Date:
Monday , April 30, 2007
Author:
Kyle Bennett
Editor:
Joey Seiler
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State of the Silicon Union - Q207

Where are AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA headed? We give our thoughts and predictions about what is going to happen in the computer technology market place over the next few years.

continued...

Looking beyond 2007, however, the AMD picture seems to be very rosy. With Barcelona core production getting stabilized, ramped up, and more efficient in 2008, AMD will come back into the market place again with a solid presence. Yes, I think Barcelona is going to be an insanely powerful processor with very long legs. This is not to dismiss Intel's upcoming Penryn technology and its move to 45 nanometer production, but I do not think we are going to see the great processor divide we do now as it pertains to AMD and Intel differences. With ATI's motherboard chipset division scaling up and working together tightly with its processor division, AMD will, for the first time, truly benefit from internally produced chipsets as has never been realized in the past. Intel has fully enjoyed an advantage over AMD by keeping its chipset and processor components working very closely together. Outside of the enterprise market, AMD has been fully at the mercy of VIA and NVIDIA since the K8 architecture truly came into its own. That is about to change. In 2008 AMD is going to realize many of the benefits that Intel has enjoyed over the years and even surpass it in a few ways.

On the subject of quad-core processors, it is of course evident that AMD is suffering at the moment in the enterprise world. Looking at servers last week to upgrade our HardForum database hardware, I found that I could buy an 8-way Intel server from Dell (2P quad-core Xeons) for less than I could buy a comparably equipped 4-way AMD server from Dell (2P dual-core Opterons). Few admins are going to worry about a little extra power or IPC when you can tell them they will get double the processors for the same money. In much the same vein, workstation users will certainly opt for Intel's quad-core processors. On the desktop, though, quad-core processors are doing little to push sales. As of now there’s just not much to do with a quad-core processor unless you are the default producer of your kids' soccer team videos or spend your days playing Supreme Commander. That will change soon, but make no mistake about it; Intel firmly holds the advantage in the server and workstation market. AMD's Barcelona will again begin tipping the scales in its direction starting later this year as did the Opteron before it. Intel's massive production capabilities will still keep a strangle hold on supply and demand factors, but as we have seen Opterons push their way into the space over the last few years, we will see Barcelona do the same. Barcelona is going to bring with it advantages, but how well it will be able to hold off Intel's Penryn throughout the end of 2008 is yet to be seen. I am thinking though that Barcelona is build to hold its ground for the foreseeable future though.

As mentioned above, I think R600 will be coldly received. Anything short of it being a raging success makes it a failure in my book. An inefficient 80nm GPU that exhibits 8800 GTS performance months and months after the 8800 coming to market is not acceptable and certainly not what ATI fans expect, much less those gamers just looking for “the best.” Aggressive pricing and bundling will certainly make it more attractive, but the 2900 XT will simply not be what it could have been to the market. Beyond R600 is R700. If you have been keeping your eyes on AMD for the last couple of years, it is clear that it has gotten very good at something, and that something is managing power envelopes and power scaling. AMD does this through fabrication process efficiency as well as smartly applied design and technology. Barcelona is going to bring with it incredible power management abilities, and there is no doubt in my mind that we are going to see those qualities imparted into AMD’s R700 generation GPU. The R700 will in no way, shape, or form resemble its R600 predecessor in terms of power efficiency, or lack there of, but rather it will benefit from R600s forward-looking architecture while being a highly efficient ASIC. AMD knows that GPUs have to follow the trend that it started itself with the low power CPU. ATI has always had very solid technology for years now. One engineering snag aside, ATI's worst enemy has not been NVIDIA, but rather fumbling mismanagement of bringing its technology to market. Inventory and ordering issues have plagued ATI's GPU production for years now. Hopefully we will see AMD better manage the GPU technology and production flow. There is no doubt in my mind that AMD can do no worse than ATI has done in the past. And on that subject, why is ATI still building and selling its own video cards? Wouldn't this task be better left to professionals that do this for a living? NVIDIA has proven to me that its overall model of bringing GPUs to market is far superior to ATI's. NVIDIA has left the grunt work to its AIC (add-in-card) partners while still keeping control over the process. AMD needs to do the same.