Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (
More info?)
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cathy wrote:
> AMD vs. Intel - The eternal debate
>
> Introduction:
> Who is AMD ?
> Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) engages in the design, manufacture,
> and marketing of industry-standard digital integrated circuits
> worldwide. The company offers microprocessors, flash memory devices,
> and embedded microprocessors. The microprocessor products are used in
> desktop and mobile personal computers, servers and workstations, and
> chipset products. The flash memory products are used in mobile
> telephones, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, networking
> equipment, and other applications. The embedded microprocessors are
> used in personal connectivity devices and specific consumer markets.
> AMD's customers include original equipment manufacturers and
> third-party distributors. The company markets its products through
> direct sales force, third-party distributors, and independent sales
> representatives. It operates primarily in the United States, as well as
> in Europe and Asia. Advanced Micro Devices was founded in 1969 and is
> headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
>
> Who is Intel?
> Intel Corporation operates as a semiconductor chip maker that supplies
> technology solutions for the computing and communications industries.
> The company's products include microprocessors; chipsets;
> motherboards; flash memory; communications infrastructure components,
> including network and embedded processors; wired and wireless
> connectivity products; products for networked storage; application
> processors; and cellular baseband chipsets. It sells its products to
> original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers who
> manufacture computer systems, cellular handsets and handheld computing
> devices, and telecommunications and networking communications
> equipment. Intel's customers also include personal computer and
> network communications products users, including individuals, large and
> small businesses, and service providers, as well as manufacturers of a
> range of industrial and communications equipment. It markets its
> products primarily in Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Japan. The
> company has a strategic alliance with Alcatel to develop mobile WiMAX
> solutions. Intel Corporation was founded in 1968 and is based in Santa
> Clara, California.
>
> CPU Comparison (Price/Performance) :
>
> The following is a link to the article that put together so you can see
> the differences between the CPU's in production today. If you wish to
> check the prices we have added a deep link to Kelkoo which compares
> prices from various retailers and the end of each row.
>
>
http://www.pantherproducts.co.uk/Articles/CPU/CPU%20Com...
>
> Now, Athlon 64 makes the AMD win the war presently for its good
> price/performance .
>
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/reports/...
>
>
>
> Evolution of the war between AMD and Intel:
> In the late 1970s and early '80s, Intel had a cross-license agreement
> and had signed AMD as a second source for various chips, including the
> x86 processors. In exchange, AMD committed to provide Intel with the
> rights to second-source some of its support chips.
> The problem for Intel was that AMD was not happy being a docile second
> source. AMD was much more aggressive and produced a significantly
> faster 286 (16MHz vs. 12.5MHz) than Intel was capable of. This
> situation may well be the origin of the clock-frequency war that AMD
> and Intel continued to fight for almost two decades. Intel then
> introduced the 80386 and decided to purposefully slow AMD's progress by
> refusing to hand over the design to AMD. Intel had begun to build its
> now famous "copy-exact" manufacturing methodology and convinced IBM and
> other PC manufacturers that traditional second sources weren't required
> when Intel had multiple fabs in multiple locations, and that Intel was
> leading in the new-product development essential to creating
> leading-edge PCs.
> Intel even started an ad campaign that denigrated its own 286 processor
> as old technology and promoted the 32-bit 386 as the future
> architecture. AMD, not having the 386 at first, pointed out that there
> wasn't much 32-bit x86 software available and that Microsoft's Windows
> 3.1 was a 16-bit operating system. (How ironic that Intel fought so
> hard against the 64-bit extensions, using almost the same arguments AMD
> made against the 32-bit extensions!) That approach did not stop the
> eventual success of the 386 architecture.
> AMD eventually reversed-engineered the 386 (and later the 486), and
> once again AMD produced faster (40MHz) versions of the 386 than did
> Intel (33MHz), although one could argue that Intel had moved on to the
> 486 when AMD made the faster 386. Intel also tried developing a version
> of the 386, specifically for mobile, with an early form of power
> management-the 386SL. AMD countered with a less expensive, and
> faster, version of the 386SX.
> AMD and Intel entered into a series of court battles as Intel withheld
> the 486 design from AMD as well and sued AMD to prevent shipment of
> 386s and 486s. AMD was late with the more highly integrated 486
> processor (Round 3) as the court battle went back and forth between the
> two companies. Eventually, AMD won the rights to produce x86 processors
> and signed a new cross-license agreement with Intel .
> When AMD realized that Intel would not hand over future x86 processor
> designs, it began its own independent processor design that would
> eventually become the K5. The K5 was a very ambitious design-too
> ambitious for the design team, it turned out. The K5 was late and, when
> it shipped, it was too slow to compete effectively with Intel's Pentium
> processor. And it was with the K5, and last generation of 486-based
> processors that AMD became involved with the "performance rating" (or
> PR) system that attempted to show that clock frequency and performance
> are not synonymous. This occurred because the Pentium processor had a
> faster clock frequency-even if it had a simpler
> microarchitecture-and was winning the performance war.
> With the K5 delayed, AMD had a brand new fab and not enough demand for
> its product to fill the fab. The solution to AMD's troubles was found
> in a smaller competitor that was rapidly running out of money but had a
> new processor design well along: NexGen. The NexGen processor replaced
> its proprietary bus with a Pentium bus and became the AMD-K6. The
> 233MHz K6 was the fastest PC processor in 1997-for about three weeks
> . Then Intel launched the Pentium II with clock speeds up to 266MHz.
> But at least AMD was back in the game.
> Intel's Pentium II and Pentium III kept a lead over AMD's K6 family,
> but AMD had another processor in the works that was even more
> promising-the K7, later called Athlon. Athlon leapfrogged Intel's
> Pentium III and was the first PC processor to hit 1GHz. Intel launched
> the 1GHz Pentium III but had trouble producing it in volume; later that
> year Intel had to cancel a 1.13GHz speed upgrade.
> Intel's next processor architecture-the Pentium 4 or NetBurst
> architecture-put clock frequency at the forefront. It was late, but
> once it shipped, Intel handily won the clock-speed race. However, AMD
> then changed the ground rules, resurrecting a form of PR to keep the
> slow Athlon processor competitive, using a mix of recognized benchmarks
> as the measure of performance . Once again, AMD had another new
> architecture-Hammer. The Hammer architecture became the Athlon 64 and
> Opteron processors, and AMD took a leadership role, bringing 64-bit
> extensions, on-chip memory controllers, and glueless multiprocessing to
> mainstream markets. Intel responded by embracing the 64-bit extensions
> (EM64T) and increasing the processor front-side bus frequency to
> increase bandwidth and reduce memory latency. Microsoft's delay of more
> than a year in shipping the x64 version of Windows XP has certainly
> helped negate AMD's lead in 64-bit.
> That brings us up to the race to dual-core processors. Although both
> competitors have different designs and different approaches, they share
> a similar overall strategy: both are implementing first-generation
> dual-core processors with independent L2 caches and limited cooperation
> between the cores on power management. AMD has a bit of an edge with
> the integrated memory-controller crossbar switch, which should allow
> much faster inter-core coherency traffic than the Pentium 4 front-side
> bus that the Pentium D will use. Drawing dead aim at Intel's top
> desktop chips, the Athlon 64 FX-51 targets the enthusiasts and gamers
> who demand the best in high-performance hardware. There's no question
> that AMD's new flagship outpaces today's Pentium 4/3.2 in virtually
> every way, and downright spanks it in high-end gaming tests. AMD set
> out to provide the ultimate desktop option and succeeded, even going so
> far as to force Intel's hand with pre-release review leaks of the
> Pentium 4 Extreme Edition.
>
> So, AMD wins the war presently, but the war will continue and the
> benefiter are the users.