Quad core Xeon due as Intel 'trashes' Opteron

Love long ago left the relationship between Intel and AMD, and chief technology officer Justin Rattner delivered it another stab today when he – literally – rubbished his chief rival’s Opteron processor. 

On stage at the Intel Developer Forum he walked over to his Dustbin of Obsolete Technology and as a fellow Inteler was about to drop in an ‘inefficient’ power supply unit, Rattner stopped him, paused, and commented: “Wait a minute. It looks like there’s an Opteron in there.”

While a cheap crack that drew widespread laughter from the audience, Intel has suffered at the hands of AMD over the past few years. And later, the company acknowledge that its competitor had stolen a march in perception, although it argued, not in terms of technology.

CEO Paul Otellini argued that processors such as the new quad core Xeon announced today and Core 2 Duo had pushed it ahead of AMD, although that glosses over past mistakes when AMD brought out a 64bit x86 processor long before Intel, and made huge gains in the performance sector with its high end desktop processors.

“Perception doesn’t change overnight, it moves in bits and pieces,” Otellini said. “And what you are seeing is Intel rebuilding its reputation.”

Opteron may have been the butt of Intel’s joke, but the company hasn’t been laughing at the gains in market share that the CPU is making.

But AMD does have a tougher job on its hands again with the server processor. It has outlined its plans for quad core 65nm Opterons due to come out next year.

Meanwhile, Intel will start shipping a quad core Xeon in November, with clear plans to more to a smaller 45nm chip next year. That will give it an edge in terms of transistor power and having lower power over its 65nm rival.

Otellini commented: “Much has been written about Intel losing momentum in the server market space. We believe with these products we have now regained our leadership.”