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After the Pentium 4 debacle, Intel Israel came up with the Core micro-architecture to replace it. Since then, Intel has built up a 4 to 5 year buffer of develop
by trome 10y ago
After the Pentium 4 debacle, Intel Israel came up with the Core micro-architecture to replace it. Since then, Intel has built up a 4 to 5 year buffer of developed silicon so that if any generation or two is worse than their competitors, they won't be caught flat footed & have to pay contra-revenue to incentivize manufacturers to use their chips.
Most notably this can be seen in review samples of chips sent out, where AMD and Qualcomm will send out chips dated as being made shortly before being sent per the packaging, Intel will send out chips that are dated 4 to 5 years old, as they are from the first or second run of silicon that Intel did with that chip design.
- sitkack 10y agoIsn't that a sign of really really poor competition?
- trome 10y agoIt is, hence why they got fined in the EU recently. That being said, so long as AMD & Via are still alive and producing x86-64 chips, they'll avoid the brunt of anti-competitive regulations.
- russell_h 10y agoI'm fairly certain this isn't true, do you have any references?
- rl3 10y ago>Intel will send out chips that are dated 4 to 5 years old, as they are from the first or second run of silicon that Intel did with that chip design. Fabrication process advancements (i.e. die shrinks) in that time span are enough to rule out what you said with near complete certainty—let alone the notion Intel is somehow shelving architectures for 4-5 years at a time. Architectures may be developed over those spans, sure—but not shelved for that long.
- trome 10y agoI'm not saying that they have 4 to 5 full micro-architectures shelved (that'd be insane), but from talking to Intel Oregon people they do keep a deep stock that will buy them a few years. Think incremental improvements like you see from Intel every year, not 20% or 30% performance improvements.