Intel: Raining On AMD's Parade?

Intel had the quad-core processor market all to itself for 271 straight days. But that wasn't enough for the chip giant to refrain from doing all it could to spoil the coming-out party for AMD's first quad-core product.

Less than a week before the long-awaited Sept. 10 launch of AMD's quad-core x86 chip, Intel announced the release of its own Xeon 7300, or Tigerton, series of server chips. Those represent the very top of the line for Intel in the quad-core x86 space and feature clock speeds considerably faster than anything AMD will initially offer with its quad-cores.

A few days after the Tigerton announcement, Intel began sending out e-mail invitations for what it described as "a BIG celebration for our tiny chips" at the Intel Developers Forum on Sept. 18. If that wording didn't get recipients thinking about Intel's forthcoming 45-nanometer chip design, the big "45nm" logo at the top of the invite certainly did.

Of course, product launches in the semiconductor industry are decided upon well in advance. Perhaps the Tigerton release's proximity to the Barcelona launch date was purely coincidental. And the unveiling of Penryn, Intel's first example of the 45nm process, hasn't exactly been a big mystery.

If so, there's little doubt about the opportunism behind Intel's press alert that it was raising third-quarter revenue expectations. The chip maker just happened to make that thunder-stealing announcement on the very day its rival was launching its most important new product in two years.

"As a result of stronger than expected worldwide demand for its computing products, Intel Corporation now expects revenue for the third quarter to be between $9.4 billion and $9.8 billion as compared to the previous range of $9.0 billion to $9.6 billion," Intel said in its Sept. 10 statement. "The gross margin percentage for the third quarter is expected to be in the upper half of the previous range of 52 percent plus or minus a couple of points. All other expectations are unchanged."

That news came more than a month before Intel was officially scheduled to announce its third-quarter earnings. The chip maker provided no further details or reasons for the jump in its earnings expectations.

AMD got some good news of its own the day after the Barcelona launch. The chip maker made greater second-quarter gains in the worldwide microprocessor market than anticipated, according to research group iSuppli's final microchip revenue market survey for the second quarter.