K8L to frag Clovertown and Intel's next generation

AMD says K8L will frag Clovertown by 40% on a wide range of benchmarks. Some think AMD was talking about floating point performance, which is simply wrong.

As I have shown here, a dual core Opteron system outperforms a quad core Clovertown system by 14% on SpecFP_rate. That is, 4 Opteron cores are 14% faster than 8 Clovertown cores. Now, we know a K8L is 3.6x faster than a K8 on FP. This would lead to the conclusion that K8L is about 5x the speed of Clovertown, as far as FP performance is concerned.

So, the 40% performance lead has to be integer performance.

In conlusion, K8L will be 400% faster than Clovertown on FP, and 40% faster than Clovertown on integer.

Watch this AMD interview on K8L yourself. Basically, AMD is saying that K8L is so advanced that nothing in Intel's known roadmap can catch up. In other words, not only Clovertown and Conroe will be fragged, the next generation of Intel is pre-fragged, even with Intel going 45nm.

AMD will soon launch four K8L parts, the fastest will be clocked at 2.5GHZ, the slowest will be about 2GHZ. Therefore, within the AMD line, the performance spread is 25%. This means the slowest AMD chip will be at least 15% faster than the fastest Intel chip.

Intel BK by 2Q08, that what I said in 2006, and that is what will happen in 2Q08.

Intel is anti-progress

I fully agree with this guy. The only reason Microsoft created a 32 bit version of Vista is because of Intel. The only reason that there is a crappy 2D version of Vista is because most Intel IGPs are incapable of Vista premium.

Why does the industry have to accommodate Intel for its backward and obsolete technologies?

The only reason is that AMD is capacity constrained. Once AMD can supply 100% of the chips, the world will break free.

BTW, it seems that AMD and Intel will move to 45nm at the same time.

Google slaps Patty

Google says it only bought a small number of Intel chips. Patty didn't say how many.

Intel's 45nm chip is just another piece of absolete technology.

K8L frag starts in April

40% will open a major gap that will take Intel three years to catch up.

It's a cruel world for Intelers out there. Intel's BK in 2Q08 is unavoidable due to AMD's massive capacity ramp.

Once K8L is out, Clovertown will be sold at $150 and Woodcrest will be $95. QX6700 will be $150 and Conroe will be $87. Quad FX will be $999 per pair (two K8L quads). AMD will flood the hell of the market with dual core K8L chips, fragging Conroe by 40%. People think AMD will be slow to transition AM2 chips to K8L core, think again.

For anyone who plans to buy a server there, he needs to consider how to wisely spend his money. Buy a expensive Clovertown machine, and find it's about half the speed of the K8L, or buy a cheap Opteron box, and then pluggin the new K8L chip and get massive performance boost. It should really be a no brainer.

Yet, Hector Ruiz promised a killer architecture in 2008. With this architecture, AMD will frag Intel by 3x at least and permanently neutralize the Intel threat.

AMD's K8L to frag Intel's Clovertown by 40%

Intel BK by 2Q08 is set in the stone. 40% architectural advantage, that's K8 over Netburst all over again. Expect Patty to be begging on the streets soon.

"Based on what we know about our product and everything we understand about our competitor’s roadmap from all sources, we’re very bullish that when we introduce our native quad-core in the middle of the year, we’ll capture definitively the performance and performance [lead] and, by the way, do so in a way that doesn’t require new platform investments on the part of our OEM customers."

When Dirk Meyer the Alpha architect who says the above, Intel dudes know their days are numbered.

Just wait and see.

AMD's 4Q06 result is quite impressive. In this tough environment, AMD grew units by 19% sequentially.

SUN in bed with Intel the monopolist

SUN is reported to be in bed with Intel. Am I surprised? Not a bit. I see through the current SUN leadership well before the rumor.

With nothing distinctive left, SUN is becoming just another assembler of offshelf commodity parts trying to grab a piece of the AMD64 pie. And SUN is in a worse positition than DELL, as DELL at least has a highly efficient supply chain.

Well, one could say SUN started off as a company built on commodity parts: free and open sourced BSD + Motorola CPUs was all that SUN had. That was a time when there were few players in the market and there were less than 100 good C programmers in the whole world.

Today the situation is different, any company can whip out a 8 way Opteron server using parts bought online. SUN's tiny volume of 10,000 server per quarter is simply not enough to win a discount from AMD. DELL sells more AMD servers per day than SUN does in a week.

SUN is desperately trying to steal a sale or two from DELL. The SUN+Intel deal is a not a deal between equals but between a little boy and big brother. Intel gives lip service for SUN's crappy software SUN isn't making a dime on, and SUN pays hard dollars for Intel bakery.

The current SUN leadership is driving SUN to the grave. Look at the software projects SUN tried to do in the past few years. Every single one of them was a total failure, and SUN evtually had to give it away for free -- no one wants to pay $ for them any way. SUN tried Star Office, Java Desktop (has nothing to do with Java), Java Enterprise, N1, $100 per employee subscription, J2ME..... They all end up the same. Today, SUN is still trying to beat the dead horse on its crappy software.

SUN's mating dance with Intel signifies the end of it. Before, SUN at least has the heart of the hard core techies. Now, SUN lost its moral essence and becomes just another also run. What SUN has is less than what Tyan or SuperMicro has. Tyan and SuperMicro can design better motherboards that hold AMD or Intel CPUs. AMD never dies, because AMD stands for something. SUN is not anything anymore, it's just another ordinary company heading to oblivion.

The Geek has problem comprehend

See here.

EV Girl is one man's fantasy

Here is her blog. She could have become more famous in real life, but some dude keeps deleting her Wikipedia entry. Mike should invite her to UK.

Maybe I should create an entry for "sharikou" on wikipedia too.

EU moves closer to nail Intel

It's just a matter of time before Intel gets nailed by the law. All Intel's profits are presumed illegal.

As I estimated previously, Intel owe AMD at least $15 billion in damages.

DELL is now a distant second in PC shipments.

Intel booked profit from yard sale

"Fourth-quarter results included a gain from the sale of certain assets of the company's communications and application processor business to Marvell Technology Group partially offset by impairments, including an impairment for the related decision to place the company's Fab 23 facility in Colorado Springs, Colo., up for sale. The gain and impairments resulted in a net increase to EPS of approximately 2.5 cents. Fourth-quarter restructuring charges related to the company's structure and efficiency program were in line with the company's expectations and decreased EPS by approximately 1.5 cents."

Intel bought the ARM business from DEC for billions, sold it at a few hundred million and booked the profit.

In 4Q05, Intel's Digital Enterprise group had revenue of $6.4 billion, in 4Q06, it's $5.16 billion, a $1.26 billion drop. Mobility group had a revenue increase of $0.5 billion. In comparison, AMD's revenue grows despite large ASP drop.

Intel's ASP went up. AMD's ASP dropped 14%, yet revenue grew 3% sequentially. Clearly, AMD's market share is close to 30%, leading to a run rate close to 40%.

Intel Core notebooks sued for overheating

Nothing to do with batteries. Notebooks overheat.

AMD is hiring. Intel is firing.

I found this interesting. Jensen Huang wanted to be the emperor. Jensen is well qualified, he is one sharp guy. But he probably lacked the experience of running a company with FABs.

AMD and Nvidia can still merge.

Patty calls Paul

Patty: Paul, great news! Our strategy is working!

Paul: Yes?

Patty: AMD's warned huge. Its 4Q06 revenue grew only 3% from 3Q06, and only up 1.5% from 4Q05. I hate AMD and now I am happy.

Paul: Okay.

Patty: You don't sound very excited. I know our numbers will be $9.4, 10% below last year. But, hey, that's still 8% above our Q3, better than AMD's 3%.

Paul: Well.

Patty: How much bonus will I get? I heard that board approved a big bonus for you.

Paul: Pat, I have to tell you the truth, don't hold your expectations too high.

Patty: What? We beat AMD to the punch. Analysts say our 4Q06 revenue will grow 8% from Q3.

Paul: Pat, our revenue will be down from 3Q06.

Patty: How come?

Paul: we lost market share and our price didn't hold. AMD's market share is now about 27%. Run rate clsoe to 40%.

Patty: then why are you getting a bonus?

Paul: Well, this might be my last chance, Ruiz is simply screwing us in the market, he basically forgo profits and take market share at all costs.

Patty: I hate them.

Paul: Don't be so emotional, this is just business, you may want to apply for a job from them in 2008.

Patty: Why?

Paul: You will see our results and know why.

Some dude is smarter

He trademarked English language.

Jobs is a smart guy, he owns the word POD. That alone is $2 billion.

Courts have more efficient customer service

A customer kept calling DELL for five months with no results. The Court solved the computer problem in one day.

SUN sues over Java trademark

See this. Anyone has read the Java GPL license?

Based on SUN's Java FAQ:

Q: What must I do to call my software based on code from the OpenJDK or phoneME projects "Java"?

A: The requirements for the use of the "Java" trademark and name have not changed with the open sourcing of the JDK and Java ME source code. The GPL v2 does not include a trademark license - no OSI-approved open-source licenses do. Sun does not currently have a licensing program that permits the use of the "Java" mark in your product or company name. You can use a truthful "tagline" however associating your product or company with Java technology, according to Sun's standard terms for use for trademarks. Please see http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/ for more details.

Based on this, the open source community will write the code, but they can't call it Java, or use the word Java anywhere in the product name. That's a cool idea indeed.

SUN's basic idea is to encourage people to use the Java language, and SUN owns the language. It's like someone owns the English language, and every American pays money to the owner.

Comparing to other languages, such as C++ and C, Java seems to be a trap. One can write a C++ compiler and call it MyFancyC++. But you can't do it with Java, you can't call your work MyFancyJava -- note this is the case regaredless of compliance with the Java specification. Suppose you are a genius and you write 10000 lines of code that makes Java 10 times faster, you won't be able to call that SuperJava, you may be able to call it DuperJ, but people who believe in the Java name won't buy it (For instance, GNU's Java implementation is caleld GCJ. Without the Java name, few want to use it). Only SUN can take advantage of that hard work, as it can take the code, put it in the Java core code base and call it Java... Thus, the so called open sourcing of Java seems to be only a way for SUN to exploit the work of the community for free.

Gates and Ruiz team up for Vista

The game of domination. Intel will be severely puunished by Bill Gates for it affair with Jobs -- recenly SEC has found Jobs falsifying option grant docs.

Bill Gates is smart, he knows that AMD will rule. The Microsoft Home Media Server is only available for AMD Live!

More PC makers flocking to AMD. This time, it is TCL, a former Intel only OEM.

AMD is "better by design", OEMs say. As we expected, all AMD machines will be Vista premium capable. Intel? 80% won't be able to play 3D kids game, and 85% won't be able to those fancy Vista graphics.

HP counters Apple iMac with Turion 64 X2 powered touch smart. VooDoo produces a notebook with 20inch LCD.

Intel BK by 2Q08.

PS: fun game to watch.

AMD tells Anand to go back to school

Learn how to measure cache latency. Brisbane cache latency is 14 cycles, not 20.

LostCircuits people do have college degeres, and they got the cache latency numbers right.

AMD advantage 2007

PCes are becoming connected and converged devices, speed is still very important, but even more important is functionality. Without features, the clock cycles will be just wasted. Intel is simply out of the HD game.

The 2007 AMD PC will be:

1) Low power, low noise (35 watt dual core)
2) HD capable
3) Doom3 capable (100% of Intel graphics are incapable of Doom3)
4) Vista premium capable

Intel can only hope to achieve 1) with a new Core 2 Duo stepping. Right now, Intel Core 2 Duo has high idle power and is unsuitable for 24x7 operation. Intel is simply out of the game in regards to 2), 3) and 4).

AMD can price a CPU+Chipset+Video+HD combo at good price, Intel can only provide the CPU. The AMD Live notebook will ride the Vista and HD wave and will be far more successful than Centrino, which was just Intel CPU+ Intel wireless.

Intel BK time analysis - a 2007 perspective

In 4Q05, Intel had a revenue of $10.2 billion. Intel released Conroe in 2Q06, and in 4Q06, its revenue is expected to be about $9.4 billion. Considering the world's CPU market has grown 10%, that's almost a 20% year/year drop. Still, I won't be surprised if Intel misses the mark by half a billion.

As I predicted, Conroe is the last straw that pushed DELL to AMD. With Conroe, Intel frags itself by 75%--overnite, 75% of Intel CPUs are sold at junk yard prices. George Ou used to tout a $125 Pentium D 805 as a SUV, recently, they were being sold at $88 and that was with a motherboard with Intel video.

The entire Intel strategy is governed by an uninhibited "I HATE AMD" mentality. I pointed out that such hatred has its roots in NAZI exclusivitism. Hector Ruiz has taken Intel to the court, and Intel got a lot to hide. Now that Intel can no longer coerce others not to AMD, it keeps cuttting itself in a vain effort to halt the rising power. But, the major batlle has alway been fought and AMD came out as the victor. The industry has set AMD64, HyperTransport and Torrenza as standards. Intel is expected to follow AMD's leadership this year. The question is whether Intel will continue to be around to follow AMD into the next year.

I have predicted Intel's BK time to be 2Q08, many don't believe me, some say it's crazy. But, folks, most of predictions came true and let's wait and see.

The situation for AMD now is that it sells every chip it can make. Since the world's PC market is nearly fixed in size[fn1]. With a declining ASP, Intel's BK time is merely a function of AMD's capacity ramp.

1) Almost all big OEMs are on board with AMD, no artificial restriction for AMD to gain market share.

2) AMD64 has become the standard.

3) 75% of Intel's CPU production is old junk. Almost 100% of Intel's IGPs are unsuitable for Vista premium.

4) The existence of Core 2 Duo further confirms that 75% of Intel's production is junk. Despite Intel's Core 2 Duo ramp in 2007, 75% of Intel will continue to be junk because of AMD's K8L ramp.

5) Given a choice, no one wants junk. Now people have a choice because of 1)

6) 75% of Intel is 60% of world demand (Intel has 77% of the market).

7) AMD's capacity is less than 60% of world demand but is quickly ramping to 55% by 4Q07.

8) Intel has about $4 billion net cash.

9) Once Intel's market share drops to 50%, it will BK in 2 quarters, due to losses in both CPU and chipset/IGP business.

10) Therefore, Intel will BK by 2Q08.

Intelers won't be able to argue on the merits. I predict them to counter the analysis above with "I hate AMD" talk just like what Patty did.

Footnote 1: Note that falling CPU prices will not boost PC sales by much. You have to remember a PC needs CPU+MB+RAM+HD+CASE. Even if CPUs are free, a PC would still cost about $300, more than a Nintendo Wii -- beyond the reach of 90% of the 3rd world.

Intel got a lot to hide

Read this tearful story on how Intel's Nazism deprived AMD's the right to gain market share -- many AMD workers had to go because of Intel's unlawful conduct.

Two of SUN's Opteron servers won awards, but more people choose DELL for servers.

A reader suggested that AMD should amend its complaint to add a RICO claim. A very good idea indeed. I see less severe acts sued for RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations).

35 watt Athlon 64 X2 4200 (2.2GHZ) coming soon

New x2 5400 (2.8GHZ) will be at 76 watt max, which is equivalent to Intel's 55 watt TDP.

AMD should produce higher clock single core. We need some 3GHZ single core CPUs.

World's largest air force only wants Opteron

"Each of the system's 30 compute nodes must have two dual-core AMD Opteron processors, 8 gigabytes of RAM, DVD optical drive, at least 40 gigabytes of hard disk. The company selected must deliver the computer system 30 days after receiving the order."

Recall the benchmark in which 4 Opteron cores frag 8 Clovertown cores by a whopping 14.4%? People mostly use clusters for floating point, with less than 50% of K8's FP performance, Intel is pretty much out of the cluster market. As a server CPU company, AMD's chips are architected to be scalable and can handle heavy duty work loads under combat conditions. Intel's front side bus is just too fragile -- picture the scene in which 8 clovertown cores struggling to get on the bus-- and only one can succeed at any momentum of time--they frag each other in a ping-pong game fashion. At 4P, Opteron is 3x the speed of Intel.

You can't bid for this contract with unproven Woodcrest, and you can't do it with Solaris 10 either. Intel and Solaris are speced out here. The specs are Linux on Opteron. But, SUN's x4100 should be OK. SUN used to brag that their servers are classified as munitions, that must be 5 years ago. For today's complex environment, only Opteron is suitable...

It seems that the world's largest air force are no dummies.

The market is demaninding AMD. It was a fiasco, according to industry analysts.

AMD is not unhappy with the situation though. You saw cocky AMD execs bragging about their company in the recent analyst meeting. They were truly confident, they know they got it. The days for Intel are numbered.

"We opened up new fab, and we're converting old fab and doubled our capacity for test and packaging. And in all of that, it's still not keeping pace with what is becoming an incredible fourth quarter.... Demand for processors in the quarter is unbelievable."

As I predicted long ago, AMD should exit 2006 with 40% market share (run rate). Intel's BK by 2Q08 is pretty much in the bag. A few Intelers see Core 2 Duo having 10% lead on desktop, but 95% people don't buy the hype, and 75% of Intel's production are 32 bit or Netburst. That's hardly an enviable situation. You saw shortages for AMD processors, but you don't see shortages for Core 2 Duo. Why? There was little demand for that unproven chip-- despite the fact that Core 2 Duo supply is very tight. Intel only produced a few million Core 2 Duos.

You will see a bloody 4Q06 for Intel.


PS: found this, enjoy! It's all about perf0rmance per watt.

Blogging from Ubuntu Installation Screen

After reading Charlie at INQ's article about using Ubuntu instead of Windows, I decided to give Ubuntu a try. I almost fell off my chair. This thing is damn cool. I push in the CD -- it's just one CD--unlike Fedora which needs 10 CDs, and in 10 seconds it starts running in this beautiful desktop environment which looks better than Windows Vista, and there you have the full OS available to use -- playing games and blogging. Note I haven't started installation yet, it was running on CD and RAM. Then I click the Install Icon on the desktop. After selecting timezone and keyboard layout, now, I am at step 5 of 6, which asks me to select a partition-- the interface looks good and clean. I wanted to share with you folks the picture, not sure what to do, I pressed the "Print Screen" key, and it saved the screen capture in PNG format.

This is much easier than Windows. See the picture below.



Now, I selected a partition and it's installing. Blogging while the OS is being installed? I challenge any Microsoft dudes to do the same.

You guys may say this is nothing special, but to get the pieces working together so nicely is no small feat. The amount of work put into the details indicates the quality. SUN folks worked on Solaris for 20 years, and they still rely on some primitive text interface for installation. To choose your timezone for Solaris 10, you need to press at leat 20 keys, F2, arrow, arrow....space, F2......space, space, down arrow, right arrow, space, return, F2... Crap.

After login the desktop, instead seeing zillions of menus for applications, such as five email programs and six web browsers, you see this clean interface. The nicest thing is this package manager, much better than Windows stuff, and forget about those dreadful rpm commands.

Now, I have finished installing the desktop version. I have burnt the server CD, which is less than 500MB... After giving the Ubuntu server a try, I have to say it's not very good, it doesn't give you options to choose services during installation, and it doesn't install SSHD by default... CentOS 4.4 server install CD does much better job -- it got all the essentials installed automatically. In a lot of cases, you have to get someone install the OS for you in a remote location, and the person is not good at Linux, they may not even know how to use a text editor. You need some installer which is no brainer, then you can login remotely to continue on.

Did I tell you this was being installed on an AMD64 machine with true 64 bit capability? It's not an Opteron, it's just an Athlon 64 3500+ (single core) with only 512MB RAM.

Most Intelers can't think straight

Reading the comments there proves again that Intelers have low IQ -- they simply can't think straight.

They are talking about financial prospects, but they keep talking about Intel's 45nm process, without noting the key question: percentage.

Intel launched 65nm in December 2005, so far, it shipped 40 million 65nm chips. Most of which were core duo (32bit) and Presler. 40 million is about 25% of Intel's production. This means after switching to 65nm for one year, 75% of Intel's production was 90nm. If you take into account the ramp, right now, about 50% of Intel's current production is 90nm. By the end of 2007, I expect 25% of Intel CPUs will be stuck at 90nm.

AMD is different. Once it nails the process, it switches over very quickly. APM3.0 does all the magic.

Intel does need its 45nm process to maintain competitive, the only trick it has left is increasing cache size. However, AMD may use Z-RAM to increase cache density 5x.

So while Intelers are dancing like crazy on the 10% performance advantage they enjoy on desktop, AMD is preparing for the next quantum leap that will leave Intel behind forever.

2007 is the year Intel becomes 90% obsolete. On desktop and mobile, Intel solutions are unworthy of Vista, while every AMD solution is Vista Premium ready. Basically, a large chunk of Intel's chipset and IGP business will be useless.

RIAA owns Russia

$1.6 trillion in statutory damages. Well, it's possible. In one case, a Legg Mason employee subscribed to some stock picking reports, but shared them with others. Jury awarded $20 million. During trial, Legg Mason was quite arrogant, saying it could buy the tiny plaintiff with pocket change, and even if it subscribes the report for all the workers who read it, the cost would be only about $60K.

$60K actual damages and $20 million statutory damages, a multipler of 300. Normally, in civil cases, the multiplier should be less than 10 for punitive damages, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a number of cases. So, $20 million does look excessive.

What Legg Mason didn't get is this: copyright infringement is stealing, it's pretty much a criminal act. There is substantial penalty for stealing stuff. Willful copyright infringement are criminal acts--it's just the FBI doesn't have the time to prosecute. Since nobody can be sent to jail in this case, the punishment is paying more money.

One may argue that the potential harm is larger than $60K, then the ratio will be less than 300. Also, since the plaintiff is financially vulnerable, a high punitive/actual ratio is justified. Basically, if the acts are close to criminal and the victim is weak, more severe punishment must be given.

What if the court awards $1.6 trillion and the defendants can't pay? BK may be an option. But, in case of willful infringement, the defendants can't even discharge the judgment via BK.

The catch is, US copyright laws don't apply in Russia -- unless infringement originated in US.

2007 the year of total domination

Time flies. It's 2007 and we are only a few months away from true quad core. With 8 sockets, you will see affordable 32 way (8x K8L) AMD64 computing. Against this 32way monster, Intel is stuck at 8 cores (2x Clovertown) struggling for a 1333MHZ FSB.

If we reveiew the situation since the beginning of time, AMD and Intel had always been in a close race. But, that is going to change in 2007. For the first time, AMD will enjoy a 4x performance lead in servers. In desktop, its lead will be 2x with K8L Quad FX.

As x86 systems getting more and more powerful, the RISC pie will shrink more.