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

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (147347)	11/11/2001 12:43:00 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: Why do you consider this a last hope? Intel's .18u Pentium 4 is already beating AMD's .18u Palomino in sales. Intel's costs are 4 to 5 times those of AMD - they'd better sell more units... The duopoly of Intel and AMD basically "takes turns" having the advantage of the newest core. When Athlon came out, it gave AMD a huge advantage - AMD's .25 Athlons were performance competitive with Intel's .18 coppermines, though they cost more to make and dissipated more heat. For the past quarter, Intel has had the advantage of a new core - and it's a core that took them 5 years to design. As often happens with new cores, it's larger than its competition, and dissipates more heat, but unlike previous new cores introduced by Intel or AMD, it does not outperform its competition, even when both are on the same process node. Recall that .25 Athlon beat .18 PIII, and note that .18 P4 can't even keep up with the performance of .18 Athlon, much less .13 Athlon. Intel is putting up a brave face, claiming that Athlon is really a .13 chip now (at the same time they trumpet beating AMD to .13 - they should pick a story and stick to it), but here's an independent 3rd party analysis of .18 copper Athlon from a company that dissects chips and sells the information they gain: Structural Analysis Report 1 GHz AMD™ Athlon™ Microprocessor Using Copper Interconnect The 1 GHz AMD Athlon is a next-generation microprocessor suited to computation-intensive applications that run on high-end desktop systems, workstations and servers. Its 0.18 micron process technology with gate lengths as small as 0.09 microns, 6-level copper metallization with dual damascene processing and 256K on-chip L2 cache are features that make this device well worth a close look. semiconductor.com Their dissection of a P4 shows the same gate lengths as Athlon, despite the hopes of Intel fans: Structural Analysis Report Intel® 1.5 GHz Pentium® 4 Processor Billed by Intel as the fastest desktop platform in the world, the Pentium 4 Processor achieves a 1.5 GHz operating speed through exciting process advances that include 0.09 micron transistor gates (as-drawn), a 0.18 micron process and low-k dielectric. The Pentium 4 Processor's nearest competitor, the AMD™ Athlon™ Processor, operates at speeds up to 1.2 GHz. It has a 0.18 micron process and gate lengths as small as 0.09 microns but uses 6-level copper metallization, not low-k dielectric. semiconductor.com And they confirm the 70nm gates of Tualatin, which can't keep up with Athlon, either: Structural Analysis Report Intel 1.26 GHz "Tualatin" Microprocessor using Copper Interconnect Intel’s latest process achievement is revealed in this 1.26 GHz Microprocessor using copper interconnect. The lithographic process size has decreased to 0.13 µm while transistors are a mere 0.07 µm. Other notable features of Intel’s new device include 512 KBytes of cache and over 40 million transistors on-chip. All of this is achieved with a die of 79 mm². semiconductor.com Now, I think it's become clear that .18 copper has an advantage over .18 Aluminum (despite Intel's squeals to the contrary), so Athlon does have that advantage, but then Athlon also has the advantage of SOI coming up, so AMD can be expected to maintain a small but significant process advantage. And the "old" Athlon core clearly outperforms the P4 core. AMD has a new 64 bit core coming next year, with an extended pipeline to allow faster clock speeds - Intel won't have another major new core for 3 to 5 years. AMD's new core will have the marketing advantage of 64 bits - and that's got to be a very big advantage, especially with Intel pushing 64 bit Itanium, SUN pushing 64 bit Sparc, and IBM pushing 64 bit PowerPC. The only 32 bit chip remaining with any pretensions to performance will be P4. And the indications are that its real performance won't be able to keep up with an SOI Hammer and that its marketing "performance" will have a tough time challenging a 64 bit CPU when it can only claim 32 bits.