Sounds like AMD is being used as a smoke screen for a more serious matter.

With all of the speculating I've read lately it's hard not to speculate a little on my own...

I cannot for one moment imagine that the delays in Intel's 45nm volume production ramp are related to AMD's Barcelona teething...;) What a ridiculous assertion, and "apology" doesn't begin to cover it. If Intel could execute, it would execute. End of story...;) I mean, might as well imagine that Intel would have delayed Core 2 to "wait on" AMD to bring Barcelona to maturity. Yea, sure...;)

But, otoh, I remember reading bang-up PR stories about Prescott's "revolutionary" 90nm production--slated to happen "any time now" but which took about 18 more months and was a failure, in fact, when it actually came time for Intel to put up or shut up with respect to Prescott 90nm production. I remember official Intel statements that Prescott would hit 5GHz "before the year's end" that were made by Otellini a couple of months before Prescott got canned and Intel bailed out of Netburst entirely.

So, to speculate...wouldn't it be a hoot if AMD's current Barcelona teething problems in 2007 turned out to be nothing compared to Intel's 45nm volume production ramp difficulties in '08...? 2008 will be an interesting year, no doubt about it.

...Now imagine how Intel will act if AMD wasn't around and they had absolutely no competition. They would halve their R&D and price-rape all of us. We wouldn't see 32nm or Nehalem for 5 more years at this rate.

This is why we need competition in a capitalist economic system. AMD better hurry the phuck up with B3....

If the 45nm Core2 Quad release is delayed as rumoured, it will probably be partly stimulated by unannounced bug-fixes in the 45nm parts and partly stimulated by the current X48 chip-set delivery issues. BTW, nVidia would be extremely happy indeed with a 2-3 month delay on the Penryn desktop releases. It would give them more time to finalize their real Penryn desktop SLI chip-set. The current "780i" hack-together of existing nV silicon is purely a short-term stop-gap.

The conspiracy suggestions on various (so-called) tech news sites that Intel are deliberately taking advantage of the AMD Phenom delay to prolong the lives of the current quad-cores are the product of over-heated imaginations.

Your version of "competition" originates with Karl Marx and has no relation to what real competition is, nor to capitalism. The threat of competition is enough even if there is only one existing producer. It's not up to you or any other person's opinion what the optimum rate of investment for Intel's processors is.

Intel's prices fell long before AMD was serious a threat. It wasn't their competition but Intel's lower cost of production which caused that price decline. Intel is the godfather of AMD, used them to produce chips for them years ago (many seem to forget that), and today Intel, after being attacked by corrupt ideological nincompoops for serving their customers and reaping their just rewards in the marketplace, has to be careful to not defeat AMD. So they reduce their investment in order to protect themselves from the attacks of the losers.

Well, if AMD gets overclockable and low-priced B3 Phenoms to market by January, I think that AMD will 'present a threat'. If I can get a B3 Phenom 9500 that goes up to 3GHz for $199USD, then they got my dollar...but maybe that's a bit too much 'wishful thinking'...

Has there ever been an official launch day for the remainder of the 45nm Quad Cores? I don't ever remember Intel saying anything about January '08 I've only seen websites put it in their QX9650 reviews, but nothing official.

As usual, most of the posts here blow the situation way out of proportion. The point is simply an uncompetitive market is bad for the consumer and the pc industry at large.

Intel is doing what is doing best! Making profit!

It's a good strategy though to let AMD slip on their own.

But yea, it hurts the consumers in the long haul.