Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So? In an episode last week, I talked
Speaker 1: about CPU architecture and I mentioned that there are two
Speaker 1: primary chip design companies responsible for most of the CPUs
Speaker 1: on the market, and by that I mean specifically processors
Speaker 1: for desktop and laptop computers. Now that being said, there
Speaker 1: are some smaller chip design companies that are in that
Speaker 1: space as well, but the two big players are Intel
Speaker 1: and AMD. So I thought I would do a quick
Speaker 1: episode about the differences between these two companies and their products,
Speaker 1: because if you're ever building your own PC, then one
Speaker 1: of the decisions you need to make is do I
Speaker 1: go AMD or do I go Intel? And just a
Speaker 1: reminder that means that you know, this decision really does
Speaker 1: matter because motherboards, you know, the giant circuit boards that
Speaker 1: you plug processors into, they're only compatible with one of
Speaker 1: the two, like they're either Intel compatible or AMD compatible.
Speaker 1: And even then you also have to look for compatibility
Speaker 1: within certain families of processors. But you can't buy an
Speaker 1: Intel based motherboard and insert an AMD CPU and vice versa,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about why as this episode unfolds. So interestingly,
Speaker 1: the companies are kind of siblings, that is, they both
Speaker 1: have the same daddy daddy fair Child Semiconductor. And yes,
Speaker 1: if you're wondering if I wrote this episode right after
Speaker 1: my weird episode about logic gates earlier this week, I did.
Speaker 1: And I was still groggy and loopy still am as
Speaker 1: I record this, And that's just how things are. So anyway,
Speaker 1: fair Child semi Conductor was kind of the dad to
Speaker 1: both AMD and Intel, and I guess that makes William
Speaker 1: Shockley the grandfather for both of these companies as well.
Speaker 1: Shockley was a co founder of the transistor at Bell Labs,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen fifty five he founded the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory,
Speaker 1: and he recruited lots of super smart engineering students and engineers,
Speaker 1: and he was also notoriously awful to work for, if
Speaker 1: reports are to be believed, so that led to an
Speaker 1: interesting situation. In nineteen fifty seven, eight of the employees
Speaker 1: of Shockley Semiconductor resigned altogether, and it was these eight
Speaker 1: that would then co found Fairchild Semiconductor. This was a
Speaker 1: branch of a larger camera company that already existed, the
Speaker 1: Fairchild Camera Company, And this company had been looking into
Speaker 1: getting involved in the semiconductor biz, but they didn't have
Speaker 1: the know how or the starting capital to just jump
Speaker 1: right in. So these guys ended up coming over and
Speaker 1: created that division for Fairchild and work there. These eight
Speaker 1: men became known as the Traitoress eight. Though, considering the
Speaker 1: types of stuff that Shockley was interested in later in
Speaker 1: his life, perhaps the word trader should be changed to
Speaker 1: eight guys who saw what was coming and got while
Speaker 1: the getting was good. Among those eight were two men
Speaker 1: who wo had later co found Intel. They were Gordon
Speaker 1: Moore and Robert Noise. But between Shockley semi Conductors and Intel,
Speaker 1: you still have Fairchild semi Conductor, right, So they're all
Speaker 1: working at Fairchild. And in nineteen sixty one a guy
Speaker 1: named Jeremiah Jerry Sanders would join Fairchild semi Conductor as
Speaker 1: an engineer. He would later go on to co found AMD.
Speaker 1: So anyway, before that, at Fairchild semi Conductor, things are
Speaker 1: plugging away till you hit nineteen sixty eight. That's when
Speaker 1: Robert Nois and Gordon Moore resigned from Fairchild and they
Speaker 1: go to co found Intel. Sanders would then leave Fairchild
Speaker 1: along with seven others, So I guess another Traders say,
Speaker 1: if you want to think of it that way, in
Speaker 1: nineteen six and they co founded Advanced micro Devices Incorporated
Speaker 1: or AMD. Early on, Intel focused on designing memory chips,
Speaker 1: not CPUs, which shouldn't be a surprise because the CPU
Speaker 1: hadn't been invented yet. We did not get the first
Speaker 1: CPU until nineteen seventy one, and remember Intel traces its
Speaker 1: history to nineteen sixty eight. The CPU actually came out
Speaker 1: of Intel. It was the Intel for zero zero four. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: this was a side project at Intel, because Intel's main
Speaker 1: business were these memory chips. But as a side project,
Speaker 1: some engineers were able to build an integrated circuit chip
Speaker 1: that had all the functions that we associate with CPUs,
Speaker 1: and so before that, all the different functions of a
Speaker 1: CPU would have to span across different components on a
Speaker 1: circuit board. Now you could have them all in the
Speaker 1: same chip, and that was huge, although also paradoxically very
Speaker 1: tiny because chips are not big anyway. It would take
Speaker 1: a couple of years for microprocessors to really take off,
Speaker 1: but they sure as heck did. AMD likewise designed and
Speaker 1: fabricated memory chips, and once Intel got going with CPUs
Speaker 1: and other companies started to follow suit, AMD got a
Speaker 1: lot of business as a second source manufacturer. So a
Speaker 1: second source manufacturer is a company that secures a license
Speaker 1: to manufacture some other companies designed product. So Nvidia does
Speaker 1: this model a lot and outsources manufacturing of its chips,
Speaker 1: and that makes sense because to manufacture chips that requires
Speaker 1: a huge initial cost to build out the fabrication facilities,
Speaker 1: so companies like Nvidia license that out to other companies.
Speaker 1: AMD would produce chips designed by other companies, including Intel,
Speaker 1: but the cooperative relationship between AMD and Intel was not
Speaker 1: to last. The second source manufacturing agreement expired in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six. There was an agreement to share technologies that
Speaker 1: was a little more lenient and lasted a bit longer,
Speaker 1: but Intel an AMD would kind of go their own way,
Speaker 1: well kind of, because AMD started to reverse engineer Intel
Speaker 1: chips and then make their own Intel compatible chips, so
Speaker 1: they weren't licensed by Intel anymore. But they figured out
Speaker 1: how Intel's processors were designed and then were able to
Speaker 1: replicate that in their own facilities. Now, Intel created what
Speaker 1: would become known as the X eighty six chip architecture.
Speaker 1: The first processor in this family was the eighty eighty six,
Speaker 1: which Intel produced in nineteen seventy eight. This was a
Speaker 1: sixteen BET microprocessor. I just did an episode trying to
Speaker 1: explain what that means when you talk about a system
Speaker 1: being like sixteen BET versus thirty two BET, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And we did talk about chip architecture last week. So
Speaker 1: essentially that just involves the layout of the various components
Speaker 1: in a CPU, and that layout is partly what determines
Speaker 1: the chip's performance. Uh, you know, how much data it
Speaker 1: can process in a given amount of time, how much
Speaker 1: power is required to run the chip, and how much
Speaker 1: heat the chip generates as it chugs along. All of
Speaker 1: that depend at least partly on the chip's architecture. The
Speaker 1: X eighty six architecture proved to be a very strong
Speaker 1: foundation for Intel. If you've been around for a while,
Speaker 1: you might remember IBM compatible computers back when we used
Speaker 1: to call you know, PC's IBM compatibles because they were
Speaker 1: based off IBM's initial PC design. But you might remember
Speaker 1: processors like the two eighty six or the three eighty
Speaker 1: six or the four eighty six. I believe when I
Speaker 1: was growing up, we had a two eighty six and
Speaker 1: then jumped up to a for eighty six, not immediately,
Speaker 1: like we let that two eighty six last a good
Speaker 1: long while before we upgraded. But yeah, I remember using
Speaker 1: those computers. So the X in X eighty six is
Speaker 1: kind of like a variable in algebra, represents a family
Speaker 1: of processors that all draw from the same basic chip
Speaker 1: architecture design. AMD reverse engineered the x eighty six architecture
Speaker 1: and began to produce its own chips that were similar
Speaker 1: to Intel's thirty two bit three eighty six processor, extremely similar,
Speaker 1: in fact, similar enough that Intel and AMD got into
Speaker 1: some legal scraps over this. The matter ultimately went all
Speaker 1: the way up to the US Supreme Court, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, the Supreme Court would weigh in. But yeah,
Speaker 1: before that, the legal decisions were flip flopping. Some of
Speaker 1: the courts were finding in favor of Intel, some in
Speaker 1: favor of AMD that got reversed by an appeals court.
Speaker 1: Eventually gets up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court votes in favor of AMD. Also, that wasn't the
Speaker 1: last time the two companies would clash in the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: but that for a full episode focusing just on AMD.
Speaker 1: I guess now, for a long time, Intel's chips had
Speaker 1: a performance edge over AMD, so AMD was really focused
Speaker 1: on making chips that were more efficient, so they were
Speaker 1: less power hungry. They were also more affordable, not just
Speaker 1: in the price tag on the chip, but also because
Speaker 1: they were sipping less power, you didn't have to spin
Speaker 1: as much on electricity bills. And both Intel and AMD
Speaker 1: were relying on this X eighty six architecture. However, in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, AMD did something really shocking. They introduced
Speaker 1: the first X eighty six processor with a one gigahertz
Speaker 1: clock speed. Now I've been over clock speed a couple
Speaker 1: times recently, but just as a reminder, the speed references
Speaker 1: the number of times the quote unquote clock of the
Speaker 1: CPU oscillates per second. So a gigahertz processor has a
Speaker 1: clock that oscillates one billion times every second. And AMD
Speaker 1: was the first company to get there. And you could
Speaker 1: think of oscillations as being sort of the span of
Speaker 1: time that a computer has to complete a step in
Speaker 1: an operation. While AMD was only a year younger than Intel,
Speaker 1: It was this move in nineteen ninety nine that really
Speaker 1: signaled that AMD was a worthy competitor to the industry giant.
Speaker 1: You know, it had been kind of trailing behind and
Speaker 1: writing Intel's coattails, if you want to look at it
Speaker 1: that way. But ninety nine showed that AMD was here
Speaker 1: for real z's it meant business. Internally, AMD called this
Speaker 1: microprocessor the K seven because it was the seventh generation
Speaker 1: X eighty six based CPU that AMD had produced, but
Speaker 1: the brand name for the CPU was the Athlon processor,
Speaker 1: and the Athlon would end up marking a divided path
Speaker 1: for AMD and Intel. I'll explain how after we come
Speaker 1: back from this quick break. All right, we were talking
Speaker 1: about a divided path between AMD and Intel. So Intel
Speaker 1: processors had an electrical as well as physical orientation for
Speaker 1: plugging into a motherboard, and at the time of the
Speaker 1: Athlon processor from AMD, Intel's specifications were called slot one.
Speaker 1: AMD no longer had the right to license Slot one technology,
Speaker 1: so that meant AMD had to choose a different specification
Speaker 1: for its chip to plug into a motherboard. This specification
Speaker 1: would be called slot A. So very confusing, right slot
Speaker 1: one versus Slot A. You get the feeling that both
Speaker 1: companies were going for this so that no one had
Speaker 1: to be number two or B. So anyway, you had
Speaker 1: slot one for Intel and Slot A for AMD, and
Speaker 1: the word slot is starting to lose all meaning for me. Mechanically,
Speaker 1: an AMD processor could fit into a motherboard that was
Speaker 1: made for Intel processors, and this was good from motherboard
Speaker 1: manufacturers reduced the hardship they would have to make motherboards
Speaker 1: that were compatible with each chip because the mechanical parts
Speaker 1: of the board could remain the same. However, electronically the
Speaker 1: two slots were incompatible, so the contacts on the chip
Speaker 1: in Slot one chips were different from those that were
Speaker 1: in Slot A, so you could not put a slot
Speaker 1: A style chip in a slot one style motherboard. That
Speaker 1: would not work. And this would hold true over successive
Speaker 1: generations of Intel and AMD chips. The chips would evolve,
Speaker 1: as did the types of connections on motherboards. They got
Speaker 1: away from slots and into sockets. But anyway, the whole
Speaker 1: thing got started at this stage where the Athlon processor
Speaker 1: kind of went off on this next step because previously
Speaker 1: you could put an AMD chip in an Intel motherboard
Speaker 1: because the AMD had been making Intel style chips. They
Speaker 1: were a second source manufacturer. But this time was now over.
Speaker 1: Both companies would evolve their technologies and the fork in
Speaker 1: the road would get wider over time. Generally speaking, there
Speaker 1: were some basic pros and cons that you could associate
Speaker 1: with the chips that the companies made over different eras
Speaker 1: of their existence. So initially, Intel chips were more powerful
Speaker 1: and had higher clock speeds than what you would find
Speaker 1: with AMD chips, and then early on AMD chips were
Speaker 1: usually a little less expensive than Intel chips, and they
Speaker 1: were more power efficient, so they were also gentler on
Speaker 1: battery life, which was important for things like laptop computers,
Speaker 1: rather than Intel's processors, which, because they were more powerful,
Speaker 1: required more actual power and would drain batteries more quickly.
Speaker 1: Over time, these things have kind of flip flopped a
Speaker 1: little bit. One company would end up focusing on power
Speaker 1: for a bit, the other one would start to optimize
Speaker 1: architecture and boost efficiency, and then the roles would reverse.
Speaker 1: So you can't just make a blanket statement of saying
Speaker 1: Intel processors are faster than AMD. It's more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: In addition, Intel's domination for a very long time was
Speaker 1: in single thread processing, so that's the kind of processing
Speaker 1: that a really powerful single core processor is made to handle,
Speaker 1: and AMD was focusing for a long time on multicore
Speaker 1: and thus multi threading processing, and for specific types of
Speaker 1: computer processing, AMD could outperform Intel, but in other types
Speaker 1: of processing, Intel beat out AMD. And again, these relationships
Speaker 1: have also flip flopped over the years. Honestly, as both
Speaker 1: companies pushed innovation, the capabilities of their products began to converge.
Speaker 1: So they are different chips with different architectures, and they
Speaker 1: require different types of motherboards to connect to, but performance
Speaker 1: wise they're kind of narrowed in on each other. There's
Speaker 1: not that huge of a different between Intel and AMD
Speaker 1: depending upon which line of processors you're looking at. If
Speaker 1: you're looking at the very top of the line processors,
Speaker 1: then Intel has edged out AMD over the number of
Speaker 1: cores available, but then AMD holds the edge on more
Speaker 1: powerful individual cores. So Intel the Intel Core I nine
Speaker 1: thirteen nine hundred K, that processor, which is as a
Speaker 1: heck of a mouthful, has twenty four cores and has
Speaker 1: support of up to thirty two threads and multi threading.
Speaker 1: AMD's Rizin seventy nine point fifty X has quote unquote
Speaker 1: only sixteen cores compared to Intel's twenty four with the
Speaker 1: I nine thirteen nine hundred K. But AMD's sixteen cores
Speaker 1: can also handle thirty two threads of processing just like
Speaker 1: Intel's can, and AMD's chip runs at a higher clock
Speaker 1: frequency and greater cash memory than Intel's. So again, depending
Speaker 1: upon what your purpose you're using the chips for and
Speaker 1: what deals are available, that might really guide your decision
Speaker 1: more than anything else. So it's possible that the choice
Speaker 1: between Intel and AMD could really come down to your
Speaker 1: budget and the availability of specific processors and motherboards. So remember,
Speaker 1: choosing the processor determines what types of motherboards you can use,
Speaker 1: and if you go with an AMD chip, then you're
Speaker 1: going to need to make sure you get a motherboard
Speaker 1: that's compatible with AMD CPUs. It also will tell you
Speaker 1: things like what you need to think about when you're
Speaker 1: looking at things like like power supplies. Obviously, this chip
Speaker 1: is not going to be the only component you're plugging
Speaker 1: into your computer. You're going to have lots of other stuff,
Speaker 1: including possibly a really powerful graphics processing unit if you're,
Speaker 1: like you know, an elite gamer type, and that in
Speaker 1: turn will also determine the type of power supply you're
Speaker 1: going to need. In order to run your machine. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the difference is between a MD and Intel from a
Speaker 1: performance standpoint really are hard to distinguish at this stage,
Speaker 1: especially when you're looking at, you know, specific price points
Speaker 1: and processor capabilities, because they're they're getting really similar in output,
Speaker 1: and it really comes down to things like your budget
Speaker 1: and the types of software you're planning on running on
Speaker 1: that machine. But that's really it. It's like it's not
Speaker 1: as it's not as cut and dry as it used
Speaker 1: to be, where you would say, oh, if you're doing
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that's going to require a multi
Speaker 1: core processing, go with a m D. And if you
Speaker 1: want something that's really good for single thread and go
Speaker 1: with Intel. That's no longer necessarily the case. So it's
Speaker 1: a lot more complicated and nuanced than it used to be.
Speaker 1: Although if you're just looking at how much does it cost,
Speaker 1: that can simplify things dramatically. All Right, that's it for
Speaker 1: this quick episode about the differences between TELL at AMD
Speaker 1: from a CPU standpoint. There are obviously lots of other
Speaker 1: differences between the two companies, but I just wanted to
Speaker 1: focus on CPUs because that's kind of what we've been
Speaker 1: talking about for the last couple of weeks. I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well. Tomorrow we are going to have
Speaker 1: a classic episode of tech Stuff, a really classic one.
Speaker 1: This one dates all the way back to two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, so I hope you enjoy that, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.