Athlon Advocates Beating Performance Drum

Electronic News, August 20, 2001 by Tom Murphy

Will Advanced Micro Devices be successful in getting message out?

In the daily struggle of the PC microprocessor war Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) fights against Intel Corp., there is also the battle marketers are waging alongside engineers.

Sunnyvale-based AMD (nyse: AMD) rose back into prominence by producing a microprocessor that achieved a 1GHz before Intel (nasdaq: INTC) did--despite all the engineering and marketing might of the larger company. It now looks as if Intel has a considerable lead in the microprocessor clock speed race as it prepares to launch a 2GHz version of its Pentium 4 processor on Aug. 27. AMD's fastest processor is a 1.4GHz Athlon, and the company's road map doesn't show 2GHz processor until sometime in the fourth quarter.

And, AMD falls even further behind when Intel switches the Pentium 4 from 0.18-micron process technology to 0.13 micron in the fourth quarter. At that time, Intel will be able to scale its architecture up to 5GHz by 2003, according to one analyst. In the desktop retail PC market, megahertz rules, according to Kevin Krewell, analyst for Micro Design Resources (MDR), San Jose. Cahners Business Information, which owns MDR, is also the parent company of Electronic News.

But all of the other performance metrics that microprocessor makers and system vendors bandy about may not figure as prominently in buying decisions as well as pure clock speed. AMD's mission since it fell behind on clock speeds is to convince people that clock cycles don't matter. Rather, it is how much work is performed in each clock cycle that matters. In that respect, AMD believes it can convince the buying public that systems based on its processors will outperform those based on its competitors' products, even if their processors spin at 1.7GHz or 1.8GHz.

Enter the marketers. AMD cites references in magazines such as PC Data Hardware Report or online dedicated Web sites such as "Tom's Hardware" as proof of its assertion. "How much work you get done in each clock cycle is important," said an AMD spokesman. "Intel has spent a lot of money on megahertz. But ever since we reached 1GHz, our message has been about performance. Most consumers don't buy a car and look only at RPMs without looking at horsepower."

AMD is also basing its marketing strategy on software performance, which is the key metric in the consumer's mind, a company spokeswoman said. She also said AMD's arguments are backed up by reports in the public domain.

When it comes to applications ranging from word processors and spreadsheets to photo editors and video games, Athlons that spin at 1.4GHz outperformed equal P4s by as much as 5 percent to 17 percent. "I think the truth is people understand megahertz," said Mark de Frere, Athlon brand manager for AMD. "Our processors can be more efficient than anything else on the market, even if they spin at a higher speed."

De Frere said that in the second quarter of this year, Athlon 4 processors sold 16.3 percent of desktop systems compared to 6 percent for P4s. "The message is getting across," de Frere said. "People are buying on performance and getting the most for their money."

AMD executives say the company's clock-to-clock performance depends on a number of technical issues. First, they feel that having their processor paired with double data rate SDRAM memory vs. Rambus DRAM memory for the P4 is an advantage. Also, they believe the chipsets that support the Athlon create an advantage over P4 chipsets.

The Pentium 4 uses a 20-stage pipeline to keep its processor fed while the Athlon 4 uses an 11-stage pipeline, de Frere said. If something goes wrong in the process of feeding the data, as it often does, there is a pipeline flush, and the data feed starts all over again. And, de Frere added, it takes the 20-stage pipeline longer to replenish than the 11-stage pipeline.