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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: muzosi who wrote (140843)	8/4/2001 12:41:14 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

just have a question: why is it that with 250 nm steppers AMD can have a 180 nm process and 130 gates and not have 100 nm gates (or less) with a 198 nm stepper ? IOW why don't you expect AMD gates to scale less than 130 nm when the process goes to 130 nm ? Why should only some layers scale down ? AMD's gates are already well below .13u. In fact they're well below .10u now. Not being a process expert, I can't speak well about how they got that small or the other factors besides lithography that limit a process. However I can tell you why they got that small. Desperation. AMD is falling behind and they have no other option. The design has run out of gas, the process is sucking wind and the competition is still fresh and leaving them in the dust. EP

To: muzosi who wrote (140843)	8/4/2001 1:19:52 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: just have a question: why is it that with 250 nm steppers AMD can have a 180 nm process and 130 gates Intel claims that copper is of no benefit at .18 AND that AMD's .18 copper process can't be improved by moving to .13 Intel sat on its fat butt from 1997 to 1999 and let AMD go from 6 months behind to 1+ years ahead in FAB technology. Intel may never catch up as both companies continue to progress at about the same rate, with Intel always 1+ years behind. Calculating Pi out to a million digits is one of the favorite benchmarks of overclockers because it can't be "gamed". You can't tune the data set or the the selected output to favor one processor over another. Pi is Pi. An Athlon MP at 1400MHZ (AMD's latest) will complete the task in 76 seconds, a P4 at 2000MHZ (Intel's latest) requires 101 seconds. I've been unable to find any example of any Athlon MP (Athlon 4) being as slow as the fastest Pentium 4 ever tested. The slowest A4 test result is faster than the fastest P4 test result. www16.big.or.jp And this isn't some synthetic benchmark. Calculating Pi has been the standard for measuring computational capability for decades - and it can't be faked. An Athlon 1200 will also take about 100 seconds, while it takes an Athlon 1600 to complete the calculations in 76 seconds. Yet Intel's higher nominal clock speed and the Intel name lets Intel get higher prices for its chips. Intel has what appears to be a permanent performance problem while AMD has what appears to be a permanent marketing problem. We'll have to see which turns out to be harder to solve.