( PLZ NOTE THAT ALL THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTINS HERE, ARE MY PERSONAL THOUGHTS. THERE IS STRONG POSSIBILITY THAT YOU MIGHT BE DISAGREE WITH ME.)
Hello Friends,
you must be heard of 2 microproccesor chips making giants......INTEL and AMD.
Intel :
-Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC; SEHK: 4335) is the world's largest semiconductor company and the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most personal computers.
-Founded on July 18, 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation and based in Santa Clara, California, USA.
-Intel also makes motherboard chipsets, network cards and ICs, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors, and other devices related to communications and computing.
- Intel's successful "Intel Inside" advertising campaign of the 1990s made it and its Pentium processor household names.
- Intel created the first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971,. During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs . During this period Intel became the dominant supplier of microprocessors for PCs, and was known for aggressive and sometimes controversial tactics in defense of its market position .
-Intel introduced the 486 microprocessor in 1989, and in 1990 the processors code-named "P5" and "P6" in parallel . The P5 was earlier known as "Operation Bicycle" . The P5 was introduced in 1993 as the Intel Pentium . The P6 followed in 1995 as the Pentium Pro and improved into the Pentium II in 1997.
- The Hillsboro team designed the Willamette processor which was marketed as the Pentium 4, and later developed the 64-bit extensions to the x86 architecture, present in some versions of the Pentium 4 and in the Intel Core 2 chips.
Partnership with Apple:
-On June 6, 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be transitioning from its long favored PowerPC architecture to the Intel x86 architecture, because the future PowerPC road map was unable to satisfy Apple's needs. The Apple Xserve server was updated to Intel Xeon processors from November 2006, and is offered in a configuration similar to Apple's Mac Pro.
Pentium :
- Pentium series is the Microproccessor series mainly targeted towards household computers.
- Till now Pentium I, Pentium II, Pentium III , Pentium IV , Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Exstreme versions are released.
Varous Models:
Model ................Clock speed.........Cores..........L2 cache
Core 2 Duo.............E6300............1.83GHz.......2 2MB
Core 2 Duo.............E6400............2.13GHz.......2 2MB
Core 2 Duo.............E6600............2.4GHz.........2 4MB
Core 2 Duo.............E6700............2.66GHz.......2 4MB
Core 2 Extreme........X6800............2.93GHz.......2 4MB
Core 2 Quad...........Q6600............2.4GHz.........4 8MB
Core 2 Extreme........QX6700..........2.66GHz......4 8MB
AMD :
-Advanced Micro Devices(AMD), (NYSE: AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets.
-Its main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers, and processor technologies for handheld devices, digital television, and game consoles.
-AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture after Intel Corporation, and the third-largest supplier of graphics processing units. It also owns 21 percent of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory.
-In 2007, AMD ranked eleventh among semiconductor manufacturers in terms of revenue.
-AMD was founded on May 1, 1969, by a group of former executives from Fairchild Semiconductor, including Jerry Sanders, III, Ed Turney, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford and three members from Gifford's team, Frank Botte, Jim Giles, and Larry Stenger.
-The company began as a producer of logic chips, then entered the RAM chip business in 1975. That same year, it introduced a reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080 microprocessor. During this period, AMD also designed and produced a series of bit-slice processor elements (Am2900, Am29116, Am293xx) which were used in various minicomputer designs.
-AMD's first completely in-house x86 processor was the K5 which was launched in 1996.
-In 1996, AMD purchased NexGen specifically for the rights to their Nx series of x86-compatible processors.
-The K7 was AMD's seventh generation x86 processor, making its debut on June 23, 1999, under the brand name Athlon. On October 9, 2001 the Athlon XP was released, followed by the Athlon XP with 512KB L2 Cache on February 10, 2003.
-AMD released the first dual core Opteron, an x86-based server CPU, on April 21, 2005.The first desktop-based dual core processor family — the Athlon 64 X2 — came a month later.
- AMD has also started to release dual-core Sempron processors in early 2008 exclusively in China, branded as Sempron 2000 series, with lower HyperTransport speed and smaller L2 cache, thus the firm completes its dual-core product portfolio for each market segment.
-The latest AMD microprocessor architecture, known as K10, became the successor to the K8 microarchitecture. The first processors released on this architecture were introduced on September 10, 2007 consisting of nine quad-core Third Generation Opteron processors. This was followed by the Phenom processor for desktop.
Various Models:
Model................................Clock speed....Cores....L2 cache
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ .........2.3GHz............2.........1MB
Athlon 64 X2 5000+..........2.6GHz............2.........1MB
Athlon 64 X2 5600+..........2.8GHz............2.........2MB
Athlon 64 X2 6000+..........3.0GHz............2.........2MB
Athlon 64 FX-70..............2.6GHz............4.........4MB
Athlon 64 FX-72..............2.8GHz............4..........4MB
Athlon 64 FX-74..............3.0GHz............4..........4MB
Litigation Between Intel and AMD :
There is long history of litigation between Intel and AMD.
-In 1986 Intel broke an agreement it had with AMD to allow them to produce Intel's micro-chips for IBM; AMD filed for arbitration in 1987 and the arbitrator decided in AMD's favor in 1992. Intel disputed this, and the case ended up in the Supreme Court of California. In 1994, that court upheld the arbitrator's decision and awarded damages for breach of contract.
-In 1990, Intel brought a copyright infringement action alleging illegal use of its 287 microcode. The case ended in 1994 with a jury finding for AMD and its right to use Intel's microcode in its microprocessors through the 486 generation.
-In 1997, Intel filed suit against AMD and Cyrix Corp. for misuse of the term MMX. AMD and Intel settled, with AMD acknowledging MMX as a trademark owned by Intel, and with Intel granting AMD rights to market the AMD K6 MMX processor.
-In 2005, following an investigation, the Japan Federal Trade Commission found Intel guilty on a number of violations. On June 27, 2005, AMD won an antitrust suit against Intel in Japan, and on the same day, AMD filed a broad antitrust complaint against Intel in the U.S. Federal District Court in Delaware. The complaint alleges systematic use of secret rebates, special discounts, threats, and other means used by Intel to lock AMD processors out of the global market.
What to buy AMD X2 or Core 2 Duo:
New computer users are asking a very basic question, that, What to buy ?? Core 2 duo or will it be AMD X2 based computer !!
well, I myself using AMD based PC for many years and it has never gave me any problem. I believe that AMD had the best processor until Intel released the Core 2Duo. That put AMD behind the curve and then AMD decided to buy ATI, which further slowed developement. So my current choice is Intel Core 2 Duo.
CHIP WAR IS BACK ON........(Article on PCWORLD.COM)
-After struggling with delayed products and bad market through 2007, a lot of industry pundits started writing off AMD. Meanwhile, Intel held strong over the last year and a half, coming out with quad-core chips and a 45-nanometer (nm) processor family and staying well ahead .
-Recently, though, AMD has begun showing some signs of life, pushing out a graphics chip set early this month, and a slew of new desktop processors, first AMD Barcelona-based systems , 65-watt quad-core desktop chip and a triple-core desktop chip now in the mix, AMD may be starting to kick back into gear.
-"It's good to see AMD back in the game," pundit said. "They've still got a lot of issues to handle, especially financially. Once you dig a hole, it's hard to dig out of it. But they're definitely back in the game."
But as AMD picks up the pace, Intel isn't giving them a steady target.
-Intel execs announced less than two weeks ago that they plan to start shipping a six-core processor to resellers in the second half of this year. With 1.9 billion transistors and 16MB of Level 3 cache, the six-core chip, code-named Dunnington, will be built with Intel's new 45 nanometer technology. At the same time, Intel announced that it will start production of its upcoming 45nm, four-core Nehalem chips, and Intel's quad-core, 65nm Tukwila chip, an upgrade from the Itanium family.
- Nathan Brookwood , an analyst at research firm Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif ,says..
"I used to think that when both these companies were firing on all cylinders, it was like watching a tennis match between two world-class players," he said. "When you have those kind of matches, then the volleys go back and forth and back and forth until somebody gets a lucky break or makes a stupid mistake. I'm hoping there's enough karma in the universe for these companies to do really well in product design and hitting releases. Lately, it's seemed that there was only enough karma for one of them. But I'm not so sure that karma is a fixed quantity. It might be possible to create karma."
I am sure that both companies will come up with more and more better products, so either way, Consumers will win.
