Intel widens 32nm chasm with AMD

by Sylvie Barak on 21 September 2009, 09:15

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

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CPU vs Platform centric approach

But Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat argued that the actual process tech gap was actually not as great as it appeared. "Intel makes its jumps at the big nodes and moves everything over at once whilst the rest of the industry use sub nodes and move production over incrementally," he explained, noting that AMD and IBM could in fact ramp a lot faster because of the way they moved the process tech over in bits.

Nevertheless, McGregor concurred that AMD was "still behind" and, worse still, because its manufacturing was no longer done in-house, "the price per wafer has gone up and that's a problem for AMD". So whilst the smaller chip firm may not be so far behind in terms of manufacturing, "there is a bigger question in terms of product and price competitiveness," according to McGregor.

At the end of the day, as Brookwood summed it up for HEXUS: "Intel and AMD may be playing in the same ballpark, but they're playing very different games."  Intel, unsurprisingly, will stick with its highly CPU-centric approach, hoping customers will accept its "good enough" graphics, whilst AMD will be aiming for the more "platform-centric" approach.

This means the firm has to convince buyers to place a higher value on what they see on screen rather than what they can measure abstractly via CPU benchmarks. But AMD has precious little room to maneuver and it's not at all clear the firm has the marketing skills or clout to convince buyers to focus on the platform. "But the approach certainly has some merit," according to Brookwood.

For Roger Kay though, it's not just about which company delivers the best technology fastest. "There's [still] a role for AMD to play, if nothing more than as a second-source supplier," he told us."The industry badly wants AMD to remain viable. All the company has to do is make decent products in the mainstream price points, and its customers will be happy."

Whether those customers are willing to wait it out for another 18 months, however, remains to be seen.

 


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Posted by drunkenmaster - Mon 21 Sep 2009 12:24
The biggest reason for the delay in 45nm introduction wasn't anything to do with a technological advantage Intel has, which, they don't and won't have. Simply logistics, Intel have eleventy billion fabs working at whatever output they want, a safe, cheap 70-80% output maybe, so shutting one down, running a few more waifers in through other plants while they upgrade a plant to a new process and run some test waifers, get up to speed etc, etc, is NOTHING to Intel. AMD however, with 2 main fabs in dresden, running some 90-95% capacity, can not in any way just shut down one fab while the others pick up the slack.

This led to a very slow turn around to a new process, they changed over each fab bit by bit, after waiting till yields on the old process were so ridiculously efficient and high they could stock pile some chips to keep sales going while output drops dramatically. They had 45nm tech ready to go when Intel did basically, you could argue that the manufacturing consortium AMD are in leave it in a far stronger position to fund, test and produce new process's as we get into newer methods as sizes get smaller. For instance AMD used immersion lithography before Intel did.

However AMD will likely have a disadvantage till the new fab is up and running which will give them, at least for a couple years, the ability to run at a much lower capacity in each fab enabling things like updating one fab much much much easier. The New York fab will, arguably, be better than anything Intel have to date, producing better yields than anything else on the newest processes. AMD now has more resources than Intel, and can likely build another 6billion fab the second they need one when fab 3 starts to get to a very high capacity also, but building a truly state of the art fab takes time.

The argument that AMD waifers not being made inhouse increasing costs is beyond ridiculous, AMD owns a massive amount of GloFo, and GloFo own a massive amount of AMD< its one company operating under two names and its that simple. Prices will go down with better fabs, not increase because its officially out of house production, while unofficially its not at all.

Theres also a link between the New York state fab and one of the worlds most advanced test fabs down the road thats currently testing all sorts of things which will almost certainly be used in the future production of chips at 22nm and below, the test lab, where students are learning about the future processes, is also a fantastic source of future employee's for AMD to snap up in their fancy new lab once their PHD's are all done.