China claims microprocessor technology breakthrough

Very succinctly put.

My cousin went on a trade junket to China and sat down with a major entrepreneur over there.

This gent was quite candid. He said, “Look, China is a market all by itself - 1/5th of the population of earth. What the west does not understand is that it is a market only for the Chinese. What market share we obtain from the rest of the world is essentially profit. We are not open for business, in so much as we prefer to buy Chinese goods from Chinese companies.”

If you go to the extremetech web site I linked to you will see that even in 2006 Intel blew away AMD on performance even without the 45 NM CPUs out yet.

Well of course it did. Since this is Intel's brand new architecture, up against AMD's four-year-old architecture, it had better wipe the floor with 'em!

But the more meaningful contest will be with AMD's equivalent-generation devices (Phenom/Barcelona).

It will be an interesting time in the industry over the next couple of years.

FWIW, AMD is scheduled to be on 45 nm by the second half of next year. They aren't as far behind as you might think.

A year behind in this industry is very far back.

Still I hope AMD doesn't get farther back. The more competition there is the better for technology advancement. And I read on the history of AMD and I like AMD . They are here in my city of Austin Texas. I would like to work for them lol.

It will be an interesting time in the industry over the next couple of years.

Yes it will be but for now Intel is pulling out way ahead of everyone. AMD SAYS they'll have a 45 nm CPU by next year but that remains to be seen:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2108904,00.asp

Core 2 Improvements in Penryn The most obvious improvement in Penryn is that it shifts the Core 2 architecture from the current 65nm manufacturing process to a much smaller 45nm one. As Loyd Case described in his Penryn update from January, this 45nm process incorporates a new "high-K plus metal gate" transistor technology that offers huge benefits in leakage reduction. Intel let us know that the shift to this manufacturing process will give them about twice the transistor budget per CPU, about 20% faster transistor switching speed, and many times less power leakage throughout the chip.

The article is not specific about what is involved in the statement that China is now able to manufacture an X86 processor but most likely it is probably refers to AMD’s Geode.

Excerpted from the following article dated October, 2005.

“Advanced Micro Devices on Monday said it had reached an agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and Peking University to license the company’s x86 Geode microprocessor design technology that will enable Chinese development of low-power and embedded computer solutions for consumer and commercial markets.”

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20051024100011.html

AMD management has been less than stellar in causing a financial chaos. Net operating losses has eaten cash reserves and they have had to borrow heavily at excessive interest rates. AMD today is in an extremely precarious financial condition and in danger of bankruptcy. They are behind Intel in technology and they desperately need their latest processor, the K10, which so far has missed the mid year promised launch. The K10 performance is also questionable and AMD continues to make only vague statements regarding its performance. Some people think AMD will be acquired by another company, such as IBM(unlikely) or they may be privatized through an acquisition by a private investment group. Not pretty.

The question remains why is AMD providing anything to China regarding x86 technology. This technology should remain in the US.

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