Intel Seeks to Upstage AMD 'Barcelona' with Quad-Core 'Tigerton'

The fact that AMD plans to unveil its quad-core Opteron server processor on Monday is the worst kept secret since rumors yesterday that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would unveil something having to do with iPods today. What has come as a surprise is that Intel decided not to wait to let AMD have its day before releasing some initial specifications for its forthcoming "Tigerton" class Xeon MP quad-core server processors.

If you believe the performance test numbers professed by CPUs' own manufacturers, then Intel definitely plans to make a wrestling match out of Tigerton vs. x4 Opteron. This afternoon, Intel stated that an IBM System x3850 M2 4-way server produced a SPEC_int_rate_base2006 benchmark rating of 184. To give you an idea of relative standing, the best 4-way Intel quad-core servers today tend to just break the 90 barrier.

An AMD Opteron 8222 SE dual-core system today, delivering the same number of total cores but just in more chips, built by AMD itself, was tested last month and produced a 108 on the same benchmark.

On Monday, AMD will promise that Barcelona will produce 48% better performance results for 4-way systems over its existing dual-core product line, citing this figure for reference. It takes the simplest of calculators to determine that, if AMD keeps its promise, that quad-core Barcelona system will only score a 160.

If there's a difference to be made up, it will be in terms of frequency and power. As we already know, AMD plans to introduce its lower frequency parts first. The IBM system in Intel's test uses four quad-core Xeon X7350 processors clocked at 2.93 GHz, according to the company, which implies that the first servers based on these models - IBM's included - will include the nearly 3 GHz speed. Quad-core Opterons at that speed won't be introduced until sometime next year.

However, if AMD's estimates are based on the slower parts it plans to introduce first, then it could yet make up that performance ground and leap-frog over Intel...even if it's late to the table in doing so.

There will be six models in the 7300 series, including the 2.93 GHz performance model at the top of the line. Intel states its power rate is 130 watts, presumably TDP (a relative rating of how much power it should take to keep the chip cool). On the low-power end of the scale is a 1.86 GHz processor at around 50 watts. In-between will be four models that hover around 80 W TDP.

For AMD to stay competitive, it will need to make a much stronger case for its lower-power value proposition. Last year, the company argued that Intel was using either unfair or unrealistic (or both) metrics in determining power consumption numbers for its CPUs. Now that Intel's numbers appear to be lower than AMD's have been, AMD will need to avoid the appearance of "parsing" as it argues it still has the power/performance/price lead.

Intel's choice of price range might be of some help to AMD, as its announcement of $856 on the low end to $2,301 on the high end, doesn't exactly break through any pricing floors.

In today's announcement, Intel painted a picture of IT shops having completely transitioned to Core Microarchitecture-based CPUs, now having the ability to pool all that processor power together into next-generation virtualized environments.

"With the introduction of the Xeon 7300, users will now be able to pool all of their Intel Core microarchitecture based server resources, whether they are single-, dual- or multi-processor based," the company stated, "into a dynamic virtual server infrastructure that allows live virtual machine migration that can improve usage models like failover, load balancing, disaster recovery, or server maintenance."

Perhaps caught just a little bit off-guard today, AMD found itself partly lifting the curtain on its Barcelona launch as it attempted to argue away Intel's new assertions like a political campaigner on the defensive. "'Tigerton' has the unfortunate distinction of being near last in a line of a dying architecture based on a Front Side Bus bottleneck," reads the first part of an AMD press release sent to BetaNews just on the heels of Intel's announcement.

The challenger's case is starting to sound familiar: Intel has an extra part, AMD points out: a memory controller that resides off of the die and thus consumes more power. What's more, AMD continues, that extra part is relied upon to tie together one dual-core component and another dual-core component, pairing them together like a double-decker sandwich, but rendering those parts captive to a separate device that becomes a bottleneck in high-performance conditions.

"Tigerton is still a dual-core processor design, just as 'Penryn' will be," the AMD statement goes on. "Intel won't offer a quad-core processor design until late 2008, more than a year after AMD. To achieve full performance scaling on real world multi-threaded workloads, real design work is needed. Packaging dual-cores together into quad-cores is insufficient, as clearly Intel itself understands. Why else transition to native quad-core in late 2008?"

By showing its hand earlier than AMD, Intel has forced its competitor to make its arguments in the alternative five days earlier than it had anticipated. In so doing, it puts the onus on AMD, come Monday, to come forth with less talk and more proof, rather than merely repeat its arguments of the previous Wednesday afternoon.

If AMD continues now as it had planned, it will disappoint both prospective system builders and investors; now that company will need to make an extremely convincing demonstration, reassuring everyone that Opteron is still in the ball game.