Intel Still Tick-Tocking AMD

As I mentioned at CMG 2008, and also in my Guerrilla Boot Camp classes, it's important to keep your eye on the various twists and turns in the technology marketplace, so that you are not broadsided when it comes to things like server procurement. One example I referred to is the very aggressive microprocessor technology roadmap that Intel is pursuing; something they call "tick-tock".

Although I'm not tracking these events as closely as I was last year (when Intel was racing toward 45 nm parts), it looks like AMD microprocessor fabrication is essentially 1 yr behind Intel. One way this leapfrogging occurs is due to full automation. Intel can go from lab to fab essentially in one shot by uploading their lab "recipes" into the production chip fabrication line. They claim to have 32 nm working in the lab already and are planning to ship parts in 4Q09.

Update: In spite of that, Intel 4Q08 profits plunged by 90 percent.

Update: In related news, world-wide desktop PC sales have taken a pounding.

Musical Chairs at AMD

It looks like Intel's very aggressive pace for technology advancement, which I have been tracking loosely over the past 18 months, is really starting to hurt AMD. The response from AMD, however, may represent continued dithering at the executive management level.

Penryn Performance. The Envelope Please!

Having kept pretty much to its promised schedule for the Penryn microprocessor ...

• Feb, 2007 The joint announcement with IBM
  
• Apr, 2007 More on Penryn
  
• May, 2007 More on Moore
  
• Oct, 2007 Folsom: Not Just a Prison But A Cache
  

Intel is now significantly ahead of the industry with the production of 45 nm parts using the new high-K dielectric materials. The claims for the new Hafnium oxide-metal gate technology included:

• Approximatley 2x improvement in transistor density, for either
  smaller chip size or increased transistor count


• Approximatley 30% reduction in transistor switching power


• Better than 20% improvement in transistor switching speed or 5x
  reduction in source-drain leakage power


• Better than 10x reduction in gate oxide leakage power

More on Moore

In an opinion piece in this month's CMG MeasureIT e-zine, I examine what is possibly going on behind the joint IBM-Intel announcement and the imminent release of 45 nm 'penryn' parts in CMOS.

Some related blog entries are:

• Programming Multicores Ain't Easy
  
• More On Penryn
  
• Moore's Law II: More or Less?