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

Robert Hallock (Thrax) Screen caps of CPU-Z peg the Deneb, the 45nm successor to the Phenom, at up 4.4GHz.

August 27, 2008 12:47 PM ET in News,

This one is an absolute doozy certainly worthy of sodium chloride worship. Reviewage out of sunny England reports that the 45nm successor to the existing Phenom, code-named Deneb, may launch at speeds up to 4.4GHz.

The lone screenshot of CPU-Z tells of a 4000MHz “Phenom FX-80″ chip running at 200×20 with a 45nm fabrication. The site also notes that an FX-82 is in the pipeline that boasts a 4.4GHz clock-speed. Both chips are said to be capable of beating a Kentsfield with a 600MHz clock deficit.

Cue mass skepticism.

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18 Comments:

  1. Your Amish Daddy
    27 Aug '08, 4:52 pm

    If they didn't include a valid86 link, then I call fraud.

  2. Leonardo
    27 Aug '08, 7:52 pm

    It's pure fantasy until CPUs are in the hands of well-recognized sites and they publish independent reviews.

    Nevertheless, it's a very engaging rumor.

  3. Komete
    27 Aug '08, 9:00 pm

    My thinking is AMD does have a heavy hitter on its way. If you think about it, Intel could release a 4ghz chip with a little tweaking. It's not a rarity for people to hit 4ghz on some of the intel chips they have now. So if AMD wanted to be competitive, a CPU around 4ghz makes since.

    AMD also has a tradition of Changing CEO's before a new major launch. Remember A64? It wasn't long after they changed CEO's that it got released. And then there is AMD tight lipping it after they promised over a year ago to be more forth coming with news. They are being quite not because they have no news( in this case you just blow smoke up investors @$$) but because they have huge news. News I think could change intels stratagies.

    I think that CPUZ screen shot is crap. But I do think AMD will wow us within the next year. It's not like all of AMD's engineers have been sitting on their hands for the past couple of years. Scientific geeks take great pride in their work. Trust me they've been working hard.

    All that aside, you can't tell me that there isn't an uneasy vibe coming from intel these past couple of months.

  4. Thrax
    27 Aug '08, 9:25 pm

    Truth be told, I don't think Intel has anything to worry about until 2009 or 2010.

  5. UPSLynx
    27 Aug '08, 9:47 pm
    Quoting Thrax

    Truth be told, I don't think Intel has anything to worry about until 2009 or 2010.

    I agree. I think AMD will bounce back soon and finally compete for top spot, but don't expect it to happen immediately. It'll be good for both companies once it happesn though.

  6. Leonardo
    27 Aug '08, 10:38 pm
    I think AMD will bounce back soon and finally compete for top spot

    Why do you think that?

  7. bullzisnipr
    27 Aug '08, 10:39 pm
    Quoting UPSLynx

    I agree. I think AMD will bounce back soon and finally compete for top spot, but don't expect it to happen immediately. It'll be good for both companies once it happesn though.

    yea, it'll be good for both not to mention the advancement in processors and other hardware, having a rivalry such as that is awesome for furthering technology.

  8. Your Amish Daddy
    27 Aug '08, 11:27 pm
    Quoting Leonardo

    Why do you think that?

    Why do you think the opposite?

  9. Leonardo
    27 Aug '08, 11:39 pm
    Why do you think that? (that AMD will see a resurgence in high performance processor manufacturing)

    It was not a rhetorical question. Don't infer what I did not imply. I simply want to know why UPSLynx or anyone else here thinks that AMD will be a competitor again in the high end.

    Why do you think the opposite?

    Why do you assume I think the opposite? My attitude about AMD is that I will believe what I see. I can 'believe' Intel because they follow their words with deeds.

    Something about pudding and the proof thereof.

  10. Komete
    27 Aug '08, 11:39 pm
    Quoting UPSLynx

    I agree. I think AMD will bounce back soon and finally compete for top spot, but don't expect it to happen immediately. It'll be good for both companies once it happesn though.

    One thing we have to remember which is rarely talked about is AMD is under contract with intel to produce chips on the x86 form factor.A cross liscince agreement I believe it's called.

    Under it's current contract AMD is only allowed a maximum of 20% of the x86 market. If it exceeds that then it has to renegotiate with Intel. So if it comes to renegotiation's it'll be very expensive for AMD. And if AMD renegotiates it will have be in a state of long term technological dominance. If it doesn't, it won't survive the off years. Historically AMD profits one year and doesn't the next. The past two years are the exception. So I really don't think there will be anytime in the near future where AMD will outsell Intel. Oh they will get a quarter here and there in but they are not going to go over that 20% mark. They may get the performance crown back but they don't want to outsell Intel.

    Maybe there is someone more knowledgeable in the agreement between AMD and intel that could commit. That's the way I see it.

  11. Thrax
    28 Aug '08, 12:23 am

    It would be disastrous for Intel to enforce the 20% clause (if it exists, I don't know). All of Intel's 64bit eggs are in the x86-64 extension pioneered by AMD. If Intel yanked the x86 license, AMD could turn around and drop the floor out from under every 64 bit CPU Intel has except the Itanium.

  12. Leonardo
    28 Aug '08, 1:15 am
    One thing we have to remember which is rarely talked about is AMD is under contract with intel to produce chips on the x86 form factor.

    Rough summary - apologies if the accuracy is off: Cross licensing stems back quite a number of years ago (20?) when Intel was incapable of producing enough processors for the PC market, which was just emerging. AMD at that time was more or less a startup company without much of any recognizable branded product and no CPU designs. Intel contracted with AMD to fabaricate processors, just as many chipmakers today contract with TSMC in Taiwan (AMD/ATI, Nvidia). So yes, a certain percentage of Intel branded and labeled processors were manufactured by AMD. Eventually - I don't remember how it happened - Intel allowed AMD to produce Intel-based design CPUs under the AMD name. If I remember correctly, this was part of Intel's compensation to AMD. At the time, Intel's manufacturing capacity was not large. Intel's need was such that they were to make concessions that neither AMD nor Intel would think of doing today. AMD was allowed to use the Intel design(s), X86 as it became called, but could produce only so much under the AMD brand. The cross licensing aspect of the deal with Intel was that AMD had to also share their own technology with Intel. That cross licensing agreement is still mainly intact. To some instant, AMD and Intel are both legally bound to share technology with each other. And they do.

    AMD's first processors were...Intel processors. Intel in some respects is AMD's adopted father. (I know that sounds like heresy to some of you. )

  13. Komete
    28 Aug '08, 1:23 am

    If you go back to the days of 386 you'll see Intel was forced to go into that contract. It was a long drawn out thing in the courts. Intel would be a sorry SOB if it didn't renegotiate. It would be like turning down free money. 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.

    BTW it was Intel that forced AMD to go from 16bit to 32bit cpu's. It was almost the same situation where you had intel saying there is no reason to go to 64bit when the os's were only 32bit, except it was AMD saying there's no need to go to 32 bit. I believe windows 3.1 was 16bit then and win95 was far off.

    It's a tug of war but when people get all excited about AMD becoming the best seller (that's been a long time) they need to realize AMD is setup to always be the under dog. Having ATI under its belt changes things money wise but as far as AMD moving the amount of cpu's that intel does, I don't see it happening ever unless a move is made away from X86.

    BTW I'm an AMD fan boy all the way. I was going to see what the next AMD CPU's looked like before I built my next system but I had my mind set on a Quad core intel. Now I'm not so sure. I'm a bigger FPS fan boy than I am an AMD.

  14. Komete
    28 Aug '08, 1:32 am

    Leonardo: You've forgot the part where AMD built intel cpu's better and released them with higher clock speeds.

    I've always felt that intel releases a technology and AMD sits back and study's it and then comes back with a better/ optimized product. Makes since with the sharing of technology that you mention. It also makes you wonder if AMD will be taking a lot from the Core2 duo's and optimize the crap out of it. If it did, then 4ghz seems very reasonable.

  15. Thrax
    28 Aug '08, 1:40 am
    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.

  16. Leonardo
    28 Aug '08, 2:07 am
    This is the very first indication of any kind that AMD is "getting" that they're pretty awful at the moment.

    I must say that the PR coming from AMD in the last two months has been matter-of-fact, without bluster, and circumspect. That to me signals that change is possible, not that it will necessarily happen to the extent we want, but that change for the better is possible.

  17. Zuntar
    28 Aug '08, 7:51 am

    He said, she said........speculation at best. Time will tell all, but know this, nobody is going to back down and that is what matters for us.

    Quoting Thrax

    ........Cue mass skepticism.

    QFT

  18. Sledgehammer70
    28 Aug '08, 9:26 pm

    I still love AMD But int he end I run an Intel chip as it was cheaper

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