Intel's Xeon and Pentium 4 processors are based on the company's hoary Netburst architecture, developed in the days before power and heat became critical problems. The newer Banias/Centrino architecture of the Pentium M consumes much less power than Netburst, and two Pentium M cores would be easier to integrate on one die than two power-hungry Netburst cores. Yet rumor has it that Intel's first dual-core processors will use Netburst. Ironically, Intel's reputation as the industry standard handcuffs it to this antiquated architecture.
Banias is roughly as young as AMD's Opteron architecture. But AMD customers are used to gambling on new innovations, while Intel buyers value tried-and-true platforms more than breakthrough advances. Intel server buyers do not want to absorb the shock of dual-core and Banias simultaneously. So Intel is virtually forced to enter the dual-core market at a disadvantage. Bet on AMD to beat Intel in the first match of the dual-core tournament, at least. But Intel will come back from behind, as it always does.
When the last ball is pocketed in the dual-core tournament next year, Intel and AMD will be tied for second place behind their customers. Both players will provide solid 64-bit, dual-core processors that take server performance to dizzying new heights. Then the price wars will begin again, making server buyers even bigger winners.
Second place will pay off handsomely for Intel and AMD. The combination of 64-bit and dual-core technologies will bring billions of dollars to both firms and their partners, as buyers rush to replace those strained, overheated, power-guzzling processors. But don't expect Intel and AMD's market shares to change much. Buyer behavior has enormous inertia, and server purchasing decisions depend on much more than the differences between CPUs.
"As a server buyer, I'm more concerned about the servers that IBM, HP, and/or Sun will have available to support the architecture," says Robert Nocera, CTO and partner in NEOS LLC in Manchester, CT. "I've always looked more at the server as a whole than which chip runs it. A great chip will only get you so far if the rest of the architecture can't keep up. As a company, NEOS has used whichever chip can give us the lowest price for the performance we need and we've never really experienced any technical problems with either" Intel or AMD. Nocera and NEOS represent the vast majority of rational buyers. Then there are the two extremes of the buying spectrum.