Barcelona processors fail to top Intel Core 2
Chip manufacturer forced to admit that performance claims may have been misleading
AMD’s recently unveiled Barcelona processors are not fast enough to beat Intel’s Core 2 processors, according to a report from market analyst Gartner.
The news comes as AMD was forced to admit that some of the benchmark tests for the processors, posted on its web site, are incorrect and potentially misleading.
According to Gartner analysts Martin Reynolds, John Enck and Stephen Kleynhans, the low 2GHz clock speed of the Barcelona processors poses no immediate threat to Intel’s Core 2 dominance.
“Although Barcelona will enable AMD to tackle the performance gap that Intel opened up with its quad processor Core 2 products, the lower-than-expected clock speed means AMD will not recover processor performance leadership against Intel’s current products,” Gartner said.
“AMD’s performance estimates are based on a 2GHz clock speed, which is lower than expected and suggests room for significant gains. The low clock speed leads us to believe that AMD has had implementation issues with the design. Gartner expects these issues to be corrected late in 2007, leading to an improvement in performance.”
However, Barcelona might give AMD a short-term edge in four-way systems since Intel does not yet have “a compelling four-way architecture”. However, this may change later this year when Intel introduces its Penryn processors.
One of Barcelona’s advantages will be that customers will be able to retro-fit older Opteron-based servers with the new faster processors. AMD claimed the Barcelona chips, due to ship in September, will increase the performance of floating point applications by up to 40 per cent and of some database applications by up to 70 per cent, compared with existing AMD chips.
Also this week, AMD was sued by Opti Technologies, which alleged that AMD breached two of its patents relating to a compact ISA bus interface. The firm is seeking jury trial as well as damages and costs. VIA Technologies, Broadcom and five other companies are also named in the suit.
In its filing, Opti said: “Each defendant has actual notice of the 807 Patent and of the 141 Patent, and is continuing its infringing activities. Each defendant’s infringement of the 807 Patent and of the 141 Patent is with knowledge, wilful and deliberate, and without a reasonable basis for believing that its conduct is, or was, lawful. Opti has suffered, is suffering and will continue to suffer damages for which Opti is entitled to relief under 35 USC 284 in an amount to be determined at trial.”
AMD has not yet responded to the lawsuit.