<Interesting, a writer for the Microprocessor Report thinks Intel should have released Willamette by now. Maybe he knows something about the K7's performance. Why else would he state that Intel is in "a position where it must rely on its competitor to fall flat"?>
With that article, I just lost a lot of respect for Linley Gwennap. I'll just refute some of the quotes from that article:
AMD's next effort, the K7, appears at least a year ahead of Intel's seventh-generation processor, code-named Willamette.
How in the world did Mr. Gwennap fall into the notion that AMD's definition of seventh-generation is the same as Intel's definition? Perhaps he also thinks that the Alpha 21364 is a revolutionary leap over the 21264. (It isn't; the 364 is only a 264 with an integrated RDRAM controller.)
With KNI, Intel's problem was finding the right launch vehicle.
Huh? I guess with MMX, Intel was also trying to find the right launch vehicle as well. Do we put it on the Pentium core, or hold off until we can put it on the P6 core and call it Pentium II? He makes no sense.
Although the vendor has yet to disclose the full details of KNI and its implementation in Katmai, the new instructions (see MPR 10/5/98, p. 1) appear superior to 3DNow.
Appear superior? After the MPR article that was referenced said that KNI is clearly superior?
Instead of Katmai, Intel should be introducing Willamette.
Perhaps Mr. Gwennap is assuming that Intel can't do any better than a K7-look-alike for Willamette. Without giving any details, I can assure you that his assumption is wrong. At the very worst, there is an eighteen-month window of opportunity for AMD to exploit. That window will only grow smaller, especially if AMD fails to execute as before.
If this proliferation of processors for specific market segments has in fact delayed Willamette, Intel made a poor choice. A next-generation core can be deployed across the board, helping all product lines.
Mr. Gwennap is wrong. There is no way that either Intel or AMD will deploy their seventh-generation processors across all market segments. I don't forsee AMD replacing their K6-2 (or K6-3) with the K7 in the low-end in the next two years, and I don't forsee Intel replacing the Celeron with some form of Willamette two years after its introduction. Or maybe Mr. Gwennap can try and convince AMD to replace their low-end K6 processors with the expensive K7, and watch as AMD's retail marketshare evaporates.
As the putative technology leader, however, Intel should never have gotten into a position where it must rely on its competitor to fall flat.
Rather, Intel should have crushed the competition before they even got a chance, thus raising the heads of the FTC, the DOJ, Janet Reno, Ralph Nader, and every other "monopoly-hunter" out there.
To conclude my rather long rant, I'm not saying that Intel made all the right decisions in the past, nor am I saying that AMD can do nothing but fail. But I am saying that Linley Gwennap is way off-the-mark with his latest article. Perhaps those "K7 foils" (™Elmer) succeeded in brainwashing Mr. Gwennap as well.
By the way, I'll be e-mailing Linley Gwennap a revised copy of my rant just to see what he has to say in response.
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