>I think you've hoping for a lot more than you're going to get out of SOI.<
Actually, no. I would like to see Athlon come to a quick and painless end once Hammer is introduced and, if Hammer gets a 20% speed grade boost and just manages to keep up with the peak speed grade of P4 with this 20% boost, when Intel does migrate to SOI Hammer will be in big trouble.
What I am hoping is that SOI manages to provide enough of a drop in power consumption to enable mobile Barton to dominate the entire mobile market, but does not allow enough of a boost in the peak speed grade of desktop Barton to justify moving from Thoroughbred to Barton. I figure that if desktop Barton reaches a peak speed grade of 2.333 GHz by the end of 2002 I will be quite happy.
OTOH, I hope that Hammer is capable of matching the peak speed grade of P4 even without resorting to SOI.
> It's just not going to save the day here. AMD's shot their wad with .13u transistors in a desperate attempt to keep in sight of Intel and SOI isn't going to save them.
What a bunch of nonsense. Intel is using smaller gates at 0.18-micron than AMD.
> Intel will shortly hit 2.0Ghz on .18u without even the need for Copper.
The reason that Intel does not need copper is that they etch their aluminum interconnects so deep, thus providing a larger cross sectional area at the same line width.
> The same could be said for SOI. If Intel needed it, they'd use it.
Intel's claim is that SOI is of significant benefit at 0.18-micron and 0.13-micron, but will not be of significant benefit at 0.10-micron or smaller. Officially, Intel felt that developing such a process technology for only two generations would be a waste of engineering resources.
I hope they are right, because this would mean that AMD would be using SOI just when it is most needed. And Intel will never use SOI.
> AMD has no other choice to remain even a distant second.<
Maybe, but it does not look that way to me. Indeed, with regards to performance it looks like Intel will be a reasonable second (temporarily taking first place when Northwood first ships). |
