AMD analyst day slides reveal shape of things to come

@ 2005/06/10
AMD HELD its analyst day today which was a bit heavy on the old Powerpoint front, with something like 163 slides intended to impress the punters.
We'd like to say we got invited to this event, but the endless slides can be found on a well Googled up site, here. Life is sometimes banal, you know.

As we've suggested here before, its roadmap extends well into 2007 with multiscore scale up to 32P level, IO virtualisation, TCP offload and the rest.

2007, it appears, will bring a new core, DDR3, PCIe generation II. But wait. Next year comes before that and as well as the much flagged Pacifica and Presidio, it appears we're gonna have Aero Glass graphics too. And a Trusted Computing Module, or TPM as the lingo goes these days.

Like the little Intel ape it is, Chimpzilla is beating its chest about irreversible progress in the market based on "solid fundamentals". This phrase makes us queasy in a way. Fundamentals and solid do go together in productivity terms, but we think we're talking intestines here.

AMD appears to be estimating that by 2007 the DDR3 ready core will be WiMAX ready, and hover about less than 35 watts TDP, with larger and shared caches for the multicore stuff.

Notebooks will have more than six hours of battery life. Not bad. Not quite a whole day of work, but not bad.

Hector Ruiz reckons the world only needs a single instruction set. To us, this reeks of Maoist philosophy but you know it's not the semiconductor companies that need persuading of this, it's the pesky Microsoft the Vole.

And when Hector starts uttering phrases such as sustainable profitability, we fear the next thing we will see is Nikola Tesla wind turbines on every PC, collecting energy from the aether.

AMD's purpose, reckons Hector, is to "re-invent the competitive dynamics of the microprocessor industry".

Thinking about this, he's quite right. We need the Via Centaur combo. Let's hope we never get to the day when they start talking sustainability, going forwards. These are only microprocessors for crying out loud. ยต

Comment from Sidney @ 2005/06/11
I call the processor development within AMD "innovation" and "continue improvement" in both speed, performance, thermal management and patience in choosing the right stuffs.

Of course, all these good things won't happen if not for Intel making most of mistakes and investing on technology otherwise no one on earth could afford.

If AMD processor runs at ~35 Watts TDP in 2007 and Intel at @70 watts that will make the world change greatly from what we see today in a matter of two years. Imagine the reduction of HS size, and the ability to use our high performance PCs without the need to pass HVAC certification of today.

In order to overclock the processor to EXTREME level, all you need to do may turn that Pot up to increase the fan speed which will become music to the ears solely reserved for the SUPREME fews ....

Should APPLE stock increase at the same rate as the last 18 months, by 2007 we may hear APPLE acquiring Intel. This could easily be reality when iPODs are owned by everyone in China and India. Oh well, may be I am dreaming a bit too early in the day. As long as Dell keeps Intel Inside, the only way "things" may change will be for Lenovo exporting quality IBM clones all over the world with AMD Inside.