Dual-Core Duel for AMD, Intel

AMD this week demonstrated a dual-core Athlon 64 processor for desktops, workstations and servers -- the only x86 architecture dual-core server, it claimed. AMD's dual-core announcement leap-frogged Intel again; the Athlon 64 is due out in the second half of this year, while Intel won't have its dual-core, 64-bit Xeon processors out until the beginning of 2006.

The Only Way To Go

The dual-core architecture -- in which two CPUs are built onto one chip and act in tandem -- is a requirement if semiconductors are to keep up with Moore's Law.

"The traditional way of making things faster was to crank up the clock rate," Gordon Haff, senior analyst at Illuminata, told TechNewsWorld. "What you basically did was chop the single instruction stream into smaller and smaller bits. The problem is that physics is preventing us from cranking up the clock speed -- we've hit a frequency and power wall. There's not going to be a 10 GHz general processor, as Intel was claiming just a few years ago."

That means that in order to handle the increasing computing needs of enterprises and home users, dual-core processors, which can handle multiple threads of a task at the same time, are the only way to go.

No Urgency

But Haff said that consumers need not be in a hurry to upgrade. "Most PC users are not pushing the upper limits of capabilities, which is much different from 10 or 15 years ago when any PC you bought was not fast enough," he said, adding that the dual-core architecture was a much bigger issue for hardcore gamers or the server and workstation market.

The key difference between rivals AMD and Intel, given that performance and price numbers aren't available, is the plain fact that AMD's chips will be out first.

"What we can say now is that AMD appears to be coming out with a dual-core chip this summer and Intel is coming out with a dual-core chip in 2006, and that's a significant advantage," Haff said.

"In most applications, AMD Opterons tend to outperform Intel somewhat. Certainly they have a very competitive product today. This summer, you will be able to get twice the number of Opteron CPUs at roughly the same price as Intel."

Defining Processor

That's because licensing is likely to be calculated by sockets the processors take up instead of the pure CPU numbers. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has already said that it will license its software based on sockets. Most others have followed, although there are two big holdouts: Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) . Their argument is that each core is a separate processor that can function on its own. Others argue that when speeds have doubled in the past, prices have not gone up, nor have licensing fees.

IBM is primarily an Intel shop, with the exception of some high-performance computing systems that use Opteron chips. Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) has pledged allegiance to Intel as well, but Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) is happy to sell systems with chips from either company and Sun systems contain Opterons.

While the new architecture may be less important for home users, it is not without function.

"On the typical Windows workstation, there are a lot of threads going at once. There's network processing in the background, virus checking, browsers refreshing. A lot is taking place in the background of a modern PC," Haff said.

And once that technology is out there, he added, function is likely to follow.