Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Torrere
AMD is based in Sunnydale, California. California is not now, nor has it ever been a part of Germany.
|
I recall AMD (before making processors) was a TX company - one of the little companies in the shadow of TI. But AMDs processors are now designed and manufactured in Dresden Germany. This is also where AMD is building their newest fab. For obvious reasons, AMD does not much discuss where these processors are designed and manufactured. Yes AMD also has fabs throughout the US. But...
Quote:
|
Intel's problems did not start with the Pentium 4. The design of the Pentium 4 was motivated by marketing: because consumers judged CPUs by clock speeds, ...
|
That is not the story of Pentium 4. Architects designed a chip choke full of ideas including (if I remember) a preprocessor that would rearrange op-codes. As the chip was designed and taped out, it was clear that the IC would be about 3 or 4 times too large. Reasons behind the expression 'too large' are too numerous to list here.
Therefore Pentium 4 architect solution was to remove as many functions as possible. One operation that suffered from a 'diet' were SI/DI operations. To make this 'Jenny Craig' processor work fast enough, compilers had to arrange code in proper order.
Now spin doctors entered. A Pentium 4 executing non-optimized code would run quite slow. For example, SI/DI functions would drag that processor into long wait states if code was not properly ordered by a compiler.
At that time, AMD processors were still significantly slower but were selling at discount prices to attract customers. After the K-5 fiasco, AMD was finally making a marketable processor. But AMD was not making profits since their still inferior processor had to sell at discount prices. K-6 was still a dog. But the first dog that demonstrated AMD could finally design a processor.
To discover reality, always start with the technology - the details. So many instead jump on Rush Limbaugh type hype - never first ask for those technical details. Never challenge those who promote MBA school type reasons. I have been through this same 'myths verses reality' discussion on '8080/8085 verse Z-80', '80x86 verses 68000', and 'Pentium verses PowerPC' nonsense. In each case, the hype about marketing or other myths were proven false. The accurate answer was always found in technical details and who was top management.
For example, so many would praise the 68000 because writing code was easier. IOW they were myopic. All those 'flexible' op codes also meant hardware was more difficult to manufacture and design. As a result, the 680x0 (68050?) self destructed because the 68000 architecture was that poor. But you could not tell that to programmers who typically had no science education AND who did not see the entire picture.
Same reasoning explains why architecture of a Pentium 4 design was its weakness. A weakness that was masked by so many other and superior aspects within Intel Corporation. A weakness all but recently acknowledged by Intel with their recently announced new cores - said to have 'superior' microarchitectures. Without those details, then one really does not know what is and is not better. Those details suggest serious problems for Intel - made worse by a new top executive who talks too much like Carly Fiorina.