The canine's gonads
This was the week of the (soft) launch of Intel's next generation CPU architecture: Core i7 nee Nehalem. The processors aren't due to come on to the market until 17th November but Intel decided to bring forward the unveiling of the technology.
Surely the imminent revelation of AMD's new Shanghai server processors had no influence on that decision?
Anyway, Core i7 was acclaimed by all and sundry to be the canine's gonads and, for the time being at least, Intel has further extended its CPU performance lead over AMD. In our analysis of the commercial implications of Core i7's arrival, however, AMD pleaded the case that most people don't need this kind of performance from their CPU.
Talking of AMD, it had yet another eventful week. In close succession it was leaked out that AMD was going to have to can another 500 people, then that one of them is apparently pretty senior and finally that the consequent game of executive musical chairs is already underway.
Quarterly earnings across the board are tending to be down on the same time last year, but such has been the precipitous pricing-in of presumed bad news into stock markets that anything short of utter catastrophe is tending to be rewarded by investors.
This was the case with NVIDIA today, which is being rewarded for only producing a quarter of the profits it did a year ago with a 15 percent jump in its share price.
