Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

Forget Intel and AMD for a minute. The two largest PC circuit board makers, Asus and Gigabyte, are at it.

The Asus motherboard at the center of the feud

(Credit: Asus)

PC motherboard maker spats have typically taken place below the radar. But a recent round of particularly sharp recriminations have become very visible because they go to the core of a new trend in marketing: How green is your motherboard?

This is what happened: Gigabyte, according to reports, said in Taipei earlier this month that Asus' EPU (energy processing unit)-based motherboards do not achieve the power savings that Asus claims.

In short, Asus claims power savings of just over 80 percent, while Gigabyte claims it is closer to 59 percent.

Gigabyte's attack on Asus alleged that the EPU is purely a marketing term and that Asus did not change the design, firmware, or packaging of the motherboards. Asus returned fire saying its claims were legitimate and threatened legal action, concluding its statement with: "Asus reserves the right to take legal action against any individual, organization or corporation which creates or spreads such rumors."

Seemingly pretty tame stuff by Intel-AMD warfare standards but an issue that has serious implications in the green computing age. Motherboard energy efficiency "is a huge marketing issue as of now," said Wolfgang Gruener of TG Daily that reported on the issue along with Tom's Hardware.

But it does cry out for perspective, according to Dean McCarron, principal at market researcher Mercury Research. Some of the interest in this issue emanates from Web sites that cater to enthusiasts that build their own systems. "The build-your-own crowd...that's a tiny, tiny part of the market...on the order of 1 to 2 percent of all motherboards," McCarron said.

"When you ask how important it is, you have to ask--how important is it to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and systems integrators? There it's becoming of increasing importance," he said. "Dell or HP or Lenovo...You'll see them now offering low-power (models). None of those classifications existed five years ago. So, it's becoming an item of increasing importance over time."

This is true. Dell, for example, says on its business desktop page: "Thanks to Energy Smart technologies, the OptiPlex 755...can save you up to 78 percent on power."

The feud may also have some parallels with Intel-AMD wrangling. As Asus grows in size, McCarron sees other motherboard vendors picking on Asus, the way smaller processor suppliers target (rightly or wrongly) Intel. Asus had sales of $6.9 billion in 2007 and, in addition to motherboards, makes laptops, desktops, servers, graphics cards, mobile telephones, pocket PCs, and a host of computer accessories.

Intel will introduce the Q9650 Core 2 Quad processor in the third quarter, according to Chinese-language Web site HKEPC, almost halving the price of the current high-end Intel part with similar specifications.

(Credit: Intel)

The Q9650 will be priced at $530, according to HKEPC, close to half the price of the similarly spec'd high-end "Extreme" QX9650, which is listed at $999 on Intel's pricing Web page.

Like the QX9650, the Q9650 will have a clock speed of 3GHz, a 1333MHz front-side bus (FSB), and 12MB of cache memory.

The other notable desktop processor slated to debut in the third quarter is the Core 2 Duo E8600. This will have a clock speed of 3.33GHz, a 1333MHz FSB, and 6MB of cache memory, according to HKEPC. It is expected to be priced at $266.

The E8600 will top the currently available E8500, which runs at 3.16GHz and is priced at $266.

When contacted, Intel had this to say: "We publicly acknowledge that we will have future 45nm Intel Core 2 processor offerings which fit into LGA775 sockets and take advantage of currently available and future desktop platforms with similar physical, power, and thermal characteristics."

HKEPC also lists price cuts. The quad-core Q9550 (2.83GHz), for example, is slated to drop from $530 to $316 (the upcoming Q9650 will push the Q9550 down to a lower price point). The widely-used Q6600 (2.4GHz) is expected to fall from $224 to $203.

The Core 2 Duo E8500 should see its price fall from $266 to $183.

UPDATE An alliance to promote the use of Intel's Itanium processor said a quad-core version of the chip will come out in early 2009. The alliance also disclosed more than a 30 percent jump in volume growth year to year and an update to its partnership with Microsoft, among other announcements.

Itanium is an Intel 64-bit architecture for high-end servers. It differs from the x86 architecture, widely used in PCs. One principal difference is the way the compiler is used. Because the compiler makes decisions about the parallel execution of instructions, the processor can execute up to six instructions per clock cycle.

(Credit: Itanium Solutions Alliance)

The quad-core version of the Itanium, code-named Tukwila, will come out in early 2009 and be one of the first "monolithic" quad-core designs from Intel, said Rob Shiveley, worldwide marketing manager of the Mission Critical Server Platform Group at Intel. A monolithic design puts all four cores on one piece of silicon (called a die). To date, Intel has built its quad-core processors by combining two dual-core processor dies. AMD's "Barcelona" Opteron quad-core design puts all four processors on one die.

This will give system vendors the ability to deliver eight-socket systems with up to 32 cores (4 cores per socket), said Mike Mitsch, General Manager, Enterprise Servers, IT Platform Group, NEC Corporation of America.

Tukwila will also have an integrated memory controller and QuickPath Interconnect technology, Shiveley said. This will increase the data transfer rate within the processor. Intel's "Nehalem" processor--due in the fourth quarter of this year--will also be a monolithic design with an integrated memory controller and QuickPath Interconnect technology.

On-chip cache memory for Tukwila will also be increased from 24MB to 30MB. "It is focused on database performance"--that's what the large 30MB cache is for, Shiveley said. Windows Itanium platforms are used, for example, to consolidate a larger number of SQL database servers.

Using two billion transistors (the bulk of the transistors are allocated to the large cache memory), Tukwila will be based on Intel's 65nm process technology and will initially have a clock speed of up to 2GHz at both 170 watts and 130 watts.

NEC's Mitsch said Itanium also supports extremely robust error detecting and error correcting memory. "We're in the process of qualifying up to two terabytes of logical (memory)," he said.

On another front, the Itanium Solutions Alliance announced that worldwide annual Itanium-based factory system revenue and system volume continued to grow in 2007, with a year-over-year increase of 30.8 and 36.3 percent, respectively. The Asia-Pacific region led the way, with year-over-year growth in factory system revenue and system volume of 61 percent and 45 percent, respectively. In Japan, Itanium-based revenue exceeds all other non x86 server platforms, the alliance said.

The alliance also said it is collaborating with Microsoft to deliver new programs and tools to help businesses migrate from "costly legacy RISC systems and mainframes" to Itanium-based platforms. Currently, a fourth of the more than 13,000 Itanium-based applications are Windows Server-based, the alliance said.

Other recent developments include: an NEC enterprise server with dynamic hardware partitioning functionality for Microsoft Windows Server 2008--the NEC Express5800/1320Xf. Sun Microsystems previewed Itanium-optimized Java SE 6 running on an Itanium-based server in several different SOA (service-oriented architecture) scenarios.

Advanced Micro Devices will try to make buying a game PC more like selecting a game console.

"AMD Game!" will put badging on game PCs and set minimum standards for PCs that carry these badges. The idea is to allow gamers to select a PC like they would an Xbox 360 game console model and to drive home the point that an integrated graphics chip (from Intel, for example) is not good enough for a decent gaming experience.

AMD's specifications will target mainstream PC gamers, not high-end enthusiasts necessarily. Initially, the specifications will cover only desktops, with notebook standards coming later.

About a dozen resellers will launch systems with the badging, including Acer, Alienware, iBuypower, and Velocity Micro. Microsoft and Logitech will also support AMD Game!.

AMD Game! minimum requirements

(Credit: AMD)

AMD has good reason to revisit its game PC strategy. The PC gaming alliance estimates 263 million gamers worldwide, with global PC game (software) revenues estimated to be $9.6 billion in 2008. But more importantly, AMD's acquisition of ATI has put it in a unique position to be the only chip supplier in the x86 PC market that offers both a CPU (central processing unit) and discrete, high-end GPU (graphics processing unit).

And it needs a larger presence in the game PC market. Most of the game PCs from resellers like Falcon Northwest and Voodoo come with Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. An equally dangerous trend is the proliferation of PCs using Intel-based integrated graphics: These PCs are not capable of playing games the way they should be played, according to AMD.

"We're not doing a good job of getting that balanced solution to people," said Brent Berry, product marketing manager for AMD. By "balanced," Berry means a cost-effective solution that offers a more precise balance of CPU and GPU performance. Nvidia calls this the "optimized PC."

"Consumers are not getting a great gaming experience with IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor)," Berry added.

Badges will direct consumers "to solutions that are specifically validated for gaming," Berry said.

The standard AMD Game "user experience" target will be a system with 1280x1024-pixel high-definition (HD) resolution that can achieve 30 frames per second, Berry said. The AMD Game Ultra will be "beyond HD" at 1600x1200 pixel and 30 frames per second.

AMD Game! badging

(Credit: AMD)

"In North America, about 60 percent of consumers say they plan on using their PCs for video games," said Berry. "But when you do a check on what people actually did on their PCs, you find out that 80 percent actually played games on their PCs."

AMD Game! minimum requirements are an AMD Athlon 5600+ X2 processor, ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics, and an AMD 770 chipset or Nvidia nForce 500 series chipset.

AMD Game Ultra minimum requirements are a Phenom X4 9650 processor, ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics, and an AMD 770 chipset.

More at AMD Game.

Advanced Micro Devices filed more legal papers this week alleging monopolistic practices by Intel. Some of AMD's allegations involving PC makers are the most intriguing. Even when large blocks of text have been redacted. Moreover, the stridency of the language approaches that of the attacks from Nvidia's CEO in previous weeks.

(Credit: AMD)

AMD in June 2005 filed an antitrust complaint against Intel claiming that Intel illegally maintained a monopoly in the market for microprocessors.

As part of the ongoing legal process, AMD filed a response (to Intel's Preliminary Pretrial Statement) on Thursday with the U.S. district court in Delaware concerning Intel's alleged monopolistic practices.

The document contains broad allegations as well was vendor-specific ones. Most of the particulars of allegations regarding "exclusive dealing" agreements are redacted (blackened out), but tantalizing prefaces to the redacted areas remain.

Allegations related to Sony and Toshiba are significant because Sony is still an exclusive user of Intel chips in its mainstream notebooks (as is Apple), while Toshiba broke a long stretch of exclusivity last year.

"Sony and Toshiba were 100% Intel exclusive for five and seven years respectively." After some redacted text, the allegations continue: "(although Sony's five year clock continues to tick as it remains exclusive today). Intel denies that this long term exclusivity had anything to do with the millions of dollars that Intel funneled into each company."

There are also allegations related to IBM. "Intel denies that it ever 'paid IBM' to limit IBM's marketing of Opteron-based systems or to 'shelve' development of Opteron servers."

After a swath of redacted text, the allegation continues. "So, between 2000 and 2005...Intel conditioned its grant of discounts, rebates, special funds and other consideration on IBM's explicit agreement to maintain its Intel exclusivity and to cancel or defer launches of AMD-based products."

Intel's statement that predates the AMD filing claimed that "AMD's lawsuit is part of a larger strategy to secure greater success by deterring Intel from aggressive competition. Stripped of hyperbole, AMD's complaint accuses Intel of competing too aggressively, by offering customers attractive, discounted prices and marketing and technical support to win their business."

Intel also stated that "AMD's case appears based on the logical fallacy that despite AMD's strong success in the market segments in which its products offered advantages, it should have been even more successful, and thus Intel must have competed unfairly."

Intel continued. "AMD...has often floundered, introducing products that often failed to live up to expectations, even after embarrassing delays. And while AMD seeks to portray itself as the innovator in the microprocessor industry, its brief period of a computing performance advantage with the Opteron microprocessor cannot mask AMD's historical and current position as a laggard in computing performance."

And in an Intel response filed on Thursday, the company said: "Inconvenient facts--such as AMD's 'capture [of] nearly 60% of HP's U.S. retail sales,' according to AMD's own complaint...are swept aside to preserve the dramatic effect."

"Moreover, the argument that Intel's discounts are provided on an 'all or nothing' basis, or that OEMs are subject to punishment or retaliation, is wrong. All of the major OEMs doing business with Intel received significant discounts, whether or not they bought from AMD, and AMD does not contend otherwise."

In AMD's response filed this week the company says: "There is a fundamental distinction between exclusion of a rival through straight-forward underselling (price predation) and exclusion by means of a conditional discount that, on a unit-by-unit basis, is nominally less than the rival's discount."

AMD also makes some more sweeping allegations, including: "What this case is...about is Intel's conditional payments, conditional discounts, punishments, threats, coercion, and assorted technological chicanery that in combination closed AMD's heightened window of opportunity and thereby prevented it from achieving sustainability as a long term innovation rival. Intel is in denial when it says nothing of the sort happened. The record even at this early and preliminary stage of discovery is replete with instances of just such misconduct."

Intel's Response to Plaintiff's Joint Preliminary Case Statement

Plaintiff's Joint Response to Intel's Preliminary Pretrial Statement

Intel Preliminary Pretrial Statement

AMD-ATI and Nvidia are preparing for the next graphics chip showdown. And there is already a good deal of information (and rumor) on the two chips due in June.

The names of the two upcoming product families have been widely reported: The ATI line is branded as the Radeon HD 4800, while the Nvidia is dubbed the GeForce GTX 200.

Advanced Micro Devices is expected to launch the HD 4850 (price estimates of graphics boards range between $189 and $219) and then follow with the 4870 (estimates range between $199 and $279). In the fourth quarter, AMD plans to add the dual-chip ATI Radeon 4870 X2.

Nvidia will respond with the high-end GeForce GTX 200 family. Initial products will be the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280.

VR-Zone has already gotten its hands on some preliminary performance numbers for the HD 4850 and 4870. German-language site Hardware-Infos has posted a table with specifications of the HD 4850 and 4870.

Tech site tg daily said "that card vendors will start printing their boxes next week, which means that the specifications are final at this time."

Less seems to be known about the Nvidia GTX 260 and 280, though a Turkish site is claiming to have all the specifications.

Dell is taking steps to promote Alienware PCs on its Web site as the PC maker tries to collaborate more--rather than compete outright--with its Alienware unit.

Dell has added the Area-51 m9750 to its gaming laptop Web site, according to a Dell company blog.

Dell Web page features new Alienware game notebooks

(Credit: Dell)

"The Alien invasion has continued, with the addition of the Area-51 m9750 to the Dell gaming laptop Web site lineup," according to the post. The 17-inch notebook offers two 512MB GeForce 8700m GT cards as an option.

The blog also notes: "It was never really in the cards to do away with the XPS gaming products early, but instead to integrate the development teams from both Alienware and XPS...The XPS isn't going away, though it may go in new directions as hinted by the XPS One and the slimline XPS m1330."

A Wall Street Journal report had stated that Dell would quickly kill off its XPS line, which Dell later denied.

The starting prices for two featured Dell XPS M1730 notebooks are about $600 and $1,100 more than the starting prices for two featured Alienware systems on Dell's notebook gaming page.

An Area-51 m9750, for example, starts at $1,399. But add a 17-inch WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 screen, an Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 2.33GHz processor, another gigabyte of memory (for a total of 2GB), and a 160GB 7200 RPM hard disk drive, and the price jumps to $2,524.

This brings the Alienware notebook a lot closer to the Dell 17-inch XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition in price ($2,599) and features. Interestingly, the Alienware m9750 notebook is not available with 45-nanometer Intel T8300, T9300, T9500 (or X9000 Extreme) processors. Dell does offer these processors.

Is the end of the Intel-AMD duopoly nigh? Via Technologies is hoping this may be the case when it announces the "Isaiah" processor later this month.

Via Isaiah processor is targeted at mainstream notebooks and desktops; top: Isaiah processor; bottom: $398 15-inch Everex gBook

(Credit: Via, Wal-Mart)

The company's first high-performance x86 chip will be targeted at the mainstream PC market--another first for the Taipei-based chip supplier. Via processors have historically appeared in ultrasmall mobile devices (such as the OQO), embedded computers, or thin-client computers.

"It puts us into the mainstream market for the first time," said Richard Brown, vice president, corporate marketing at Via.

Isaiah, like Via processors before it, will still hew to the lower-power line, however.

Correction: Isaiah's TDP (Thermal Design Power or power envelope) is not confirmed at this point. However, Glenn Henry, president of Centaur Technology (the Via subsidiary that designed Isaiah), said in a previous interview that Isaiah will consume more power than Intel's Atom processor but "has the same power curve" as Via's existing C7 chip.

One of the main differences between Isaiah and Atom is that Intel's chip uses a more simple "in-order execution" design compared to Isaiah's Superscalar, out-of-order design.

Because of this more sophisticated design, Isaiah may deliver higher performance than Atom, though independent benchmarking will be the final judge. But more to the point, Isaiah may be competing more with Intel's low-end Core 2 or Celeron lines than with Atom in some cases (since Isaiah will be initially targeted at mainstream notebooks and desktops).

Via subsidiary Centaur Technology designed the processor. "Centaur has been working on this for the last three years. It's between two and four times the performance of C7 (Via's current processor). So, it' very, very close to (Intel's) Core 2. Core 2 solo (single core)," Brown said.

The Via C7 processor is currently being used in a design that may herald more Isaiah-based mainstream notebooks. The $398 Everex gBook is being sold at Wal-Mart with a 15-inch screen, a 1.5GHz Via C-7M processor, 512MB of DDR2 system memory, a 60 GB hard disk drive, optical drive, Ethernet, and wireless. It uses the gOS Version 2 operating system, a Linux distribution.

"We're in full agreement with the optimized PC concept," Brown said. An idea put forward by Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, it postulates that a consumer will get better PC price-performance by adding a $50 graphics card rather than a two or three hundred dollar quad-core processor. "You can have a processor like Isaiah matched with a better graphics card," Brown said. "There's opportunity in both desktops and notebooks."

Last month, Via and Nvidia announced a platform billed as the "The World's Most Affordable Vista Premium PC," the sub-$45 processing platform will combine Via's Isaiah processor with an integrated Nvidia graphics chipset.

Fast silicon is hitting a wall in game PCs, according to Alienware, which is looking for ways to boost game PC performance.

Parent company Dell vowed on Tuesday to pour more resources into the game PC unit and invest in "product development, design, and engineering."

Alienware Area-51 m9750 notebook

(Credit: Alienware)

Alienware's Marc Diana believes optimizing systems for the 64-bit world would allow game PCs to make big strides in performance. In effect, today's 32-bit environments are putting a crimp on PC-based gaming.

"So many people are caught up in this hardware race. Dual-core, quad-core this and that," said Diana, who is Alienware's product marketing manager for desktops. "If these companies--Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia, ATI, and AMD--if they'd just sit down and realize the performance benefit of optimizing their drivers and software for 64-bit."

"I think that would make sense now," Diana said emphatically.

Much of the software in the PC world is still 32-bit, including most copies of Windows XP and Vista. In fact, Diana said Alienware doesn't offer 64-bit operating systems because "we don't feel comfortable shipping a system to a customer with the 64-bit driver support that's out there in the industry."

The most obvious limitation of 32-bit operating systems and applications is a cap--4GB--on how much memory an operating system can use. And some applications can't even use the entire 4GB. "Who cares about DDR3 memory? What about giving me 4GB?" Diana asked.

"They're building (software) for something that is inherently very old technology," he said. "We (need) drivers that are very healthy in the 64-bit space. I'm not saying that 64-bit drivers don't exist. I'm just saying there's not enough software development and support on that end to warrant companies like us to move to 64-bit operating systems."

He also talked about other factors--beyond faster processors and graphics chips--that affect system performance, particularly for consumers who have limited budgets. "If I was looking to invest in one component over another," Diana said, "I would probably invest in a really good motherboard," and after that, a dual-core processor and a midrange graphics card such as Nvidia's 8800GT or ATI's X2 card.

New DDR3 memory is also becoming more of a factor. DDR3 memory is offered in two Alienware platforms. "It is the highest-performing memory now on the market. But I'm not so sure it's quite there yet. The cost is very high," he said. "Six months from now it will start making a lot more sense (economically) than it does right now." Because of this, DDR2 memory is still widely used.

DDR3 memory modules use less power and double the data prefetch buffer to 8 bits from 4 bits per cycle. DDR3 also operates at higher clock rates (1600 MHz), among other improvements.