Help with econ project on AMD?

[DaRuSsIaMaN]

Hey everyone. I'm doing a project for my economics class which involves picking a firm and analyzing a few things about it. I already did the first half, and the second part of the project requires that I "identify a new product that the firm is currently developing (or has developed recently) and discuss at least two important economic problems the firm faces in determining the optimal strategy for bringing the product to market." That just means any kind of decision(s) they're facing for how to best market and sell it (or develop or not develop it further, etc.), not "problems" in the sense of disasters or mishaps.

So the firm I'm using is AMD, and I'm just wondering if any of u know much about what them and their products. I'm currently looking at their descriptions of their multicore technology on their website, like here (from there I visited a couple links like the "products" link and the "what is multi-core technology" link). Does having a dual-core processor really mean twice the processor power? Not, like, 1.5 times the processor power or something? I'm thinking if i understand their latest tech better I can identify the economic decisions facing them better.

What's 64bit technology in the first place? Cuz the added cores of the dual-core processors are added onto already existing 64-bit chips, but I don't know what that's all about. Before 64 bit, processors were 32 bit, correct? So ... what are these differences a measurement of?

**

Hmm ... well, other than that, if anyone knows some microeconomics and has any general (or specific haha) suggestions for how to go about my assignment there that'd be awesome. Thanks.

 

[Addis]

I may be doing economics later this year, not sure though :).

Dual Core
AMD dual core does not in fact offer twice the performance of a single core. The aim of the dual core chips is to allow better multitasking. One of the reasons why it doesn't offer twice the performance is that software is not optimized to take advantage of multiple processing cores. Multi-threading is still not widespread. So, to paraphrase, AMD and Intel with their respective dual core CPUs are relying on the software industry to exploit the full potential of their chips. However, its not as easy as "compiling for dual core CPUs and done and dusted". It can be a pain for developers to get their programs utilizing another core.

The software that currently does take advantage of it is the ones produced by the very large firms like Adobe, Autodesk etc. These programs like 3D modeling and editing utilize the extra core, and brings the much needed performance boost.

64bit extensions
AMD64 and Intel's copy of that technology, EM64T, do not actually make the CPU pure 64 bit. An example of a pure 64bit CPU is Intel's Itanium, a CPU series for servers which is widely regarded as a failure because of its price and was unsuited to the market of 32bit software. AMD64 takes the original x86 instruction set, and adds 64bit extensions to it. This allows the CPU to run both 32bit and 64bit software. One of the reasons for relatively quick adoption of the technology was that customers were able to run existing 32bit software now, and then when the 64bit software was released migrate to it at their own pace.

An advantage of the 64bit extensions is that it allows the CPU to address more RAM than 32bit CPUs. 32bit CPUs can address a maximum of 4GB of RAM (for the maths its 2^32). This is especially useful on large servers where RAM caching is useful. This is where AMD's Opteron was widely successful.

One more reason why it offers more performance is that it allows the CPU to process data in 64bit "chunks". This doesn't mean it gives twice the performance however.

 

[DaRuSsIaMaN]

Okay, thanks a lot! Can you or anyone else also tell me what 90nm versus 65nm refers to? I was reading this article. It talks about Intel's upcoming Woodcrest processor being made with the "65nm process" which is better than AMD's 90nm. What's all that about?

 

[Addis]

The 90nm and 65nm refers to the fabrication process used when creating the CPUs. 90nm allows CPU dies to be smaller than 130nm dies. This not only lowers heat output (in most cases) but also increases yields and saves money. 65nm offers the same advantages over 90nm.

Intel at the moment use 90nm but are very quickly transitioning to 65nm. AMD are a bit behind on this and will likely release 65nm chips late this year/early next year.

Finding the AMD and Intel roadmaps will give you a clue as to where the CPU production is going.