"Read the Paper. IBM was working on SOI in the 70's"
So was Intel. Dave Wanlass (*) and Bob Nungester were doing SOI development in 1974.
(* Interestingly, Dave Wanlass is the brother of Frank Wanlass, credited by most as being the inventor of CMOS.)
Their benches were near the ones I was working at as a new engineer in Craig Barrett's small group (the other engineer is a reader/lurker here in SI, but he doesn't post).
Intel also had other SOI/SOS efforts several years later. Jake Haskell was one of the principals. And continuing interest after that...now showing up in the IEDM paper, several years in the making.
The proof of the pudding is not who makes _claims_, of course, and this applies to Intel as much as it does to AMD. But it should be noted that AMD is talking about _licensing_ a technology from others, while Intel has made some substantial breakthroughs.
There was a time when AMD had about a third (maybe even as much as a half) the total market cap of Intel. Now their market cap is about 5% or less of Intel's. Their stock price is basically what it was 20 years ago, while Intel's is so many times larger that log paper is needed. (Thankfully, I own Intel stock, and have for many years, about 27 of them, in fact.)
AMD did a good job with the Athlon. Few dispute that. But they don't seem to have been able to replicate whatever led this success. And while Intel stumbled a couple of times, they now seem to be firing on all cylinders.
The divergence in market cap is likely to continue.
--TIm May |
