AMD Shanghai memo leaks
AN AMD MEMO from Randy Allen, Senior Vice President, Computing Solutions about Shanghai has leaked out to the Polish site PC Lab. It paints a rosy picture of Shanghai for the launch to an internal audience.
There are a few key points to note, bearing in mind that it is written from a rather biased viewpoint. First is that AMD is shipping Shanghai chips to customers now, not a big shock considering it launches in less than two weeks. If they weren't shipping by now, then AMD would have some rather serious logistics to work out in the next 14 days or so.
Then comes the interesting point that AMD has a time to market advantage over 'our competitor', which is true since 2S Nehalems won't ship for about three more months, and then it will take a bit to ramp from there. Early word is that Shanghai will beat Penryn on clock-for-clock performance, the real question is whether or not they can jack the speed up.
Mr Allen then goes on to say that Shanghai shipped about 1Q early, and to make matters more hopeful, it is supposedly shipping under planned TDP and higher than expected clocks. Both of these are credited to getting the engineering back on track, and the new 45nm immersion process. Lets hope for the industry that this is a systemic change, not a fluke.
From there, the memo goes on to talk about price/performance, and price/performance-per-watt leadership. I take this as a bit telling that they won't have the outright performance lead, likely due to Intel's clock advantage, but it isn't a bad place to be considering how 2008 has been for the company up until this point.
Virtualisation is also leaned upon heavily, and it has been one of AMD's strong points up until now. With Nehalem pulling the memory controller on die, it will remain to be seen how much of that advantage goes away, virtualising this has been the killer app for AMD over the last few years.
In the end, it is clear that AMD thinks it has a winner on its hands. It will be quite interesting to see how Shanghai stacks up, both later this month vs Penryn, and in early 2009 vs Nehalem.
Game on once again. µ
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What if those nutty Americans actually put Obama in the white house??????????
However, McCain is still good for those Deep 'n Delicious ice cream cakes. Yum-bo.
Intel needs a competitive AMD to keep them honest. I'd hate to have to go back to the good old days of being spoon fed overpriced Intel processors.
... that they pull it off.
Weren't they this hopeful and confident about the Phenom only to follow it up with the B3 bug?

Make no mistake I want / we need them to get this right. Lets just rather not count our chickens before they hatch.
Shanghai? Shouldn't it be Dubai, do-buy, please do buy.

I too don't want a single chip giant overcharging us all, sitting on their technology, etc. We need a competition rule that forces any business with 90%+ of the market to open it's tech up to competition (through licensing or other methods).

Good luck Arab Micro Devices!
"I'd hate to have to go back to the good old days of being spoon fed overpriced Intel processors."

We are already there and have been for the last year since AMD failed wiht its barcelona. Intel has a huge margin on each processor sold and Creaming it from ever punter selling old processors or new smaller for redicules prices just look at the articales about the new Core i7.. $1000 processors are back then you need a $400 motherboard etc.
Then they feed the cheap market with over prices cheap Atoms that they make a killing on. Guess whos laughing all the way to the bank. Intel Execs. Should have bought some intel shares.
Agree with Homefries, we all need a strong AMD to keep Intel pushing, particularly in the server market. Recently there have been a number of <a href="http://360is.com/downloads/360is-V1624.pdf">hardware virtualization appliances</a> based on the AMD RVI technology which have shown Intel partners up in benchmarks.
I'd love to be able to buy AMD for my next round of upgrade - but I'll wait to see which gives me more bang for the buck.
And I'll admit I like the point-to-point architecture of Nehalem. With the memory controller (finally) on the CPU, things look good for Intel (again).

Come on, AMD, give us a big surprise !
systems since 80286, and having 100% of my stock portfolio in AMD, I now totally mistrust the company. They totally lost their credit by the deceiving, deception and dishonesty that followed the Barcelona development and introduction. 
The company execs can jump from joy and generate endless press releases, but I will wait for the HW review sites to see if there is any merit to the new chips. Until then, I buy Intel quads for my desktops.
I remember when AMD released their K6 233, it was the fastest thing for about 10 minutes, and then the pentium II 233 put it in it's place.

I like AMD, i have lots of amd machines, but even if they beat penryn (which is a great accomplishment considering their current deficit), they'll still be 2nd place to nehalem for at least another year or two or three... Slower clocks and less IPC means they'll still be competing on price.
If you are lagging in performance, and every other benchmark that is relevant, you release your benchmarks as soon as possible. Heck, even Intel does that. The fact that Shanghai launches in two weeks, and still no benchmarks are out doesn't tell a very nice story.
Why does AMD seem to re-invent the calendar every time they near a launch?

They said 45nm would ship "mid-08", "then H2'08".... how exactly is late Nov, one quarter early?

You'd think an internal memo would be honest and they would save the spin for the external communications! You don't think they INTENTIONALLY leaked this, do you?
If AMD had anything serious to show it would be all over the tech sites, no?
I hate intel, they have these dodgy things in their chips when you combine their chipsets to their cpus. It's like some big drm bull. and refuses to run some of my sh*t, and i'm thinking twice about investing anything more on intel - even if they are very fast.

It's been said; what is speed whithout control.

As for amd they are struggling to just get the cpu to run on it own, not if they attempted to do anything else they would fail and they know it - plus they're small anyway. This is what i think.

Amd chips are not that much off from intel (the high end amd in talking about not the shitty £20 ones).

I think because they (intel) are big and everything, they (intel) are being raped by those copyright morons to implement some bullsh*t. I just don't need to be part of or support that looser group.

Thats just me... make of it what you will. Come on, this is what the american democray is all about isn't it? Giving people the freedom.

All good.

Jon.
Good luck AMD. I hope your yield rate doesn't suck. The Arabian foundry might be better but thats aways off. 

As far as being spoon fed expensive processors? No one is forcing you to upgrade. I've always hated these whiners about how intel CPU's are overpriced and that we need amd. Poppycock I say- Some people just don't want to pay to play.
"Mr Allen then goes on to say that Shanghai shipped about 1Q early, and to make matters more hopeful, it is supposedly shipping under planned TDP and higher than expected clocks. Both of these are credited to getting the engineering back on track..."

Funny,I didn't realize AMD engineering was off track?!? I thought AMD CHOSE to release the lower clocks on 65nm 'because customers were demanding it'? .Must be getting hard for AMD to keep all the spin and lies consistent with each other? Weren't they boasting about their world class manufacturing technology not too long ago? (during the onset of the 1 year asset light/smart/removal talk)

Seriously, Charlie - you hold Nvidia accountable for their past spin and half-truths regarding the extent of their chip problems... but you give AMD a pass when they do similar things? How about some consistency, if not integrity?
Just 1 question Charlie:

From your article:
"From there, the memo goes on to talk about
price/performance, and price/performance-
per-watt leadership"

What happen if Intel discounted penryn so it
priced 10 dollars below the same performance
shanghai?

If you look INTC and AMD stock (search
Google/Yahoo Finance) 3Q profit for INTC is
2 B$ while AMD -67 M$.

With INTC market cap at 90+ B$ and AMD
at 2+ B$. Who do you thing would be able
to absorb the cost of the price war?

Would AMD too early to say they have the-
upper hand on price/performance/watts? All
Intel has to do is... discount. IF it ever felt it
is necessary.

What do you think?
"If AMD had anything serious to show it would be all over the tech sites, no?" .... 
posted by : krod, 05 November 2008 

QuITe the contrary, krod, it would be a very well kept Top Secret which is full of Eastern Promise and quite probably a hack/crack into the Promis System and Transactional Memory.
..be dancing in the aisles at this news.