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Let's see... the fact that AMD is promising previously unannounced .45 CPU's based on the current x2 chips with a 1Mb L3 cache for the second half of 2008 is just a co-incidence?
Clearly AMD's proposed 'CARTWHEEL' chips (see recent AMD roadmap) are to be built by TSMC. This situation has been a long time in the making, for AMD has spent many years trying to arrange the finacially viable manufacture of some of its chips in Taiwan.
However, by doing this, AMD will drive the ASP of good dual cores so low that all other families of Intel/AMD CPU's will be affected. Even the current x2 core from AMD, running at 3Ghz, will be good enough for 99% of most customers. Quad cores are not so great, when they offer little for the ordinary user, and cost vastly more.
Intel compatible CPU's with enough performance for the vast majority of applications are about to become as cheap as providing any other commodity PC function, like 2D graphics, sound, or fast ethernet connection. What happens to Intel and AMD when most people can use a CPU costing less than 20 dollars?
Today the performance of a modern PC is far more impacted by hard-drive speed, GPU speed, and the (crappy) MS OS. Therefore, in the very near future, CPU's are going to cease to be 'cash cows'. Even if a real use is found eventually for quad-core by most users, it will be at a time when the transistor cost is so low given the then current manufacturing process, that even a 4-core chip at 3Ghz+ will cost
Clearly AMD's proposed 'CARTWHEEL' chips (see recent AMD roadmap) are to be built by TSMC. This situation has been a long time in the making, for AMD has spent many years trying to arrange the finacially viable manufacture of some of its chips in Taiwan.
However, by doing this, AMD will drive the ASP of good dual cores so low that all other families of Intel/AMD CPU's will be affected. Even the current x2 core from AMD, running at 3Ghz, will be good enough for 99% of most customers. Quad cores are not so great, when they offer little for the ordinary user, and cost vastly more.
Intel compatible CPU's with enough performance for the vast majority of applications are about to become as cheap as providing any other commodity PC function, like 2D graphics, sound, or fast ethernet connection. What happens to Intel and AMD when most people can use a CPU costing less than 20 dollars?
Today the performance of a modern PC is far more impacted by hard-drive speed, GPU speed, and the (crappy) MS OS. Therefore, in the very near future, CPU's are going to cease to be 'cash cows'. Even if a real use is found eventually for quad-core by most users, it will be at a time when the transistor cost is so low given the then current manufacturing process, that even a 4-core chip at 3Ghz+ will cost
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[Posted by: zak 
| Date: 07/28/07 11:35:12 AM]
