So with everyone hyped out of their minds about what the new Apple phone will or will not do / when will it be available / oh Steve Job’s is such a mastermind… Enough already! There are other subjects to blog about, such as this major acknowledgement from Intel.

Intel concedes the mega-hertz war with rival chip makers was not the solution to wining the microprocessor wars after all.

What was that? You did not see the press release? Funny, I missed it too, but let me see if I can put the pieces together for you.

Remember over a year ago when Intel re-branded all its desktop processors to Pentium D 805/820/915 and so on. Then came the rather meaningless distinction “ViiV”, and alas this year we have the endless parade of Core 2 Duo TXXXX, EXXXX with the new Quad cores hitting the streets now with, you guessed it, equally confusing nomenclature.  Now don’t get me wrong, Intel’s new Core architecture is stunning and impressive, but aren’t they accomplishing this with lower power, wider buses, better caching and Slower Chip Speeds. Hum, sounds a lot like AMD’s direction for the past several years.

This year, Intel’s booth at CES served to reinforced this stance. It was heavy on glitz and light on any substance. Now this could be due to their show floor proximity to Microsoft – right next door. All the cheap shots aside, it was a shame that the focus of the Intel subcontract show staff was, ”it’s all about the multi-cores!” (Of the three I spoke to at length, none of them actually worked for Intel – rent a marketer.)

Intel Booth at CES 2007

As you can see from the photo, just about every kiosk and display within the booth centered on gaming. Hey gaming is cool, but as an industry guy, why not tell me how fast the chip is running, how many cores it has, and how big the L2 cache is – this would be more helpful then trying to figure out which chip is faster T2050, E6600 or X5160?

One thing is certain, the ball is now back in AMD’s court. Can they answer back to not only the performance, but marketing edge that Intel has garnered with the Core platform? I think it’s possible, but please AMD, for the love of all things holy, don’t convolute your product names like Intel.