The Eye Of The Storm

At the same time that people on the web are insisting that AMD is spinning its statements to cover up failures with K10, I've seen many of these same people frantically spinning the news in the opposite direction by interpreting any snippet of information in the worst possible way against AMD. If there are indeed cyclonic and anti-cyclonic forces at work then perhaps somewhere in the center we can find something that makes sense.

The only way to reach any conclusions about AMD is to start with what we know. We know that AMD first demonstrated Barcelona November 30, 2006. This was presumably a stable Alpha chip. The earliest Conroe's were also Alpha chips and we know that it took Intel about six months to go through two revisions to get to the B1 release version. However, we also know that Intel's B1 had a minor bug that was fixed in the B2 revision, so B2 is also a reasonable assumption for production. We know too that the fastest that AMD could run off inline test chips would be 10 weeks. So, if we project this from the November 2006 demo we get:

November 30, 2006 – Stable Alpha silicon demo
February 8, 2007 – B0
April 19, 2007 – B1
June 28, 2007 – B2 (originally intended launch?)

Since AMD gave another demonstration in May we can assume that this followed the B1 revision. They could not have been waiting on a B0 revision since, even with delays, this would have been ready no later than March. It is reasonable to assume that they managed to squeeze in a B0 and B1 and then gave a demo shortly after B1 would have been ready. However, the fact that AMD did not give another demo when B0 was ready suggests that B0 was probably not much better than the A1 revision. Notice too that we have good correlation between the B2 revision and AMD's stated time frame of mid year since the B2 revision should have been ready by mid July even with some delay. So, we are probably on the right track. But, what if the B2 chip isn't the actual volume production chip and AMD needs another revision? Projecting further we would get:

September 6, 2007 – B3
September 23, 2007 – Calendar End of Summer.

With two and a half weeks of margin, this suggests that a B3 revision could probably be released before the calendar end of Summer. So, again we have good correlation with AMD's latest statement about release by end of Summer. Typically, you don't commit large amounts of production capacity to a new design until you are sure that the die is production ready. If AMD's B1 revision had been ready then it would have committed for B2 and the launch would be July. However, if B1 still had a nasty bug or two then it would take the B2 revision to fix it and production would not be committed until B3. In other words, AMD could have good production samples at the end of June or early July with B2 but with only testing run volumes probably too few for a genuine launch.

If you launch a product with nothing but ES samples then that is a paper launch. This is pretty much what Intel did when it previewed Conroe six months before availability and what it has repeated with Penryn. If you launch with final version samples but volume won't be up for two or three months then that is a soft launch. To get a genuine launch your volume run must be available within a month. Since it takes two and half months for wafers to run through production this means that you would have to wait about two months after you had a good sample batch to give the volume run time to be ready. If AMD only has a small sample B2 run available in late June or early July then this could be a soft launch unless they wait until late August to launch. There is some small possibility that AMD could gamble and start a small production run early knowing that they might have to scrap it if the samples don't measure up. This is probably the only way that AMD could do a firm launch in July.

We can also reasonably guess that once a production run is started for Barcelona that AMD will begin a Phenom batch about a month later. This probably means a lot more delay than with Barcelona. For example, AMD might be willing to gamble a small production run for server chips since these are low volume anyway but probably would not be willing to gamble with the much larger batch of desktop chips that would be needed. So, even if AMD had enough Barcelona chips for a reasonable launch in July it is still almost a certainty that the desktop chips would be delayed until October. Again, these speculative dates seem to match well with what we've been hearing lately.

I was a bit surprised when some suggested that the lack of an elaborate showing by AMD at Computex meant something. However, if you look at the 2006 Computex, AMD showed almost nothing beyond AM2 systems and motherboards, and AM2 had been officially released a month earlier. The real information was given at AMD's June 2006 Technology Analysts meeting. Since nothing was released right before the 2007 Computex this year, I'm not surprised that it seemed so barren. This year, it looks like AMD is pushing the meeting back one and a half months and “will hold its 2007 Technology Analyst Day on Thursday July 26th, 2007”. The push to a later date probably has to do with the fact that DTX and mini-DTX motherboards are due in August as much as the time frame for K10. July also makes sense because FAB 30 should be into the 300mm conversion and FAB 36 should be working on 45nm, and AMD will surely want to mention them. AMD will probably have some word about the repaired R650 GPU series by then along with a time frame for R700. Most importantly though AMD would know by then if the June B2 batch is ready for production.

Our assumption so far has been that B2 will probably be a good batch with volume coming with the B3 batch. This has led some to speculate that a bad B2 batch would knock K10 out for the rest of the year since presumably they would have to wait until the B3 test run to commit for B4 and this would arrive too late for Q4 sales. However, this scenario is not likely to happen. If B2 turns out bad then AMD will have little choice but to start full production with B3 and gamble that it will be good enough to sell. In other words, if AMD is that late with K10 then they will have to perform without a net knowing that a bad B3 batch will cost them millions in scrapped silicon.

The next issue is performance. Back in January, Randy Allen at AMD stated that K10 would be 40% faster than Intel's best Clovertown. And, presumably this would be with the 2.5Ghz speed K10. At the time that Allen said this, Clovertown was only projected to clock to 2.66Ghz. K10 would have needed a boost of about 25% over K8 to hit this performance level. This was possible but Penryn changes things considerably. So to figure out how it might compare with Penryn we have, 1.4 X 2.66Ghz = 3.724Ghz for Clovertown. However, Intel has stated that Penryn is 9% faster than Clovertown. Therefore, 3.724Ghz / 1.09 = 3.42Ghz for Penryn. Interestingly, this is only 2.5% faster than Intel's expected 3.33Ghz speed for Penryn. Recalling that since 3% is the margin of error in testing, a 2.5% difference is not significant. So, we seem to have correlation between Penryn's expected performance and launch speed and AMD's earlier relative performance estimate. By the look of it, Intel intended that a 3.33Ghz Penryn would match whatever AMD could release. Personally, I think AMD's January estimate was a bit too high and rather than 2.5Ghz it will take a K10 more like 2.8Ghz to match a 3.33Ghz Penryn. 2.8Ghz for quad core K10 is looking less and less likely in 2007 while 3.33Ghz Penryn seems much more likely. Roughly speaking, this could allow Intel to hold onto a 10% lead on all single and dual socket systems.

My estimate is based in part on the architectural changes. Of course, I've also seen lots of people trying to pull some kind of estimate of performance out of the two benchmarks that have been done. The problem is that A1 silicon is usually bogged down by patches and won't really show performance. I can already hear Intel enthusiasts insisting that this can't be true because Intel demoed A1 silicon with Conroe. Well, not exactly. Intel's initial silicon was so slow that they had to overclock it with water cooling. This is why they wouldn't let anyone look inside the case. Secondly, Intel very, very carefully controlled what benchmarks were used. They left out most benchmarks and only used what wasn't affected by the BIOS patches. Then, when B0 was ready and needed fewer patches they loosened up a bit and allowed more benchmarks. They were clearly confident by the time B1 was released so we can be certain that it required no major BIOS patches. We know that B1 still contained a bug but this was apparently not so severe that it hurt the benchmark scores. However, this does not seem to be the case at all with K10. Since AMD did not demo a B0 revision it must have still been heavily patched. And, the very limited demo in May with the B1 revision makes it likely that the chip was still using heavy enough BIOS patches to knock the performance down. Remember though that no vendor or partner has anything newer than B1 since the B2 chips won't be ready until the end of the month.

I have heard some insist though that the B1 revision is “final silicon” and therefore whatever benchmark scores have been seen must indicate true performance. However, this is obviously not the case since if B1 were final then K10 would be launched in volume with B2 and there would be no question of when it would be available. In other words, we can't claim that K10 is delayed because it is buggy and then claim that the silicon is still good enough for valid benchmark scores.

Nevertheless, the negative speculation about AMD's actions is unending so let's see if we can cover each point:

The first possibility is that K10 has a major architectural flaw that is causing the low benchmark scores. We saw this with Intel with both Williamette and Itanium. However, this would not explain a delay since major flaws take at least a year to fix. AMD would have to launch K10 as it is in spite of the low performance just as Intel did with Williamette and Itanium.

The second possibility is that K10 is complete but is running hot like Prescott did. Prescott was delayed for months until the BTX standard fixed both the cooling problems and the high socket power draw. This argument doesn't work though because Prescott was actually released right away as the lower clocked Celeron D. Likewise, Intel released Smithfield at lower clocks when heat and power draw were a problem. AMD would simply follow suit and release lower clock speeds of K10 which would easily replace 3800+ and at least compete with with C2D 6300 and below. AMD would probably also release a quad FX version since these platforms could handle more heat and power draw. With its enhanced SSE performance there is no doubt that even a lower clocked K10 would add value to the current offerings. There is also no doubt that AMD desperately needs a quad core offering in whatever form it can produce. Even at low clock speeds a quad core would still be launched just as Smithfield was for dual core.

A similar argument is that K10 is in finished form (and therefore the scores are valid) but that AMD is having process and yield problems and this is why the chip is delayed. However, we've already seen that if speeds were a problem that AMD would release anyway. Also, when K8 was first released in 2003, the yields were not only bad but were the worst that AMD has ever had. Yet, that didn't stop them from launching with 1.4 - 1.8Ghz chips that were no faster than the 2.2Ghz Barton. And, with the large drops in volume in Q1 AMD would have enough idled capacity even if the yields are poor. So, if yields or speeds were a problem then K10 would be launched at low speeds and then bumped up as AMD was able. Finally, even with low yields, AMD could produce enough K10's to cover the server segment where volumes are low and margins are much better than on the desktop as they did with K8.

The most logical assumption remains that the delay is caused by bugs in the die that require BIOS patches to run. This then degrades the performance and causes the low benchmark scores. A patch that did not degrade performance would not cause a delay. A serious design flaw would likewise not cause a delay. Process or yield problems would only cause the initial clock speeds to be lower rather than causing a launch delay.

I've seen commentors on my blog and web authors (who should know better) claim that silence by AMD on these matters will erode confidence and hurt AMD's sales. These people tend to forget that the tiny percentage (less than 0.1%) of enthusiasts who really care about top performance are only a tiny fraction of sales. Also, this crowd tends to be very fickle and will quickly swap systems if any advantage becomes apparent. There are people who read information on the internet who aren't looking for the highest possible performance but this group tends to have brand loyalties anyway. The fact is that probably 95% of all people who may buy a computer in the next year have never heard of Barcelona or Agena and will not notice or care if it is delayed. The only people who really matter are the ones who make purchasing decisions for Dell, HP, and Gateway since the chips have to actually be in systems before they will be purchased by most consumers. And, not surprisingly, buyers for major vendors get their information from private demonstrations rather than reading reviews on the internet. AMD is not likely to give out much information before the 2007 Technology Analyst Day and this is probably when they will announce firm release dates for K10. If some find this fact frustrating then perhaps they should consider the lyrics to the Go Go's song, Our Lips Are Sealed.

AMD's Outlook

I showed in my last article that bankruptcy for AMD is unlikely in 2007. I also showed that benchmark code should use the PGI compiler since it is faster for Intel as well. But, let's concentrate just on where AMD is and where it needs to be.

AMD's luck has not been good lately. They've seen a sharp drop in revenue in Q1 that will probably be matched in Q2 and that will almost certainly make three quarters in a row with an average loss of $500 Million (for $1.5 Billion total). And, whereas AMD had good success with Nexgen, DEC, and IBM the ATI merger seems a bit different. While it isn't a total failure like AMD's later collaboration with Motorola and UMC, it does seem more of a work in progress. It also appears that AMD is going to have to have another revision of Barcelona before launch.

For discreet graphics, R600 is not exactly a success. The delay to May is now followed more delays and less than stellar performance for the 1900. Fuad has suggested that not only is AMD going to move to the 65nm process with R650 but that ATI is going to make some tweaks to the architecture as well. Basically, this means three things. It means that R650 is going to solve the current 1900 heating and power problems. It also means that R650 is much more than a simple shrink of R600. However, this means that R650 is what R600 should be right now so ATI has to be seen as trailing by about half a generation. R650 should be able to finally move beyond the current barrier of 8800GTS performance and get up to 8800GTX where it needs to be. Obviously, nVidia is going to tweak its own designs so there will be something faster by then however there is no doubt that R650 will close up some of the current large gap in performance. Beyond this it remains to be seen if AMD will still be trailing when R700 is released or whether these delays will delay it as well. This does indeed bring into question whether the ATI merger is helping or hurting ATI. My guess is that these problems were all in place at ATI before AMD even considered the merger and I would say that AMD is currently scrambling to give ATI some very needed assistance. AMD does seem to know where the problems are so its a question of how quickly they can get them fixed.

Barcelona now appears to be delayed further into Q3. Most likely, another revision was needed to fix some remaining bugs. Another revision means at least a two month delay and this seems to match with the latest release statements. The INQ suggested that the current revision was ready to go but it looks to me like they got it wrong. I'm also inclined to believe another revision was needed because it looks like AMD is trying to compress the transition from Opteron server chips to Phenom desktop chips to be able to hit the December buying season. AMD will also have to do this in the face of another round of price cuts from Intel, the faster 3.0Ghz Kentsfield and Clovertown, and the knowledge that Penryn could remove a lot of Clovertown's deficiencies. The launch clock speeds are very much up in the air though. AMD had originally said 2.3 in Q3 and 2.5 in Q4 for quad core. However, that seems to be when they believed that Intel would stop at 2.66 on quad core. There is no doubt that Intel's 3.0Ghz speed puts pressure on AMD to move higher. However, what AMD might be capable of delivering is anyone's guess. There are some pretty good indications that AMD could launch 100Mhz higher with 2.4Ghz instead of 2.3 and then go to 2.6Ghz in Q4. However, Intel could match this with a 3.0Ghz Penryn and then followup in Q1 or Q2 with 3.33Ghz. So, even if AMD bumped the speed to 2.8Ghz in Q1 or Q2 they could still end up trailing.

AMD doesn't have many bright spots but they do have some. Their integrated chipsets seem to be working okay and their mobile chipsets seem reasonably competitive. AMD should be able to do a lot of volume in the mid to low end desktop with both DTX and its chipsets and with mini-DTX. However, the desktop has lower margins than either mobile or server and this is the low half of the desktop. This does seem reminiscent of 2002 when AMD was hanging on by selling K7 against the lower performing Celeron. In fact, mini-DTX versus mini-ITX is exactly this kind of mismatch with mini-DTX having more memory and memory bandwidith, more expansion capability, and more cpu power. This should at least help AMD hold on in the 2nd half of 2007 if they can do modest mobile sales and gain back some position in servers. Obviously though, AMD has no real chance of challenging Intel on the desktop until they can deliver some real volume in 2008 and by that time they will be up against Intel's 45nm Penryn. AMD should be fine in 4-way and higher servers after Barcelona is finally released. AMD can probably claim the fastest desktop with QFX if Intel doesn't match with its own dual socket system. Intel could very well retain the title of fastest single socket system.


While Intel seems on track and only has to make small steps with Penryn and Nehalem it looks like AMD is going to have to work a lot harder to get back into the game. There are potential gains for AMD but none of them are going to be easy. If AMD works hard and stays on track they could be in a more competive position with mobile, graphics, and high end server by mid 2008. However, since Nehalem's performance is an unknown AMD could find itself with a much tougher high end server competitor in 2009 without ever having gained signficantly in either high end desktop or low end servers. Time will tell.

AMD Q1 2007 Outlook

AMD's Q1 2007 results were certainly disappointing. This has caused the rumors about bankruptcy for AMD to start popping up like mushrooms. Beyond bankruptcy there is the question of AMD's Q1 sales and after that there is the question of outlook for the rest of 2007 and into 2008. Time to dig in.

The simplest way to handle the question of bankruptcy is to look at AMD's history and assume that AMD can survive whatever it has already survived. The most definitive ratio is the stockholders' equity to assets ratio. This essentially tells what percentage of the company is not in debt. AMD's ratio in Q4 06 was 44% but it has now dropped to 41%. In spite of the better than $600 Million loss in Q1 this really isn't too bad since AMD's lowest percentage was 35% back in 2003. This suggests that AMD could lose another $1.4 Billion to hit 35% and still survive (since it did in 2003). Therefore, bankruptcy does not seem to be an immediate problem.

Figuring out AMD's processor position is a bit tougher since they've now started combining processor, embedded, and chipset revenues. However, by any measure it is way down from Q4 06 (about 30% lower). As far as I can tell the dropoff is way above the usual seasonal decline, but the only other comparison is Intel. So, we have two possibilities. The first possibility is that Intel's numbers are indicative of the quarterly demand and demand for AMD has fallen sharply. The second possibility is that general demand has fallen sharply but Intel was bouyed by pent-up demand. It doesn't seem reasonable though to assume that general demand has fallen off as sharply as AMD's numbers so there must be another reason.

However, no other reason is obvious. AMD is now 100% 65nm on FAB36 and is producing more than half of its volume as 65nm. This is very confusing because AMD's inventory has not increased enough to swallow 30% of the production yet it is difficult to imagine that they've cut production that drastically after being maxed out just one quarter ago. The only other explanation I've seen is that AMD has unreported income due to payments next quarter from government sales. While Net 60 or 90 terms are not unusual, one would nevertheless think that if AMD had large revenues due next quarter that they would have mentioned this. Since AMD didn't mention this, I have to discount this line of reasoning. The only other possibility I can think of is that AMD's cpu sales fell off because of delays in delivering chipsets. About the only bright spot in this is that almost every possible reason for the sharp drop in both volume and revenue will get better in the next two quarters.

To see where AMD really stands it is necessary to dispense with the typical shell game that plagues most attempts to characterize AMD. For example, people compare AMD with nVidia for discreet graphics and then compare AMD with Intel for processors. People often dodge back and forth comparing AMD with either Intel or nVidia for integrated graphics and chipsets using whichever seems a tougher competitor. The truth is that Intel doesn't yet make discreet graphics and nVidia doesn't make processors. AMD is currently the only company that makes processors, chipsets, and discreet graphics yet I can't recall a single editorial or analysis that mentions this fact. And, the double standards for Intel and AMD are still very much alive. For example, I've seen comment after comment about AMD's R600 delay yet no mention of Intel's 965 chipset being two months late or the proper drivers being a full year late. Sadly for Intel, it looks like the finished drivers may arrive just in time to discourage upgrade to Intel's newer chipsets for Nehalem. I've now seen people proclaiming that R600 is a total failure when it has already been suggested in the trades that AMD's R600 orders will max out the capacity at foundry giant TSMC.

Without doubt though, the good news for AMD is mini-DTX. Again, the trades have suggested that mini-DTX will shove aside all other contenders to become the dominant small form factor standard on the desktop. Having compared AMD mini-DTX boards with Intel's latest, underpowered mini-ITX offerings, it is difficult for me to argue with this assessment. While Intel will offer cheap, Celeron class solutions on mini-ITX, AMD's only slightly larger mini-DTX boards will deliver real desktop power with double the cores, double the memory bandwidth and memory capacity. AMD can do this while delivering both PCI and PCI-e while Intel is only able to deliver PCI. There is little doubt that Intel is guilty of a major oversight in low cost desktop architecture but it still isn't clear what Intel can do to dig itself out. Mini-ITX is low cost but underpowered while pico-BTX has enough power but can't begin to compete in cost. This leaves AMD mini-DTX with no competitor and Intel with no sandbags to plug the gap in levee.

Likewise, Intel's Geneseo has now shown itself to be not at all a competitor for AMD's Torrenza as was first claimed. First, while Torrenza products are already available, users will have to wait until 2009 to get any Geneseo products. And, these delayed Geneseo products will be little more than upgrades to existing PCI-e products. There is no doubt that this will hurt Intel both in terms of high powered servers and HPC. HPC accelerators benefit from Torrenza's cache coherency which is missing on Geneseo while high powered servers benefit from the much greater bandwidth of HTX for things like networking cards. In simple terms, while Torrenza is designed for maximum power with lowest latency and greatest bandwidth, Geneseo is designed for low cost and overlap with existing PCI-e. This is quite a handicap because Torrenza too is designed to leverage existing HyperTransport technology to minimize development costs. But since PCI-e was already far behind HyperTransport Intel's boost with Geneseo does nothing to close the gap with Torrenza. Essentially, Geneneseo is roughly competitive with HyperTransport 1.0 as AMD moves on to the considerably more powerful HyperTransport 3.0. Consequently, an HTX powered network will run rings around a Geneseo powered network. So, in spite of the new Nehalem architecture we see Intel giving ground in high end X86 server architecture and once again optimizing for low end single and dual socket systems. One certainly has to question Intel's direction given a renewed X86 attack from AMD with K10 and a very aggressive attack from IBM with much faster Power speeds.

So, while Geneseo's delay brings into question when an actual CSI implementation will be ready, we also have to wonder about mobile. Intel took most of the mobile share by delivering the specialized Pentium M processor with a good mobile chipset and wireless capability in the Centrino platform. However, the current situation is ironic indeed. While Intel had a separate architecture for mobile, AMD used the same K8 architecture for mobile, desktop, and server. Now, Intel is using the single C2D architecture for everything while AMD is splitting off a separate mobile architecture. Assuming that AMD can deliver a quality mobile chipset by mid 2008, Intel could find itself facing a much tougher mobile competitor with both a specialized mobile cpu and chipset. A reversal in battery life with AMD notebooks outlasting Intel notebooks could be a serious blow to Intel's mobile share. We will have to see if C2D will truly be able to cover all bases with just a chipset change or whether Intel will have to scramble to try to differentiate the mobile architecture once again.

We can also see that the battle for fair benchmark testing is still raging. Most people don't seem to be aware that with the dominance of the Intel Compiler that benchmark code is often poor quality on AMD processors. This poor quality code gives Intel processors an artificial boost in testing. Yet, there has been no call to have testing code compiled on the PGI compiler even when this code gives a boost to Intel as well.

Looking at this graph we can see that Core 2 Duo runs only 95% of its normal Intel Compiler speed when running PGI Opteron optimized code, however, it runs about 109% of its normal speed when using the PGI Unified Binary. One would think that getting a 9% boost in speed would be enough to make testers want to switch to PGI.
However, here we can see the main problem. While Intel Xeon only falls off slightly while running good Opteron code, Opterons take a much bigger hit while trying to chew through the poorly optimized Xeon code generated by the Intel Compiler. So, anyone who wishes to give Intel an advantage would not want to trade Intel's current artificial 19% advantage for a genuine 9% advantage. There doesn't seem to be any valid reason to continue to use the Intel Compiler to compile benchmarks unless the reason is indeed to tip the scales in Intel's favor. PGI code is 9% faster for Intel than Intel Compiler generated code and fully 19% faster for AMD than Intel Compiler generated code. It's time to stop the sham and make PGI the standard comparison compiler for all benchmark code. There is no doubt that Intel would oppose this since it would be losing not only its current artificial advantage but revenue from its compiler sales as well. However, one does wonder what would happen if all the popular review sites grew backbones and insisted on PGI benchmark code. Until this happens I'm not sure how we will ever know how Intel and AMD processors actually compare.

In conclusion, AMD's current position is terrible. There is no doubt that it would be better if 65nm had been released sooner or the new chipset had been out sooner or K10 had been out sooner. So, AMD is just going to have to bite the bullet until Q3 when things should improve. The chipset and graphic sales should be up by then and AMD should be fully anchored on the desktop with mini-DTX and DTX. These two should prevent any further erosion of the desktop although Intel will still control the top range. Barcelona should begin to take back at least the top end server sales (which are now going to Clovertown) and re-establish AMD's server chip ASP's. However, it will take until Q4 for AMD to be able to start hitting back at the upper desktop range and to re-establish its desktop ASP's. It doesn't look like AMD will drown before Q4 but it won't be much fun getting there. I've also seen suggestions from the Intel hopeful that Penryn will prevent an AMD comeback. I'm sorry but suggestions that Penryn is 30% faster are not exactly accurate. Penryn can be 30% faster than Clovertown in some circumstances because Clovertown bogs down badly with four cores. Penryn however is not 30% faster than Conroe (possibly 10%). And, in spite of Penryn's improvements, native quad is still more efficient than MCM at managing bus access. Unless Penryn gets a substantial boost in clock speed (which is possible) AMD will take back the lead on both desktop and server. Recent tests certainly seem to suggest that AMD will bump its K10 clocks by 100Mhz. However, other demonstrations suggest that AMD could hit 2.97Ghz in Q4 while Intel could pull 3.33Ghz Penryn into Q4. So, it looks like the actual leader in Q4 is going to depend on deliverable clock speed and that is a huge question at the moment since AMD has only admitted to 2.5Ghz while Intel has only admitted to 3.0Ghz.

AMD's position does seem fairly good going into 2008 since it still insists that 45nm is on track and will be ready six months after Intel's. Meanwhile, Intel has severely downgraded expectations of Geneseo while also announcing that desktop versions of Nehalem will not use an IMC. However, even with an IMC, Nehalem is not going to be able to match K10's DC 2.0 connectivity. There is also little doubt that until Nehalem does arrive, Intel is going to get hit hard in power consumption with its monstrous quad FSB northbridge for 4-way. Even with Penryn's lower power consumption Intel is going to have a tough time matching AMD. This is doubly true with Intel still using FBDIMM. I think it is safe to say that Intel is going to lose some of its server position in late 2007 and into 2008 and presumbably is then going to start pushing Nehalem with its IMC advantages. Likewise, Intel is going to lose some of its current desktop position and it remains to be seen what they will do about mini-DTX. Intel may have to create a new small form standard to compete. My guess is that Intel will fair best in the upper desktop and lower server ranges. AMD may have a tough time taking back single socket and dual socket server share although having a real quad core to compete will certainly help. I would say that AMD's strongest position comes from the ability of quad K10 to be a drop-in replacement for dual core on socket F and AM2. So, AMD could potentially improve its volume and revenue position substantially by end of 2008. However, Intel could block this if it can deliver much greater clock speeds with Penryn or possibly if it can get Nehalem hardware out sooner than 2009.