In February 1982, AMD signed a contract with Intel, becoming a licensed second-source manufacturer of 8086 and 8088 processors.
Um that's not making Intel CPU's. that's licensing x86 instruction set which they still do today because we use the x86 instruction set in our 32-bit apps and OS.
By your reasoning then Athlon64 X2 is an Intel chip... That quote from Wiki is not saying what you are saying which is:
they manufactured chips for Intel on contract, only later they became a fully fledged processor maker (from the K5 onward).
They made nothing for Intel... /the only thing AMD makes for Intel is motherboard chipsets which came as a result of the the ATI buyout.
Originally Posted by Anandtech
Curious about our overclocking successes, we asked Intel why Core 2 CPUs are able to overclock close to the same levels as NetBurst processors can, despite having less than half the pipeline length. Intel gave us the following explanation:
NetBurst microarchitecture is constrained by physical power / thermal limitations long before the constraint of pipeline stages comes into play. The microarchitecture itself would continue to scale upwards if not for the power constraints. (In fact, we have seen Presler overclocked to 6 GHz in liquid nitrogen environments. At that level, power delivery through the power supply & board itself begin to limit further scaling of the processor.)
Intel's explanation makes a great deal of sense, especially when you remember the original claims that NetBurst was supposed to be good for between 5GHz - 10GHz. NetBurst never got the chance to reach its true overclocking prime as Intel hit thermal density walls well before the 5GHz - 10GHz range and thus Intel's Core architecture was born. Intel's Core 2 processors once again give us an example of the good ol' days of Intel overclocking, where moving to a smaller manufacturing process meant we'd have some highly overclockable chips on our hands. With NetBurst dead and buried, the golden age of overclocking is back.
Which part of this disagrees wit anything I've said?
As for the thermal output, I was incorrect and you were right, I concede on this point. Well done
I realized I must have made my statement more clear, the AM2 easily outperforms the C2D in terms of memory bandwidth on similar memory clock frequencies. Both theoretically and in practice, and tomshardware had article where they pushed both to the limits. AM2 came out ahead, I'll post the article if you wish?
No there was nothing unclear, your point is still incorrect.
Its no secret that AM2 memory performance is better than any Intel platform. In theory they are the same PC6400 ram is PC6400 ram irrespective of platform. That PC6400 is the theoretical peak data-rate at 64-bits/sec @ 800MHz. As I said AMD's internal controller gives them the advantage...
In fact it is a very important issue in making high clock frequency achievable, the reason the newer AMD's are able to achieve such high clock rates (and C2D) is because of architecture enhancements as well as lower process
In AMD's case its the maturing of their 90nm process which they have had fr some time. 939 CPUs were making 3GHz as well, so no architectural changes made this possible that were not there in S939.
Intel P4 roadmap was set to achieve a 10Ghz CPU! Which is not at all possible with the shorter Pipeline. Thus the long pipeline made quite a difference in helping the P4 achieve such high clock rates, at least initially.
But then your very own quote from Anandtech speaking to Intel
NetBurst microarchitecture is constrained by physical power / thermal limitations long before the constraint of pipeline stages comes into play. The microarchitecture itself would continue to scale upwards if not for the power constraints. (In fact, we have seen Presler overclocked to 6 GHz in liquid nitrogen environments. At that level, power delivery through the power supply & board itself begin to limit further scaling of the processor.)
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As for AMD regaining the performance crown - I don't think it's gonna happen. Intel is scheduled to roll out their updated Core2 chips around April, as well as more quad-cores, and they are planning to move to a 45nm process near the end of the year - while AMD has only just managed to get to 65nm.
Not reallyt. AMD has always been a node or two behind Intel. That didn't make a difference in performance. The way AMD K10 is designed it's putting in better numbers* than intel's quad core by 40% or so. Intel changiing the FSB to 333MHz isn't going to do much to change that. When Intel releases Penryn, AMD will have Shanghai which is a 6MB L3 behemoth that will go up against Intel's 12MB L2 Titan. We'll have to see how it goes...
One thing that can be said is that AMD's memory bandwidth efficiency is going to improve on the new core because of the 2 64-bit (in essence single channel) memory controllers over the one 128-bit we have right now.
