Kap,
Copying the Hammer's branch predictor into the Thoroughbred core sounds plausible. It can result in delays though; just like Palomino was delayed partially because the hardware prefetch was copied from Hammer to Palomino very late in the game.
Don't scare me. <g>
Unfortunately, there is a bad parallel between Palomino and Tbred. They were both supposed to come out in Q4, then slipped to beginning of Q1, then just Q1, then shipments to customers would happen to Q1, then, these will be only notebook chips at first, notebook vendors can't turn on a dime, and it is middle of Q2 before the first Palomino is in hands of the users.
AMD was saved from being completely blown out of the water in Q1 and Q2 by having good performance lead with Thunderbird 1.2 and 1.33 and DDR.
Today, AMD is marginally behind in performance now, Intel doesn't have the Rambus albatros, is in full production with P4.
The only advantage for AMD, if this scary scenario plays itself out again, is that Palomino mobile chips started from scratch, with poor chipset support, no market share, no customers, was limited to performance notebook segment.
.13u TBred is facing a challenge of new socket, but has none of the challenges that accompanied Palomino. On top of it all, AMD has a first commercial notebook design win, and will have power consumption suitable for mainstream thin and light segment, in addition to performance segment. The notebook chips alone could keep AMD not too far below breakeven.
If the desktop Tbred is MIA in Q2 and Q3, we will see an interesting anomaly, I bet, as the notebook chip prices may drop below desktop prices. If AMD is shut out of desktop segment (with Palomino 2000+ vs. NW 2.4, 2.6 with 512K L2, 533 MHz FSB), AMD's desktop CPU prices will go back to 60s, while Intel cleans up all the premium pricing - above $150. Notebook CPU prices may drop below Intel's desktop ASPs.
Anyway, the guy leaking info on Ace's hardware said something about CeBit, so I guess that's when Tbred will be introduced. I hope there are no more slips with Tbred.
Joe |
