Intel PWNZ AMD’s Quad Core with a running OctoDeca Core CPU

What the hell is AMD showing off Barcelona in this week’s ISSCC – Integrated Solid State Circuit Conference? If this is management’s way of desperately saving advertising money, then I say, good job. Sure everyone knows they’re not bringing anything to the conference, but what the heck, it sure is nice for AMD to be around the big boys in semiconductor innovation and pretend they’re one of them.
Look! AMD is talking about Barcelona’s power management and how its 40% better in performance/watt (sure, because they haven’t really had one turned on yet). Good for you AMD.
Meanwhile Intel shows off an actual working 80 core – 62 watt – Teraflop CPU. It’s going to be quiet in AMD’s booth. But hey, at least they get free advertising!
Intel Builds the Fastest Chip Ever!

This non-performance related presentation of AMD is quite alarming. I’d keep my eyes open if I was an AMD investor. The emphasis on performance/watt is a bit strange as well. There’s a lot of wiggle room in this benchmark compared to just simple stating “performance”. I’m thinking it’s either that they’re not confident of beating Intel’s offering at the time of launch or they already know that the K10 is DOA. Another possibility is that Opteron orders are so bad at the moment that they don’t want to Osborne it further with Barcelona benchmarks.