Has AMD made Intel what it currently is

[cosmogenesis]

What I mean is that all of the present innovation seems to have come from careful thinking by AMD and their present suffering seems to be unwarranted in many ways, I mean look at the following:

32/64 bit hybrid CPU's, Intel were for a move to 64 bit only but scraped it in favour of AMD's approach eventually.

Dual cores, AMD were first to market were they not.

Lower power consumption, again AMD were there first.

IPCC, AMD delivered more efficient and hence more powerful cpu's

AMD delivered real competition that Intel had to respond to and if it was not for their industry presence, available finance and muscle they would not have succeeded as well in responding as they have done.

Integrated memory controller, not sure about this one but it did matter at some point in time.

All C2D CPU's are a direct response to AMD efforts to get better cpu's to market and without AMD we would still be looking at power hungry 4 Ghz low clock cycle 32 bit only processors from Intel.

And one more thing, native quad core as oppossed to hybrid qud core from Intel, who will be thinking of getting the new native quad core AMD cpu's if they are good enough over Intels hybrids to get their balance back. You see in the mainstream the AMD 5600+ is just as good as a Intel 6400, ok it may not overclock as well but price performance is similar in many ways but it would appear that Intels marketing machine seems to be telling us otherwise.

 

[Will_3rd]

you been reading T's Hardware per chance?

 

[cosmogenesis]

Not really only the bit about the 5600+ and 6400 mainstream processors, the rest of it is from my own knowledge of recent history since AMD released the K7 way back when.

 

[Tooks]

Well, a lot of companies are where they are in a market because of a competing rival. That's why it's good, the companies push each other along.

To balance your post though, I'm sure there are lots of innovations from Intel which have driven AMD. Thinking about it, didn't AMD used to make 'clones' of Intel CPUs in the early days, or was that Cyrix?!

In a way though, both AMD and Intel need each other, and AMD is probably what it is today because of Intel!

 

[jaykay]

Yer i think AMD was made by Intel.
AMD had to create innovated ideas that could keep cost down
The memory controller was to counter Intels huge cache. AMD is still too small to produce huge caches.
But using the memory controller has its downside. You cant just stick 2 cpus together like intel have as the memory controllers wont work or not effeciently.

Intel were the first to have a dual core but it was 2 P4's stuck together.
AMDs were much better as they were on the same silicon and thus had lower power consumption.

But really in any market you need more than 1 company. It speeds up technology and creates good prices.

 

[Egosh]

the more competition there is the better for the consumer simple as that..

 

[Egosh]

the more competition there is the better for the consumer simple as that..if there was no amd i doubt we'd be buying e6600's for £150 today...hell it probably wouldnt have been as good either..

 

[Corasik]

You could equally 'blame' AMD for the P4 in the first place. The P3 was a great chip, but near the end of its like AMD were able to squeeze their processor just that bit harder. Intel actually had to recall their 1.13Ghz P3's do to reliablity issues.

So Intel went out on a limb, and designed a totally new concept chip. The P4. Unfortunalty it sucked. It was really slow. but it was very easily scaleable. So by pushing the clock speed higher and higher, they were able to keep up with AMD (More or less).

In the meanwhile AMD just continued 'tweaking' their processors, a gentle evolution from one stage to the next. Very little 'innovation', but they improved their compatibility and reliability and became extremely competant.

AMD bolted 64bit onto X86, but honestly thats nothing new really. X86 is really a 16bit technology, thats been 'upgraded' in the past to 32bit. The move to 64bit was even easier, as the methods to maintain compatibility had already been figured out in the earlier move from 16bit to 32bit.

Not trying to belittle AMD or anything, as Intels 'pure' 64bit processor is a dog compared to Core 2 Duo, so AMD have done the world a massive favour in keeping the old X86 alive.

X86 certainly isnt perfect, but so many people know how to code for the X86 that the experience of programmers more than outweighs the technological advantage of most other platforms.

Anyway, the clockspeed brickwall that intel hit, eventually pushed them back to the very sucessfull P3 core, which is really the 'father' of Core 2 Duo.

The industry works in Cycles. There wouldnt be an AMD processor, if intel hadnt given a manufacturing contract to AMD to satisfy IBM's demand that their PC's processors must be made by two separate companies. Intel designed the 8086, 80186, and 80286, and each time AMD got the blueprints to manufacture under license.

From 8086 to Pentium 3, there was very little between the two companies in terms of performance, power efficiency etc. Intel doing the majority of the 'improvements' in the x86 platform. Not that AMD didnt try with '3DNow', but MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3 etc all 'Intel' based upgrades.

It could be said that intel made a bad call by following the P4 route, and leaving the better P3's on the sideline (to become laptop chips). However even the P4 isnt without its good points. Intel have learned how to make very fast switching transistors, capable of working at upwards of 6Ghz with proper cooling, and that research will serve them well in the future, and is probably largely responsible for the extreme success rate in overclocking C2D.

Both companies have been good for the computer industry inho, and we need both AMD and Intel to continue battling in the future

 

[snazzy_dazzy]

You could equally 'blame' AMD for the P4 in the first place. The P3 was a great chip, but near the end of its like AMD were able to squeeze their processor just that bit harder. Intel actually had to recall their 1.13Ghz P3's do to reliablity issues.

So Intel went out on a limb, and designed a totally new concept chip. The P4. Unfortunalty it sucked. It was really slow. but it was very easily scaleable. So by pushing the clock speed higher and higher, they were able to keep up with AMD (More or less).

In the meanwhile AMD just continued 'tweaking' their processors, a gentle evolution from one stage to the next. Very little 'innovation', but they improved their compatibility and reliability and became extremely competant.

AMD bolted 64bit onto X86, but honestly thats nothing new really. X86 is really a 16bit technology, thats been 'upgraded' in the past to 32bit. The move to 64bit was even easier, as the methods to maintain compatibility had already been figured out in the earlier move from 16bit to 32bit.

Not trying to belittle AMD or anything, as Intels 'pure' 64bit processor is a dog compared to Core 2 Duo, so AMD have done the world a massive favour in keeping the old X86 alive.

X86 certainly isnt perfect, but so many people know how to code for the X86 that the experience of programmers more than outweighs the technological advantage of most other platforms.

Anyway, the clockspeed brickwall that intel hit, eventually pushed them back to the very sucessfull P3 core, which is really the 'father' of Core 2 Duo.

The industry works in Cycles. There wouldnt be an AMD processor, if intel hadnt given a manufacturing contract to AMD to satisfy IBM's demand that their PC's processors must be made by two separate companies. Intel designed the 8086, 80186, and 80286, and each time AMD got the blueprints to manufacture under license.

From 8086 to Pentium 3, there was very little between the two companies in terms of performance, power efficiency etc. Intel doing the majority of the 'improvements' in the x86 platform. Not that AMD didnt try with '3DNow', but MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3 etc all 'Intel' based upgrades.

It could be said that intel made a bad call by following the P4 route, and leaving the better P3's on the sideline (to become laptop chips). However even the P4 isnt without its good points. Intel have learned how to make very fast switching transistors, capable of working at upwards of 6Ghz with proper cooling, and that research will serve them well in the future, and is probably largely responsible for the extreme success rate in overclocking C2D.

Both companies have been good for the computer industry inho, and we need both AMD and Intel to continue battling in the future

I cant belive that you wrote all that
Very informative

 

[A2Z]

yep very interesting, thanks

on the mention of 3dnow! i always wondered if those kinda things actually made any difference...like when intel had 'mmx' i think it was in their chips..