Advanced Micro Devices is joining an exclusive club, makers of quad-core chips.
On Monday, AMD (NYSE:AMD)
But more than that, AMD is counting on Barcelona to lift its sales and move it back into the black.
Intel released its first quad core in November, joining the small group of quad-core chipmakers that also includes IBM (NYSE:IBM)
"We believe it's the most advanced microprocessor on the market," said Randy Allen, the AMD vice president in charge of its server and workstation chip lines. "In terms of performance per watt, nothing today delivers as much."
Quad-core chips, as the name implies, have four cores, or what can be called four identical chip designs, on a single piece of silicon. This boosts performance over single- and dual-core chips but without any increase in power usage. This is critical for today's computers, which use so many applications that controlling power usage is crucial to keeping machines humming.
On Wednesday, Intel unveiled a line of quad-core chips for servers at a press event in San Francisco. Analysts say Intel's timing was in part to steal AMD's Barcelona thunder.
Quad-core customers, though, for the most part aren't choosing sides.
Among the server makers at the Intel event were IBM, Dell (NASDAQ:DELL)
American Technology Research analyst Douglas Freedman says AMD's Allen overstates the status of Barcelona, but it's a fine chip.
"I view Barcelona as evolutionary, not revolutionary," Freedman said.
He says it's sometimes better to be evolutionary. AMD's Opteron, the first dual-core chip, unveiled in 2003, was revolutionary, he says -- so much so that computer makers weren't ready for it.
That shouldn't happen with Barcelona, he says.
"(AMD's) ability to ramp good and exciting products is a lot better than it used to be," he said. Freedman has a buy rating on both Intel and AMD stocks.
AMD has a lot riding on Barcelona. AMD has lost money the past three quarters, a trend expected to continue in the next few quarters.
After several years of market share gains vs. Intel, AMD started losing share last year as Intel stepped up its product pace. AMD's share of total microprocessor sales has dipped into the upper-teens from nearly 25% early last year, analysts say. Its stock trades near 13, down from 27 a year ago.
Barcelona and the line Intel unveiled on Wednesday, the Xeon 7300, target network servers. One difference is that the Intel Xeon 7300 is strictly for servers and Barcelona is AMD's next big design advance. Other Barcelona chips will target PCs.
Allen says the first AMD quad-core chips will ship near year's end.
Barcelona has a couple of features that Intel can't yet match.
For one, its design is a "native" quad core. That is, AMD builds four identical cores onto a single piece of silicon. Intel puts two dual-core chip designs side by side on a chip, and connects them to form a quad core. AMD says its design performs better.
Intel has said it plans to release its own native quad-core design in the second half of 2008.
Another feature unique to AMD processors is an on-chip memory controller. Analysts say having the memory controller on the processor is faster than having the controller in a separate chip set, as Intel does it. Intel plans to put an on-chip memory controller on its devices starting in late 2008 or 2009.
Intel's new Xeon 7300 quad core, however, has a few advantages over AMD's Barcelona.
For one, Intel's had nine months to work the bugs out of the design, something AMD can't say. AMD had planned to roll out Barcelona last summer but was delayed when it ran into a design problem.
In addition, Intel will start using a more advanced manufacturing process by the end of this year.
Today, both use 65-nanometer designs. Intel will start using a 45-nm design later this year. The measurement refers to the width of the circuitry etching on the chip. The smaller the nanometer size, the higher the performance and the lower the cost of the chip.
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