If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, we at AMD are feeling very flattered this week.

According to Intel’s Patrick Gelsinger as quoted in The Wall Street Journal, “The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series is the foundation for the next decade of innovation.” Well, I almost agree with that. After nearly six years of telling customers that the AMD Opteron™ processor architecture was the wrong answer, this week our competitor has finally delivered “Nehalem” ― which some might call a copy, at least as far as the architecture is concerned.

So I suppose it’s all about when you think that decade started.

Nehalem, or the “Opti-clone” as I call it, has been met with “breathless” enthusiasm by many.  AMD’s John Taylor will cover this in our communications team’s blog, but I am getting a bunch of questions ― so I thought it may be time for some humor (or what I think passes for it).

With that in mind, I present the interview I just concluded with myself:

Interviewer:     

Wow, you people must be really scared.

Me:                       

Nope.

Interviewer:     

Nope? Ok, how about really, really scared?

Me:                       

Nope. Nope. No, really we’re not.

Interviewer:     

Why not?

Me:                       

Over the last ten or so years, we have traded performance leadership with Intel something like six times.

Remember 2006? We heard some of these same statements from Intel then, about an eighty percent performance advantage and never losing another benchmark to AMD again with “Woodcrest”. That gap closed quickly.

Interviewer:     

But they are the fastest – won’t that mean they will win all the business?

Me:                       

Interviewer:     

No.

Me:                       

I think that might be because it’s Twin-Turbo V8 Engine with 1183 horsepower has a $654,400 base price. But more to the point: the 0-60 mph speed of a car does not define how long it takes to get across town.  And most customers buy servers to, well, get across town.

More than ninety percent of what we sell is not our fastest part. The market for the fastest part is always small and in this economy it’s likely even smaller.  And while Intel may leapfrog AMD in raw performance (for the moment, at least) with the ― oh so flattering ― overhaul of their server architecture, they are also introducing a new learning-curve and resource-drain for an already cost-sensitive and disruption-averse IT environment.

Interviewer:     

But Intel tells me this is what the market has been waiting for.

Me:                       

Value, consolidation and saving money is what’s hot at the moment ― and that’s not likely to change for the foreseeable future. With all of our competitor’s talk about memory bandwidth, they have ignored the market that cares the most about having a large memory footprint ― the 4P market.

Interviewer:     

But surely this is it, you can have no response?

Me:                       

We have demonstrated that our upcoming 6-core “Istanbul” processor, which is on track for launch in the second half of this year, is compatible with existing OEM platforms for a faster time to benefit. In early 2010, AMD plans to introduce our next-generation “Maranello” platform that will feature the 12-core “Magny-Cours” processor as well as serve as the platform for our “Bulldozer” architecture in 2011. The debate will continue.

Interviewer:     

But they win over 30 benchmarks. Surely that matters for something?

Me:                       

Only if you run your business on benchmarks.

Joking aside, nice job Intel, but value for money is what’s key in this market. </breathless>

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.