Intel's Nehalem: The 'tock' heard 'round the world

There's a list of features which have historically pertained to Intel processors -- a list that's now smaller today than ever before. It's the list of features AMD has and Intel doesn't, leaving AMD at a widening disadvantage.

Prior to his having left AMD last year, marketing chief Henri Richard told BetaNews he believed that neither AMD nor Intel would ever enjoy a wide margin of performance advantage again in their histories. Instead, one would always be leap-frogging over the other -- five percent here, three percent there. And that process would end up being good for the consumer.

Nehalem is one pretty big frog for Intel. Today, the official curtain was lifted for availability of quad-core CPUs with what's now called Core i7 architecture. Though the precise distance that Core i7 may be leaping is only now being ascertained, the fact that i7 has fewer omissions that AMD can point out in comparison with its own architecture, gives even an amateur observer the impression that the distance could very well be stated in miles.

First, Core i7 chips integrate the memory controller onto the die for the first time in Intel's history, wiping away AMD's HyperTransport advantage. Second, HK+MG methodology is used in Core i7's production, dramatically reducing the problem of higher leakage at lower lithography sizes (32 nm), and nullifying AMD's historical advantage of using silicon-on-insulator (SOI) methodology instead of Intel's bulk silicon.

Third, Intel's new application of symmetric simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) will enable each core to handle as many as four simultaneous threads, in addition to Intel's reintroduction of hyperthreading. With all four (and later, inevitably, eight) cores truly sharing the same die, AMD can no longer call Intel to fault for making "chip sandwiches" -- sticking two dual-cores on a die and calling it four.

But even those changes may not be the stuff of AMD's current nightmares. While business publications this morning took Intel to task for introducing high-end technology to the upper echelon of its customer base during an undeniably lousy economy, those publications failed to take a good look at the early performance numbers from independent testers. For example, Sharky Extreme is reporting that Intel's new Core i7-920 -- the bottom-edge performer of its premiere trio of CPUs, at only 2.66 GHz -- has performance that is comparable with, in some cases virtually matching, Intel's current Core 2 Extreme 3.2 GHz QX9770 processor.

Why is that important? Because the QX9770 sells on the street today for $1,429.99, while the street prices for the first Core i7-920 are averaging right now at around $350. Meanwhile, the 2.93 GHz Core i7-940 which very measurably outperforms the QX9770, sells on the street for about $680 on average; and the 3.2 GHz Core i7-965 Extreme sells today at right about $1,150.

So for about 24% lower price than Intel's top of the line last week, you can get a CPU that performs about 20% better. This will drive AMD deeper into the value segment for shelter, as its high-performance CPUs such as the Phenom X4 9950 retreat to a price of around $200; and yes, that's still competitive on a price/performance basis. But it may be driving long, deep stakes into AMD's margins. While Henri Richard may have wanted his company's battle with Intel to remain marginal, that word may come to mean something much more dire for AMD in a very short period of time.