AMD versus Intel: CPU wars roadmap

// June 30th, 2008 // Technology News

Intel announced the next revolution in Microprocessor fabrication by replacing Silicon Dioxide gates with High-K dielectric metal gates.  Microprocessor industry analyst David Kanter who contributed a lot of the information in this piece had this in-depth analysis on what this means for Intel and AMD.  I spoke with David Kanter of Real World Technologies and came up with the following roadmap of the two chip giants for the next two years.

Chart: George Ou with David Kanter of Real World Technologies

Intel made some large gains with its new Core 2 architecture introduced in 2006 and reversed its downward spiral with the aging NetBurst architecture.  At the end of 2006 we saw the release of the first quad-core CPUs from Intel for the desktop (QX line of products) and server market (Clovertown) which gave Intel a huge advantage in both markets.  Intel was able to gain key design wins such as Sun and Google while AMD was forced to cut prices and profits to the bone to maintain market share.

According to Kanter, the big reason for AMD’s problem was Intel’s manufacturing lead.  While Intel was producing 65 nm processors all of last year, AMD was outputting 90 nm parts and barely got their first 65 nm product out by the end of the year.  The significance of this is that 90 nm manufacturing with small 200 mm wafers produces less than half the number of wafers compared to a 65 nm process on 300 mm wafers.  That means that while the price wars of 2006 put a damper on Intel’s profits, it tore in to AMD financials because of higher chip fabrication costs.