IBM and its chip development partners made a stunning announcement today, apparently beating Intel in the successful production of the first functional 22 nm SRAM cell. 22 nm processors are still three years out in the future, but IBM’s news is a good sign that chip manufacturer will be able to easily scale to this new level by the end of 2011. It appears that, for the first time in several decades, Intel may have to put some extra time into its research and development efforts to make sure it can keep its manufacturing lead at 22 nm and beyond. But then, Intel has a different opinion what this announcement really means.

As the release of AMD's 45 nm processors Shanghai and, more importantly, Deneb is drawing closer, we are getting a better idea of what to expect from AMD’s next generation of CPUs. The HyperTransport Consortium just released details of the HyperTransport 3.1 specification, which increases the clock speed from 2.6 to 3.2 GHz (6.4 GTransfers/s).

Remember AMD’s promise to return to profitability in the third quarter of this year? You may be wondering how this will be possible considering the fact that the company has lost money over the past seven quarters, including $269 million in Q2 2008, and no big bucks advances against Intel are in sight. But we are certain that AMD in fact will report a huge profit for the third quarter that may not originate from hugely increased product sales, but will create the foundation for the much anticipated announcement of AMD’s “Asset Smart”.

Opinion – IDF is just around the corner and Intel will provide a flood of new information about its upcoming Nehalem (Core i7) processor as well as its 32 nm and 22 nm successors, new architectures such as Larrabee, the ready-to-launch WiMax mobile platform, CE processors such as Tolapai and new partners such as Dreamworks. IDF’s marketing machine typically buries anything from AMD, but this year, AMD is reverting to a strategy from the past: AMD is setting up its camp in a hotel nearby in an effort to balance Intel’s messages. A first briefing discounting Intel’s current product line was given to journalists earlier today. And if the tone of this briefing is any indication, then Nehalem feels like Core 2 Duo all over again.

AMD announced four new “business class” Phenom processors, which essentially means that these processors are made available for a platform that won’t change for at least two years and include a 3-year warranty.

Analyst Opinion - This week I have been spending some time with AMD listening to an update of their workstation and server roadmap.  AMD’s message: We are healthy and we are executing once again.   However, they admitted that their misses in 2007 hurt the company a great deal in revenue, profitability and - even more importantly - credibility.

Hector Ruiz’ time at the AMD as we know it today is coming to an end. Ruiz recently stepped down from his role as CEO, but kept his position as chairman of the board with the purpose of launching AMD’s Asset Light and Asset Smart strategies, which are expected to split AMD into two entities. And this event is only weeks away, industry sources told TG Daily. 

AMD is ready to launch its second assault at Nvidia’s performance leadership in the graphics industry within three weeks. This time AMD goes after Nvidia’s flagship cards GTX 260 and GTX 280 and if we believe the company, then AMD has regained the performance the crown with a significantly faster card that comes with two GPUs, 1600 processors and bunsen burner heat.

Intel will open the doors to its Fall developer forum in San Francisco next week. The new Nehalem micro-architecture, which will first surface in Core i7 high-end desktop processors in the fourth quarter, will be the technical highlight during the conference and be the source for more news topics than we have seen at any previous IDF, if we believe Intel’s promises. Here is a quick outlook on what to expect next week. 

AMD introduced its 790GX chipset and refreshed the 790FX today. Reviews of 790GX motherboards have been published by the usual suspects but there is one trend that especially has caught our interest: AMD goes after extreme overclockability.

Considering the big news coming out of Intel this week (Larrabee) and the expected big News from Nvidia within the next two weeks (x86 CUDA), AMD is under pressure to match its rivals: AMD is making substantial changes to its GPGPU software strategy and announced at its GPG CTO Technology Day that it will ditch its Close-To-Metal platform and switch to OpenCL.