Penryn Launch: Game Over

Today, Intel formally launched its 45nm Penryn based processors. The press release is available here in case you missed it. Concurrent with the press release, Intel made available this link comparing 45nm Penryn CPU performance vs Intel's existing 65nm and AMD's existing K8 and K10 (rev 10h, Barcelona) based designs across a wide variety of benchmarks spanning Integer, FP, HPC, Database/OLTP, ERP, Web, Media, and Virtualization.

Not only do Intel's performance results dominate and blow away the competition, but Intel also has stated that Penryn products are available between now and the next 45 days, which is 180 degrees opposite the AMD Barcelona launch experience. This Tech Report article summarizes the available Penryn SKUs along with pricing information.

Let's take a look at a couple of examples of Intel's Penryn performance:


Source: Intel

Remember when AMD was making a bunch of noise earlier this year about how it was going to blow away Intel in SPECfp_Rate2006 with simulated Barcelona numbers? With Penryn, it appears that Intel blows away its own 65nm quads as well as deliver AMD's forthcoming Opteron "true quad core" Barcelona at 2.5GHz a "nice try" message.

Lets look at another benchmark: SPECjbb20005


Source: Intel

In SPECjbb2005, you see that the Penryn Quad-Core Xeon X5460 @ 3.16GHz system provides about 21% higher throughput than Intel's existing Quad-Core Xeon X5365 "Clovertown" system @ 3GHz. Where is AMD's Barcelona quad comparison? Perhaps AMD has not gotten an OEM or themselves to publish numbers because they know better. The best that could be done in this case is to compare against the existing Dual-Core AMD Opteron 2224SE @ 3.2GHz publication, which Intel's existing 65nm Intel Dual-Core 5160 "Woodcrest" trounce handily.

I could spend the rest of the space in this post talking about the Penryn Desktop performance numbers or links to other articles on the web...but I won't and leave it as an exercise for you to find using your favorite search engine :).

In other news, over at Circus Maximus, Sharikou has officially gone mad. In a desperate attempt to paper over Intel's Penryn product launch blitzkrieg, Sharikou rushed his post, titled "The world gorws (sic) up with AMD" out. A word of advice to Sharikou: if you are going to mock, at least use a spell checker. This is not the first time you've been caught with a fumbled headline. And please give credit/citation to the source of the materials you post in your, er, "blog". Doesn't every "journalist" know how to do these two simple things? In my world, real journalists get disciplined or fired for plagiarizing work or for lack of basic English spelling skills.

Update: Sharikou scrambled again tonight and posted anew to try and deflect Penryn with this lame post and managed to screw up the title yet again: "Intel's 3GHZ Penryn ia (sic) almost slower than 2GHz K10". Doesn't this babbling idiot learn?

In summary, Intel has pulled a coup with Penryn. Not only does it blow away anything the competition has to offer at attractive price, power, and performance points but it has actual CPUs available at launch, something that AMD should find sobering.

Now, who is it again that is going BK?

"Tick" - the clock is ticking

Source: 2007 Intel Spring Analyst Meeting


Source: 2007 Fall IDF

This morning, Intel sent out this press release announcing the opening of its first, high-volume 45nm leading edge microprocessor manufacturing facility in Chandler, AZ.

Fab 32 is the 2nd factory in Intel's fab network to produce 45nm processors, following the D1D Hillsboro, OR facility which manufactured the first 45nm processors in January, 2007.

Fab 28, in Kiryat Gat, Israel and Fab 11x in Rio Rancho, NM will produce 45nm microprocessors in 2008, rounding Intel's 45nm factory network.

Intel's 45nm High-k manufacturing process will be used to produce Penryn and Nehalem based processor designs.

It is rumored that on November 12, Intel will observe one minute of silence in remembrance of AMD, as "rev 10h" is officially inducted into Justin Rattner's Dustbin of Obsolete Technology.

Oh, and one more thing. Today 10/25 was also the one year anniversary of the acquisition of ATI by AMD. In celebration of the event, the Inquirer's Theo Vallich wrote this piece in memory of the ill-fated union. Was it worth it? Theo writes:

"Time will tell if Hector and Dirk screwed things up or not. All we know is that AMD's market cap today is at the levels of ATI Technologies alone (at ATI's finest hour), meaning around 15 billion dollars of shareholder value got wiped over the course of a single year.

Joint market cap was around 20.87 billion USD - Daamit is now valued at 6.99 billion USD. µ"

Hmm...maybe not :)

10/26 Update: besides reporting lackluster support for AMD's Black Edition from motherboard makers in this article, DIGITIMES reported that AMD will launch its first Phenom quad-core processors on November 20. Techspot reckons that if the rumor is correct, Phenoms at 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz will 512K L2 per core and 2M shared L3 will be peddled. This will not be enough to compete against Intel's Penryn based monsters.

NEWS FLASH! Sharikou narrows his Intel bankruptcy projection timeframe

I previously wrote here that Sharikou had pushed out his Intel bankruptcy timeframe prediction out to 2009. I had chided Sharikou for not giving a narrower range in 2009 as in his original bankruptcy prediction he had given both the calendar year and quarter.

Today, in this new Circus Maximus post, Sharikou narrows his Intel bankruptcy projection to 1Q09.

In an ironic development, on Tuesday, October 16, Intel reported blowout Q3 2007 earnings. From the press release:

INTEL POSTS RECORD THIRD-QUARTER REVENUE
• Revenue $10.1 Billion, up 15 Percent Year-over-Year
• Operating Income $2.2 Billion, up 64 Percent Year-over-Year
• Record Microprocessor, Chipset and Flash Unit Shipments
• Net Income $1.9 Billion
• EPS 31 Cents

Intel also guided Q4 earnings in a positive trajectory
• Revenue: Between $10.5 billion and $11.1 billion.
• Gross margin: 57 percent plus or minus a couple of points.

Intel shipped more than 2 million quad core processors during the 3rd quarter. I wonder how many AMD managed to ship in the same timeframe. Anyone care to hazard a guess?

AMD reports Q3 2007 earnings on Thursday, October 18, after the bell.

Intel Nehalem and AMD Toliman Die Pics

I recently became aware of a recent post by Hans de Vries of his analysis of Intel's Nehalem Die. For pictures of other work by Hans you can check out http://www.chip-architect.com/


Quad Core Nehalem



Another picture of Nehalem's die was posted in this DailyTech blog entry by Kristopher Kubicki




Not to be outdone, I've recently become aware of recent links to pictures of alleged AMD Toliman aka AMD PhenomTM triple-core dies floating out and about.

You've probably already seen this picture in this Roborat's blog post


This one was sent to me by a recent ex-ATI Markham employee who's recently relocated to points south.



And this one, perhaps my favorite one to date, hails from this post (scroll to see post by RuSo) on http://www.overclock.net/



I also received a mysterious email with the following image claiming to be that of the home of a certain "managing editor" who resides in Linton, Indiana. I don't know what this has anything to do with Nehalem or Toliman die pictures but I figured I'd put up the image to round out this set.



If someone has additional links to other die shots of interest, I'd like to know about them.

RUMOR - No more posh digs for AMD execs?

According to this AMD fan site post, AMD's Chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz will be downsizing from an office to a cubicle. This change will presumably take place when AMD moves out of its existing Austin location to the new "Lone Star" campus which is under construction under heavy protest from environmentalists as its on the environmentally fragile Barton Springs area of the Edwards Acquifer.

According to this article by the Save Our Springs Alliance,

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) recently bucked public opinion and public policy guidance by moving their operations out of the Desired Development Zone and into the and into the Barton Springs watershed, where they are building an 860,000 square foot complex. For comparison, the Frost Bank tower downtown is about 500,000 square feet.

We encourage companies to locate in Austin responsibly. AMD instead was irresponsible with their location, and consequently polluted the waterways of the Barton Springs watershed with dirty runoff after a relatively minor rain event.

Some links on this matter from the Austin Chronicle

AMD Not So Clean?
Point Austin: Saying 'No' to AMD

Here's AMD's spin site on the matter.

AMD employees should be ashamed. Maybe the "senior leadership team" should have retained their offices at the existing AMD location.

One more thing. Didn't Hector relocate to Sunnyvale?

NEWS FLASH! Sharikou delays his Intel bankruptcy prediction until 2009

After many ramblings in the Circus Maximus blog by Sharikou whereby he asserted that Intel would go bankrupt in 2Q08, today we are greeted with the following statement in this latest Circus Maximus post, where he writes

But by 2009, Intel will have BKed, and won't be able to pay the
anti-trust penalties.

Come again? 2009? Whatever came over Sharikou to grant Intel such an extensive reprieve from bankruptcy at this time?

How could we go from such memorable statements like below (thanks to Intel Fanboi)...:

Dell was excited, I heard, he is going to switch to near 100% AMD by 1Q08, just one quarter ahead of Intel's projected BK

I re-iterate my projection that Intel BK by 2Q08.

Intel BK by 2Q08, that what I said in 2006, and that is what will happen in 2Q08.

As I predicted long ago, AMD should exit 2006 with 40% market share (run rate). Intel's BK by 2Q08 is pretty much in the bag.

...to a CY2009 pushback? Hell! What about the friggin' calendar quarter, eh? Sharikou, are you losing your touch?

We could speculate what brought forth a change in Sharikou's doomquarter, umm, doomyear projections...

• Did a bowling ball or some other similarly amassed object land on his head?
• Did he finally get the right meds to stabilize his condition?
• Did he suddenly learn how to find and read SEC filings?
• ?

Sadly, we may never know the answer to the question.

Perhaps it's a Freudian slip

Maybe 2009 is the year a company "BK"s alright.

But not Intel.

"Loose lips sink ships"

My buddy Roborat confessed in this post that he has been getting leaks from Intel and AMD anonymous readers lately.

I must come clean and confess the same. It is eerie because for the life of me I can't understand why someone would risk their career and livelihood in this way.

Like Roborat, I can't vouch for the authenticity of the content that I receive. I'll leave it up to you to come to your conclusions.

AMD CONFIDENTIAL INTERNAL USE ONLY
MANAGERS, PLEASE ROLL DOWN TO YOUR STAFFS.
THIS WILL BE POSTED INTERNALLY AT AMD ONLINE ON 9/12.

Top Ten Austerity Measures, effective 9/12/2007

10. All non-essential travel is hereby cancelled and must be approved on a case-by-case basis by a senior manager. In case travel is authorized, electronic booking must be made using Priceline's 'I don't care how may legs it takes me, give me the most effin' cheap way to get to my destination' option.

9. Due to the high cost of color toner and glossy photopaper, all Powerpoint use will be restricted for production of roadmaps that will never see the light of day.

8. The employee assistance program will cut its hours of operation from 24/7 to 8:00AM-5:00PM local time. FAB employees, especially those working in the night and graveyard shifts, will not experience the customary level of service they deserve. Please get a hold of your manager, lead, or supervisor immediately if you believe this will be an issue.

7. Given the recent spike in phone calls to Brazil and the Cayman Islands originating from the corporate office, personal phone calls from company telephones are hereby restricted to life-threatening situations only.

6. Effective immediately, former ATI employees located in Canada as well as AMD Saxony employees in Dresden will be paid in US currency.

5. Use of external agencies and expert consultants to write flattering studies of AMD will still be permitted; however, a minimum of five potshots at Intel must be taken instead of the prior three per page, with at least two uses of 'Intel, the global monopolist' and 'AMD values fair and open competition' per page.

4. The legal department will reduce the number of screen writers guild sitcom writers to 5 billable hours per calendar week, except during periods when Intel is scheduled to launch new products or attend high-profile events where up to 10 billable hours per calendar week will be allowed.

3. Director/principal members of the technical staff and above will see a reduction in 'incidental perks' and will be restricted in the number of Intel platforms they may purchase every calendar quarter for personal use.

2. In order to continue to retain and attract the best corporate executive talent and to adequately compensate them and their families, we are hereby eliminating all non director/PMTS and below level restricted stock awards, stock option awards, and Employee Stock Purchase Program for the next four calendar quarters and will re-evaluate re-instituting them pending future business conditions. Stock units/shares already distributed to employees will continue to vest on their normal schedule until further notice.

1. Despite rumors to the contrary, marketing budgets will rise while the engineering budgets will be flat to down in the next four calendar quarters. You Tube will be our preferred marketing tool of choice, subject to restrictions outlined in item 4 above.

November 12, 2007: Game over

No paid for studies
No 'native quad' or 'tri core' nonsense
No whining
No apologies
No blaming others
No sub-par scaling silicon process
No stumbling
No hissing serpents
No paper launches

On November 12, the GAME WILL BE OVER as we know it