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Changes in AMD's roadmap have occurred as the winds of the Hammer progress demanded them but the general outlines have remained the same and among those is the next die shrink. The importance of the die shrink goes far beyond making smaller transistors that will run faster, use less energy and run cooler. The one thing that where AMD has been hurting forever has been the wallet and here is where the greatest asset of the die shrink comes into play: manufacturing cost. Compared to a full wallet, Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) is only eye candy, a bigger L2 cache as it is still on the current roadmap for the Barton will be helpful for keeping up with overall performance but the main priority has to be the profitability of the company. Let the hammers do the performance dance once they are available.

AMD "Thoroughbred" vs. "Palomino" Take 2
Bottom view of Throroughbred and Palomino. Where the Palomino had its surface components "inside the Socket A", the TBred is bald.

One of the golden rules in the IC business is that the die size where one can really start making money even if they yields may be low is 100 square millimeter. As strange as this sounds, since different dies will be sold at different costs, this rule holds surprisingly well even though Intel admits that they make money on the PIII at 106 mm². Not everybody needs the very fastest processor at all times especially at the rate of obsolescence caused by the clock-race. However, a 33 % die shrink from 120 to 80 mm² means a healthy cost reduction and if the overall pricing level remains at about the same level, a 33 % cost reduction can increase the net profit from e.g 10 % to 40 something %, or in this case (which is a totally arbitrarily chosen number) quadruple the net earnings.

The morale of this story is that we are not as much concerned with the question of whether the Thoroughbred will once again rip the crown of the fastest x-86 processor from Intel, that one might fall into the realm of fantasy at the moment. The more burning question is whether the shareholders are going to be happy and whether weather AMD stock is going to be a strong buy. For this to happen, the only thing that the Thoroughbred really needs, is to hold its ground, there are enough other system bottlenecks that are much worse than CPU performance. Of course, a bit of extra power has never hurt anybody either.

AMD "Thoroughbred" vs. "Palomino": Take 3
Die comparison between the old and the new CPU. The L2 cache has moved from the right side to the bottom of the die. Because of some of these rearrangements, the overall transistor count could be lowered from 37.5 Million to 37.2 Million transistors. In both cases, the L2 cache is roughly 15 million transistors.

With respect to overall system performance and particularly price / performance ratio, we need to factor in a few other parameters. Every system builder knows that the CPU is only a relatively small contributor to the total manufacturing costs of the entire system. To put it into perspective instead of numbers, a CPU can cost less than a keyboard or a wireless mouse and it can be as much as a high end monitor. One can build a system for $ 1000 where the CPU costs $ 35, meaning 3.5 % and one can double the performance by choosing a processor for $70. If $35 is all it takes to double the performance, it is a no brainer. If it is $400 to get an, er, measurable performance increase that may or may not even be noticeable by the consumer .... I guess, you get the drift. So much for the background that may or may not have been the rationale for the release of today's review candidate: Enter the AMD XP2200+ Thoroughbred.

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