[AlexV]

Originally Posted by 3dilettante

Someone pointed out that the delayed Intel chips are quad-cores.
Are the dual core 45nm chips delayed as well?

They are the same chip, and they both share the same competitive advantage over their respective AMD opponents. The only difference is the shared FSB for the quads, and the earliest rumor concerning a defect.


On the AMD front, Charlie at the Inq says rumor has it that AMD's Bulldozer design is delayed.
The reasons he gives are that AMD was facing a resource crunch and it couldn't launch both Swift and Bulldozer simultaneously, and that Swift's evolution of an already fixed design was safer than Bulldozer--which he claims is having design problems.

The unverified nature of those claims aside, this does dovetail rather nicely with the appearance of Montreal on the roadmap where Bulldozer should have been making its debut.

AFAIU, Wolfdales(the dual-core Penryns) are still going to be released according to the old schedule, in January. As will the QX9770(I'm not sure about this last one, but I'm praying it will because I must posess it and it is impossible to scrounge it up from anywhere ).So the scenario with simply not wanting to cannibalize 65nm Quad-Core sales is likely.

[3dilettante]

Originally Posted by Morgoth the Dark Enemy

AFAIU, Wolfdales(the dual-core Penryns) are still going to be released according to the old schedule, in January. As will the QX9770(I'm not sure about this last one, but I'm praying it will because I must posess it and it is impossible to scrounge it up from anywhere ).So the scenario with simply not wanting to cannibalize 65nm Quad-Core sales is likely.

Why is the scenario likely only for the quad cores?

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by 3dilettante

Why is the scenario likely only for the quad cores?

Because I'm making a guess that they probably have more 65nm quad-core inventory then they have 65nm dual-core inventory. And that demand is likely high enough for dualies to ensure that even the older parts will make their way into quite a few systems, whilst quads are a tad less general in appeal still and thus getting the cooler, cheaper 45nm parts out the door would cannibalize 65nm sales entirely. One last aspect would be that in general usage(read non-heavily multi-threaded stuff), the Wolfdales'll probably end up faster then Phenoms, and thus they'd spank AMD around even with non-release of the Yorkies.

This is a guess. I may be completely wrong, but the whole:"Intel has this bug, see" noise that came up at a very convenient time simply didn't strike me as very convincing. Not with the 9650 shipping and 45nm Xeons also shipping, but as I said, I may be horribly wrong

[MTd2]

How is the availability of Intel's 45nm parts? Did AMD get lucky?

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...irl-intel-45nm

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by MTd2

How is the availability of Intel's 45nm parts? Did AMD get lucky?

Perhaps not, it looks like they just pulled the trigger again...

Originally Posted by Digitimes

AMD has recently notified its partners that the launch of higher-end quad-core Phenom processors, including the 9700 and 9900, will be postponed to the second quarter of 2008 from the original schedule of early 2008, according to sources at motherboard makers.

The sources commented that the reason for the delay of 9700 and 9900 is because AMD has not yet been able to solve the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) erratum found in the chips. However, they added in saying that, in the long-term, AMD's decision is correct since pushing products that are not ready will only hurt the company more.

Digitimes report.

[MTd2]

AMD Phenom CPUs to see further delays

AMD has recently notified its partners that the launch of higher-end quad-core Phenom processors, including the 9700 and 9900, will be postponed to the second quarter of 2008 from the original schedule of early 2008, according to sources at motherboard makers.

However, whether AMD's triple-core Toliman series CPUs will also see delay will be the key decision for the company, since Toliman offers a high price/performance ratio compared with Intel's quad-core CPUs. A delay for Toliman will hurt AMD the most, noted the sources.

The sources commented that the reason for the delay of 9700 and 9900 is because AMD has not yet been able to solve the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) erratum found in the chips. However, they added in saying that, in the long-term, AMD's decision is correct since pushing products that are not ready will only hurt the company more.

AMD declined to comment on this report. The company pointed out that it has not made any official announcement regarding a delay of the mentioned CPUs.

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20071224PD200.html

[ShaidarHaran]

Ya know, for the longest time I was pissed off at AMD, I felt as though they failed me personally as I had been one of their biggest supporters for the longest time. Now, anytime I read yet another piece of bad news I just laugh. This has got to be the worst-run tech company ever.

[IdaGno]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/1...y_n_77829.html

Chrysler LLC has slipped into a serious financial crunch just four months after Cerberus Capital Management LP swept in to save the auto maker.

At a meeting earlier this month, Chief Executive Robert Nardelli told employees the company is headed for a substantial loss this year and is scrambling to sell assets to raise cash, according to an account by two people present that Mr. Nardelli confirmed.

"Someone asked me, 'Are we bankrupt?'" Mr. Nardelli said at the meeting. "Technically, no. Operationally, yes. The only thing that keeps us from going into bankruptcy is the $10 billion investors entrusted us with."

Will AMD ever be so forthcoming

[3dilettante]

Ran across a nifty link about early AMD-Intel litigation, informed in part by the arbitrator.

http://electronicdesign.com/Articles...458/17458.html

[MTd2]

This is 2 days old news, but I guess it is worth posting it

AMD to launch triple-core Phenom CPUs in March 2008

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20071225PD219.html

[INKster]

Originally Posted by MTd2

This is 2 days old news, but I guess it is worth posting it

AMD Phenom CPUs to see further delays

http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Ne...4104&query=AMD

Yeah, it was posted alright... by you .
Go back 4 posts in this thread.

[MTd2]

Originally Posted by INKster

Yeah, it was posted alright... by you .
Go back 4 posts in this thread.

Oh, sorry, wrong "news" . Fixed! Thanks for pointing out!

[3dilettante]

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6224419.html

AMD confirmed that Sandtiger is delayed to 2010.
Native octal-core Bulldozer chips will have to wait until then.

If there is a Bulldozer quad-core SKU, it might sneak in before Sandtiger, but the design effort would basically parallel the octal, so there aren't many reasons for there to be a massive difference in release dates.

Unless AMD switches things around and decides to release the new architecture for desktops before the server chips, Bulldozer and its variants seem likely to slip into 2010, perhaps very late 2009.

[MTd2]

Originally Posted by 3dilettante

Unless AMD switches things around and decides to release the new architecture for desktops before the server chips, Bulldozer and its variants seem likely to slip into 2010, perhaps very late 2009.

We don't know how that combination of existing CPU and GPU will workout. Maybe it is better than the Bulldozer would ever be. An intermadiate solution might be even faster. Remember that AMD boasted Phenon as a native quad core against Intel "fake" quad core?


Anyway, what I really found bad about AMD on that article was this:

"According to sources, AMD's board has shown some irritation at the lack of AMD's execution, but a number of the members don't have a technical background in the PC and server industries. As a result, they rely heavily, like a number of corporate boards, on management's assessment and recommendations. Those recommendations haven't worked out so well over the past 12 months, and further missteps could be impossible to ignore. AMD declined to make any of its directors available for comment."

[Geo]

It seems to me the signs and portents are towards Hector moving on to some kind of emeritus status and Dirk getting the big chair pretty soon.

[Fox5]

All the while AMD's stock continues to slide into hell. I've got some AMD stock myself, really wondering if it's time just to cut losses and get a 3rd of what I originally paid for it, because I'm really doubting AMD's ability to get out of this hole it's dug.

[Arun]

Ugh @ Sandtiger indeed being delayed to 2010. I still had some hopes it'd be there in mid-2009 and that roadmap was just bogus. Anyway, this part is just ridiculously screwed up:

The Sandtiger processor--based on the Bulldozer cores--will now have to wait until 2010, an AMD representative confirmed. The representative declined to elaborate on who was responsible for that decision, but noted that this time around, the company's customers approve of the decision to minimize risk.

If I had to pin-point one 'culture' problem at AMD, it's that whole 'customer-centric' stuff. Here's a big hint: OEMs and customers in general don't have any clue whatsoever what they want. Asking them is just a waste of time, because what they *really* want is just better products.

It helps if you do a couple of nice things for them, as it builds up loyalty, but that's not the most important part. Case in point: Opteron. AMD's share isn't down to 12% only because they screwed up on execution; their roadmap in general was just quite subpar, yet I'm sure customers also "approved" of it. And then you've got other things like OEMs asking for socket compatibility which is why you see HT3 being wasted on Barcelona.

Anyhow, must be pretty tough being in the position of AMD's board of directors. At this point, they probably should ask for outside help from people/consultants with better industry experience; heck, I can see a few persons in the tech press that could even do a pretty good job at this kind of thing, so there's really no excuse here.

[hoho]

Intel slides about Nehalem

It will be quite difficult for AMD to fight against something like that. It'll take at least a year until it has something better than Shanghai and I'm not that sure if Bulldozer can help them much.

IMC helped AMD quite a bit. Later Intel could improve their platform enough so their MC could be very competitive with AMD solution in most cases besides bandwidth intensive ones. Now with Intel going to IMC they'll likely get some nice boost from it, at least with memory latency (it can only get better than their current solution) and most definitely with bandwidth.

Another thing I like is the additional memory slots. Having 12GB of RAM is quite sweet, even though it is only for the high-end.

[3dilettante]

If the site is accurate, the high-end Bloomfield will not sport triple-channel DDR3 with an IMC, but rely on a northbridge.
At least in that respect, AMD's chips with IMCs won't be beaten by Intel's IMC products.

I'd expect there to be a latency penalty that would result from this, but Intel has already demonstrated its ability to make up for a fixed ~20 ns penalty.
The Quickpath connection will sport more bandwidth than the Core2 FSB, so it seems probable that even without an IMC Intel's top desktop chip will excel on bandwidth-limited tasks on the desktop.

Nehalem with IMC--if the controllers on AMD's chips are of similar latency--will potentially have better memory latency than AMD, since Nehalem doesn't go for the 3-level exclusive cache arrangement that took out most of the latency advantage A64 had over Core2.

On the moderately good news front, the Nehalem product that is paired with a GPU is a 2Q 09 product, which means AMD's Swift (if both chips are on schedule) should lag by at most 6 months, whereas before it wasn't certain if Intel would release the product in 4Q 08 or 1Q 09.

[hoho]

Originally Posted by 3dilettante

If the site is accurate, the high-end Bloomfield will not sport triple-channel DDR3 with an IMC, but rely on a northbridge.

From what slide did you deduce that? From those 2P/4P ones? Look at the last slide on page one, there IO hub and ICH are separate from RAM. I'm sure that on 4P image they put the RAM near IO hub just to save space on the slide


From what I've understood Intel will have direct memory connection with three and two channel CPUs. Single channel ones will use external memory controller.

[edit]

No, wait. The second page has something I didn't notice before and what is different from what I previously known.

[edit2]

Google translation:

According to the motherboard industry, as it is the first high-end products Nelalem, Bloomfield is not built-in memory controller and PCI-Express, and help enhance the yield and reduce risk, enhance overclocking potential, and Tylersburg chipset specifications strong, attractive market for players, is very clever approach.

Now that's really odd. At least the two and three channel models should all have direct memory connection (why else would they need different pin-count?). If indeed Intel decides to go with external memory controller it might indicate there are problems with their integrated one.

The information is kind of contradicting as the third page talks about three-channel integrated memory controller. With the highest-end CPU they need IO hub to connect more than one GPU (dual-channel one has integrated PCIe controller in CPU)

[AlexV]

Wolfdales seem to be trickling down the channel:http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=171938.

So some more pain incoming.

[vertex_shader]

AMD stock price already drop ~7% today, thy are in 6.27$ now.

[epicstruggle]

Originally Posted by Fox5

All the while AMD's stock continues to slide into hell. I've got some AMD stock myself, really wondering if it's time just to cut losses and get a 3rd of what I originally paid for it, because I'm really doubting AMD's ability to get out of this hole it's dug.

It depends. If you lost all of that money, would it break you? If not, Id ride it out at this point, if yes wait a few days they should bounce back to 7 relatively soon.

You could do one other thing. Consult a tax advisor and see if you can avoid paying some taxes by claiming a loss from the sale of these stocks.

[Fox5]

Originally Posted by epicstruggle

It depends. If you lost all of that money, would it break you? If not, Id ride it out at this point, if yes wait a few days they should bounce back to 7 relatively soon.

You could do one other thing. Consult a tax advisor and see if you can avoid paying some taxes by claiming a loss from the sale of these stocks.

Heh, I only had $1000 invested in them so it's not a big deal.
I bought AMD around $14. Thankfully I also bought Intel around $20 so that should soften the loss somewhat, as well as the Best Buy stock I bought at the time time. Well, they were until I just checked and both dropped about $2.00 today.

[epicstruggle]

Originally Posted by Fox5

Heh, I only had $1000 invested in them so it's not a big deal.
I bought AMD around $14. Thankfully I also bought Intel around $20 so that should soften the loss somewhat, as well as the Best Buy stock I bought at the time time. Well, they were until I just checked and both dropped about $2.00 today.

Invest for the long term. You could also dollar cost average your stock purchase. Get $500 in amd stock now and it should average to $9.9/share. Or put $1000 and it averages down to $8.6/share.