I just read that the Sony PSP uses 90nm chips and a future version will
use 65nm chips to use much less energy. Why doesn't AMD go to 65nm as
well? Do you think they're holding off until they've sold a lot of 90nm
chips, then they'll start selling 65nm chips? Planned obsolescence?

On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 09:00:07 -0800, wizzzer wrote:

> I just read that the Sony PSP uses 90nm chips and a future version will
> use 65nm chips to use much less energy. Why doesn't AMD go to 65nm as
> well? Do you think they're holding off until they've sold a lot of 90nm
> chips, then they'll start selling 65nm chips? Planned obsolescence?

They will. They are talking about having 65nm next year but I wouldn't
count on it. AMD has always been behind Intel in process technology
because they don't have the same resources. Each process transition take
billions of dollars and is very risky. The jump to 90nm burned the
pioneers, both literally and figuratively, because the process turned out
to much less power efficient then everyone had thought. Intel's 90nm P4s
are space heaters. AMD was lucky that they're transition to 90nm was a
year after Intel's, it gave them time to address a lot of the problems
with 90nm before they had to ship product on it. Expect the same thing to
happen with 65nm, Intel will get there first with AMD following by 6
months to a year.

Don't count on the 65nm chips being less power hungry, that rule
doesn't work the way it used to anymore. They have to do a lot more
development nowadays to get the chips less power hungry than simply
just shrinking it. The rule broke down when they made the transition
from 130nm to 90nm this time.

As an example of all of the extra things they have to do these days, we
can take Intel's experience vs. AMD's experience as a textbook account.
Intel raced to get their transition to 90nm done ahead of AMD and the
others. They were able to do this by simply doing a shrink to 90nm
without adding any new ingredients into their manufacturing process,
such as Silicon-On-Insulator technology. AMD on the other hand
specifically researched new manufacturing technology and added it into
their 90nm transition, in fact, they even added the technology into
their 130nm technology (they wanted to get practice at using it in the
mature previous generation). The result was, Intel's processors all
use more power at 90nm than they did at 130nm (even their Centrinos),
the amount of extra power depends on the Mhz level that each processor
runs at. By contrast, AMD was able to reduce their power consumption by
25% across the board when they transited!

Yousuf Khan

On 1 Apr 2005 08:26:45 -0800, "Yousuf Khan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Don't count on the 65nm chips being less power hungry, that rule
>doesn't work the way it used to anymore. They have to do a lot more
>development nowadays to get the chips less power hungry than simply
>just shrinking it. The rule broke down when they made the transition
>from 130nm to 90nm this time.
>
>As an example of all of the extra things they have to do these days, we
>can take Intel's experience vs. AMD's experience as a textbook account.
>Intel raced to get their transition to 90nm done ahead of AMD and the
>others. They were able to do this by simply doing a shrink to 90nm
>without adding any new ingredients into their manufacturing process,
>such as Silicon-On-Insulator technology. AMD on the other hand
>specifically researched new manufacturing technology and added it into
>their 90nm transition, in fact, they even added the technology into
>their 130nm technology (they wanted to get practice at using it in the
>mature previous generation). The result was, Intel's processors all
>use more power at 90nm than they did at 130nm (even their Centrinos),
>the amount of extra power depends on the Mhz level that each processor
>runs at. By contrast, AMD was able to reduce their power consumption by
>25% across the board when they transited!
>
> Yousuf Khan


And this is an great example of why AMD is the leader now in CPUs.

I wonder when the popular press will get out from under Intel's
advertising thumb and print the truth.

Intel should get down on their knees and kiss Bill Gate's behind for
delaying windows64 until they were ready.