Digital Trends

Chipmakers AMD and Intel are engaging in a race of words, both claiming progress toward quad-core computing even as Intel engages in a serious restructuring.

Processor makers AMD and Intel are already engaging in a war of words over the not-yet-born quad-core processor market, each claiming in their quarterly financial statements that their quad-core products are on track for strong debuts. However, despite a substantial internal restructuring aimed at streamlining the company's internal processes, Intel is expected to be out the door with its Kentsfield and Clovertown quad-core designs by the end of 2006, with AMD vowing to demonstrate its quad-core solutions in the same timeframe.

For its part, Intel announced disappointing quarterly earnings (down 57 percent from the same period last year) along with an internal shakeup designed to cut costs and streamline the company's internal development and decision-making processes. The moves involve shuffling around high-level management so simplify the overall corporate structure, ahead of expected layoffs among Intel's rank-and-file. Intel's management isn't giving any numbers, but analysts put overall pending layoff figures around ten percent of the company's overall workforce, or about 10,000 employees. These cost-cutting moves are probably the only thing keeping investors from further eviscerating Intel's stock price in the face of gloomy earnings outlooks for future quarters: Intel's Core 2 Duo (aka Conroe and Merom) processors might tip the overall processor performance battle in Intel's favor, but Intel's battle with AMD is forcing the company to price the technology at painfully low levels—pain that certainly extends to it competitor, AMD.

For its part, AMD pledges to demonstrate its "true" quad core processor architecture by the end of the year, although neither analysts nor the company itself expect expect units to actually reach market until mid-2007. AMD is referring to its new microarchitecture design as a "true" quad-core with four separate processor cores on a single die, to contrast it with Intel's forthcoming Kentsfield and Clovertown processors which are essentially separate dual-core Core 2 Duo and Xeon processors layered together. AMD's 4x4 architecture also provides for two HyperTransport AM2 sockets, each responsible for two cores and one bank of DD2 memory; in contrast, Intel's quad-core offerings all reside on a single bus, which may give AMD's eventual products a performance advantage, albeit at higher manufacturing costs.