Lifting the lid on the next-gen Intel CPU

Dailytech.com publishes an interesting "interview" (though there are few actual direct quotes) with a couple Intel execs.

Intel is just another great example of the wonders of Capitalism at work. Intel was fat and happy, resting on its laurels for a good five years (2000 - 2005). AMD, with its Athlon and Opteron CPUs, started winning the speed wars and a resulting increasing marketshare.

Voila, just like that Intel completely ditches the over-heating and under-performing Microburst architecture. They created the new "Core" (Conroe) series of CPUs, have a repeatedly-demonstrated performance advantage. And, this article is proof they are not going to rest on their laurels, but rather continue to push the envelope of smaller, faster, more efficient chips.

What people must realize is that, in that five year hiatus from meaningful new product development, a lot of Intel's focus was on its manufacturing capacity. They pushed from 130, to 90, to 65nm . . . and are now poised to convert plants to 45nm and (apparently) continue the pace every two years. Meanwhile at AMD, while their Athlon and Opteron chips were gaining market share and out-performing, their manufacturing advances lagged. Now, they're just getting to 65nm process and anything smaller than that is but a pipe dream.

So, the lesson is that Intel is a much stronger company - and we consumers are getting a better product - as a result of AMD's competitive influence. Beautiful!