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AMD Readies Shanghai to Battle Nehalem

Sagittarius   on 17 August 2008 - 16:44 · 22 comments & 14386 views

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Advanced Micro Devices is making it clear that its upcoming 45-nanometer processor for servers—"Shanghai"—will compete against what Intel brings to market with its new line of processors based on the upcoming "Nehalem" microarchitecture. According to AMD Senior Vice President Randy Allen, the chip will ship in Q4 2008, and his company will be ready with its server products before Intel. "They [Intel] won't be factoring our 45-nanometer Shanghai product and be making shipments of that by the end of the year," Allen said.

However, despite much talk about how Shanghai will be competing against Nehalem, there was a notable absence of details about Shanghai during Allen's press conference, held on the eve of the Intel Developer's Forum, including specifics on performance improvements. AMD has previously said Shanghai will contain 6MB of Level 3 cache compared with the 2MB of L3 cache in the company's current crop of quad-core Opteron processors. Something AMD has in its favor is that the Shanghai chips will be compatible with the current group of Opteron chips. With BIOS update, users can upgrade their systems fairly easily, which should help AMD move the products into the marketplace.

View: Full Story at eWeek

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(1 reply) #1 Imran Hussain on 17 Aug 2008 - 17:23
Shouldn't it be Level 2 cache??
#1.1 RAID 0 on 17 Aug 2008 - 17:32
No, L3 is correct.
(2 replies) #2 RAID 0 on 17 Aug 2008 - 17:35
Well, they did pull off something crazy with the 4870. I'm hoping their next CPU will at least keep up to Nehalem, but I doubt they'll beat it's performance.
#2.1 Beastage on 17 Aug 2008 - 21:26
(RAID 0 said @ #2)
Well, they did pull off something crazy with the 4870. I'm hoping their next CPU will at least keep up to Nehalem, but I doubt they'll beat it's performance.


AMD didn't do anything crazy with 4870, there is no relation between their CPU and GPU business.

The 4870 is a continue of previous ATI products, so ATI guys get the credit for it.

Last edited by Beastage on 17 Aug 2008 - 21:55
#2.2 Eis on 18 Aug 2008 - 00:01
(Beastage said @ #2.1)
AMD didn't do anything crazy with 4870, there is no relation between their CPU and GPU business.

The 4870 is a continue of previous ATI products, so ATI guys get the credit for it.

One of the perks of buying a company is most of the people like you know enough about a merger not to say this after it happens. I guess there's still some that don't catch on though.
#3 +Sethos on 17 Aug 2008 - 19:24
I really hope they can turn the boat around.
#4 MioTheGreat on 17 Aug 2008 - 19:56
Maybe they need to use their available die space for more sophisticated enhancements than cache...

So much extra L3 cache just seems like a "We have this space left over from not implementing all that much new stuff, so lets just add a crapload of cache" thing.

I mean, Intel is always going on about microcode improvements and better implementations of various parts of the processor, but AMD isn't as much.

Last edited by MioTheGreat on 17 Aug 2008 - 20:49
#5 Airlink on 17 Aug 2008 - 20:27
I'm not a fan of AMD by any means, but I hope they do manage to stay in the game. Loosing them would leave Intel as a monopoly, and that would just be a bad thing.
#6 CentralDogma on 17 Aug 2008 - 20:41
I've always thought that Fusion was going to be the main competitor to Nehalem.
#7 gaabrysz on 17 Aug 2008 - 21:09
Fusion is designed for Laptops and Notebooks and other mobile devices afaik.
(1 reply) #8 episode on 17 Aug 2008 - 22:48
"They [Intel] won't be factoring our 45-nanometer Shanghai product and be making shipments of that by the end of the year," Allen said.


Yeah, they aren't factoring it because its going to suck.
#8.1 Majesticmerc on 18 Aug 2008 - 11:12
How could you know that?
(1 reply) #9 hardgiant on 17 Aug 2008 - 23:47
I long for the days when x2 was first released and it kicked Pentium D's butt. It seems those days are over.
#9.1 maudit on 18 Aug 2008 - 00:47
(hardgiant said @ #9)
I long for the days when x2 was first released and it kicked Pentium D's butt. It seems those days are over.

Yeah at least until another phenom generation... Sad though we won't get as much price drops
(1 reply) #10 ChrisJ1968 on 18 Aug 2008 - 00:51
question for anyone: is there ANY particular reason why I can't find quad core laptops by AMD or Intel? just dual core.

I'd love to see laptops run quad core chips.
#10.1 TrickFinlay2 on 18 Aug 2008 - 00:58
http://gizmodo.com/5035828/lenovo-thinkpad...al-grade-screen

"the W700 has a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Extreme quad core processor"
(2 replies) #11 ChrisJ1968 on 18 Aug 2008 - 02:06
only a lenovo? what the hell is up with HP, Compaq, Dell and the others? damn...
#11.1 EnzoFX on 18 Aug 2008 - 02:48
Quad's a bit too hot for the average laptop, at least currently. Won't be seeing them in mainstream laptops soon...
#11.2 ChrisJ1968 on 18 Aug 2008 - 03:59
(EnzoFX said @ #11.1)
Quad's a bit too hot for the average laptop, at least currently. Won't be seeing them in mainstream laptops soon...


ah ok. so maybe 45 nanometer process can lower that
#12 ajua on 18 Aug 2008 - 06:49
They need to release specs on this new release because of what we know now about Nehalem, it will be very though on AMD to beat Intel (think of the Core launch years ago, again).

Maybe AMD can pull something out this time than can challenge Intel just to help drop down prices.
(1 reply) #13 RPDL on 18 Aug 2008 - 15:26
I'm not really looking forward to the i7s because I'm sort of worried that you'll need a big expensive motherboard where the chipset has a fan and you're forced to used overpriced DDR3. So I'm hoping AMD can cook up a 180-220$ processor to compete with the i7's eventually.
#13.1 Airlink on 18 Aug 2008 - 22:54
DDR3 prices continue to fall. By the time i7 is ready for prime-time DDR3 should be very affordable. I'm waiting for DDR3 2000 MHz to become affordable, though. Get that down below $100 and I'm all over it.

As for heat issues, it seems that liquid cooled chipsets and liquid cooled RAM is the future. Or you can just submerge the entire motherboard in canola oil and cool it that way.

Seriously: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/strip-fans,1203.html

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