Well, what a brilliant stroke it was for AMD to "control" these reviews to the extent that all of the reviewers were supplied with handy engineering samples of pre-production 45nm Core 2 cpus. Your contention is, then, that it was AMD's idea to contrast the 65nm cpus they were launching today with the 45nm cpus from Intel which have yet to ship? Your position is that this was all AMD's doing?....
You're the one saying we shouldn't judge until we've seen how Phenom does in the coming months.
I don't think time has ceased flowing over at Intel HQ.
The general rollout of 45nm desktop parts is a few months away.
Intel has already released a 45nm part.
Consider that the overal tenor of most statements and reviews is that AMD is hoping on the mystical B3 stepping should correct some of the errata not corrected by the previous B steppings, then note that this stepping is also a month or more out.
So your contention is that when AMD is ready to ship them that nobody will ship them? I mean, if they'd "kill" to ship the motherboards this week, I see no reason that attitude might dramatically change next week, do you?
That doesn't reflect on the sorry state of the platform.
You might care about how people "feel" about the warm and fuzzy Phenom, but in truth it's all hard and brittle silicon and cold hard cash.
Thanks to the bargain-basement price of the CPUs, the time Intel has had to saturate a good deal of the market, and that fact that we can't even guarantee that it is safe to overclock past 2.4 GHz until BIOS support is updated throughout the supply chain, the value of selling Phenom products is now severely reduced.
Here's how I suspect those partners feel:
They have outstanding product lines making them no money right now for products they were promised about a quarter ago (already delayed a quarter ago).
They had financial guidance, financial plans, manufacturing and inventory plans all pushed back by months.
They had solid, possibly binding commitments with AMD (which is likely why they didn't delay the launch any further) that AMD is only superficially meeting.
They have solid, possibly binding commitments to customers that they can only superficially meet.
One likely reason why the quality of product is so low is it doesn't seem that AMD seeded its manufacturing partners with fast-running silicon until the very last minute.
Opteron was by some accounts a year late. By others it was two years late. And after launch, Opteron ramped up in MHz and yields--just like Core 2 did after it shipped at ~1.9GHz.
That's funny, I recall speeds in excess of 2.8 GHz at launch.
Regardless of the lateness of Opteron, which could be debated from here to eternity, the delay did not prevent the chip from being a smash success when it shipped, did it?
Yes, when running up against a Netburst architecture that was poorly designed for most server workloads, in part because Intel made the mistake of restricting the design target for the processors to the low end to save something for Itanium.
I forget, which one of Intel's designs right now is not competitive?
Is there an expected stretch where Intel will suddenly unlearn the lessons of the last 5 years and go back to producing Prescotts?
I do not think it unreasonable to consider the context of a product's success. Since Intel and AMD sell to the same market, neither can be considered in isolation.
Some might say that Core 2 was 3-4 years "late"--which hasn't detracted from its commercial success in the slightest.
It helps that the product is better, faster, cooler, and cheaper.
AMD should be thanking its lucky stars that FB-DIMMs keep power consumption on the high-end boards too high at idle and only slightly better than AMD at load.
When new cpus ship--and this is true for everybody including AMD--what is represented at that point in time is the beginning of the cpu's lifespan, as opposed to the end, right?
What good is a 2.6 GHz Phenom to me when it won't be stocked until next year?
What good is it when I know that by the time it is available in quantity a far cooler-running chip will be available at the same or better price point?
Why is it that AMD has projected roadmaps into 2Q 2008, and not one lick of news on a 3.0 GHz Phenom?
Where the hell are the dual cores?
Where does Intel's product line suddenly regress in performance, or is it now utterly exhausted for optimization?
Is there some code that only can run for AMD?
Just how massive of an improvement has any commodity processor gotten in its brief life cycle that somehow keeps it superior to the next generation of the competitor's product.
News flash: it wasn't true except for one fraction of the battle between K7 derivatives versus Netburst.
Athlon beat Williamette.
It was beaten by Northwood.
K8 beat Northwood, which also ironically beat Prescott.
Well, then--what about 45nm Core 2 in terms of "status"--in terms of product people pay real money for? (I didn't know you could buy products with play money, but that's beside the point...) Regardless of that status, that didn't prevent users from using the results garnered from essentially the cherry-picked 45nm Core 2 samples Intel sent out to people expressly for the purpose of diluting Phenom's launch, did it?
I think AMD's months of delays have done that pretty well.
Intel's ramps these days have been aggressive.
Intel's latest shipment history indicates it will be available in the same timeframe AMD's ramp actually takes hold.
AMD itself stated not to expect a significant revenue impact from the 10h family in 2007.
It has pushed its product ramp to coincide with Intel's next product ramp.
AMD's currently released products barely hit the low water mark of the current Intel lineup.
About the K7's initial chipset/motherboard problems--don't forget that Intel was directly behind many of those problems, as we've known for quite some time.
I know why K7 had those problems. It doesn't negate the fact that those problems hurt AMD's product uptake.
Let's follow my theory: that platform problems hurt product adoption--regardless of the their cause.
Questions posed without answers are merely speculation--gossip, if you will. As far as your remarks about clockspeed are concerned, you are aware I'm sure that Phenom does not share the architecture of earlier AMD cpus, and therefore direct comparison with the clockspeeds of earlier architectures is likely to tell us absolutely nothing...?
You're kidding, right?
Phenom is a clean-sheet design unrelated to K7 and K8?
Did the new logo on the heatspreader throw you off?
K10's integer pipeline is only slightly updated from K8.
Its SIMD resources are doubled and slightly elaborated from K8.
Its cache structure from the L2 to L1 is only altered in that the datapath is wider and there is a bit more prefetch logic.
The bigger change is in that dog-slow L3 and frequency-capped memory controller.
Guess what, until they fix the frequency scaling for those components, any Phenom we buy will be hobbled.
If you want, you can say Phenom might be more competitive a few months from now.
Any chip bought right now will not meet your criteria.
One can get a very good idea of clock speed scaling when the critical execution paths for K8 and 10h are so closely related.
One can get an idea of AMD's problems when the TDP skyrockets in a matter of a few speed grades.
Which seems to dramatically illustrate the point that Phenom is indeed a new architecture. Should we expect that utilities written for the P4, even if written by Intel, should always work with Core 2? I would never make such an assumption.
And CPU-Z has had problems with ID strings for new steppings a bunch of times.
Did you go out screaming about new architectures every 2 months?
You seem to be under the impression that there is some kind of mystical power to be unlocked in CPU silicon.
The science of CPU design is more mundane, and thus far its track record and predictive power exceeds yours.
People were saying about 8 months ago that Phenom would not beat Core2 at single-threaded integer IPC, that it would be closer with FP, and likely win in some cases with memory-bound FP. They said it would not be performance competitive until it got more clock speed.
They surmised that some of Barcelona's attempt at increasing MP scalability would hurt single-threaded performance. The smaller L2 and shared L3 would increase latency.
That's how it turned out.
Do you think they did that by reading tea leaves?
I'm arguing you can tell a lot by evaluating the components of a system, if you really want to look.
How about the fact that the areas Barcelona does best in are the same areas that even K8 does very well in comparison to Core2?
New design that acts like the old one?
What they didn't predict and nobody expected was how late and slow Phenom would be, and how unprepared its board partners are.
They did not predict that AMD's native quad-core had latencies for data sharing on par with Core2's MCM.
They didn't think AMD's memory latency would have gotten so much worse.
Every prediction that they got wrong has gone wrong in the wrong direction for AMD.
I guess that here your supposition must be that nobody ever optimized for AMD cpus, and that AMD did nothing to push its optimized compilers/optimizations out to anybody? If so, I'd have to disagree. It's well known that Intel optimized for the P4 in all these respects--and of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. It seems only logical, however, since the P4 and the A64 were and are entirely different x86 architectures, to expect that like the P4 benefited the A64 would benefit from AMD optimizations of various kinds. I think that is beyond argument.
The real irony was that P4 forced certain coding practices that in the end benefited AMD as well.
There were areas where optimizations favored one over the other, though there was far more overlap than you seem to think.
AMD does not have its own optimized compiler.
It foists the work on a collection of 3rd parties.
It shows when the Spec scores for Barcelona have a different compiler for every other subtest.
In some cases that I can clearly recall, P4 compilers placed flags designed to clearly disadvantage non-P4 x86 cpus like the A64; in other code, for instance some benchmark code, the degree of P4 optimization was so heavy and pronounced that A64 was automatically disadvantaged when running it.
This is true, but those cases were so far inbetween near the end that they were eclipsed by general performance gains.
Tell me, what corners to the Core2 architecture are there that would not be present for Phenom?
Core2 is of the same design philosophy as K7. It is a wider OoO core with a more standard OoO engine. It even packages a lot of its micro-ops in the same way as K7.
What exactly does it do that is so completely out of the realm of what Phenom must do?
Interesting observation, because I also noticed that in a few of these benchmarks the Phenom tested ran all over the Q66/6800's...
So I guess what the Phenom is either slower than or faster than is highly dependent on the software being fed to Phenom, isn't it? Sandra, as I said, is mostly Intel-centric, and always has been. Efforts to better represent the differences between the P4 and the A64 inside Sandra always came long after the fact--with the OOB Sandra experience being very sympathetic to Intel architectures. Accordingly, Sandra is a program that I have installed, and then uninstalled, at least four times over the years--always being unhappy with how the software had difficulty in even correctly identifying the hardware I was running at any given time.
Too bad it rates K8 so highly in some of its subtests.
Damn them and their K8 favortism.
For a successful product, the degree of lateness would seem not to matter--as I pointed out above with respect to both the A64 and Core 2.
I've just invented a bow and arrow that can defeat the heavy plate armor worn by the Teutonic Knights. Do you think I can set up my shop near the apothecary and fortune teller in the village market?
If Phenom proves itself unsuccessful in comparison with Core 2, it will not be because Phenom was late, it will be because Phenom was so inferior that no amount of price disparity could serve to make it attractive in volume.
Unless you consider that fact that Intel managed to saturate a huge amount of the market segment Phenom now targets.
Or that Intel charged high prices at the time, and has now cut prices to make it near commodity status.
Let's not forget an AMD exec said something to that effect.
There are so many other factors involved, that I'd argue you are positing a false choice.
If Phenom otoh proves itself a successful competitor to Core 2, then the fact that Phenom was late out of the gate will simply not matter, because it will succeed on its merits as opposed to its calendar release date.
What merits would those be?
Its being fashionably late when the architecture it would have mostly had a chance against is being replaced?
Which is part and parcel of all overclocking, isn't it? You can take a Core 2 cpu and if you overclock it enough you can "freeze" the system, too...
This was especially true when Core 2's first shipped at ~1.9Ghz, but really, it is true of all cpus. Some of them can be overclocked to a great degree, and some of then cannot be, but the fact is that *none of them* has been validated by the manufacturer to successfully run in all situations at clocks higher than those at which they are sold.
You keep saying 1.9 GHz.
I recall launch speeds over 2.6 GHz.
And you are missing the point.
AMD has disclosed a TLB protocol erratum in the L3 cache that basically causes instability in parts clocked at or above 2.4 GHz at load.
It was so bad that they postponed the launch of an entire speed grade.
In the grand scheme of overclocking problems, a chip that by the manufacturer's admission screws up 100 MHz over its already low launch speed is not an interesting overclocking target, especially when the TDPs a few bins up are already so high compared to the competition.
Heh...
Yup, right along with the "one" 45nm Core 2 Intel manages to build next quarter...
That's a bit of a ridiculous comment, don't you think?
I was being facetious.
Again, how does this statement square with the fact that AMD's latest and greatest easily walks all over a Q66/6800 when the two cpus are fed the appropriate benchmark software--and even when the Intel Q's are clocked half a GHz higher than the Phenom?
I'd be interested in which numbers you are looking at.
The fact that Phenom is inconsistent in that regard seems to me entirely consistent with the fact that Phenom is a new architecture which has not yet been properly optimized for or supported by much of the benchmark software that pretends to be able to measure its performance potential. I think these inconsistencies will sort themselves out in time as the Phenom architecture becomes better known and supported.
That's where you are trending towards wrong.
Phenom isn't nearly as new as you think.
Considering the lag time in software development, 65nm Phenom will be running code that is poorly optimized for all of its short life.
Again, you are ignoring the benchmarks in which the Phenom easily bests the Q66/6800's as well as older Athlons. Sparse though such examples may be at present, they do indicate dramatically that the situation is nowhere near as consistent as you represent it.
By definition, a trend with only sparse contradictions is consistent.
I'd also argue that sparse examples are not all that dramatic.
In conclusion, I argue my representation has not yet been contradicted.
I've seen prices quoted for the top-end Core 2 cpus in excess of $1,000. It was to those that I was referring, the price of the motherboards at that point being moot.
I don't really need those chips to beat Phenom, do I?
I fail to see why they'd declare it "over" since Intel isn't yet shipping 45nm Core 2's at any level that could be considered comparable to the volume of 65nm Core 2's it is shipping, if Intel is shipping 45nm Core 2's in any volume at all...
If Intel can just ship 45nm in similar volume to 65nm Phenom, it's all that really matters.
Right now, it's not much of a stretch.
As is evident in this industry, a company's production plans for a product do not equal actual production of the product itself, as often even the best-laid plans of mice and men go awry...
IE, it isn't wise for any company to do too much of counting its chickens before they hatch. I'm sure you know that Intel has wound up with egg on its face many times in the past for doing just that.
You're the one who says to count on incredible gains months down the road in the absence of any such claims by the company itself.
I'm looking at an extrapolation of past history and current trends.
Sure, something unexpected might come up, like Intel's Hafnium gates kill puppies, but I'd rather bet on the puppy killing transistor than the mystical K7 derivate.
The basic thrust of what you seem to be saying here is that you regard Intel as a perfect corporation always manufacturing perfect products, perfectly on time according to its pre-announced schedules. Of course, I would energetically disagree with any such characterization of any hardware company, AMD and Intel included. OTOH, you don't seem to be able find anything approaching perfection when it comes to your assessment of AMD.
I'm saying Phenom is late. (Hector Ruiz said this).
I'm saying its launch is weak. (The smattering of reviews, limited board selection, and indeterminate shipping quantities and dates, the expectation of another stepping to fix today's bugs)
I'm saying its platform is not ready.
(New BIOS is now needed for all Phenom boards for chips over 2.4 GHz, new stepping required on top of that)
I'm saying a competing design clocks better and does on average better at the same clock. (Numerous examples that aren't benchmarks)
I'm saying that the competing design is in a few months going to be replaced by a better design. (A design that is shipping in limited quantities right now and has been seen running applications and sampling longer AT SPEED than Phenom has had working samples on display)
I'm saying that the manufacturing behind this better design has all the indications of being as solid as the aggressive ramp of the current design.
(One or two fabs are in production, more are planned to be ready for the first half of 08)
I'm saying AMD is saying little because it has nothing good to say. (Marketing 101)
I'm saying AMD is severely limiting samples of a chip that should be shipping in the millions because it either can't ship it in the millions or has nothing good to say.
I'm saying AMD's design does not favor single-threaded performance compared to how Intel's does (microarchitecture 101).
I'm saying AMD's TDP skyrockets at oddly low speed grades. (AMD)
AMD has a clock speed gap of almost 1 GHz (1st grade math).
My believing this does not require that I suck Intel's corporate cock.