Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)
AMD vs. Intel - The eternal debate
Introduction:
Who is AMD ?
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) engages in the design, manufacture,
and marketing of industry-standard digital integrated circuits
worldwide. The company offers microprocessors, flash memory devices,
and embedded microprocessors. The microprocessor products are used in
desktop and mobile personal computers, servers and workstations, and
chipset products. The flash memory products are used in mobile
telephones, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, networking
equipment, and other applications. The embedded microprocessors are
used in personal connectivity devices and specific consumer markets.
AMD's customers include original equipment manufacturers and
third-party distributors. The company markets its products through
direct sales force, third-party distributors, and independent sales
representatives. It operates primarily in the United States, as well as
in Europe and Asia. Advanced Micro Devices was founded in 1969 and is
headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
Who is Intel?
Intel Corporation operates as a semiconductor chip maker that supplies
technology solutions for the computing and communications industries.
The company's products include microprocessors; chipsets;
motherboards; flash memory; communications infrastructure components,
including network and embedded processors; wired and wireless
connectivity products; products for networked storage; application
processors; and cellular baseband chipsets. It sells its products to
original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers who
manufacture computer systems, cellular handsets and handheld computing
devices, and telecommunications and networking communications
equipment. Intel's customers also include personal computer and
network communications products users, including individuals, large and
small businesses, and service providers, as well as manufacturers of a
range of industrial and communications equipment. It markets its
products primarily in Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Japan. The
company has a strategic alliance with Alcatel to develop mobile WiMAX
solutions. Intel Corporation was founded in 1968 and is based in Santa
Clara, California.
CPU Comparison (Price/Performance) :
The following is a link to the article that put together so you can see
the differences between the CPU's in production today. If you wish to
check the prices we have added a deep link to Kelkoo which compares
prices from various retailers and the end of each row.
http://www.pantherproducts.co.uk/Articles/CPU/CPU%20Comparison.shtml
Now, Athlon 64 makes the AMD win the war presently for its good
price/performance .
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/reports/5041/1/
Evolution of the war between AMD and Intel:
In the late 1970s and early '80s, Intel had a cross-license agreement
and had signed AMD as a second source for various chips, including the
x86 processors. In exchange, AMD committed to provide Intel with the
rights to second-source some of its support chips.
The problem for Intel was that AMD was not happy being a docile second
source. AMD was much more aggressive and produced a significantly
faster 286 (16MHz vs. 12.5MHz) than Intel was capable of. This
situation may well be the origin of the clock-frequency war that AMD
and Intel continued to fight for almost two decades. Intel then
introduced the 80386 and decided to purposefully slow AMD's progress by
refusing to hand over the design to AMD. Intel had begun to build its
now famous "copy-exact" manufacturing methodology and convinced IBM and
other PC manufacturers that traditional second sources weren't required
when Intel had multiple fabs in multiple locations, and that Intel was
leading in the new-product development essential to creating
leading-edge PCs.
Intel even started an ad campaign that denigrated its own 286 processor
as old technology and promoted the 32-bit 386 as the future
architecture. AMD, not having the 386 at first, pointed out that there
wasn't much 32-bit x86 software available and that Microsoft's Windows
3.1 was a 16-bit operating system. (How ironic that Intel fought so
hard against the 64-bit extensions, using almost the same arguments AMD
made against the 32-bit extensions!) That approach did not stop the
eventual success of the 386 architecture.
AMD eventually reversed-engineered the 386 (and later the 486), and
once again AMD produced faster (40MHz) versions of the 386 than did
Intel (33MHz), although one could argue that Intel had moved on to the
486 when AMD made the faster 386. Intel also tried developing a version
of the 386, specifically for mobile, with an early form of power
management-the 386SL. AMD countered with a less expensive, and
faster, version of the 386SX.
AMD and Intel entered into a series of court battles as Intel withheld
the 486 design from AMD as well and sued AMD to prevent shipment of
386s and 486s. AMD was late with the more highly integrated 486
processor (Round 3) as the court battle went back and forth between the
two companies. Eventually, AMD won the rights to produce x86 processors
and signed a new cross-license agreement with Intel .
When AMD realized that Intel would not hand over future x86 processor
designs, it began its own independent processor design that would
eventually become the K5. The K5 was a very ambitious design-too
ambitious for the design team, it turned out. The K5 was late and, when
it shipped, it was too slow to compete effectively with Intel's Pentium
processor. And it was with the K5, and last generation of 486-based
processors that AMD became involved with the "performance rating" (or
PR) system that attempted to show that clock frequency and performance
are not synonymous. This occurred because the Pentium processor had a
faster clock frequency-even if it had a simpler
microarchitecture-and was winning the performance war.
With the K5 delayed, AMD had a brand new fab and not enough demand for
its product to fill the fab. The solution to AMD's troubles was found
in a smaller competitor that was rapidly running out of money but had a
new processor design well along: NexGen. The NexGen processor replaced
its proprietary bus with a Pentium bus and became the AMD-K6. The
233MHz K6 was the fastest PC processor in 1997-for about three weeks
.. Then Intel launched the Pentium II with clock speeds up to 266MHz.
But at least AMD was back in the game.
Intel's Pentium II and Pentium III kept a lead over AMD's K6 family,
but AMD had another processor in the works that was even more
promising-the K7, later called Athlon. Athlon leapfrogged Intel's
Pentium III and was the first PC processor to hit 1GHz. Intel launched
the 1GHz Pentium III but had trouble producing it in volume; later that
year Intel had to cancel a 1.13GHz speed upgrade.
Intel's next processor architecture-the Pentium 4 or NetBurst
architecture-put clock frequency at the forefront. It was late, but
once it shipped, Intel handily won the clock-speed race. However, AMD
then changed the ground rules, resurrecting a form of PR to keep the
slow Athlon processor competitive, using a mix of recognized benchmarks
as the measure of performance . Once again, AMD had another new
architecture-Hammer. The Hammer architecture became the Athlon 64 and
Opteron processors, and AMD took a leadership role, bringing 64-bit
extensions, on-chip memory controllers, and glueless multiprocessing to
mainstream markets. Intel responded by embracing the 64-bit extensions
(EM64T) and increasing the processor front-side bus frequency to
increase bandwidth and reduce memory latency. Microsoft's delay of more
than a year in shipping the x64 version of Windows XP has certainly
helped negate AMD's lead in 64-bit.
That brings us up to the race to dual-core processors. Although both
competitors have different designs and different approaches, they share
a similar overall strategy: both are implementing first-generation
dual-core processors with independent L2 caches and limited cooperation
between the cores on power management. AMD has a bit of an edge with
the integrated memory-controller crossbar switch, which should allow
much faster inter-core coherency traffic than the Pentium 4 front-side
bus that the Pentium D will use. Drawing dead aim at Intel's top
desktop chips, the Athlon 64 FX-51 targets the enthusiasts and gamers
who demand the best in high-performance hardware. There's no question
that AMD's new flagship outpaces today's Pentium 4/3.2 in virtually
every way, and downright spanks it in high-end gaming tests. AMD set
out to provide the ultimate desktop option and succeeded, even going so
far as to force Intel's hand with pre-release review leaks of the
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition.
So, AMD wins the war presently, but the war will continue and the
benefiter are the users.
AMD vs. Intel - The eternal debate
Introduction:
Who is AMD ?
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) engages in the design, manufacture,
and marketing of industry-standard digital integrated circuits
worldwide. The company offers microprocessors, flash memory devices,
and embedded microprocessors. The microprocessor products are used in
desktop and mobile personal computers, servers and workstations, and
chipset products. The flash memory products are used in mobile
telephones, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, networking
equipment, and other applications. The embedded microprocessors are
used in personal connectivity devices and specific consumer markets.
AMD's customers include original equipment manufacturers and
third-party distributors. The company markets its products through
direct sales force, third-party distributors, and independent sales
representatives. It operates primarily in the United States, as well as
in Europe and Asia. Advanced Micro Devices was founded in 1969 and is
headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
Who is Intel?
Intel Corporation operates as a semiconductor chip maker that supplies
technology solutions for the computing and communications industries.
The company's products include microprocessors; chipsets;
motherboards; flash memory; communications infrastructure components,
including network and embedded processors; wired and wireless
connectivity products; products for networked storage; application
processors; and cellular baseband chipsets. It sells its products to
original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers who
manufacture computer systems, cellular handsets and handheld computing
devices, and telecommunications and networking communications
equipment. Intel's customers also include personal computer and
network communications products users, including individuals, large and
small businesses, and service providers, as well as manufacturers of a
range of industrial and communications equipment. It markets its
products primarily in Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Japan. The
company has a strategic alliance with Alcatel to develop mobile WiMAX
solutions. Intel Corporation was founded in 1968 and is based in Santa
Clara, California.
CPU Comparison (Price/Performance) :
The following is a link to the article that put together so you can see
the differences between the CPU's in production today. If you wish to
check the prices we have added a deep link to Kelkoo which compares
prices from various retailers and the end of each row.
http://www.pantherproducts.co.uk/Articles/CPU/CPU%20Comparison.shtml
Now, Athlon 64 makes the AMD win the war presently for its good
price/performance .
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/reports/5041/1/
Evolution of the war between AMD and Intel:
In the late 1970s and early '80s, Intel had a cross-license agreement
and had signed AMD as a second source for various chips, including the
x86 processors. In exchange, AMD committed to provide Intel with the
rights to second-source some of its support chips.
The problem for Intel was that AMD was not happy being a docile second
source. AMD was much more aggressive and produced a significantly
faster 286 (16MHz vs. 12.5MHz) than Intel was capable of. This
situation may well be the origin of the clock-frequency war that AMD
and Intel continued to fight for almost two decades. Intel then
introduced the 80386 and decided to purposefully slow AMD's progress by
refusing to hand over the design to AMD. Intel had begun to build its
now famous "copy-exact" manufacturing methodology and convinced IBM and
other PC manufacturers that traditional second sources weren't required
when Intel had multiple fabs in multiple locations, and that Intel was
leading in the new-product development essential to creating
leading-edge PCs.
Intel even started an ad campaign that denigrated its own 286 processor
as old technology and promoted the 32-bit 386 as the future
architecture. AMD, not having the 386 at first, pointed out that there
wasn't much 32-bit x86 software available and that Microsoft's Windows
3.1 was a 16-bit operating system. (How ironic that Intel fought so
hard against the 64-bit extensions, using almost the same arguments AMD
made against the 32-bit extensions!) That approach did not stop the
eventual success of the 386 architecture.
AMD eventually reversed-engineered the 386 (and later the 486), and
once again AMD produced faster (40MHz) versions of the 386 than did
Intel (33MHz), although one could argue that Intel had moved on to the
486 when AMD made the faster 386. Intel also tried developing a version
of the 386, specifically for mobile, with an early form of power
management-the 386SL. AMD countered with a less expensive, and
faster, version of the 386SX.
AMD and Intel entered into a series of court battles as Intel withheld
the 486 design from AMD as well and sued AMD to prevent shipment of
386s and 486s. AMD was late with the more highly integrated 486
processor (Round 3) as the court battle went back and forth between the
two companies. Eventually, AMD won the rights to produce x86 processors
and signed a new cross-license agreement with Intel .
When AMD realized that Intel would not hand over future x86 processor
designs, it began its own independent processor design that would
eventually become the K5. The K5 was a very ambitious design-too
ambitious for the design team, it turned out. The K5 was late and, when
it shipped, it was too slow to compete effectively with Intel's Pentium
processor. And it was with the K5, and last generation of 486-based
processors that AMD became involved with the "performance rating" (or
PR) system that attempted to show that clock frequency and performance
are not synonymous. This occurred because the Pentium processor had a
faster clock frequency-even if it had a simpler
microarchitecture-and was winning the performance war.
With the K5 delayed, AMD had a brand new fab and not enough demand for
its product to fill the fab. The solution to AMD's troubles was found
in a smaller competitor that was rapidly running out of money but had a
new processor design well along: NexGen. The NexGen processor replaced
its proprietary bus with a Pentium bus and became the AMD-K6. The
233MHz K6 was the fastest PC processor in 1997-for about three weeks
.. Then Intel launched the Pentium II with clock speeds up to 266MHz.
But at least AMD was back in the game.
Intel's Pentium II and Pentium III kept a lead over AMD's K6 family,
but AMD had another processor in the works that was even more
promising-the K7, later called Athlon. Athlon leapfrogged Intel's
Pentium III and was the first PC processor to hit 1GHz. Intel launched
the 1GHz Pentium III but had trouble producing it in volume; later that
year Intel had to cancel a 1.13GHz speed upgrade.
Intel's next processor architecture-the Pentium 4 or NetBurst
architecture-put clock frequency at the forefront. It was late, but
once it shipped, Intel handily won the clock-speed race. However, AMD
then changed the ground rules, resurrecting a form of PR to keep the
slow Athlon processor competitive, using a mix of recognized benchmarks
as the measure of performance . Once again, AMD had another new
architecture-Hammer. The Hammer architecture became the Athlon 64 and
Opteron processors, and AMD took a leadership role, bringing 64-bit
extensions, on-chip memory controllers, and glueless multiprocessing to
mainstream markets. Intel responded by embracing the 64-bit extensions
(EM64T) and increasing the processor front-side bus frequency to
increase bandwidth and reduce memory latency. Microsoft's delay of more
than a year in shipping the x64 version of Windows XP has certainly
helped negate AMD's lead in 64-bit.
That brings us up to the race to dual-core processors. Although both
competitors have different designs and different approaches, they share
a similar overall strategy: both are implementing first-generation
dual-core processors with independent L2 caches and limited cooperation
between the cores on power management. AMD has a bit of an edge with
the integrated memory-controller crossbar switch, which should allow
much faster inter-core coherency traffic than the Pentium 4 front-side
bus that the Pentium D will use. Drawing dead aim at Intel's top
desktop chips, the Athlon 64 FX-51 targets the enthusiasts and gamers
who demand the best in high-performance hardware. There's no question
that AMD's new flagship outpaces today's Pentium 4/3.2 in virtually
every way, and downright spanks it in high-end gaming tests. AMD set
out to provide the ultimate desktop option and succeeded, even going so
far as to force Intel's hand with pre-release review leaks of the
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition.
So, AMD wins the war presently, but the war will continue and the
benefiter are the users.
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