks to be an even stronger part of its future plans, if Phil Hester's prediction of a heterogeneous processing era comes true. While Intel has managed to deliver a much stronger CPU roadmap, we don't have much of an understanding of its answer to Fusion in the long term. AMD has very much been a leader in areas such as the move to 64-bit, an on-die memory controller, and now we may see the same leadership role with the move to integrate the CPU and GPU. The integrated CPU/GPU, taken to the exploitation stage as it was called by AMD, has the potential to really change the CPU as we know it. We do know that Intel has a response, but we're not as clear as to exactly what it is.
That being said, there's a lot that AMD has to do in the near term to ever get us to the point where the ATI acquisition could pay off. Barcelona is still at least a quarter away, we have no idea how it will actually perform, and AMD isn't giving us any indication. Despite a relatively weak introduction of Intel's latest Centrino platform, AMD still doesn't have a good competitor; while Fusion will give it a unique selling point into the mobile market, the first Fusion core is still well over a year away. The same worries we've had about AMD are still there; while we now know that AMD has some truly wonderful things planned for its future, we worry how great of a toll the interim will take on the company.
It is often said that what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger; despite losing $611 million dollars last quarter, and not winning a single performance benchmark since Intel launched its Core 2 processors, AMD is not dead. Market share is diminished, morale is low, but it may just be possible for AMD to come back from this stronger than ever. We're not exactly sure how AMD has lasted through all of this, but if it can pull through, we may once again have two very competitive manufacturers in the CPU industry.
AMD finished things off with a brief update on its manufacturing. By the middle of this year AMD's Fab 36 will be completely transitioned over to 65nm, which is just in time for Barcelona to ramp up production.
By the middle of 2008, AMD plans on bringing 45nm to market, approximately 6 months after Intel does. Fab 36 will continue to be AMD's most advanced fab, with 45nm coming out of it starting in 2008 and by 2010 AMD expects to move the fab to 32nm.
AMD showed off the same 45nm SRAM test vehicle we saw over a year ago in Dresden, which is a bit bothersome. We expected to see more than what we had already seen, but it could be that AMD continues to be a bit more guarded than we'd like; either that or functional 45nm CPU silicon just isn't yielding yet.
Final Words
Needless to say, there's more to come and this is just the beginning. The fact that we can say this about AMD is an absolute shock to us, and possibly to you as well. For the longest time it seemed like the only CPU articles we'd write were either disappointing AMD product launches or exciting new Intel announcements. AMD is changing, arguably later than we'd like, but at least it's happening.
For a while we had lost confidence in AMD, like many of you had as well, and although AMD's position in the market hasn't changed we are more confident now that it can actually bounce back from this. Intel seemed to have the perfect roadmap with Conroe, Penryn and Nehalem all lined up back to back, and we saw little room for AMD to compete. Now, coming away from these meetings, we do believe that AMD may have a fighting chance. Over the coming months you'll begin to see why; it won't be an easy battle, but it will be one that will be fought with more than just price.
AMD's Fusion strategy looks to be an even stronger part of its future plans, if Phil Hester's prediction of a heterogeneous processing era comes true. While Intel has managed to deliver a much stronger CPU roadmap, we don't have much of an understanding of its answer to Fusion in the long term. AMD has very much been a leader in areas such as the move to 64-bit, an on-die memory controller, and now we may see the same leadership role with the move to integrate the CPU and GPU. The integrated CPU/GPU, taken to the exploitation stage as it was called by AMD, has the potential to really change the CPU as we know it. We do know that Intel has a response, but we're not as clear as to exactly what it is.
That being said, there's a lot that AMD has to do in the near term to ever get us to the point where the ATI acquisition could pay off. Barcelona is still at least a quarter away, we have no idea how it will actually perform, and AMD isn't giving us any indication. Despite a relatively weak introduction of Intel's latest Centrino platform, AMD still doesn't have a good competitor; while Fusion will give it a unique selling point into the mobile market, the first Fusion core is still well over a year away. The same worries we've had about AMD are still there; while we now know that AMD has some truly wonderful things planned for its future, we worry how great of a toll the interim will take on the company.
It is often said that what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger; despite losing $611 million dollars last quarter, and not winning a single performance benchmark since Intel launched its Core 2 processors, AMD is not dead. Market share is diminished, morale is low, but it may just be possible for AMD to come back from this stronger than ever. We're not exactly sure how AMD has lasted through all of this, but if it can pull through, we may once again have two very competitive manufacturers in the CPU industry.
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TA152H - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
Actually, I do have an idea on what AMD had to do with it. You don't. If you know anyone from Microsoft, ask about it.Even publicly, AMD admitted that Microsoft co-developed it with them.
By the way, when was the last time you used AMD software? Do you have any idea what you're talking about, or just an angry simpleton?
rADo2 - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
Oh man, AMD copied, in fact, all Intel patents, due to their "exchange". They copied x86 instruction set, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, and many others. Intel was the first to come up with 64-bit Itanium.And AMD is/was damn expensive, while it had a window of opportunity. My most expensive CPU ever bought was AMD X2 4400+ ;-)
fic2 - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
What does the 64-bit Itanium have to do with x86. Totally different instruction set.And what would the Intel equivalent to your X2 4400+ have cost you at the time? Or was there even an Intel equivalent.
rADo2 - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
"What does the 64-bit Itanium have to do with x86" -- Intel had 64-bit CPU way before AMD, a true new platform. AMD came up with primitive AMD64 extension, which was not innovative at all, they just doubled registry and added some more.yyrkoon - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
You mean - A 'primitive' 64BIT CPU that outpeformed the Intel CPU in just about every 32BIT application out there. This was also one reason why AMD took the lead for a few years . . .fitten - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
It was actually pretty smart on AMD's part. Intel was trying to lever everyone off of x86 for a variety of reasons. AMD knew that lots of folks didn't like that so they designed x86-64 and marketed it. Of course people would rather be backwards compatible fully, which is why AMD was successful with it and Intel had to copy it to still compete. So... it's AMD's fault we can't get rid of the x86 albatross again ;)TA152H - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
AMD had no choice but to go the way they did, there was nothing smart about it. They lacked the market power to introduce a new instruction set, as well as the software capability to make it a viable platform.Intel didn't even have the marketing muscle to make it an unqualified success. x86 is bigger than both of them. It's sad.
rADo2 - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
I bought X2 because I wanted NVIDIA SLI (2x6800, 2x7800, 2x7900, etc.) with dualcore, so Pentium D was not an option (NVIDIA chipsets for Intel are even worse than for AMD, if that is possible).X2 was more expensive than my current quadcore, Q6600, and performed really BAD in all things except games.
I hated that CPU, while paying about $850 (including VAT) for it. For audio and video processing, it was a horrible CPU, worse than my previous P4 Northwood with HT, bought for $100, not to mention unstable NVIDIA nForce4 boards, SATA problems, NVIDIA firewall problems, etc.
I never want to see AMD again. Intel CPU + Intel chipset = pure godness.
yyrkoon - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
SO, by your logic, just because a product does not meet your 'standard' ( which by the way seem to be based on 'un-logic' ), you would like to see a company, that you do not like, go under, and thus rendering the company that you hold so dearly in your mind, a monopoly.Pray AMD never goes under, because if they do go away, your next system may cost you 5x as much, and may perform 5x worse, and there will be nothing you can do about it.
Cheers
TA152H - Friday, May 11, 2007 - link
Not only that, but HP had more to do with the design than Intel.