Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Duel with Dual

The battleground is heating up. Each side is putting up newer, better than ever warriors. Its going to be real fun what happens next, and to what levels all this will go to. I am talking about microprocessor manufacturing giants, AMD and Intel.

AMD, was looked for how it would "market perform". But these days its doing more of a "out perform". (that phrase is a rip off) Intel has been a legendary player, right from introducing one of the first chips capable of programmable computing, the 4004 to its evolved successors, the 80x86 series, which still remains the wider base of general purpose computing, the x86 platform. AMD has its own merits, like bringing out the first desktop level 64-bit chips and the world's first dual core chips.

Now both companies seem to have agreed on one thing. There is no point in going behind increasing performance by chasing the clock speed. AMD realised it earlier and they improved their architectures to become more productive, and hence their per watt productivity is high. Both of them have ventured deep into dual and multiple cores. Intel just released the dual-core chips for desktops and laptops. Through 2006-2008, AMD and Intel are all set to introduce quad-core and eight-core chips in the market...

Meanwhile AMD is eating out the PC market, which traditionally was topped by Intel's share. Now for the first time in history, AMD has 49% share in the desktop segment and Intel has 48% in the US. With some marketting this can be replicated over the world. Most importantly AMDs processors have better technology in a given price segment, like say laptops. The Sempron M series is very much evolved compared to the Celeron M series in the same price bracket, so is it for desktops. A 64-bit Athlon-XP is cheaper than a 32-bit P-4, and performs better. Intel has to watch out for itself..it has become vulnerable. Getting a entry in Apple market isnt a big market boost, cause Apple has less than 1% share.

I never really took it from Intel. They think they are the monopoly and price their products insanely. Few years back when i wanted to get a new processor, the 2.4Ghz was 4K costlier than 2Ghz ! Then i had settled for VIA C3...an interesting processor with its own story, i'll discuss it some time. This time i have settled with the AMD Turion ML-30.

Category [ _Tech_ ]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Always, an AMD enthusiast you were !
Never did you love Intel as much as AMD, do u ?
AMD was always ur precious as Gollum !
Clear the minds of doubts as the unknown brings fear, young padawan or Jedi Master should say I!

If the prophecy is true, then AMD is the one which will bring balance to the force.
But, Neo says, " The prophecy is a lie. It is another control program in the matrix."

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH U !!!
(in Huttesse too)

Comment highly expected !!!

Parag said...

In the world of dictators,
Rebels will be born
The base of ignorance
Will be cut by competence
The prophecy is a farce...
Balance will not be restored,
For they shall be the only force.