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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: graphicsguru who wrote (235554)	7/3/2007 4:19:55 AM
From: BUGGI-WO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

@GG - decisions // Lima Completly right - here is again a bad move: dailytech.com AMD expects to launch Sparta in September 2007 in 256KB and 128KB L2 configurations. Sparta arrives as a replacement for Orleans and Manila-core processors and is essentially a 65nm die-shrink of Manila. I can't understand, what AMD is doing these days. They seem to be so stupid. Intel is going fast to a complete C2D lineup and even lower end CPUs from them are now much better com- pared to old Netburst-style stuff. AMD should recognize this. It makes sense to end A64 in SC lines and drive DC down, which is already done, but their Sempronlineup looks weaker every week. Could be already seen at the prices, which are way be- low year ago levels. Instead of going to 65nm and 128/256 small Cache versions, they should switch existing 90nm A64 512KB SC down to 65nm. Use these "new" DIEs and label it "new Sempron". They add Speed, drive TDP down and they could compete very well with Intels low-end ones. Instead they choose to cripple again these versions just to save a few mm^2. I can't say it often enough - who is making all these bad decisions? Before these new modells are already on the market, we could guess, that they have to be priced so low, because performance will not a big strength - frustrating for AMD investors. BUGGI

To: graphicsguru who wrote (235554)	7/3/2007 10:05:21 AM
From: Reseller Mike	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

low-cost 4 die servers Umm, no. Two (2) die server chips - 2 dual core and in the future 2 quad core.

To: graphicsguru who wrote (235554)	7/3/2007 1:33:19 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

gg, The marketing goons at AMD didn't realize that the way to press K8's advantage was to price Opteron 8xxx the same as 2xxx and press motherboard manufacturers to build cheap 4S infrastructure. That would have been disruptive and 90% of the server market would have moved over to 4 die AMD servers. Instead, it was Intel that first moved the market to low-price 4 die servers. How ironic! AMD had a far superior infrastructure to connect 4 dies together. Yet they stupidly chose to price the dies in such a way that AMD 4 die servers remained a small niche. I have to agree here. Selling 2x the number of server dies in a server is enough of a premium for the user to pay, IMO. OTOH that is only a temporary step to what I think an ideal server chip would be, which is a one (huge) die server with on die memory controller(s), several memory channels, multiple cores, L3, and most importantly, no memory coherency trafic overhead. The cost of the server would shift from expensive mobos and chipset to an expensive silicon. IMO, a dollar spend on a silicon die area (cost-wise) has to have bang for the buck of one or more orders of magnitude over cost of designing complex motherboards. Adding cores is now just a cookie cutter type of thing now. AMD has the inside the chip communication worked out very well, well positioned to adding cores. Intel's Conroe approach to shared L2 does not scale well, but my guess is that Intel will revise it for Nehalem, probably closer to Barcelona approach. Anyway, next thing to work out the redundancy of cores, meaning you would make say 10 core die to get 8 core chip, or 5 core die to make 4 core chip. Intel is already capable of making large chips (with Itanium), so I think this whole thing of one die servers is very possible. The problem is the economic one. Looking at who would benefit from this, clearly not server OEMs, since it would not take a whole lot of expertise to make these, so they would be commodity that today's 1S servers are. CPU manufacturers would be able to sell more expensive chips, but fewer of them, so they would not necessarily benefit. Customers are the only ones who would benefit, being able to get a lot more bang for the buck, which unfortunately puts the whole thing in doubt... Joe