Analysis of Intel and AMD in the CPU market
Thousands of dreams in June 2004
As we all know, the CPU is one of the most intense domains of this PC market. The CPU is the core, most important part of the PC. The technical content is extremely high, and the company has no several companies - Intel and AMD two companies Absolute advantage controls the entire market, Intel has a share of more than 70%. Intel and AMD interpretation of the PC market is extremely exciting, tragic competition.
The industry has a period called: "First-class enterprise sell standard second stream enterprises selling technology three stream enterprises selling products four stream enterprises." Although there is a loss, it also illustrates a fact that by weight: Standard> Technology> Products> Service, like Qualcomm, NVIDIA is a very good example of "upstream manufacturers". Today we have also simply analyze Intel / AMD in the Dragon Tiger fight in the CPU field.
Standard: The current CPU is collectively called X86-32, regarding the standards of facts on PC. It is based on Intel's launch of 80386cpu in 1986. Whether INTEL / AMD / VIA / MDP support / compatible with this instruction set, it is also the foundation of the entire 32bit operation. Since then, Intel has expanded the MMX / SSE / SSE2 / SE3 and other instruction sets, and AMD is here. 3DNOW! Instruction set, always, Intel extensions have supported extensive support than AMD, although Intel finally authorizes to AMD, but will slow a beat, such as Pentium 3 after using SSE instructions to authorize MMX to AMD, SSE2 After Pentium 4 is available for 18 months, it is authorized to AMD.
In 2003, AMD launched a 64-bit CPU and X86-64 instruction set compatible with 32 bit operations. It is a first machine. Intel means supporting this standard after nearly 1 year. Intel / AMD is a member of several international IT standards, but Intel has a greater voice, such as Intel leading to formulating PCI / AGP bus standards in the 1990s, peripheral USB standard, hard disk's SATA standard; It does not mention Intel is an important member of Wi-Fi. This year, the domestic WAPI's indefinite postponement is implemented, let us once again inspect the energy of Intel. The release of the PCI-Express standard for the next generation PC platform is also released under Intel, and the 915/925 chipset published by Intel in June 2004 is the first chipset that meets this standard. Intel has once again strong market opportunities. AMD can only support PCI-Express helplessly.
Products: Intel has a complete product line in the CPU market:
Server / Workstation: 64bit's ITANIUM Series 32bit Xeon Series
Desktop CPU: Pentium 4 Series
Mobile CPU: Pentium M Series
Where the Pentium 4 / Pentium M extends low-end Celeron series
And Pentium M also has ultra-low voltage versions for some special fields.
It can be said that the Intel product line is extremely rich, covering high high schools.
Confused AMD:
Low-end Athlon XP is compressed from low frequency Pentium 4
Mobile field: Athlon Mobile does not accept the unified brand of Pentium M / Centrino
High-end Athlon 64 (including Athlon
64 m
Although it is better than high frequency Pentium 4, there is no guarantees, there is no effort; there is no market. After the next few months, when the capacity is coming, it is really higher frequent Pentium 4 (year It will reach 4GHz and support 64bit extensions), Intel is only in this time, with 64bit extension Pentium 4 listing, will be more disadvantageous to AMD. In the field of server / workstation, Opteron is currently in the face of ITANIUM / Xeon, still achieved good record, rare, rare; but in the next 2 months ("August 2004), 64bit extension Xeon will also be listed! AMD wants to seize the key for these months, vigorously promote Opteron, otherwise the card in Intel is more bigger, I am afraid AMD to cultivate 64bit markets, Intel wants to enjoy their fun. In addition to the CPU, Intel also has a complete peripheral product line-chipset, network card, integrated graphics, etc. Test indicates that Intel's CPU runs most stable on its own chipset, and the performance is also the highest. Intel will Pentium M / 855PM chipset / wireless network card integration has achieved great success for this unified mobile computing brand. And AMD's chipset design capacity is lacking, and it has to rely on third-party company, such as VIA / NVIDIA, resulting in a chipset specification. Losing behind the CPU, lost the market opportunity. The first generation Athlon in 1999/2000 is an example. Intel is usually a new CPU has a new chipset release together. Recently, the LGA775 Pentium 4 and 915/925 chipset are also published in the same time.
Manufactured: CPU and all chips can be made into two aspects: design and manufacturing. AMD is not divided by Intel in the design of the CPU, but the manufacturing is far less intended, the latter has the current most Advanced Chip Manufacturing Factory - With a number of wafers and packages in the world (Shanghai also include Intel's package factory), the new Pentium 4 has adopted a 90-nanometer process, while AMD uses only 130 nm technology, and there is only one factory. The new chip has to find IBMs. Intel's chips are manufactured by themselves, which not only guarantees capacity and profits, but also supports the flexible design of the CPU, ensuring the market strategy is more active and flexible, 1998/1999 Intel is in extreme In a short period of time, the Celeron Series Pressing the Pentium CPU for Pushing Great L2 in a short time.
Software: Although Intel and AMD are hardware vendors, software is far from them, but in terms of intel are also very good. There are mainly 4 aspects:
1 Driver: Intel's chipset is very stable under WindowNS, the performance is also very good, this aspect is Wintel's power, Microsoft's extreme attention, on the other hand, INTEL has often released new drives; and running under Linux Nice. In this regard, AMD is a bit unreasonable. First of all, your chipset design can't be designed.
VIA / NVIDIA, etc., VIA, also also is also an Intel design chipset, in the field of CPU, is also one of the competitors, the relationship is also extremely subtle; the design chipset and CPU are not "tacit", the driver lags, There is often a major bug that appears.
2 Official Optimization Software: In addition to issuing normal drivers, Intel Releases Optimization Software IAA (Intel Application Accelerato For Windows 98/2000 / XP / 2003), the test indicates that the memory subsystem disk subsystem has 5% after installing IAA. -20% performance improvement! Everyone knows that the CPU's frequency increases by 10%, such as
2.0g
raise to
2.2g
Performance improvement is far less than 10%, usually only 1% -3% increase. Therefore, IAA is extremely excellent, equivalent to free upgrade CPU. 3 The optimization of third-party software; in this respect, Intel wins, currently on the market, in particular the media handling class is optimized for the MMX / SEE / SSE2 instruction set, although AMD's CPU also supports these instruction sets, but it is often Intel's CPU benefits the maximum. Domestic Kingsoft IDuba also optimizes the NetBust architecture (the architecture of the Pentium 4 / Xeon CPU).
4 Compiler: Intel also released its own C / C compiler, Linux has a complete version, and Windows can also be used as a VC / C plugin. You don't have to modify the source code with Intel's own compiler. Performance improvement! Although the AMD is now available to Athlon 64 optimized library, but still is still not enough.
Channel: Intel Leading PC Market CPU has been almost 30 years, long-term brand sedimentation, users, especially corporate users, the complete industrial alliance, mature market strategy AMD cannot match. Some people say: AMD is an engineer, and Intel is a businessman. This shows the problem. Intel has the support of IBM, HP, Dell and other international PC giants. There are also such ally such as Lenovo, etc. There is a precedent in China: If the non-Intel system is too powerful, Intel will put you in multiple aspects, such as the source. There is also a supporter like Lenovo, Intel will invite a product launch together, which will have a lot of points, which is more expensive than yourself.
Although it has achieved good results since the second half of 2003, the AMD and Intel gap are still very large, and there is still a long way to go. Do more users support - more understanding AMD Product, maybe it is not suitable for you this time;
Don't superstitize Intel's brand, the key is to choose something best for you.
