Intel spins Woodcrest launch Spin, spin, spin, sin and spin againBy Charlie Demerjian: Monday 26 June 2006, 22:25INTEL HAD THE Woodcrest love in, and once again, I got a lot of good Windows spider games in, but somehow was left unfulfilled. The visual presentations were stunning*, and the news was a little stale, in fact, I can't think of anything that was said that has not been common knowledge since spring IDF.But there were a few points that were odd for Intel to mention, and at least one that was flat-out wrong. The first was its spinning of the IMC. Intel officially poo-poos the lack of an IMC on the server, mainly because their first few stabs at it fell really flat.Today, they spun it as a win because they could put 4MB of cache on the chip to allow for 50 per cent less memory accesses than AMD. Very true, but there are two problems: cost and cost. The first cost is die area on your most expensive parts. Intel does not have an IMC, so it has to eat the cost on a cutting-edge process instead of on a -1 or a -2 process that it builds the chipsets on, or an IMC on the chip itself. The other cost is you need to put it on the mobo and have a more complex motherboard with more high speed links. Lose/lose spun as a win, I wonder how much of the press in the room are going to buy that one. Send us links people.The one I thought was flat-out wrong was Intel's claim of virtualisation leadership. Intel does not have an IMC, AMD does. Intel can not virtualise memory for the time being, AMD can. Guess what the computer does a lot of? Hint, see the last paragraph. I doubt this claim to the point of almost ruining a monitor by coughing up Diet Berries and Cream Dr. Pepper when I heard it.Another problem was Pixar, or at least Intel's touting of Pixar, and again, there were two problems there. The first is that Pixar uses P4s, not because they are better, but because Intel gave them such a sweatheart deal on them that AMD couldn't compete. It may have been the worst solution possible, but money talks.Enter Woodcrest, and their amazing performance per watt advantage over Nocona class CPUs. No Sh*t, really? Intel went out of its way to show how Performance Per Watt was better on Woody than Opterons in the first half of the show, but went strangely absent in the second half. Pixar did not mention it, I wonder why? Could it be that Woodcrest is shatteringly better than Nocona in every way, but loses to Opteron at some key measures, one of which is hardcore FP work? Nah, that would be...Then it went and hit on one of my hot-button issues. No, not the purposely obtuse naming, but choice. Intel said something about everything it does is enabling choice. Bull. Everything it does right now is aimed at crushing the life out of the choices you have. You can have any colour you like as long as it is black.Programs like Centrino, Viiv and vPro are all about denying you choice, and then biting Intel in the ass as soon as it stumbles. When you hear its blueshirts talk about 'platforms', it is simply code words for giving you mediocre additions to good CPUs, and denying you the very choices they tout. The White House would be proud of the job they are doing.All this said, Intel does have a great CPU. It was delivered early, will ramp really fast, and has a stunningly good chipset that no one seems to notice. For the next few quarters, it has the lead in several key areas, no question there. If it could just lose the spin, I would be much happier. µ* Started out with a server error, then transitioned smoothly into a page not found error. Must be the new BIOS on Woody.
