Interview: AMD's Simon Solotko and the Third Core

SCOTT FULTON, BetaNews: Now, AMD does like to position itself sometimes as the underdog in order to help rally support among Americans, who tend to like the underdog. Is there any chance that, when we're judging this on performance, we're going to look at a head-to-head battle between a three-core Phenom and a four-core Core 2 Quad?

SIMON SOLOTKO, desktop brand nanager, AMD: Depends on the frequencies... think this will keep them honest. If they have a low-frequency quad-core, and it gets beaten by an AMD Phenom triple-core, that's certainly not the kind of brand-level message that they would want.

SCOTT FULTON: Uh-huh...You're saying "if." You're not saying "when."

SIMON SOLOTKO: Yea, I cannot predict all the things that my competitor will do, but suffice it to say that our high-frequency triple-core product on many benchmarks is going to do very well.

SCOTT FULTON: When you say "high frequency" triple-core, in this market -

SIMON SOLOTKO: [In comparison] with a potential low-frequency quad-core. The question is, how many megahertz of difference do you need before certain benchmarks favor either number of cores or the frequency? Or all the next-generation architectural benefits we get with Phenom?

SCOTT FULTON: We're not to make any assumptions now about whether this type of design moves over to the mobile space or not?

SIMON SOLOTKO: The only note I'd make is, the Griffin mobile processor for mobile is a substantially different architecture. So there's a very different set of dynamics, and we have substantial architectural differences between our mobile and desktop products. They are more than the architectural differences we have with Barcelona.

SCOTT FULTON: Same goes with server lines, right? We shouldn't make any presumptions there, right?

SIMON SOLOTKO: I certainly wouldn't.

SCOTT FULTON: When AMD unveiled the Phenom processor logo and the new Opteron processor logo...these new logos have four components. The new "O" has four arrows; the new Phenom has four rocket tailfins. Are we going to need to make it a three-tailfin for this one?

SIMON SOLOTKO: I barely noticed when I worked on the logo design that it had four rocket tails. I'm glad that this logo has stuck itself in your mind. I apologize that we get that much bandwidth...Yes, indeed it does have four; and no, I won't be altering it. Thanks for the humor. Any other brand-level recommendations, please send them to [our Marketing guy] so he can filter them out.

SCOTT FULTON: I'm not sure Intel saw this coming, and it's going to be very interesting how this is going to play out.

SIMON SOLOTKO: Yea, I think...we had a little insight into that, and yes, I think indeed it was a reasonably well-kept secret, which is a first. But again you can see how, for competitive reasons, the ability to come to market with a product that doesn't look like an architectural mess - which is what will happen if our competitor does this - is really a benefit of our true multicore design. There's nothing about this design, even if we were to make a dual-core out of the STARS core, it would have again all those same architectural advantages. So there is a great benefit to the architectural choices, and I thank the fortitude of some sound engineering decisions that were made many years ago, the benefits of which we are still extracting today.

I think also people are looking for AMD to do something different or exciting, or feel that we kinda have to, and so I think we're starting to answer some of that mail. It's nice to rise to the occasion. Certainly we understand the necessity and imperative of doing so.