Re: but how long did it take them o get to 1 GHz? They felt threatened by AMD when AMD hit 1 GHz. My recollection is that Intel's 1 GHz was a paper launch and they had problems achieving that and higher speeds until they came up with the idea of netburst.
The short answer is that Intel tried, but they were disadvantaged in being able to beat Athlon in frequency. For one thing, the Athlon had a deeper pipeline that was optimized for higher frequencies, relative to Pentium III, which had the same pipeline as P6 in 1995 (save for changes made to support SSE). As I said in my earlier post, it was amazing that they went as far as they did, from a 300MHz Pentium II in 1997 to a 1GHz Pentium III three years later.
AMD's other advantage was using copper interconnects at 180nm process, probably the only time they they were indisputably ahead of Intel in process innovation. Even at 90nm, where AMD appeared to have an advantage relative to Pentium 4, Intel was first to innovate with strained silicon, and 90nm Dothan CPUs ended up very power efficient on that process.
The point you are trying to make is that AMD did indeed push Intel to innovate faster in the late 90s, and I'll probably agree with that. In fact, I have never disagreed that competition was a bad thing for the industry. Quite the opposite, in fact. Intel was most complacent in the late 90's, and who can blame them? They were at the top of their game, and their stock was being very highly valued. It happens to all kinds of companies, but I think the Intel now is very different than the Intel then.
At some point in the future, I think an absence of AMD could affect Intel's behaviors, but you aren't going to see a shocking change over night. Intel is pretty committed to their roadmap, as well as their pricing strategy, which I will maintain is in a very elastic environment.
Over time, this could change, but I don't think the industry could go on for long without a competitor to Intel. I have always maintained that the business is so large, and so many companies out there design MPUs, that another x86 entrant would appear the moment AMD is forced to declare bankruptcy. Perhaps they buy out AMD's IP in full, or perhaps they start from scratch, but any of the IBM, Samsung, TI, Broadcom, nVidia, or others would be qualified to compete with Intel in terms of innovation.
Most people here vociferously disagree, because they think AMD is the only hope towards a competitive CPU market. I think that's bull, but I'll agree that it's controversial. My beliefs may be different than yours, and I accept that. But the extent to which people will say and do anything to support AMD is laughable IMO. AMD will not survive by your support, or anyone else's, but purely on their own execution. Intel can't prevent them from being successful, although Intel will certainly try to maximize their own profitability. Most of the perception of AMD can be root caused to the claims and demeanors of the madmen who have run the company over the years - namely, Jerry Sanders and Hector Ruiz. AMD's successes and their failures can be attributed to these men, who compete not for their company's success (although Hector and Jerry were extremely well compensated for their decisions over the years), but rather with one goal in mind of toppling the Intel empire.
Ruiz has blamed Intel repeatedly for all of AMD's issues, but time and again the justice system just can't seem to find fault with Intel's business strategy - and I believe this time, with this lawsuit, will be no different. Time will tell, but I believe the microprocessor market is thriving, and consumers should be grateful, regardless. We are in a very competitive tech industry, and a lot of companies out there know how to do it well. Intel is one of them, and having passed through their period of complacency, I think they are well positioned to find great success in the upcoming years. |
