Originally Posted by
Blauhung
I agree completely that AMD does have a very strong and competitively priced middle ground right now with Phenom/PhenomII going up against C2Q's right now. It's not that Intel doesn't have a lot to offer as there are a complete range of performance that directly competes with AMD at pretty much any level you can point out, it's mostly that there just isn't anything new. The goal of i5 is to offer a platform that has been cut down in simplicty and cost of ownership and will perform on par with current i7 products out now as they will be replaced shortly after i5 release with Westmere. i5 will be that more affordable middle ground as the platform itself has less components on it and it uses less power.
Now the more I think about the probable lifespan of i5, the more I can see why the platform may not see a direct 32nm refresh with a Westmere based chip. I completely forget what it's called at the moment, but the 32nm dual core with a MCM'd IGP has been pulled into this year, showing Intel's confidence in the 32nm process. This also allows for an accelerated timeframe on Sandy Bridge which can pull in and overshadow the release of a Westmere based middle ground quad core near Q4'10. So not speaking as an employee, there's a chance that we will could see the new architecture come in on both middle and high end segments before 2011
Again, I agree with you, IMC and tri-channel on i7 is not really needed, but it's not there as a selling point although marketing people need to use it that way. It is there to make the platform work using the server chips that require Tylersburg as a hub. We will really see the benefit in lower power and lower platform complexity on i5. The fact that there's no longer a NB does help a lot.