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Three things that have always been in Intel's favor have been their truly massive and always cutting edge fab capability (which no other cpu manufacturer has be
by InclinedPlane 14y ago
Three things that have always been in Intel's favor have been their truly massive and always cutting edge fab capability (which no other cpu manufacturer has been able to even come close to), their extremely well-funded R&D teams, and their industry relationships (largely due to those other two factors).
Intel is able to field several different processor lines and architectures simultaneously, and also develop multiple new architectures at the same time. That's not something that most other companies can do. They've also been reasonably good at recovering from mistakes quickly (something that Microsoft has also been fairly good at).
That said, it'll be interesting to see how things pan out with the changes to the computing landscape that are in the works now.
- Osiris 14y agothings that have always been in Intel's favor have been their truly massive and always cutting edge fab capability (which no other cpu manufacturer has been able to even come close to) On a flight a while back I struck up a conversation with a PhD that specialized in chip design. He suggested that if AMD was able to manufacture their chip designs in Intel's fabs, that they would be out Intel chips in terms of performance and power. The idea was that because AMD uses fabs that are, basically, two generations behind Intel, that their designs have to be more innovative to be able to work within the constraints of the older process. I'm no electrical engineer, so I took him at his word, but it certain points out that Intel's fabs are a distinct advantage.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoI wouldn't go that far. Intel definitely has an advantage in process technology, but it's not as though they rely on it exclusively to stay ahead. For example, currently the AMD and Intel CPUs in the server market are both at the same level of process technology, 32nm, and Intel's CPUs are still overall superior.
- rnemo 14y agoIntel's Ivy Bridge processor has been out for almost a year now, and is on the 22nm fab process.
- ippisl 14y agoIt's 22nm finfet. The finfet is equivalent to a 0.5/1 generation advantage in power or speed.
- mqatrombone 14y agoIvy Bridge still hasn't been released in the server space. The server market currently has Sandy Bridge chips. The Ivy Bridge chips are due at the end of the year.
- raverbashing 14y agoWasn't AMD moving to have (x86) chips made at TMSC? Maybe if they partner with IBM. Still, even if Global Foundries is two generations behind Intel, that's still one of the most modern fabs and being constantly updated is very expensive.
- ArtB 14y agoI've always felt that there fab division should have been forced to be split off from it's design division. It would be better for the industry if architectures had to compete on their merits and all designs had access to the same quality of fabs.