AMDZone has posted an interesting interview with AMD public relations rep Damon Muzny. The interview covers a lot of ground, from AMD's 65nm and 45nm plans to Intel's new architecture, DDR3, and the upcoming dual-core Turion X2s. On new process technologies, Muzny stresses that AMD is "on track" for 45nm production by mid-2008, and that Fab 36 should be 50% converted to 65nm production by early next year. Here's a bit:

Jeff Tom: Right and Intel claimed they'd have 5GHz processors and they never materialized in the market place.

Damon Muzny: Intel said Netburst would take them to 10GHz. You know, we can both fab some pretty nifty one-off products that may never see mass production. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. When can you bring a product to market competitively? Making off-the-wall claims 5 years out isn't leadership.

Netburst was ultimately too inefficient and so the architecture was finally scrapped. Intel began scrambling to bring up a "plan-B," but that takes time. So meanwhile one way Intel attempted to compensate for not being competitive with Direct Connect was by increasing their cache sizes. We know that didn't get them to performance parity. What they got was an increase in die size with performance that still notched them down the value ladder when lined up to next to AMD chips. So while both AMD and Intel are both headed to 65nm, 45nm and beyond... Intel's complex and inefficient architecture with large "compensation caches" made 65nm necessary to bring die sizes back down on Pentium. And this is just one aspect of the big picture. So when you hear the competition crowing about starting a new, smaller design process sooner, understanding the big picture gives a more clear view of what is really going on.

Here's another good example. Intel has been trying to take the focus of their current product portfolio with Conroe demonstration stunts. So while I can't really comment about a competitor's product probably which won't be available for 6 or 9 months, I will say this much about their tactics: it's not like their typical "AMD who?" approach. Clearly we've forced our competitor to respond us. Every time they stress future products they are simply admitting their current products aren't competitive so customers shouldn't buy them. That's just an irrational and desperate move for them. Their claims of future architectural competitiveness largely assume AMD is standing still, and we're not. In fact, as they work to catch up to us, we'll move ahead with our own innovations. So the big picture is Intel in crisis-mode, reacting to AMD's leadership. It shouldn't come as a surprise.