AMD To Get Out The Elmer's?
AMD has been working hard on making native multi-core CPUs while rival Intel has been using a leapfrog technique. The technique Intel has been using is to essentially "glue" two existing cores together and then work on a native design for the following generation. AMD initially snorted derisively at this approach, but it appears that AMD now is actually regretting their earlier attitude:
"The chipmaker stands behind the technical merits of pumping out a so-called native four-core chip with all four cores on the same piece of silicon. It, however, admits that Intel gained a major marketing edge by melding a pair of dual-core processors with a multi-chip module (MCM) when it released the "Clovertown" version of Xeon last year. That four-core chip allowed Intel to claim a server processor technology milestone ahead of AMD for the first time in about three years.
"If I could do something different, I wish we would have immediately done a MCM - two dual cores and call it a quad-core," said Mario Rivas, an EVP at AMD, during a recent interview in Austin, "because, I guess, the market sucks it up."
Before Clovertown, AMD enjoyed one of the more remarkable runs in server chip marketing and production. It beat Intel to 64-bit extensions for x86 chips and then nailed the release of mainstream, dual-core chips. Besides hitting these milestones, AMD clobbered Intel's Xeon on overall performance and performance per watt - two of the server world's favored metrics."
Perhaps the most interesting thought in the whole article is if this means AMD might change their plans about their first 8-core chip.
