Intel Vs AMD: The Final Chapter Entry?

I spent a substantial chunk of last weekend building up PCs, installing operating systems, driver suites and applications on them, and benchmarking them. Given today’s released pricing and initial testing results on Intel’s Core i7 (aka ‘Nehalem’) CPUs, you might think you know what hardware I was playing with. Alas, you’d be mistaken…although I do have Nehalem-based system components in hand, and although I do plan to test them soon, the first draft of my January 8, 2009 cover story is due on the 17^th of this month, and I’ll be at Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference beginning tomorrow through the end of this week.

As such, given that my 1/8/09 cover story will be a hands-on performance and power consumption test of the latest ‘value’ processors from AMD, Intel and Via Technologies, I spent my time firing up evaluation boards for Intel’s single- and dual-core Atom, as well as my Atom-fueled netbook, along with a Via C7-based ARTiGO kit (my Via Nano-based mini-ITX board is due to arrive on Friday, when I return from WinHEC). It’s not yet totally clear to me what AMD’s got planned for this particular market segment (I’m betting on a litho-shrunk K7), or if the company will be able to get me relevant hardware in time for print (or for that matter, online addendum) treatment.

Speaking of AMD and litho shrinks, the 45 nm Shanghai successor to the company’s flawed Barcelona server CPU is set to launch sometime before year end (with a derived Phenom descendant for desktops inevitably to follow), so say the abundant rumors and reseller price lists. Given AMD’s ongoing fiscal crisis and its impacts on headcount and other project parameters, I expect Shanghai to be an evolutionary baby step as compared to the prior Opteron-to-Barcelona leap…a near-identical per-core design, coupled with substantially larger amounts of core-shared L3 cache (with no further TLB flaws, one would hope) befitting the higher 45 nm transistor budget, and tweaked on-chip memory controllers that support the latest-and-greatest DDR3 SDRAM flavors.

Conversely, competitor Intel is in revolution mode, at least from the perspective of its own product line…many of the new Core i7 features are conceptually reminiscent of capabilities that AMD’s offered for many years. There’s:

• The three integrated DRAM controllers, and
• The HyperTransport-reminiscent QuickPath Interconnect

Innovation heritage debates aside, in scanning over the Core i7 reviews that went live earlier today I again shake my head wondering how AMD’s going to respond (specifically in a fiscally profitable manner). As it is, AMD’s 65nm products can’t hit the same performance pinnacle as their Intel 45 nm Penryn-based counterparts, and AMD’s been forced to under-price Intel’s equivalent CPUs at lower speed bins in order to capture a modicum of business. AMD promises to up the performance ante with Shanghai, but Intel is poised to respond with Nehalem. And given past history, you can rest assured that Intel will rapidly spread the Nehalem architecture throughout its CPU product line…first mobile variants, for example, are rumored to appear in Q3 of next year.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at these writeups:

• The Dark Knight: Intel’s Core i7 (AnandTech)
• Intel lifts curtain on Nehalem performance (hint: it’s fast) (Ars Technica)
• Intel’s Core i7 920, 945 & 965 processors (bit-tech)
• Intel Core i7 Review: Nehalem Gets Real (ExtremeTech)
• Core i7 Dissected and Benchmarked! Does Intel’s Next-Generation Chip Live Up to the Hype? Hell Yeah! (Maximum PC)
• Intel Core i7 ‘Nehalem’ processor and X58 chipset (The Register)

AMD, it seems to me, desperately needs a big break (either in the courts or the marketplace) in order to regain its stride. But Intel doesn’t seem inclined to give it one. The recent company split generated enough cash to enable AMD to keep limping along for a while longer. But at this point, I find it hard to not conclude that the company’s demise is now a matter of when, not if.

AMD apologists will predictably accuse my (numerous) technical counterparts and I (with apologies to Hillary Clinton) of ‘a vast Intel-wing conspiracy’. The following question isn’t for them (though I suspect they’ll chime in anyway). Agree or disagree with me, readers, and why? I welcome your thoughts. Meanwhile, I’ll get you my suite of Core i7 results as soon as I can.

Followup: Engadget and the Inquirer provide links to even more Core i7 reviews