Is AMD Dead Yet? 467
TheProcess writes "Back in February 2003, IBM predicted that AMD would be dead in 5 years (original article here), with IBM and Intel the only remaining players in the chip market. Well, 5 years have passed and AMD is still alive. However, its finances and stock price have taken a serious beating over the last year. AMD was once a darling in this community — the plucky, up-and-coming challenger to the Intel behemoth. Will AMD still be here in 5 years? Can they pose a credible competitive threat to Intel's dominance? Do they still have superior but unappreciated technology? Or are they finally old hat? Can they really recover?"
AMD did it to thsemelf (Score:5, Insightful)
Slow/quick end.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course AMD will survive. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Will they make it? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Phenom's a bit of a disappointment, and will probably remain so until/unless people start writing much more parallelisable code (until then, Intel's bigger L2 cache more than makes up for Phenom's "true" quad-core design). But AMD are fighting back on the GPU side - the HD 3870 X2 has had some great reviews, and in many games it's faster than an 8800 Ultra for sixty quid less.
Of course, since Nvidia have just launched the 9600GT, we may presume there's a 9800GT on the way soon that'll blow both of them away; but while AMD's GPUs were, frankly, laughable all through 2007, the new cards definitely put them back in the game. I think they'll be with us for a while yet.
x86 history report... (Score:2, Insightful)
large company make billions of dollars, sits on it's laurels. Young upstart company makes a decent product and begins to eat at the large company's business. In this case, intel was nimble and humble enough to realize how to respond to that (make lower power chips and adopt x86-64 from AMD) So now, AMD is back to being a scrappy company. Just wait until Intel makes another bazillion and sits on it's laurels again. AMD (or someone) will come to push Intel again.
(The major difference now however, is that fabs are freakin' expensive and AMD might not have enough capital to keep upgrading fabs, which will run them out of business.)
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course AMD will survive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you. Anyway, the mass market is where the money is. Pandering to gamers is more of a prestige thing, 90-something percent of the PC buyers don't care about that.
Re:Apparently not (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Slow/quick end.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's hardly the end though. The only people who bother "predicting" the end of a company are fearful shareholders or people who have nothing better to do. Everyone else is just wondering just WHEN the benefits of the ATI purchase will show, not if.
Let's hope they don't die! (Score:5, Insightful)
Token competitor (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is (Score:5, Insightful)
So it can be hard to try and just compete on the low end of things, since you can't charge as much, and often the people doing the high end things get killer low end products as a side effect.
This is something companies have found out with graphics cards. There have been a number of companies who have tried to compete with nVidia and ATi in the lower end market. Their idea is that while they don't have the R&D to produce a top flight graphics card, that's ok because most people don't buy one of those anyhow. They'll make midrange and lower end cards and sell those.
Great idea, it seems, until you consider that ATi and nVidia get great midrange cards as a side effect of their high end cards. Graphics cards are highly parallel beasts so all they do to make a lower end card is cut some of the units off, put on less memory, maybe clock it down a bit to improve yields and they are good to go. An 8800 GTX and an 8600 GT are the same beast at heart. The 8600 basically just has 25% the number of shader units the 8800 does, and other things like a smaller memory bus. End result is nVidia has and extremely fast $100 card that cost them very little in terms of R&D that wasn't already done for their high end card.
So the companies that have tried have thus far met with little success. Their offerings just haven't been able to compete with the big boys and it is no surprise. You can pour a lot more in to R&D when you are going to sell graphics cards at $500+ and then make use of that very same technology in midrange and low end cards.
Re:Will they make it? (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=946&model2=882&chart=444 [tomshardware.com]
There are still plenty of reasons to buy AMD. We all seem to forget that these things just execute binaries and seem to be ascribing all sorts of personal identification with a friggen CPU brand, as if it were a shirt we wear every day. When I bought my way into dual cores kinda recently (you can probably figure out the type of user I am -- pragmatic?) I looked at their chart, looked around in my price range, and realized that AMD was as fine of a bet as Intel. I could have easily bought an Intel processor, but the products I found fitting my mainboard and processor needs aligned quite evenly over AMD, so after putting aside the market perception, that's what I got.
And my computer does its job of being a computer very nicely.
Re:I inadvertently switched to Intel... (Score:3, Insightful)
Did apple's market share explode just recently?
AMD seems to be fairly capable of supplying various server-
and desktop-vendors. Dell, HP and Sun come to mind.
I don't think that the "number of chips that apple requires"
would be such a big deal for AMD.
Do you want to be any more inflammatory? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:1, Insightful)
I sure hope so...ATI graphics suck and have always sucked. Every ATI card I have bought I ended up bringing back and paying the extra money for an NVIDIA. ATI never produces decent Linux drivers, probably never will. I would hate to see the AMD chip go, but ATI should burn in hell.
Re:In other news, IBM reported dead (Score:2, Insightful)
However I believe that the main reason Microsoft switched to IBM for Xbox360 was that IBM allowed them to having the chips built by other foundries, which is something Intel would never allow (and took opportunity of to screw Microsoft on price for the first Xbox). Ironically Microsoft learnt there the danger of a single provider.
Now if AMD goes belly up, people might become afraid of Intel's monopoly power and start looking for alternatives, in the end it might be a better alternative than having a token competitor.
The x86 monoculture is frightening, if somebody comes up with a PwrFicient (pasemi.com) based laptop, I'd buy it even if it is way more expensive than a Core2Duo. I'd also buy a desktop, but nobody sells them at a semi-decent cost ($6000 is too much, I'd be ready to pay this for a laptop, not for a motherboard without even SATA).
Re:Of course AMD will survive. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apparently not (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope both AMD and ATI do well to keep the competition up, but to me it's two underdogs stuck together. Usually you want one pulling the other up, not both pulling each other down. There's more than one company that's gone straight to hell looking for "synergies" between business areas where there are none.
Re:Intel mistakes: CPU development is VERY difficu (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OpenCores (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:For me, this story crossed a line. ATI excellen (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad AMD is in the market if only because they force Intel to do deep price cuts to their Core2Duo line. Plus, AMD's quad cores are terrific for digital audio workstations. For the price, they are still very fine processors.
So wrong it's harmful (Score:5, Insightful)
2) You're assuming that your ISP is going to allow you to connect without 'trusted' software running.
TCPA is designed to "secure" whole networks of computers for the trusted computing group, not just your own device(as if *anything* you own is going to actually be your own). Unless you are solidly sure that you'll always be able to connect to a 'non-trusted' network, this is fine. But for the rest of us, this stuff is *not* our friend.
Re:For me, this story crossed a line. ATI excellen (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah I'm always watching the front page of slashdot waiting for it to tell me what to buy and what to sell. Actually that might work...stock market is group think, slashdot is group think.
It is all about the platform. (Score:5, Insightful)
They finally, now, have the platform.
Not just that - the difference between Intel is hubris vs economics. As nerds, WE have the responsibility to show people where they're wasting their money. If you're shelling out $6000 to get something bleeding-fucking-tomorrow-edge, yes, you want Intel. If you want something you can use for the next 3 years, but not top of the line (which most people don't need), then an AMD chip will cost you less than half as much as an equivalent-powered Intel.
My hope is that AMD continues to grow and gets their chips into lines from a few other commodity manufacturers. The best thing for the consumer would be two companies competing on approximately equal footing.
Re:Might Be A Challenge (Score:3, Insightful)
but these figures from AppleInsider [appleinsider.com] seem to suggest
that Apple's share, while significant, is not even in the same ballpark as Dell or HP.
Even if only 25% of the Dell's are shipped with AMD CPUs that would still be more
than all of Apple. As said, I have no idea about the actual figures (maybe Dell sells
only 1% AMD?) but I can hardly imagine that an Apple-commitment would bring AMD to it's knees.
Maybe we mortals would have a hard time buying our single chips off the shelf for a while,
but a true contention? Hm.
Re:It is all about the platform. (Score:5, Insightful)
the AMD based latitude 131L kicked the crap out of the 620 laptop in performance, so we went that route for the whole company. we ended up saving money as well as the AMD laptops were cheaper. the ONLY gripe was that the 620 still had pcmcia and the 131L was new tech and used the Expresscard. so several sales people were without cellular internet for a while until we got expresscard modems to replace the pcmcia modems. This was a year ago and we still are happy with the decision.
The only problem is it's hard to find high end servers that are AMD. All the Intel Dell servers are robust and real server hardware, the amd versions are glorified PC's. I want a 4 processor Dual Core server grade system to replace our aging 8 processor SQL server Only recently did Dell release a quad dual core opteron server platform. I have yet to inspect it to see if it's full server grade hardware though.
Re:Intel mistakes: Lack of competition (Score:5, Insightful)
When the competitive marketplace isn't driving you, you have to drive yourself. Once that starts to happen, the directions can become bizarre, with Itanium and Netburst being to very good examples.
Itanium: The problem Itanium was designed to handle was cloning. First and foremost, they sewed up the I.P. so that it was not subject to any existing cross-licensing agreements. Second, the architecture was sufficiently different that they were outside of the realm of existing art ahd cross-licensing, so their I.P. was "strong." Notice that I haven't said a word yet about performance, cost, or any of that normal stuff. When mere technical and marketplace concerns are that low in the priority schemes, guess what happens.
Netburst: It seemed like someone in marketing got overly focused on clockspeed as the Ultimate Metric. The rest falls from there.
The reality is that ANY corporate product, will turn to junk without a competitive marketplace to keep it focused on delivering value to customers. Once competition is gone from a specific marketplace, the company will either focus its development budget in other areas where it needs to respond to competition, or it's development will be driven by motivations internal to the company, that are likely irrelevant or even negative to customers
Re:Wrong marketing did them in, clock *does* matte (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't specify which applications you were using, or what you were doing, or in fact any useful detail at all, which makes your story essentially unverifiable. Moreover, your reported results appear to be somewhat at variance with the general experience, and your claim here is just overly simplistic (ALU throughput, and having enough registers to effectively manage latency, are just as important) - and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Given the variance between the two architectures, on lots of levels, I'm sure there are specific runs of code in which the P4 would trounce the Athlon (and vice versa), and it's possibly that you happened upon them in the specific applications you were using (or writing - you don't specify that either... although of course if you had access to the source code, you could have produced profiler runs and seen exactly where the time was going). On the other hand, you might have missed something simple yet vital in your comparisons, or your comparison might be completely unrepeatable.
I am NOT saying you didn't observe what you have reported, not at all. But without useful detail, the rest of us can only disregard outlying data points.
Yeah - that's why the chips are called AMD64 (Score:2, Insightful)
AMD is going no where
Re:Shorting AMD stock: NASDAQ figures (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, if the *only* things you are doing with your PC are looking at web pages and "doing email" (as some put it), or "office work", then our current PC's are fine. Of course, the same was true of the computers at the time I was quoted in the paper, too. I want to do *more* and I'm not alone.
Just look back to '93, then compare that with what we can do now. Now, try to imagine what we could be doing in another 14 years...
Re:Wrong marketing did them in, clock *does* matte (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, clock does matter, but there are tradeoffs, and Intel chose to maximize clock frequency at the expense of all else. AMD had to either explain that to customers, or switch to using an actual benchmark to measure performance. Argue all you like about which benchmark they chose, but it was the right decision.
Re:Ok, what are you smoking (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115029 [newegg.com]
Now unless it's one of the few apps that actually utilizes quad-core, the E6750 beats or compares to the 9700, which is at least $50 more expensive than it is (can't find a 9700 for sale anywhere, 9600 is $240). And if you need quad-core, the Q6600 is probably about the same price as the 9700 and about the same performance.
I've never been a fanboy of Intel nor AMD (being a fanboy in general is pretty stupid...no company always makes the best products). My prior PC was an AMD 64 3800+ (which is now chugging away happily as a server). I build AMD machines for the workstations where I work because you can make a great machine for $300. What I'm saying is that AMD is simply not competitive for most applications in the mid-high end right now. I really wish they were and hope they get there, because competition is good, very good. Intel getting the crap kicked out of it for years and producing the Conroe is a great example of why....had AMD not been beating them, they might have just stayed lazy and complacent and just done the standard MHz upgrades.
Re:It is all about the platform. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I thought Core2 did them in (Score:2, Insightful)
All depends on how to spin the numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Intel is UP 17.4%
AMD is UP almost 28.4%
But if we extend that window to 8 years, they are BOTH in trouble, each DOWN about 63%.
Lastly, with careful manipulation of the dates to just a little bit over 2 years (where I chose the high point in the stock after the AMD/ATI hysteria and AMD's stock price skyrocketed before coming back to the Realm of Reality), it looks like AMD is on the brink, being down over 80%.
This is why we shouldn't use stock prices over time to judge these things. They are just too easily manipulated.
However, I'm NOT saying AMD isn't having troubles right now. There's a LOT on AMD's sheets right now that look very unhappy with a negative P/E and EPS along with massive cash losses. I'm just saying we shouldn't look at stock price alone, especially over arbitrary time lengths.
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:3, Insightful)
And honestly, I think AMD's approach to multi-cores (Quad+) is really where they'll benefit in the long run. Intel, while they were able to get a short-run boost, is still going to have to figure that problem out to compete in the long run. So, AMD is still ahead in many respects, even if they are not fully benefiting from it today - they will tomorrow.
Business is not just a matter of the quarterlies, or even the year-to-year. You have to think Short term to stay ahead today, but you also have to have a good long term plan. AMD64 and the multi-core approach AMD has invested in are certainly good for the long term health of the company. With AMD64 they get to control this round of the instruction set; with their multi-core approach they get to save money later as that approach will be what's required in the long term.
Honestly, think about it. AMD's multi-core approach is the right design to multi-core. Intel's approach, however, is like patching a program - it gets the job done, but the real work is still head. AMD will be better off for what they did, and they will see the benefits. If they followed Intel's approach, then not only would they have had to do what they did, but they would have also spent a lot of extra money doing Intel's band aide approach too. So they have already saved themselves money. Not to mention that they essentially did their multi-core approach in about the same time as Intel did their approach, namely because they thought about it when they did their implementation of AMD64. (Intel didn't get that advantage since EMT64E/Intel64 was just a band aide around IA-32 to get x86 64-bit compatible CPUs quick to market.)
The ATI purchase isn't too different either - after all, think of how many systems have built-in graphics cards. They could easily take that market over so a minimal GPGPU + basic interface chipset (to the Output port - VGA/DVI/etc) is all that is needed for those systems. They would also get the benefit of being able to aid a normal graphics card, so high-end graphics would be able to pull more performance by having its specialty plus the GPGPU extensions. Need combo.
Needless to say, I like the fact that AMD's management did the right thing for the long term.
motherboards for AMD CPUs better and cheaper (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the motherboards that support AMD Phenom's are superior to and cheaper than motherboards for Intel Quad-cores. Gigabit motherboards offer up to 16GB of RAM; it also offers 2 x16 PCI-e slots and 3 x1 PCI-e slots, as well as 2 PCI slots; the Gigabit GA-790FX-DQ6 is around $200 for that. This motherboard has around a 4- to 5-star rating from numerous reviewers.
Some of the MSI motherboards offer 8GB and 4 x16 or x8 PCI-e slots, along with 1 x1 PCI-e slot, and 2 older PCI slots: that's 7 total. This one's for around $160. This board has a 5-star rating from numerous reviewers (on NegEgg). It also has an award for best motherboard in terms of quality.
Meanwhile, the only Intel motherboards for their non-server Quad-cores that go up to 16GB are by A-bit, a poor brand, and those motherboards have comparably poor reviews from NewEgg.com.