Bandwagon Journalism (AMD is sooo last year)

Much like wearing Prada, it has become fashionable to attack AMD. Often it seems that web authors say negative things less because there is any valid reason and more because they simply want to be part of the crowd. A good example of this type of trash journalism is this Extreme Tech piece by Joel Durham. Durham and many others suggest that the evidence is everywhere that AMD became lazy and stopped innovating. The reality is that there is no such evidence.

Let's start with the argument that AMD has been generations behind Intel in terms of process technology. In early 2003, Intel's Northwood P4 was at 3.2Ghz while AMD's Barton K7 was at 2.2Ghz. Both were using a 130nm process.

Intel P4
2003, 3.2 Ghz - Q4 2006, 3.8 Ghz, 19% increase in 14 quarters

AMD K8

2003, 1.8 Ghz - Q4 2006, 2.8Ghz, 56% increase in 14 quarters
Equal to K7, 2.0 Ghz -2.8 Ghz, 40% increase
Equal to P4, 2.2 Ghz - 2.8 Ghz, 27% increase

After changing processes twice P4 topped out at 3.8 Ghz on 65nm, a very modest 19% increase in clock. AMD increased clock by 56% in the same period of time. Of course, it could be argued that K8's initial 1.8 Ghz was slower than the fastest 2.2 Ghz Barton at the time. However, looking at either the 2.0 Ghz point where K8 matched the fastest K7 or the 2.2 Ghz point where K8 was faster than the fastest P4 we still see that AMD increased clock more than Intel over the same period of time.

The second argument is that AMD has been doing much worse with 65nm than it has before with process technology and is way behind where it should be. This is not exactly true when compared to AMD's previous track record with 130nm SOI. It took AMD about a year to match K7's old process speed of 2.2 Ghz and deliver 2.2 Ghz K8's in volume in early 2004. We see an almost identical scenario with 2.8 ghz 65nm K8's now arriving about a year after their 90nm counterparts.

The third argument is that AMD's 65nm process is broken. The supposed evidence of this is that K8 hit 3.2 Ghz on 90nm while 65nm is only now at 2.8 Ghz. This may sound good but it isn't a fair comparison. AMD stopped developing the process used for K7 because K7 was on the old socket A and therefore had a limited lifespan. If K7 had continued to be developed it very likely too would have been at a higher speed in early 2004 when 2.2 Ghz K8 arrived. We could easily have been comparing 2.2 Ghz K8 to 2.4-2.6 Ghz K7 much as we see today. In fact, this very thing did happen to Intel with P4. Intel continued to develop the Northwood core on the old 130nm process and reached 3.46 Ghz which exceeded the initial 90nm clock speeds. In fact, if we use Intel's highest 130nm clock then Intel's efforts look particularly poor as we only then see a tiny 10% increase in clock speed to 3.8 Ghz on 65nm in the next 3 years. By the logic of the bandwagon analysts Intel's 90 and 65nm processes must have been broken.

However, the reality is quite a bit different from such a superficial view. In between the period of 2003 and 2006 both companies shifted to dual core on P4 and K8 which slowed clock increases. We really can't compare one to one a dual core Tulsa at 3.8 Ghz to a single core Northwood Xeon at 3.46 Ghz. We clearly saw that even though AMD's 90nm process was mature by 2005 the initial clock speeds for X2 were 400 Mhz slower than the single core speeds. Adding in the core doubling factor we can see that the actual clock increases were greater than the apparent increases. Similarly today we see speeds being held back because of a shift from dual core to quad core.

It is clear then that K8's clock speeds advanced at a normal pace and that 65nm matches the rate of development of AMD's 130nm SOI process. This leaves the question of why the notion that AMD became arrogant and lazy has become so pervasive since 2006. There is no doubt that Intel scored a big win both by introducing an architecture with increased IPC and increasing clock at the same time. This is similar to Intel's introduction of Northwood P4 where the IPC increased over Williamette and the improved 130nm process allowed a faster clock. Compared to this AMD's necessary shift to revision F for DDR-2 seemed very disappointing. Thus at the end of 2006 Intel was at 3.0 Ghz on a 65nm process with quad core compared to AMD which was just introducing 65nm and was only at 2.8 Ghz with 90nm dual core. Some have tried to claim that AMD should have moved to 65nm earlier but FAB 30 was not capable of 65nm production and any money spent on outdated 200mm tooling for upgrades would have been wasted. AMD had to wait on FAB 36 and the 65nm ramp there seems inline with industry expectations.

So, in looking at AMD and Intel more closely we simply don't find the arrogance, laziness, or lack of innovation that it has become so chic lately to attribute (with airy wave of hand) to AMD. The change to a DDR-2 controller no doubt consumed development resources but added no speed to the processor itself. The bottom line was that Intel's 65nm process was mature when C2D arrived because it had already been wrung out with Presler and Yonah and there was simply no possible way that K8 with internal 64 bit buses was going to compete with C2D with new 128 bit buses. Intel basically got lucky with quad core since the shared FSB architecture was adaptable to this. I saw a lot of people claim that AMD should have done an MCM type design with K8 but I still haven't figure out how well this would have worked with a single memory controller feeding two chips and the second chip being fed via an HT link. Presumably the performance would have been very similar to dual socket with only one chip having a connection to memory and these only showed 50% performance for the second chip. I still have doubts that this at 2.8 Ghz would have had much effect in late 2006 and it seems that the memory bottleneck would simply have gotten worse as the speeds increased to 3.0 and 3.2 Ghz. Rather than laziness it is clear that 2006 found AMD with very few options to respond to Intel's successes.

I've seen comment after comment claiming that the purchase of ATI was a huge mistake. I'll admit that it cost a lot of money when AMD had none to spare but what exactly was the alternative? If AMD had not purchased ATI the five quarters worth of losses would have been the same. There was nothing about the ATI purchase that affected AMD's processor schedule. I've also seen claims that AMD overpaid for ATI and the supposed proof of this is the $1.5 loss of goodwill charged in Q4 07. The problem with this idea is that the purchase price had to include ATI's prospects including business from Intel. Naturally, ATI lost this business when it was purchased by AMD. Since the loss of Intel business was a direct result of AMD's purchase this loss of value at ATI was inevitable. However, on the positive side AMD acquired the 690G chipset which remained the most popular chipset for AMD systems through 2007. Likewise it is a certainty that the 790 chipset will be in 2008. AMD also gained a purpose designed mobile chipset. The lack of such a chipset prevented the superior Turion processor from matching Penium M for the past several years. Gaining this chipset is difficult to underestimate. This also puts AMD in a much more competitive position with Fusion. There is no doubt that AMD has troubles but I can't see any which were caused by the ATI purchase. Without the purchase AMD would have more money but its competitive position would be worse.

I've unfortunately found that when people state my position they usually only get it right about 1/3rd of the time. So, I'll try this clearly. It is obvious that AMD is behind and the clearest indication of this is the lack of FX chips. The Black Edition doesn't count since this is actually a volume chip, more like a poor man's version of FX. True FX chips are at the bin limits and therefore only available in limited quantities. The fact that FX chips have been replaced with Black Edition shows that even AMD knows that it is behind. AMD's official highest clock on 65nm for X2 is 2.8Ghz. This X2 4000+ review at OC Inside shows 2.93 Ghz at stock voltage. This 200Mhz margin is the difference between common and low volume. In other words AMD should therefore be capable of delivering FX 65nm X2 chips at 3.0Ghz. Of course, there would be no reason to since these would not be competitive. However, using the pattern of X2 we would assume that X4 would be 2.4Ghz common volume and 2.6Ghz FX volume. Again, a 2.6Ghz X4 would not be competitive as an FX chip so there are none.

These clocks match closely with what we've actually seen. I have seen accounts of 2.7 and 2.8Ghz on Phenom X4 with stock voltage. This of course would contrast sharply with suggestions from places like Fudzilla that Phenom will top out at 2.6Ghz since one would assume that another quarter or so would give 2.8Ghz common volume for X4 in Q3. This would then seem to allow 3.0Ghz at FX volumes. These are both good questions: whether AMD could truly deliver 2.8Ghz in Q3 and whether AMD would consider 3.0Ghz fast enough for an FX branded chip. I have seen suggestions that AMD will abandon 65nm in favor of 45nm at mid year. However, this would not seem to match AMD's previous behavior since 65nm chips use the same socket and therefore would not be end of life as K7 was in 2003. It would seem more likely that AMD would continue to rely on 65nm during 2008 for the bulk of its chips and highest speeds and that 45nm even if at reasonable volumes in Q4 will not reach competitive speeds until early 2009. In other words, barring a big process leap for 45nm I would expect AMD's best in 2008 to be 65nm. I don't suppose we will get any real idea of AMD's 45nm process until someone gets ahold of some 45nm ES chips and that probably won't happen any earlier than late Q2.