Barcelona now just a mid-range server CPU?

…And it hasn’t even been demoed yet. Intel yesterday announced that it will pull in the 45nm Penryn core to 2H’2007. That completely erases AMD’s chance of at least closing in Intel. Unlike AMD’s dumb shrink from 90nm to 65nm which showed no performance increase, Core2’s move to 45nm brings in larger cache sizes, micro-architectural changes for higher performance and process changes (high-K metal gates) for power management. The Penryn family is planned to scale up to 4GHz while consuming significantly less power than current offerings. While AMD is known to be struggling with 65nm yields, Intel seems to be having no issues with 45nm which is the main reason for the very aggressive product pull in.

This is yet another setback for AMD who’s already struggling to make profits. The new K10 micro-architecture which was supposed to give AMD the ability to raise prices is now completely out of the picture. Besides Barcelona, AMD has nothing to offer for the next two years while Intel will be coming out with Nehalem (think Core3), most likely also pulled in to Q1’2008. Expect AMD to produce very little of the big-die-bad-yields Barcelona parts in 2007 as without the ability to charge a premium AMD will be making more money with older generation models.

This surely looks like Intel is making more frequent and larger jumps in what AMD describes as a “leap frog” game.


Intel's 45nm Penryn pulled in