Here is a story most people wouldn’t want to touch with a thirty
meter pole. AMD has been
stealing (not legally, just morally) Intel’s CPU design ever since
the 286 days. I even have
an AMD 286 on my key-chain. Back
in the day, it didn’t matter which company made your big bad
286-12MHz CPU, because both had the same design. Then, Intel goes and changed the name of it’s fifth
generation CPU, which it called the Pentium. Because of that, AMD could no longer copy Intel’s design,
because it was copyrighted. Please
keep in mind that companies cannot copyright numbers, which Intel used
to name processors prior to the Pentium.
So, that is where
the story really begins. Back
in 1994, AMD had to find it’s own processor core. At first, all they really did was take the 486, shrink it down
from .6u to .35u; speed it up, from 80Mhz to 133Mhz; and added twice
the L1 Cache than a 486. They called it the 5×86. It didn’t last for very long, being the Pentium clocked at
75MHz did better than the 5×86 clocked at 160Mhz in some cases. So, AMD bought NexGen, a RISC processor maker. A RISC processor is the type of Processor ALPHA makes, it can
do only a few things, but very quickly, unlike the Pentium, which is a
CISC, which can do a lot of things slowly. AMD
then came out with the K5, which was a Pentium alternative. All it basically was was a 5×86 with some Pentium like
features. That, and it could fit into Socket 7, which is the same CPU
socket Pentiums fit in. After
the horrible failure of the K5, they came out with the K6, which was
suppose to revolutionize the industry…but didn’t. Then it was the K6-2, which had a set of special 3D
instructions. It did a
little better, especially in the low-cost computer market. Intel didn’t like AMD making money one bit, so it released
the Celeron, which was a cache-less Pentium II. That didn’t do very well, so they added 128KB of L2 cache at
full CPU core speed. This
was proven to be just as good, if not better, than the Pentium II at
some activities. To top it off, The Celeron ran at a much lower cost than the
Pentium II.
What next you may
ask. Well, AMD releases
the K6-III, which was basically the K6-2, but with 256KB of full core
speed L2 cache. But, with
that release, we all know what happened. The K7 rumors started coming out. Now, the K7 is called the Athlon. It’s also called the Intel Killer. At the same clock speed, AMD finally made a CPU that will beat
the Intel flagship CPU. This
has NEVER happened before. So
now, Intel is struggling. It’s
now threatened motherboard makers that make Athlon compatible
motherboards with a shortage in its 440BX and i820 chipsets.
Being that
can’t be proven, there is nothing we can do to punish Intel for what
they are doing besides stop buying their products. We all know it’s wrong to use their position in the industry
to stay on top. That’s
why Microsoft is in the mess they are in now, and that is why I
mentioned them in the previous episode. Intel has obviously done something wrong. Not only are they dying slowly, they must strip themselves of
all their pride by trying to stay alive in coward like ways. Now, what Intel must do is actually produce a new CPU that is
revolutionary. They
haven’t done anything like that for almost three years, when they
introduced the Pentium Pro, which is still the basis of all Intel CPUs
to this day. With the
Merced CPU so far off, and having so many delays, it’s doubtful
they’ll have anything new soon. Meanwhile, AMD is already planning the K8, which will be even
better than the K7.
I would like to
conclude with 2 things:
LONG LIVE AMD!
Stock Tip: For
long-term investments, buy stock in AMD.
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