Power paradigm

This is a story
of power. It's a known fact as we look at the processor landscape that Intel is
the king, and in the last two years, Intel's innovation engines have worked in
full throttle and as a result the market saw some of the most amazing processors
that have taken PC power and performance to new levels. In the last few years
the competitive landscape has not changed very much except for the fact that AMD
keeps challenging Intel every now and then with its processors. But it is yet to
see large volume shipments in its PC processors compared to Intel and as usual
the current market dynamics imply that it's a predominantly Intel world outside.
Hence, we need to accept that reality and AMD indeed has a lot of catching up to
do from a market share perspective; but on the innovation front it does give
serious competition to Intel.

At CES 2010, Intel's Pankaj Kedia shows off the LG Electronics GW990 smartphone based on Intel's Moorestown platform, expected to come to market later this year

Power Ecosystem

The trend at this point in time is not just about packing more transistors
and cores. It's about how to optimize the cores and the apps users run and
attempting every core to run effectively. Moreover, graphical performance is
going to be the key and as we look at Intel's Core i series, users can leverage
the chips without the use of dedicated graphical cards. However, the industry is
still obsessed with cores and it's to be seen whether one has apps that can
effectively leverage all the cores. Take the case of AMD, as per industry
sources it's developing a six core desktop processor called 'Thuban' and also
developing a matching platform which is code named 'Leo' that will create
harmonization between CPU, graphics card and chipset. Intel meanwhile is betting
big on its Core i series of processors for multiple user segments-low-mid and
high-end notebook and desktops.

On the server side the battle becomes more intense between
Intel and AMD. Analysts aver that due to the shifting strategies on both sides,
the fight between Intel's Nehalem-EX and AMD's Magny-Cours is likely to be a
fight among equals. AMD which launched Magny-Cours, end of March 2010 takes
server processor wars to new levels. AMD has launched Magny-Cours under the
Opteron 6000 series. Magny-Cours is a single threaded 12 core chip that is based
on two six core die in a package, with a total 12 Mbytes L3 cache. Stacking up
with AMD, the Intel's Nehalem-EX supports four more threads than the Magny-Cours,
AMD's Magny-Cours has four more cores. Intel's Nehalem-EX is also dual-threaded,
eight core processor with 24 Mbytes of L3 cache meant for use in systems with
four or more CPUs. Both microprocessors have four 64-bit DDR3 memory
controllers.

So how do both these chips stack as they both look
extremely powerful? Intel having mastered multi-threading is expected to offer a
significant performance boost of up 25 percent, but with AMD's extra cores means
more performance than Intel's. But some analysts say that Intel's cores boasts
of superior design and its chip has twice the L3 cache that is more than enough
for many power hungry applications. AMD counters that Magny-Cours will score
over Intel in terms of processing performance and energy efficiency and cost per
computing power. In fact according to AMD the new chips offer 119 percent better
performance compared to its previous generation server chips. But as we go
along, it would be interesting to watch how the market will react to these new
age chips on the server side.

Innovation Galore

In the last quarter Intel had flooded the market with Core i series of chips
for the PC segment. While Core i7 is the high end, the Core i3 and i5 are low
and mid end series respectively. Intel has also brought in some hot technologies
with its new chips which are in the 32 nano meter process. One of the
path-breaking innovations Intel has done on the Core i series is the
incorporation of its 'Turbo Mode' technology. To put it simply, Turbo Mode is a
technology that adjusts the core speed dynamically and depending on the
applications' processing requirements, it will scale up and down the processing
power. So this makes for the optimal utilization of the cores based on the
computing power required by the applications. This also makes the Core i series
an apt chip for multi-tasking. Another innovation that Intel brought with its
new processors is a technology called 'Anti-theft' which allows policy based
security settings and in the event of a laptop being stolen or lost, the data
can be secured and the notebook rendered unusable.

Intel has many firsts to its credit like putting
virtualization capabilities on standard mainstream two socket servers, trusted
execution technology (TXT) that adds an extra layer of security in managing
multiple VMM's and host of other innovations. On the entry level probably one of
the disruptive things Intel did was launching its Atom processors. Intel took
the lead by developing its low cost Atom processor that has opened up
ultra-small form of computing on the netbook platform; and it has taken a bit
for AMD to counter Intel's Atom.

Drivers and Trends

For both Intel and AMD the pricing is one factor that will lead both to
bigger market share. To increase its intake, AMD has launched sub $100 quad core
processors and AMD is expected to launch cheaper yet fully functional power
processors with bigger graphics that will find greater adoption. AMD as per
industry sources has been working on this balanced power, performance and price
strategy for quite some time and 2010 will see bigger dividends of this
strategy.

As we look at what AMD will be focusing at this year, we
find that it is planning to gain more market share by using its graphical
capabilities. Some of the initiatives it has taken of late also reinforces that.
Recently, AMD announced its VISION Pro technology, a new commercial PC platform
brand that AMD claims will deliver superior visual computing experience, and
help businesses increase productivity and gain competitive advantage by enabling
visually stunning communications.

According to AMD sources, graphics matter more than ever
in business communications and innovative companies are leveraging balanced PC
platform technology to generate and view rich visual presentations, including
videos and 3D graphics to communicate winning ideas. Studies show that more than
80 percent of the human comprehension is gained visually and that the use of
visual aids with oral presentations improves content retention as much as 6.5
times greater than using words alone. Furthermore, the increased viewing area
provided by multiple monitors helps improve a worker's productivity by as much
as 40 percent. "At virtually every price point, commercial PCs based on VISION
Pro technology offer incredible value and a balanced platform performance needed
to leverage today's visually oriented business applications," said Nigel Dessau,
CMO, AMD.

Way Forward

The processor landscape right now is moving to the 32 nano meter processes
and it has come a long way from 65 nano meter processes. Both Intel and AMD are
focusing on adding more capabilities to their processors, it's spilling out of
the traditional systems environment and there are a whole lot of opportunities
on segments like mobile handsets and e-readers. Intel will be focusing on the
Core i series and will launch many such flavors in the coming year until it
comes with its next micro-architecture. It will also come up with more powerful
multi-core server processors. On the server side, quad core will be the 'in
thing' as many enterprises will consolidate and virtualize by moving from a
large fleet of single core servers to quad core ones. The value is significant
for CIO and CTOs in moving to quad cores. For instance, a server sprawl of 200
single core ones can be overhauled with just about twenty-five two socket quad
core servers. High end quad core laptops will also become popular but at the
moment it will be predominantly ruled by dual core ones. Clearly, as we step
into the next decade of processing power-which will fade out sooner or later-as
vendors keep adding more cores and take the power paradigm to new levels.
Moreover, 32 nano meter processes have just started and Intel is already talking
about

22 nano meter!

Shrikanth G

Source: DQ