I am actually pretty happy of the cooperation with the ATI guys, we have some pretty interesting stuff coming together ...
We are going to take a "Quick Path" ;-) then PCIex.

Who ever wants to work on the perf side is welcome, it does include EVERYBODY.


who?

Moody's downgrades ratings for Advanced Micro

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080812/advanced_micro_moody_s_ratings.html?.v=1

Moody's said Monday it downgraded the ratings to "B2" from "B1." It also revised the rating on a $390 million senior note due in 2012 to "B3" from "B2" and said the outlook is negative.

The service said in a note its negative rating outlook reflects the company's "challenges to move its operating performance towards a level of self-funding profitability and then to sustain that momentum."

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS21385508

SAN MATEO, Calif., August 15, 2008 – Worldwide PC microprocessor shipments in the second calendar quarter of 2008 (2Q08) reached record levels again, according to new data from IDC. Despite the fact that the second quarter is typically the slowest quarter of the calendar year for processor demand and concerns that the economic woes in the U.S. are spreading to other regions, worldwide processor unit shipments grew 3.1% quarter over quarter and 16.1% year over year. Strong vendor price competition in the middle and low end of the desktop PC processor and mobile PC processor market segments caused overall market revenue to decline 4.5% quarter over quarter to $7.7 billion.

"While sequential market growth is unusual in the second quarter of the calendar year, it's clear that, in 2Q08, Intel's processor shipments drove the growth," said Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC. "Intel's processor shipments alone grew nearly 4.3% over the first quarter and 20.8% year over year, while AMD's processor shipments were about flat."

Vendor Highlights

In terms of processor vendor shares, on an overall unit basis, Intel earned 79.7% market share, a gain of 0.9%. AMD earned 19.7%, a loss of 1.2%.

By form factor, in the mobile PC processor segment, Intel earned 86.5% share, a gain of 1.3% and AMD earned 12.6%, a loss of 1.9%. VIA Technologies, based in Taiwan, earned 0.9% share, a gain of 0.7%. In the PC server/workstation processor segment, Intel earned 86.2%, a loss of 0.8% and AMD earned 13.8%, a gain of 0.8%. In the desktop PC processor segment, Intel earned 73.3% share and AMD earned 26.4%; share changes were negligible.

Any truth to the Russians trying to buy into Fab30?

HP posts 4 socket, 2.66 GHz Dunnington TPC-C score (4p/24c)

635k TpmC @$1.10/TpmC (256 GB, MSQL 2005, Win 2003)

For comparison:

2.5 GHz Barc HP DL585 (4p/16c) gets 472k TpmC @$1.17/TpmC
(256 GB, MSQL 2005, Win 2003)

4.2 GHz Power6 PL860R (4p/8c) gets 629k TpmC @$2.49/TpmC
(256 GB, DB2, AIX)

IBM also posted an 8 socket Dunnington score (8p/48c)

1201k TpmC @$1.99/TpmC (512 GB, DB2, RHEL)

http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_last_ten_results.asp

Looks like Intel has "shanghai'd" AMD's comeback prospects in
the server market even before bringing out QPI based Xeons.

I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned this yet: AMD is officially saying that they will become fables: http://bigtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/09/08/re-engineering-amd/

Quote:

“We’re going to go away from a captive fab model to more of a fables model for the CPU part of the business,” Meyer says. “Longer-term, it relieves us of the burden of having to shell out cash for these gigantic factories. So it will be more of a pay-as-you-go model like a traditional fables semiconductor company.”

As in Aesop's?

Another data point of Dunnington induced pain for AMD in server
segment

New SAP-SD submission for 8 socket Dunnington from IBM

http://www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx?num=50

8s/48c Dunnington (2.67 GHz) - 9200 users, 46,170 SAPS (DB2 on Win 2003)

For comparison:

16s/64c Tigerton (2.93 GHz) - 10,600 users, 53,980 SAPS (DB2 on Win 2003)

8s/32c Tigerton (2.93 GHz) - 6615 users, 33,100 SAPS (DB2 on Win 2003)

8s/32c Barc 8350 (2.5 GHz) - 5230 users, 26,180 SAPS (MSQL on Win 2003)

An 8 socket Dunnington box performs 76% better on SAP-SD
than an 8 socket Barcelona box, 39% better than an 8 socket
Tigerton box, and only 13% slower on SAP-SD than a 16 socket
Tigerton box