You Cannot Stop the Peloton from Driving Forward

I am sure that most of you have been around the internet and back - checking out the latest from IDF on Conroe. I wrote up a simple counterpoint to offer other angles that would improve the results of AMD’s current technology. I have received over 200,000 visitors over the last couple of days and comments from both enthusiasts and investors alike. While enthusiasts seem to understand what’s happening – investors don’t seem to align with the concept of industry momentum, I hope this article will help you understand it more.

I must give credit to Intel, they allowed Anand to re-configure the AMD machine by updating the bios as per my recommendation, although he didn’t do any specific tweaks Anand assures us that the system was bone stock and pretty clean. Anand also corrected his mistakes on the FEAR benchmark – and ultimately concluded that Intel has a 20% lead over AMD’s current offerings.

I still stand by what I said – I do believe we could improve the performance of the AMD platform just by making the right hardware choices and installing software on the machine from scratch, after all this is what we do for a living. That does not mean an AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 would be faster than the Conroe, that’s just ludicrous to assume. It just means that we could close the gap slightly. It’s simply not possible for AMD’s current generation to be faster than the processor Intel plans to launch 6 months from now.

Even though most of the reviewers weren’t able to open the machines or run their own time demos – there is hardly a conspiracy theory here. I keep getting emails from fans (one particular email was totally out of line) suggesting there is some sort of conspiracy – I don’t believe this is the case at all.

Does that mean that AMD’s next generation won’t keep up? Let’s look at it this way; Intel is currently behind on many fronts – not solely related to performance. They are behind in platform, power, thermals, and performance. They have a lot of ground to make up; this is why Conroe will be such an impressive piece of kit as it repositions Intel to a point where they have fixed all of their previous issues and now all we have to do is hope they follow through. At the moment I find it impossible to get any Core Duo parts, so I don't know what to expect down the road - let's hope they get the process right.

AMD at 90nm still does not face the same thermal, power, or platform issues that Intel faced for the last number of years. AMD will therefore release their new AM2 platform without any roadblocks to slow them down. The obvious challenge that AMD faces against Conroe is related to performance. One needs to understand that even if AMD is slightly behind in six months it’s nowhere near the same position that Intel is currently in at the moment. So basically Intel is doing whatever they can to draw pressure away from themselves over the next six months. Is six months a big deal?

In terms of industry momentum, six months is an eternity, allow me to explain.

You cannot stop a Peloton from driving forward. AMD has been winning in the high performance space for the last few years. It is because of this constant winning in the high end that their influence went mainstream in 2005 and they’re recently whistled past 80% retail market share in the U.S. That is an unbelievable feat, and it clearly explains Intel’s knee-jerk reaction to debut a technology that is 6 months away before it comes to fruition.

What this essentially means is AMD will have a couple of very strong quarters before mama gives birth to Conroe and as a result AMD’s momentum will carry them through to their next core (and following quarters). I imagine Conroe will do very well for Intel, but AMD will not stop chipping away at the various markets they have been hitting. They will continue to blow away Wall Street estimates as they continue to grow in desktop, server, workstation, and notebook. By the time Conroe comes out AMD will already have 95% of their market covered, and there’s no arguing the momentum. They will have already made huge headway with a number of new customers, and no amount of P.R. can detract from fantastic numbers.

I will also not be wearing a bunny suit; I am still quite sure about that.

Now when AM2(AMD's next generation) comes out - if the performance is better than expected - it still won’t change things significantly before their next core. AMD will still have the momentum no matter what happens.

Am I excited about Conroe? Damn rights I am, but I am equally excited about AM2 – I love what AMD is doing with this platform. AMD has held top to bottom technology leadership for the last few years on every category other than notebooks. When you think about the possibilities for new Turion platforms on next gen platforms you realize that their momentum is not only attached to desktops, workstations and servers.

One last point, there are people suggesting that AMD "needs to counter Intel quickly" by releasing their performance numbers on AM2. That's just crazy talk - AMD does NOT need to play this game. It should be obvious why they don't need to answer to anyone on future speculation. There is no doubt that Intel’s P.R. strategy to showcase Conroe in its first trimester was the only way they could contend with their upcoming quarterly results.

Competition is good for the industry. Fair competition is good, Intel coming out with improved products pushes AMD to be its best. When the market works openly and fairly, everyone wins. Either way we wish both AMD and Intel good luck with their new technologies – and as an enthusiast I would like to thank both of you for making our space so exciting.