Perhaps one of the earliest memories I have of working with normally calm and relaxed IT personnel is how certain discussions on mundane subjects can cause them to become intensely passionate. Probably the most persistent of these subjects is the question of whether Intel or Advance Micro Devices (AMD) produces a better chip for a specific application, which always seemed to stir up a debate

Seeing bespeckled middle age men targeting each other’s clipboards and pocket protectors with furious onslaughts of rubber bands and spit balls left a lasting impression on my young mind! To this day a Google search of Intel VS AMD will garner you over twenty five million hits! Needless to say, there never was a successful conclusion to the debate, so I will offer some historical perspective to the battle and leave you to your own conclusions.

First, as is so often the case, the roots of the conflict lie with IBM. In the early 80’s, at IBM’s insistence due to their policy of requiring redundant suppliers for all critical components, Intel entered into an agreement with AMD to produce chips for IBM’s initial PC venture. While the PC soared the relationship between AMD and Intel soured quickly, resulting in innumerable court battles that endured for over a decade, resulting in a Supreme Court decision granting AMD a limited victory.

In the interim, AMD began producing chips that were less expensive than their Intel equivalents, but perceived as merely being reverse engineered copies of INTEL intellectual properties. As AMD developed it’s first purely original chip set they actually referred to them as the Kryptonite series, with the clear implication it was intended to bring down the ”Superman” of chips, Intel. Thus began the tradition of giving chips codenames during development.

The battles between them still rages to this day, with Intel seemingly having gotten the upper hand in the ISS sphere with a strong reputation for both performance and reliability, while AMD has made significant inroads into the desktop environment. AMD’s approach has included off loading most video and audio functions off the chip (thru working closely with Nvidia technology) and running a leaner chipset that gave them the reputation of being the preferred gaming platform in the high end desktop segment.

As far as the ISS sphere the question has been dormant for some time, because most ISS servers are being used in such a way that the CPU utilization is extremely low in most applications and other hardware has historically been the bottle neck, meaning the CPU choice was based more on clock speed or price than any other feature. HP offers both brands (The chip can be determined by the last digit of the model in HP products, with a zero represents an Intel chip, and with a five representing an AMD chip) in most of their machines, and does significant volume with them both.

As is always the case in this industry, change seems to be in the air in the ISS side of the chip wars. With the increased interest in virtualization, both Intel and AMD have been racing to add virtualization friendly designs to their recent releases recognizing that it is the tide of the future, as well as scrambling with multiple processor configuration types such as Quad, Dual and even a Tri core version for ISS boxes anticipated soon that has 3 CPU’s on a single chip.

So who do I believe will ultimately win the battle? The consumer, because competition between the two has driven both organizations creativity to the limit. As far as selecting my preference, I shall remain quiet, lest someone pelt me with a rubber band.

Best regards,

William “The ISS Guy” DeMuth

demuth@mjm.com