Intel’s Tick-Tock Clock Picking Up Speed

Those who might think that the regulation of the clock that governs the process changes of chipmaker Intel is done with a quartz oscillator would be completely wrong. The beat of change at Intel is not nearly that precise, allowing the company to slightly speed up, or slow the march of its designs into becoming silicon.

Though many companies are being slowed by the world-wide recession, Intel continues unabated, and in fact is speeding up the tick of their clock. The newest designs, formed on a wafer at a size of 32nm are being launched, while an entire process line, at 45nm has been given the death knell.

from TG Daily

Intel is scrapping its 45nm Havendale chips before they even entered volume production in favor of moving straight to the 32nm Clarkdale.

Sources at the chipmaker told Digitimes that the 32nm process was going better than anticipated, allowing them to move to the smaller process ahead of schedule.

As a result, Intel has canceled production plans for the 45nm Havendale CPUs which were originally scheduled to arrive at the end of this year and will instead launch the 32nm Clarkdale in Q1 2010 targeting the entry level and mainstream markets with prices ranging from $60-$190.

Intel has also issued updated end of life (EoL) and product discontinuance notices (PDNs) for a number of its current products. CPUs to be phased out in the second half of this year or Q1 2010 include the Core 2 Extreme QX9775, Core i7 940 and several Core 2 Quad, Pentium and Celeron CPUs.

Intel will issue a PDN for the Atom 330 and 220 in April 2010, according to sources at motherboard makers.

So the never under-capitalized Intel marches on. In fact, another name, not simply referencing processors is going away, Centrino. That grouping of chips, packaged to make a mobile desktop, will soon be no more.

Any sort of breathing room that AMD thought it might have had, is gone. AMD will still be a generation behind, and remain so for the foreseeable future. Only if amazing progress is made at Global Foundries, the AMD spinoff, will AMD be able to catch up. This means depressed dollars for any AMD designs; good for the consumers, but bad for the outlook of AMD.

AMD needs to jump ahead, and get to a smaller process size at least in step with Intel, but Intel simply will not let the pace slide one iota. This is also what has made one time CPU alternative VIA, a non-player. That company slipped and has simply not been able to catch up since. VIA has also lost out in the glue chips market as well, simply well behind in having any options available in a reasonable amount of time.

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During our crossing, Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and by the time we arrived I was fully convinced he understood it.Chaim Weizmann

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