Well, give credit where credit is due, and blame where it should be as well. Apparently both Sumner Lemon of IDG and I completely missed the fact that the servers running AMD's quad-core Barcelona chip in AMD's booth showed the chip running at 1.6 GHz. DailyTech didn't, and even persuaded someone to run some quick benchmarks (off of a USB stick they smuggled in, I suspect).
That 1.6-GHz figure is true; I received that number from one of AMD's partners, along with my contribution to the story: "disappointing". And that's news, if only because three of AMD's partners used that exact word in describing the chip. One partner used this term: "chaos". And these guys had AMD boards in their booth.
The funny thing is, AMD's presence is
everywhere here at the Computex show in Taipei. Their logo is on banners, billboards, balloons, the little tables where people sip coffee, you name it. If I had to compare AMD's logo penetration to that of Intel, I'd say it was 60-40. That had one of AMD's partners stumped too, who told me that AMD had spent "a lot of money" on his company's booth, with nothing really to show for it.
AMD's ATI graphics subsidiary had a healthy showing, but Nvidia boards seem to be outselling ATI boards, at least among the partners I talked to. One big partner had it at close to 70 percent of their product line.
Back to Barcelona: DailyTech reported that partners were talking about speeds of 2.0-GHz. I didn't get that (I heard a "possibly 1.8-GHz at launch"), but we are still (unfortunately) talking about early silicon. What's known as the "B0" stepping is out, and the "B02" stepping should be available shortly, I was told.
AMD's done well over the past two years, and risen to a prominent position. But the market is fickle. AMD's always lagged behind Intel on manufacturing, but made up for it with design. But Intel launched (or announced, anyway) seven chipsets here at Computex, from the enthusiast market down to the mainstream. Consider what AMD's facing right now: a delay on a flagship chip that's already suffering from a manufacturing disadvantage, unhappy customers, plus the massive blow that Intel just delivered in the chipset market.
The scary thing is that when a company like AMD has something good coming down the pipe, it leaks. People get excited; the hype machine rolls into action. AMD has revealed the results of its own benchmark tests:
"According to Mario Rivas, executive vice president of AMD's computing products group, the company's Barcelona will yield 42 percent better "floating-point" performance than Intel's Xeon X5355 Clovertown in SPEC_fp benchmark tests.
For SPEC_int, which measures integer-processing tasks, Barcelona will have a leg up on Clovertown again with a performance advantage of more than 10 percent, Rivas said."
Still, the fact that there was only one Barcelona demonstration at Computex (in a server, no less) and that its partners weren't even really talking...it just gives me a bad feeling. For competition's sake, let's hope that AMD has something great up its sleeve.
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June 8, 2007 5:04 AM
Frequency != performance. Intel itself began shipping Intel Core processors at 1.6GHz when their own Pentium 4 where clocked above 3GHz. In fact, I'd expect frequency reductions after every architecture improvement :-P
June 8, 2007 7:26 AM
Intel shipping Core at 1.6 GHz?
Maybe you meant 2.6 GHz, as there are no Core processors at 1.6 GHz.
June 8, 2007 8:38 AM
check out AMD's site, they might have something up their sleeve, they say that 6/10/07 they will be revealing there phenom processors:
http://multicore.amd.com/us-en/AMD-Multi-Core/Products/Desktop-PC.aspx
June 8, 2007 9:05 AM
JPack:
Maby you should do a little reasearch before making such stupid statements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_microprocessors
June 8, 2007 3:33 PM
someone,those are the mobile chips,not desktop.Cpu frequency is low on mobile systems because of power consumption.
we're talking about desktop here,and 1,6GH is very low for desktop.we can't judge yet AMd's new models.
i agree with the writer that amd must succeed,otherwise the old bad days of intel monopolising the market and robbing us blind will return
June 8, 2007 10:32 PM
I hope that the new AMD processors play nice with LINUX as well as Windows since many users use both. Direct X10 support is nice for the Windows people but matters little to the LINUX camp. It would be a shame if buying AMD meant getting locked into Windows.
June 9, 2007 1:23 AM
I sincerely wish AMD well, both from a business standpoint and for processor performance, with respect to Intel. Competition is GOOD for customers.
It is interesting, though, that my overall feeling about the article was marred by apparent laziness or carelessness in its writing. One would expect better from an author that the "PC Magazine ProductWire" email newsletter refers to as "Our senior reporter Mark Hachman...". Not content with simply using the possessive form of "AMD's" the author indulges in creative contraction construction. All was well until the sixth paragraph where suddenly "AMD's" is twice used to mean "AMD has" and then is used in place of "AMD is." Since the construct "AMD has" is used correctly elsewhere in the piece, I suppose this should be chalked up to either a momentary lapse or a failure in the editing process (if such process actually occurred). Is it not reasonable to hold professionals, and "senior" professionals in particular, to high standards in their craft? It is somewhat picayune I suppose, but in this form of communication the writing is everything.
June 12, 2007 1:56 PM
I think the author's rating of "disappointing" a bit premature. As Guillem pointed out clock is not everything as the Athlon64 pointed out to Intel in the Pentium4 Days.
AMD being a more customer-centric and dynamic company than Intel they will change where their customers want change and not just where Intel "thinks" they need change.
I have confidence that AMD will turn around with the many projects that they have going now.
As was previously pointed out, competition is a good thing for the buying public so let's all wish AMD good fortunes in the days ahead.
Fred Dunn
June 16, 2007 10:16 PM
We cannot Let AMD die... Let Buy AMD Products or else INTEL will Kick us real hard if we allow AMD to die