Intel is in a league of its own right now. After the latest instalment of the mono-branded technology jamboree that is the Intel Developer Forum, it's hard to come to any other conclusion. Its road map looks ominously good.

Of course, that Intel is a much larger company with significantly more resources (both in terms of cash and blokes in white coats) than AMD is hardly news.

But this autumn's IDF in San Francisco was an exceptionally ominous display of technological might. Eight-core, sexdecuple-threaded (yes, really) CPUs, ultra mobile platforms that promise to squeeze desktop x86 computing into genuinely pocket-sized gizmos and the relentless march of Intel's silicon process technology were the key highlights.

More to the point, the flawless manner in which Intel has recently been executing its product road map means demands that we take seriously any claims the company makes. Of late, Intel's hardware has certainly matched its PR hype.

Terrifying technology

The sheer breadth of Intel's current competence is rather terrifying. Not only does it sport comfortably the best mainstream desktop, server and mobile x86 processor line up. It's also on the cusp of introducing a brand new alternative to its heavy duty out-of-order CPUs in the form of the floating-point monster that is the Larrabee processor.

Sure, it's still an x86-based architecture. But with a massive array of in-order execution cores it's also a revolutionary new approach. Whichever way the market turns, it seems Intel has it covered.

Indeed, as good as its current Core 2 processors are, Intel is pressing relentlessly on. After the welcome but rather routine (by Intel's standards) shrink to 45nm later this year, 2008 will bring an essentially all new CPU architecture. The Nehalem family finally calls time on the last weakness in Intel processor design by ditching the creaky old FSB and bringing the memory controller onto to CPU die (or at least the CPU package).

Where for art thou, AMD?

All of which begs the question, what's up with AMD? Frankly, it doesn't look good. While Intel has been strutting its stuff, AMD has been struggling to supply even a handful of final stepping quad-core Barcelona samples to the UK press.

Moreover, early benchmarks circulating on the web seem to confirm my worst fears. Barcelona is a pretty minor advance over AMD's previous K8 architecture, as found in Athlon 64 processors. I'll have more to say on this once I've put it through its paces.