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?"
Why did they buy ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:AMD did it to themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not? (Score:0, Interesting)
Darling of the community! (Score:5, Interesting)
AMD has too many assets to just disappear (Score:2, Interesting)
AMD makes a ton of FLASH memory.
And then there's the GPU division (ATI). It's a bit hard to imagine that both CPU, GPU and Flash RAM will all tank at once.
Could it happen? Yeah. Everything is possible. I would not bet my apartement on it, though.
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
What they originally wanted to do was merge with nVidia, it made sense at the time because nVidia was producing the best chipset for AMD CPUs. Anyway the communications between the 2 companies went sour, so AMD, still hot to do something picked the number 2 choice, ATI.
Now a merger between nVidia and AMD would have produced a powerful company. nVida has 3DFX tech, Telsa, chipsets and the 2 companies had already done a lot of joint work on the original X-BOX design (intel was a late entry). AMD brought CPU tech, flash and some other tech into the mix. However it was not meant to be.
So buying ATI was just a plan B, and not really optimal.
The Intel Core architechture is impressive. It's powerful enough over the Athlon that they can take shortcuts. Gives them more headroom for later, whereas the Athlon is reaching its maximum efficiency of instructions per clock so they have to be more thoughtful with their engineering.
Re:Don't think so. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now the situation is different:
-Since the introduction of the Core 2 Duo Intel has the better architecture (minus memory controller though).
-Intel is smoking the rest of the industry with 45nm high-k/metal gate in therms of process technology. Compared to what has been published by IBM about their hkmg technology IBM/AMD has a long way to go to catch up.
And let me say this: Intels technology is extremely clever, they did one fundamentally different thing (gate first) against conventional wisdom which took them onto an entirely different path. Getting the fundamental flaws out of this approach enables a flurry of additional optimizations that IBM/AMD will not be able to apply in their technology. (full metal gates, not using any exotic materials for the gate)
The only disadvantage for intel could be higher cost/lower yield associated with the hkmg process. However they have the benefit of scale (in therms of volume) on their side. In addition they went go through the painful hkmg transition two years earlier and hence things will be much easier for them at the 32nm node. IBM/AMD will be in even more trouble than they are now. I predict that Intel will have a very quick 32nm ramp around the time IBM/AMD managed to get their 45nm hkmg process to manufacturable yield.
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
When you are designing architectures for 7 or so years out, you need a powerful crystal ball, but no such thing exists. AMD just guessed wrong about the nature of future applications. Intel guessed wrong with the Itanium also. Maybe the common thread is you have to fit existing apps instead of the other way around. But, betting against app change has risk also.
Perhaps AMD should focus on the low end rather than guess what the high-end app technology of the future will look like. This may be a better bet for them because they cannot absorb the kinds of gambles that Intel can, being a smaller company. Thus, if they focus on the low-end, they don't have to predict the future of the high-end apps, reducing their risk. They just have to make existing apps run faster and/or cheaper. This would essentially force Intel to be the pioneer (of app change guessing) and take the arrows so that AMD doesn't have to. Of course there are the arrows of internal technology changes, but at least having to guess what *apps* of the future will be like is out of their court.
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Free Software friendly (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone have any detailed information on this? Perhaps the Free Software community can support AMD's openness by buying AMD hardware, *and letting them know this is the reason*.
I inadvertently switched to Intel... (Score:5, Interesting)
Before I switched to using Macs, I would always build my own PC's from components, and I always chose an AMD processor (starting with the 450 MHz AMD K6-III).
Until Macs start coming with AMD chips, I doubt I'll buy another one any time soon.
Not if I can help it... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the offices was broken into lately, and the thieves bypassed the "wimpy" micro-ATX cases and stole big, heavy machines... which happened to be older, slower stuff.
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:3, Interesting)
That will finally be enough of a change to make me retire my 6200 with 512Mb ram.
Back on topic though, AMD profited mightily from the years when Microsoft's power was at its height, and the Wintel partnership was despised by many. I personally refused to buy an Intel chip for a long time because of the whole Wintel thing, and quite liked the faster and cheaper AMD products.
That's all old news now though. No-one really views the Wintel partnership as the PC market controlling giant it once was. AMD never got that essential buy in from the OEMs, so now the knee jerk anti Wintel thing is over, people are once again following the age old habit of following the winner. That's Intel, always has been really, even though they don't own the entire market.
Re:Don't think so. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've used several AMD processors (couple of Durons and now an Athlon X2). I chose them on a value for money basis. I never buy the fastest chips that command a heavy price premium, so the arguments over who has the top chip of the moment are irrelevant to me. I considered an Intel for my current PC, but the price difference was minimal and I know the AMD-based chipsets a bit better so I knew it should work for me. I do like to support the underdog, but not if it exceeds my budget.
Even in the last few years I have met people who consider AMD to be inferior or less reliable than Intel chips. Intel's marketing millions must be doing something for them, but I find their jingle intensely annoying when it crops up in the middle of an ad.
Re:AMD did it to themselves (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought Core2 did them in (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact looking at the AMD page on ebuyer they have great cheap AMD dual core chips. If I were building a nice but cheap system for friends/family I'd probably go with one of those AMD's unless they wanted to play the latest games. Then it'd be Core2 all the way.
I think you've got it exactly the wrong way round. Intel moved in on AMD's market, not the other way around.
Re:Will they make it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Don't think so. (Score:1, Interesting)
Looking at most of my friends who have core 2 duo laptops mostly with Vista, I'm still impressed how buggy the Centrino technology is. They get BSOD and cold reboots when turning on the wireless card or even when they are actually doing nothing! I'm sure most of you will say: "-Hey dude, it's windows!". But, might it be windows fault?
I own a Turion64 X2 + nForce + Geforce laptop. This hardware combination is awesome, the system is always smooth even under heavy cpu or hdd I/O. I never had a machine hardware exception, no overheat nor compatibility problems. What I would want more? Nothing. I would not trade this laptop by any superior Core 2 Duo solution.
And why average Joe cares having a fast multi-core CPU when all his applications are word, excel, mostly single threaded programs?
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that the low end is probablly only a couple of years behind the high end. So if you try and stick to the low end you still have to design architectures 5 years or so out and each low end CPU makes far less profit than each high end CPU so you find it even harder to cover those R&D costs.
Re:Darling of the community! (Score:3, Interesting)
For me, this story crossed a line. ATI excellence. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to see a statement added at the end of this Slashdot story that KDawson took no money for this story, and that no one at Slashdot or its parent company took money or will benefit from a drop in price of AMD stock. I'm not accusing anyone of anything; I am just concerned that this story is worded in a way that seems sleazy and possibly fraudulent to me.
Second, in response to the parent comment. ATI is the premier video CPU provider now. nVidia is so lame that there is an entire web site devoted to fixing nVidia driver issues: LaptopVideo2Go [laptopvideo2go.com]. I spent hours trying to get one of my laptops, which has an nVidia chip, to work correctly with an external monitor. It works well now, but I could never have done the work without the help of LaptopVideo2Go.
Third, Intel is suffering from very bad management. For example, see the comment [slashdot.org] I posted to an earlier Slashdot story, responding to someone saying, "Intel's behavior regarding the OLPC is reprehensible."
Fourth, AMD seems to be the more technologically dedicated company. Intel has a history of dumb mistakes. For example, see this December 2000 article about the Pentium 4, which calls Intel "Chipzilla": Pentium 4 Linux problem all Chipzilla's fault, apparently [theregister.co.uk]. Quote: "Intel... failed
I seem to remember that the entire Pentium 4 architecture was abandoned in favor of the Pentium 4 Mobile architecture, which is what Intel is shipping now.
Both AMD and Intel make VERY sophisticated processors. It's amazing that a product that is so tiny it is affected by quantum physics is cheap enough for everyone to own. When one is temporarily ahead, it is simply silly to say that the other is dying.
Stock prices are often affected by hysteria. This is especially true of prices of technical stocks, which are often owned by people who don't really understand the technology of the company they partly own.
One potential future advantage of AMD's technology (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:x86 history report... (Score:3, Interesting)
Since then afaict there has been on new entry (transmeta) in the PC processor market which was a miserable failure.
So we are down from three to one serious competitors for intel. If AMD fall I wonder if anyone else will ever manage to break in.
Wrong marketing did them in, clock *does* matter (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I tested it in the only benchmark that matters to me, my own applications. The result? For some applications involving video processing, those where I need most CPU, it performed at about 25% of the level of an Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4. For my own applications, the "AMD 2200+" is actually an "AMD 800-".
I really don't care about how much better it performs in office applications, or whatever other tests AMD did to "prove" that clock speed doesn't matter. You can only stretch the truth so far, when one is doing number crunching a faster clock will get you more performance than faster context switches.
Intel mistakes: CPU development is VERY difficult. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Finally, the thermal problems were so severe, Intel decided to abandon the Prescott architecture altogether, and attempts to roll out a 4 GHz part were abandoned, as a waste of internal resources."
"The original successor to the Pentium 4 was Tejas, which was scheduled for an early-mid-2005 release. However, it was cancelled a few months after the release of Prescott due to extremely high power consumption (a 2.8 GHz Tejas consumed 150 W of power..."
Re:Free Software friendly (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Intel mistakes: CPU development is VERY difficu (Score:3, Interesting)
Silly me, I thought you were going to drag out AMD being the first to 1GHz and intel's failed attempt to leap frog them with the 1.13 GHz.
Kinda like Linux, AMD's big year has always been just around the corner, but has never arrived.
Might Be A Challenge (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it did. And in 2007 they shipped millions of machines. And most of them were laptops or uses laptop CPUs. And in the US laptop market Apple had some 20%! That is a considerable market share. I believe the OP was right in saying that AMD would be hard pressed to supply Apple with that many chips - and still serve the rest of their customers. But that's just my guess.
Re:I inadvertently switched to Intel... (Score:2, Interesting)
Shorting AMD stock: NASDAQ figures (Score:5, Interesting)
Often a company's stock price reflects market manipulation rather than any sensible estimate of the true value of the company. This Slashdot story is very likely to drive the price down, as short sellers want. Check the price after the market opens.
When AMD integrates ATI video with AMD CPUs, the resulting combination is likely to be very competitive. AMDs technical prospects seem good to me, although I have not done a thorough analysis. Remember that we are no longer in a CPU speed race; CPUs are fast enough now for the average user.
There are more obvious questions ! (Score:4, Interesting)
The simple fact that one of the biggest differences is made by having a multi-core processor when running modern Operating systems rather than raw processor speed should yield one obvious comment:
The cheapest Dual-Core processors I can quickly find :
The performance is within a hairs breadth of each other... and yes, when coupled with a modest graphics card they both do just fine in all but the latest bleeding-edge 3D games.
In other words, for normal home or business computing with light to moderate gaming - there is an obvious choice. Even with more demanding gaming, thats £30 more to throw at your graphics card which will make far more difference - or £30 more memory (2 GB !!!).
With this sort of thing going for them, and the higher-end really matching Intel in the price/performance stakes I suspect theres life there yet... quite a bit of it.
As far as graphics goes, everyone is happy to compare ATI with nVidia - but the only choice when it comes to on-chip graphics is not "ATI v nVidia" but "ATI v Intel"... you have looked at Intel graphics lately right ?
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:2, Interesting)
20% of the engineering effort gives you 80% of the performance, while the other 80% effort is required to give you that last 20% performance.
The Core's at that beginning stage where it's easy to overpower the other guys just by expending a little more effort. That's where the Athlon was a couple years ago. As soon as AMD introduces another architecture, ATI's going to hit that 80% mark trying to overpower it, and then it's going to be easy for AMD, and hard for Intel. Their roles are probably going to be swapping like that ad infinitum, until someone actually does bite the dust, but I don't think that's going to be this time around.
intel can't do this with x86 CPUs: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://hpcsystems.com/AMDQuadOpteron_A5808-32.htm [hpcsystems.com]
where you at Intel (IA64 doesn't count)?
Re:Darling of the community! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why did they buy ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wrong marketing did them in, clock *does* matte (Score:3, Interesting)
The original Pentium 4 models were widely and famously known for the fact that their clockrate was vastly out of proportion to its real-world performance. I believe that clock-for-clock, a Pentium III performed 1.5 to 2x as fast as a Pentium 4. It is quite possibly, the least efficient CPU in terms of clock per performance ever to be manufactured.
The early Pentium 4s were almost universally slower than the Pentium IIIs that they replaced.
Likewise, only very specific types of "number crunching" actually took advantage of the Pentium 4. Certain types of video encoding worked quite well, whilst "general purpose" calculations were pathetically slow. Intel was also widely known for running highly-optimized benchmarks on their processors, and then running unoptimized i386 compiles on AMD's machines to make them look poor by comparison.
AMD's chips, at the time, however, had clock speeds that were more closely pared to Pentium IIIs.
Intel wound up getting a taste of its own poison after the architecture proved to be unsustainable in meaningful yields past 4Ghz, and its low-power Pentium 4 M chips began outperforming their power-hungry desktop equivalents that were priced twice as high. This architecture eventually evolved into the Core series of chips. In the interim, Intel had a *very* tough time marketing its chips, and for a time, Mhz ratings dropped out of Intel's marketing entirely.
AMD's speed rating was pegged to the Pentium 4, and from what I can remember, it was a fairly faithful benchmark. Although the "fake" speed ratings aren't as necessary today, it's still nice to be able to vaguely compare processors across generations.
If it weren't for the Core series of chips (which weren't even developed by Intel's main development group!), AMD would almost certainly be on top of Intel right now, provided they could keep up with the demand.
Re:Shorting AMD stock: NASDAQ figures (Score:3, Interesting)
I know my computer isn't fast enough because I cannot run a 3D environment in a high enough resolution that I cannot identify individual pixels on a 6 screen 8'x8'x8' system while calculating all of my motions via video capture, and processing all of my voice input, all in real-time.
That being said, my system upgrade cycle has moved from 6-12 months to 3-4 years. When I buy a new system, I am not getting new functionality because the old system did everything the new system does, just faster. I would say that we are in a lull where we have to rely on the server market, and the few that buy systems just because they enjoy the bragging rights of a fast system to push manufacturers to improve. It looks like we need MUCH faster processors to get to the next hump where users need to upgrade to get something really new.
Re:It is all about the platform. (Score:3, Interesting)