Toward more processing power

Every technological develop­ment is met with some sup­port and some
skepticism. The treat­ment received by the 64-bit processor has been no dif­ferent.
The evolution of 64-bit in PCs started when AMD announced its Athlon 64 pro­cessors
in 2003 and created a new market segment. AMD pitched in on both the desktop and
the notebook application scenarios. The company even went a step further saying
that it will totally overhaul 32-bit, in time, and will only vend 64-bit chips.

While
on the desktop side, the battle for 64-bit is being waged between Intel and AMD,
with Intel countering AMDs Athlon with its EM64T extensions, which has an
extended memory space. But, by and large, the 64-bit computing on the desktop
side has remained at the higher end of the spectrum. Moreover, Microsoft has
already rolled out its XP 64-bit edition that supports both AMD and Intel proces­sors.
The battle took an interesting turn when 64-bit forayed into the notebook
market. It opened up a debate about its market adoption.

Why 64-bit?

With 64-bit on the desktop side becoming a reality, the scenario took a new
dimen­sion when AMD launched its Turion, a 64-bit processor for mobile
computing. This was a significant move. Exorbitant prices have restricted the
growth of 64-bit systems on the desktop side and with Turion 64 ushering in new
levels of affordability makes it significant for the notebook market.

AMD's manufacturing faclity

But all the while the big­gest spoiler is the dual core processor, which by
virtue of two cores, gives more com­puting power to the user. So the dual core
in a way prohi­bits growth of 64-bit compu­ting. If we look at the note­book
processor landscape, Intel's launch of Core Duo will also slow down adoption
of Turion-based notebooks. But with Microsoft's Vista round the corner, users
will increa­singly evince interest on AMD notebooks. AMD pitches hard that its
Turion processor prepares the user for the future computing needs and players.
However, from a buyer's point of view, buying looks extremely challenging.
This is because consumer's options have clearly expan­ded in the last two
quarters. Some critics argue that we do not need 64-bit notebooks at this point
of time, as there are not enough popular 64-bit applications. But advocates of
64-bit computing say that it brings enterprise class performance to the personal
computing.

Changing Processor Landscape

Over the last three years Intel's Centrino has become a default standard
in mobile computing. It created a new premise in power consump­tion. This is a
major shift from P4, which consumes more power. Intel's recent launch of Core
Duo, further escalated battery life to a minimum of five hours.

On the other end of the spectrum, AMDs Turion also offers a good battery life
and competes head on with Intel- based notebooks. For the first time the
notebook mar­ket is aligning on definite lines of power, value, and
performance. Here, a new mindset that crept in 2005 was that performance is not
always just processing power; whole of other aspects such as form factor, wide
screen, and above all a good battery life also goes into it. In this new normal
paradigm, where does 64-bit notebooks fit in? Right now only AMD has a pure
64-based processor and Intel claims that its Core Duo will support 64-bit
applica­tions. Looking from a price, per­formance, and future read­iness
point, AMD surely has the edge. But it is a double edged sword as Intel's
current Dual Core processor is seen as more than enough computing power as of
now. And the industry observers say that it can also support Windows Vista. Here
AMDs campaign so far for its Turion is compared only to Centrino, which cannot
run Vista. Hence, the biggest challenge for AMD is to position Turion in such a
way that it remains a step ahead and different from Intel processors.

As we look at the expected notebook market dynamics in second half of 2006,
it looks extremely interesting because Intel is already wor­king on its 64-bit
dual core processor called Merom. Ob­server feel that Merom will coincide with
the launch of Windows Vista, whose exact launch date is yet to be known, but
beyond XP, Vista is a major milestone for Micro­soft and PCs will get an OS
that can fully leverage 64-bit processor. AMD is also working on its dual core
Tu­rion and these develop­ments will put notebook market in the limelight in
2H'06. The Dual Core Turion processors are slated to hit the market well
before Intel's dual core Merom 64. Moreover, AMD, as per initial reports
available, will launch a slew of Dual Core Turion variants by May 06. This
clearly indicates an im­­peding price war in 64-bit Dual Core notebooks in 2H
'06.

Shrikanth G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in