Re: [Rumor] AMD's 45nm 'Deneb' core to launch at 4.4GHz?

Quoting Komete

Whatever deal AMD has with intel on the 64bit side of things is already done. I don't know the particulars of course but it is completely a different situation..

No, it's not done. It's the single most powerful bargaining chip AMD has in its arsenal in any potential wrangling with Intel. Sure, Intel can cripple AMD's ability to produce CPUs, but AMD can send Intel backwards 9 years at the drop of a dime by revoking their x86-64 license. Every 64 bit OS, motherboard, BIOS and application would suddenly be completely useless, because Intel would have to create a new 64 bit standard from scratch.

This bargaining chip is irrelevant given that AMD has made one bad decision after another for two, almost three years. Where they could have done the right thing and not assumed that Intel was going to lie dormant and milk Netburst forever, they sat on their laurels and got caught with their pants down. They've backed themselves into the red with a trumped architecture followed by a laughable while the boat gets captained by an idiot.

This is the very first indication of any kind that AMD is "getting" that they're pretty awful at the moment. What the Deneb can not be reconciled with is the fact that AMD has bad Phenom yields and is having considerable trouble raising the clockrate. Deneb is just a die-shrink, not a magic bullet and not a new chip. AMD isn't going to magically leap 1200MHz with additional headroom for future chips just by shrinking the die. AMD isn't even releasing a new architecture until late 2009 (or early 2010 knowing AMD ).

This is fun speculation, but very unlikely. Very, very, very unlikely.