YOU WOULDN'T think that an Intel Developer Forum would be the place to find out about AMD's Thunderstorm project, would you?

AMD doesn't even want to talk to the INQ any more, so we were surprised to bump into a bus driver here in Shanghai who seemed to know more about Intel's plans than your average road pilot.

The roadmap is this. AMD's Thunderstorm project, first published on my bog a few weeks ago, will put paid to Intel's Larrabee's plans by being released before the end of 2008.

Intel is not ready to talk about Larrabee, but the bus driver said the project is far advanced and uses backward compatibility to achieve the same effects - as in 12 to 16 cores - far earlier than anything Chipzilla has up its corporate sleevies.

We don't know anything about AMD's plans - AMD doesn't talk to us any more. But it seems to brief the local bus drivers here in Ole Shanghai. µ