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AMD's David to Intel's Goliath
Diox writes "A very insightful article was posted on ye old Tom's Hardware Guide about AMD's and Intel's strategies over this past year.
" Good stuff as usual from Tom's.
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It was interesting seeing Tom talk so confidently about the future of computers and internet appliances in general near the end of the article. I found the article to be fairly good until that point, but it revealed the same problems I've found with his site, and many other hardware sites in general. Certain authors make claims about current products, and future products without backing up the information in any way. This ranges from benchmarks to opinions. In the article, he dismisses the Playstation II as being "proprietary", and also says that the so called microsoft "x-box" will be able to undercut in both price and performance, without once backing up that claim. Even if the x-box is the wave of the future, and can beat out the psx2 in both price and performance, that doesn't mean that it is good for AMD's future. He simply says that "it is believed" (by who?) to be based on the splitfire chip by AMD. This single statement is the only link that is made to his apparent thesis: "All of these factors compounded with the fact that personal computing is about to undergo a profound transformation set the stage for AMD's ascension and Intel's collapse." His arguement about the x-box is not supported by fact, and because the x-box only is rumored to use an AMD chip, it also does not support his thesis statement.
Does anyone else notice similar issues with hardware review sites? Perhaps I'm being too nitpicky, but it seems that there is a lack of quality in hardware reviews that is not found in most other scientific research papers. It would be to their own benefit to attempt to improve on the quality of their texts, rather than offering so much quantity.
What odds will you give? :)
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Uh...AMD turned a hefty profit last quarter ($0.43 per share) mostly due to higher ASPs off of Athlons. I see no reason this won't continue through Q1 and Q2 with more retailers signing on for Athlon chips (Gateway, IBM, etc).
This, folks, is what happens when two or more companies are truly competing in a marketplace. Nobody can afford to get complacent, the technology (or whatever) advances at a rapid pace, and the prices are kept reasonable. The ultimate winner is the consumer.
This is the kind of thing you'd be seeing in software if Microsoft were not a monopoly. Linux has caused them to wake up a little, but if Microsoft had the kind of competition that Intel now faces, it would truly light a fire under their collective butts to deliver some real value to consumers.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
AMD did a tech-luncheon at my uni a while back, talking about the K7, K8, and K9 (snicker). Anyway, the 64-bit extensions to IA-32 sound pretty nice. The best thing (from AMD's standpoint) is that it uses the same core for both 32 and 64 bit code, and hence should run 32 bit code at little or no performance penalty. There were lots of other cool features (like multiple cores on a chip), but I can't say much about them because every question I asked got the "That hasn't been published yet" answer. Every one! Aaargh! He couldn't even tell me if -- since they are going to require a new OS version anyway -- they have added to the intel architecture's _pathetic_ number of GPR's. He couldn't answer me, but I'd assume so. I _hope_ so anyway.
The enemies of Democracy are
The future of OS's are geared towards SMP. AMD knows it, Intel cant make up its mind, Crusoe isnt even a contender...
:)
The GFX card manufacturs know, look at the Voodoo2 SLI or ATI Rage Fury Maxx..
It all comes down to the consumers. People want speed cheap. SMP is the answer.
If I helped to design the crusoe, it would be stackable, and let people just add cpu's for more speed. Low Mhz x 10cpu's would whoop a Ghz Pentium...
PS. Soon as AMD has its Quad system boards out, my p3-500 becomes a linux/mp3 box.
I bought the cheapest Athlon mobo I could buy, a FIC SD-11. It's got a crap powersupply. It doesn't crash. It hasn't crashed.
The problem isn't with the mobo, it's with FUD, which could probably be traced to intel or intelosers.
--"In dreams begin responsibilities" - Delmore Schwartz
There are a number of reasons why the route chosen was the MHz route. Firstly, consider Moore's Law. If the speed of processors doubles every 18 months, then is there a similar relation for # of Procs on a system? Let's say that back in '92 we started down the multiproc route instead of the MHz route. In order to be at our current speed, we would need 32 procs to keep the speed. Silicon ain't cheap, though. This shows us that the CPU cost alone is prohibitive.
Secondly, the support hardware is also more complex for multiproc setups. You're memory controller must make sure that there is cache coherency across all of the processors' caches. This makes the motherboard more costly. There are a number of other hardware issues that jack the price up.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is the software aspect of multiple CPUs. Writing concurrent programs is far more difficult than their sequential relatives. You not only have to debug the program for proper behavior, which is difficult when there can be process interference, but you also have to debug speed issues that arise from the interaction of processes. When a sequential program is run on a faster CPU, if it is a CPU-bound problem, then it will result in faster execution. This is not necessarily the case when you add processors. Concurrent programming is a whole new bucket of monkeys.
History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion-i.e. none to speak of. - Lazarus Long
Forgive me if we've done this one before. I have a short term memory for most of them. But then again this has a twist that really shows AMD's primary problem.
My computer is:
Intel & Retail store bought
Intel & I built it
AMD & Retail store bought
AMD & I built it
where Retail store bought covers all cases where you bought a prepackaged, preassembled machine (even Dell and Gateway count, even though you "select your components". Technically you're not selecting components unless you can choose anything you want, not from a dropdown list of three items.) I built it thus means the opposite. You had full control of what went into your system, even if you didn't actually physically connect components etc.
Therein lies AMD's problem.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
Actually, one reason your company buys only Intel machines is because most "Business Desktops" lines from the major companies are Intel only (with AMD sneaking in on the consumer lines). At least where I work, the purchasing policy has nothing to do with the CPU manufacturer, and only with what our vendor of choice (Dell) will sell at a particular price point and expected delivery date.
"Intel Inside" is really a marketing program aimed at the OEMs, not consumers, and reinburses OEMs for making an entire model line-up Intel only. This is a tough nut to crack for AMD, and it will take time before these contracts start to expire and OEMs can start taking bids from AMD across their model line-ups.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Like many discussions on this board, the problem with this one is that everyone is assuming that Intel versus AMD is a zero sum game. This isn't at all true -- the market for PCs, laptops and x86 servers has been growing by a huge percentage every year for more than a decade, and it shows no sign of stopping.
The point I infer from Vaxman's post is that AMD is never going to beat Intel, and if AMD plays their cards right, Intel will never beat them either. Both companies can be very profitable and successful at the same time -- so spread your bets a little.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
90% of the demo consisted of video taped demonstrations. If their product was near shippable, why didn't they at least have prototype boxes?
AMD demoed a 1.1 Ghz Athlon, and everyone here was smart enough to say "Okay. That's nice. How long til you ship it?"
Transmeta shows a video tape of a simulation of a crusoe processor using less power than a DESKTOP pentium III, and everyone jumps up and says "I want one!".
I'm not disputing that Crusoe's real or not. I'm just saying don't love the thing until you see how it works in the real world. All anyone who hasn't signed an NDA has seen so far is Transmeta's fluff piece about the wonders they've been working on. Of course they're not going to mention which hurdles they haven't made it over yet, or which ones could be erected (pardon the word) prior to themselves shipping the actual product.
Transmeta's got their eyes on going public, like every other tech company. IF they decided to try to raise $20/share, Intel could simply offer them $40/share and hope the VC's that funded Transmeta bit. Or they could just wait for them to float enough stock into the market and then gobble them up. A few well placed press releases in the days leading up to their IP, and they might not end up soaring like many other IPO's in recent history.
Why would you want 16 50 MHz processors rather than 1 800 Mhz processor? Each system built would use a much larger chunk of each wafer from which CPU's are built and that cost would be passed on to us. Besides that, have you seen the size of the machines that hold 16 CPUs? Heard the noise from the fans?
Besides the pieces of silicon, there'd also be a LOT more wiring in the boxes... right now, I think most motherboards are either 4 or 6 layers(?). We'd need motherboards twice as thick... meaning more cost.
Single processor machines will always be cheaper than multiprocessor machines, and will suit the needs of 95%+ of computer users.
And lastly... The mainstream OSes benefit much more from more MHz in a single CPU rather than adding lots of slower CPU's. Linux scales well up to 2 and sometimes 4 processors (based on benchmarks I've read), NT does about the same. Be... I've actually not seen a BeOS system with more than 2 CPU's (PowerPC or otherwise) so i can't comment on that.
So... More CPU's rather than just faster CPUs... would greatly increase the cost of systems, and because of the inefficiencies of most low-end OSes, the benefits would go largly unnoticed.
From the article:
...since [Transmeta] has a lot of cheap competition, most notably from National Semiconductor's soon to be released PC-On-A-Chip and Intel's StrongARM processors.
National Semiconductor's chip is called the MachZ. It's designed by David Feldman (father of the PC/104 embedded computer standard which he invented when he worked for Ampro in the '80s) and sold by Feldman's new company, ZF Microsystems (same link).
Apparently it's confusing to you - the real name of the chip is in fact "Athlon", not "Althon". If I had a dollar for every time I grind my teeth after reading "Athalon" on /., I'd use those dollars for my dental bills :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I have to agree with the article when it comments on how many people believe ZDNet is covering up for Intel.
KX133 from Via? is out now. Irongate was always a stop gap measure according to AMD (they are not really a chip set manufacturer).
If the Athelon Geoforce combination is so bad why have all the gamers gone to it for much higher frame rates and no mentioning of crashes?
The only reason not to use a athelon on a server is multiprocessing capabilities and the fact that I don't know of any workstation type motherboards.
Sorry, not to sound too critical
The AMD chip will probably affect prices more than Transmeta, much like it's affecting prices for desktop processors.
IIRC, the Crusoe was already in full production in IBM's plants when it was announced. It's far from vaporware.
Unless of course you'd like to have more than just 4 gigabytes of RAM in that server..
I don't really see why backward compatability is needed, Itanium is not a directed to consumer market, but to high-end servers. I don't think people really if care if their $80K web server doesn't run Quake3 60fps sustained.
There seems to be a distributed DoS attack on Tom's going on right now ;p
Slashdotted before I got halfway through the article.
One motherboard that I didn't see listed was the Asus K7M. I've seen them for sale at various computers stores in the area where I live. I have several other Linux systems with Asus mobos and I've had excellent results with all of the systems.
Point of clarification. I am not a news junkie. The "silence" over the Crusoe and the noise from the others relates to advertisements I regularly get in the mail and articles which frequently appear at the few sites I regularly visit.
If the battle is over desktop chips, then what the !@$#* is in a laptop? I guess neither intel nor AMD see any relation between a web-pad and another device of comparable size. Espcially if the web-pad starts out running regular windows and quake.
Lastly, I run win 9x, nt, linux, mac os, and bsd due to what I support. I fail to see how that had anything to do with my initial post.
PS. I thought VAX died along with disco.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
I do not have a problem with big companies. The problem is unfair marketing practices. Marketing vaporware should be illegal. When MS says, "we will have product X out by day Y." Their purpose is to convince people to wait and try their product. They are doing this to hurt the competition, and they are succeeding even though there is no product on the market until date Y++.
Another practice which MS has engaged in was crippling their software so that it would not work with the competion. They did this back with win 3.1 and DR Dos. MS coded windows so various things could not be installed on a DR Dos system. The initial solution was to boot with a MS DOS diskette, run the install, exit, and reboot the DR DOS.
Then they changed the packaging scheme. They stopped selling the OS independant of the GUI. There is obviously a OS under win 9X. It is what you get with format a:/s. The fact that this one got settled out of court stinks. Especially being the DR Dos was the better OS. It had better memory management, multitask, diskcopy to an img file, etc.
They get away with a ton of stuff that in any other industry people would have been screaming foul a long time ago over, but when it gets right down to it, most people do not understand the computer industry. There are many users, out there who know how to get a task done, and that is it. It is like me with my car. I know how to drive, put gas in it, use the stereo, and take it in for regular maintainance.
But, if you car started giving me the blue screen of death more than once every 12,000 miles, some car manufacture would be getting regular visits from me until they fixed it or gave me my money back. Computer users just accept the blue death as a fact of life. Lemon laws do not appear to apply to computer programs. (i.e. read the fine print where it says this software is not guaranteed to do anything we say it does).
I will be honest. When it comes to the Intel - AMD battle, I prefer Crusoe. It was kept quiet till they had a chip in production.
With Intel, when they made bad chips there was a small call back. With windows when they produce trashed memory management from way back to present, it just continues to be a black hole that never gets fixed.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
The difference between these companies is simple: Transmeda and AMD are good at making great chips. Intel is great at making *MONEY*
No, Intel was great at defining a standard and defending it against all comers. When fighting a battle at which they couldn't define the standard (3d graphics chipsets), Intel lost.
Last time I checked, Intel had absolutely no debt and over 10 billion dollars sitting in cash. How much do you really think they are going to suffer?
This business is probably one of the more capital intensive modern industries on the planet. US$10 billion buys you around 5-8 fabs these days. It's also not a simple matter to change the technical direction of a company like Intel. To do so takes time; a weakness which AMD and Transmeta can easily exploit.
"I saw a webcast..."???
While that's cool and all....
You still haven't run Q3A on it!
:)
toodles
Karnal
I don't know if you got all the way through the article (it's long but worth it), but the author explains why Crusoe will probably never compete in the same arena as Intel and AMD. He lists as many details as he can without having a Crusoe of his own to test.
Do I think Transmeta can build a profitable company supplying chips for long battery life notebook computer and small PDA/ Webpad products? Absolutely. But it comes down to a business equation, not a technical one. The margins on Xeon class high end workstation/ small server CPUs are amazing. The margins on CPUs for a web pad with a retail price of $500 are nice, but nothing spectacular.
I was looking forward to the Transmeta press conference as much as anyone. The fact that they didn't have any real benchmarks bothered me a lot. I think that many Slashdot folks are letting their love of a certain Finn cloud their judgement about Transmeta.
-B
And if the numbers in the article are correct, it will execute 32 bit code at about the speed of a 500 MHz Celeron. Considering that the Cellys cost about $100, and I can't believe an Itanium will run less than 2 grand in the near future, that's quite a speed hit. The article touches on the fact that when comparing an Itanium and a 4 way Athlon that is just as fast, costs the same, and can also run 32 but instructions, it's not a hard choice.
-B
I think that this is just Tom's bias coming
through. The biggest indication that Tom "doesn't
get" the Crusoe is the "Crusoe will not be a
player on desktops anytime soon." (Heh, it will be
when I'm using a Crusoe laptop on my desk... =) )
The whole design of the Crusoe seems to be tied
to the power savings and lower heat, and NOT on
sheer performance.
It seems to me that Tom just likes the biggest,
baddest stuff and sneers at anything less.
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
My favorite speculation from this article is the "...it may be time for not only Intel's investors to worry, but also the entire stock market."
/. say that people don't need faster processors, but then Tom spins a yarn of global doom just because the Athlon will have greater clocks than Intel's processors? =) Just ironic...
While Intel is now part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (and thus highly visible, with impact to the DJIA when INTL goes down), how can you say that even if INTL loses have it's market cap (to a measly $175 billion) that it would even make a dent in the market (according to the NYSE, 7 TRILLION dollars exchanged hands in 1998 just in the NYSE. How much is traded in a year in all of the combined markets? How many people have been dumping money into many, many stocks and mutual funds since '98?)?
While this doesn't invalidate the criticisms of Intel's methods or lack of spiffy new chips, it does not do wonders for this authors credibility to tout this sort of statement lightly.
By the way, isn't it funny that so many people on
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
What's with the really bad names? "Itanium"? "Merced"? "Willamette"? I don't even really like "Althon", it's too easy to confuse with "Athalon", "Athlon", etc. I thought Pentium was a pretty good name, but since then Intel has come up with a good name (let alone a decent product).
On the other hand, there are some good processor names. "Alpha" (though it has some bad connotations), "StrongArm", "Sledgehammer"... I'm still undecided about "Crusoe". It's easy to remember but it's not much of a processor name...
Interesting point, bad example.
Processor IDs are a good idea.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
any good links on where to buy 'em? I think I get a paycheck right about that time and my 300 just ain't cuttin' it anymore.
+&x
In addition, this Register story from a couple weeks ago states that Xeon production is poor, demand is low, and there are no motherboards yet that support the 800. (Xeons use Slot 2, normal PIIIs use Slot 1).
Xeons just basically exist to be a high-margin Intel cash-cow, but are an answer to a question that no one asked.
Will Microsoft release software (including NT/Win2K) optimized for the AMD system?
Uhh Windows 98SE (not sure about reg 98) does have 3DNow! optimization.
Will third parties release drivers that don't suck it up under AMD chipsets (see the GeForce fiasco, mentions on Tom's site)?
Hmm My Voodoo3 drivers have 3DNow! support, they're stable, and they are FAST.
The entire problem with the GeForce cards on Athlons hasn't been performance problems so much as power consumption. Too much power pulled between the Athlon and the GeForce and the power supply couldn't handle that. Yes there are some problems left with the AGP implementation of those, but these drivers are improving and the situation has been getting better.
(and AMD, also, will likely have problems ramping their .18 up)
.18 micron. Not so much as even a hiccup, and every chip to come out of Dresden is going to be .18micron with copper interconnects
Intel has 7 or 8 really big fabs, all of which ALREADY are 0.18. AMD has one, which is in the process or being ramped up.
All Athlons coming out of AMD's Austin Fab since they released the 750 have been on
3. Or VIA which now has Centar, IDT and Cyrix. I would also like to point out that it was Cyrix which initially forced the sub $1000/$500 market not AMD. I would also like to point out that Cyrix was the company which released a processor which competed with significantly faster clocked Pentiums on what was the standard benchmark of the day (winbench). They were also the ones to start the >66mhz bus increases (initially the PR200? @75x2=150) with VIA not AMD.
Besides it constantly amazes me how short peoples memory is in the PC industry.. AMD 286-20's anyone?
> Itanium[...] like "titanium," but not quite --
> perhaps for their next processor Intel will be
> inspired by "iron" and call it "Ron"
The next piece of Intel vapourware will be inspired by sodium and codenamed "Odium". It will have an undisableable serial number and a government-held backdoor password which overrides your security settings. In response to massive public outcry they will back down, and announce an alternative "Eon" chip, inspired by neon, which doesn't have a serial number and backdoor, but doesn't do very much very fast.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Yeah, but still on the T1 price you need to tack in the ISP charge as well. Which around here is another $600.00. I used the $600.00 price because I'm assuming an ISP that provides DSL already has the infrustructor for this. Actually around here T1's have gone up in price slightly. :(
When Tom goes on to talking about: The PC is Dead! Long Live the... X-Box? Tom talks about the CPU being perhaps irrelevant for some people because you'll be able to download media streams and what not off of a high bandwidth internet connection. While I keep seeing everyone talking about this, I just don't see this happening within a few years. Maybe in 5 to 10 years perhaps, but within a few I just don't see it. Just the other day I was talking to a friend who runs an ISP. The telephone company was telling him to put 100 DSL subscribers per T1. My friend thought this was ludicrous, and I thought it was pretty stupid too. You just start thinking here for a moment, a T1 is 1.544Mbit/sec divided by 100 and you're getting some pretty slow transfer rates if all 100 people are transferring their favorite movie off of the Internet. Even yet so, say for instance you totally forget about what the phone company told me friend and you decide to use 10 DSL users per T1. You still get a 1.544Mbit/sec divided by 10 and that's still a pretty slow Internet connection if all the users decide to stream whatever they want. You figure at a price of say ~$600/mo for a T1(What it costs from the telco here), You then add up the price of say $80.00/mo from your 10 users you come out to be making only $200/mo off of those subscribers not including the other costs associated with keeping those 10 customers happy. So with all that, you figure more and more people will be using these types of things, such as cable and DSL, I start to wonder, "Where is this bandwidth coming from?" So unless T1 connections drop dramatically within the next couple of years, I still think the majority of us will be on either modems or ISDN connections. Of course if T1's drop that much in price, why not just have a T1 installed into your home? So again, I just can't see this convergence of your media and the PC into one thing making the type of CPU you have irrelevant.
Unless I'm completely wrong and not really thinking about this far enough, but I still can't seem to wonder WHERE all this bandwidth is coming from to be able to do the things everyone keeps getting excited about within a budget the typical middle class person can afford. :->
If only I had invested in AMD when the future of the company was still "questionable".
At least I kept the faith!
P/.
--
Za's Vid
E/.
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What, me worry?
Before you decide whether Crusoe is a disappointment or not, you have to decide on the importance of low power consumption. I would look to the handheld gaming industry for an example of what low power consumption does.
Nintendo's Gameboy has been around forever, and it has beaten many superior systems that were similarly priced. One of the main reasons for its success is its battery performance.
Changing out and recharging batteries in laptops and handhelds is one of the major drawbacks to these devices. I suspect many businesspeople, especially those that travel, would take half the performance of their laptops for 3 times the battery life in a heartbeat. How fast do you need to run Powerpoint, after all?
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
"Had it been done right" stated the original post.
I take this to mean "If multiple processors were simpler than present, if motherboards and architectures and OSs were easily scalable".
All the stuff you mention: Cache glue, software spaghetti, cooling and power.. is based on the assumption that current techniques would be adapted to suit multiprocessor systems. Well, no, current techniques are best-suited to single processors. That's why we're here.
But what if there'd been some major breakthrough, some innovation that allowed multiprocessing to become simple? Perhaps a way to put intelligence in compilers so that programs could run, segmented across many processors and in a divided memory space. Perhaps a way for lots of processors or mini-machines to communicate efficiently, possibly adding redundancy for error-checking. Maybe something else, or a combination of the above.
Then what we'd see is less emphasis on making faster individual chips, and more on making the chips cooperate more effectively. We'd still be making faster chips, because that is one way to get more performance out of a system. But we wouldn't be screaming along near the gigahertz mark, because it simply wouldn't be necessary.
Multiprocessing wouldn't replace development of faster chips, it would supplement it. We'd be a lot better off with a couple dozen 200MHz chips than a single 800MHz, and we'd be a lot more tolerant if one CPU fan failed.
The piece is supposed to be opinion! Isn't that obvious? Do people on the net have to prefix everything they write with "IMHO"?
Second, if it weren't for Microsoft, you wouldn't have any software on your computer. Do you realize how stupid that sounds? I hope you do. Intel is not the only (or best) microprocessor vendor in the world. They're not even really the first. TI had a microprocessor arguably before Intel did.
We don't owe Intel anything. Intel owes us for making them number one. If we (the market) decide to take our business elsewhere, Intel will fumble and die.
Come on, everyone, say it with me: TOM DID NOT WRITE THIS ARTICLE .
Thank you.
(too bad "blink" isn't allowed html *grin*)
p.s. Yes, it does share Tom's biases, but you can tell by the flawless English grammar (Tom is not a native English speaker), exceedingly strong bias (Tom is usually a little more controlled), strange predictions (Tom is usually a little more reality-based), and humor (Tom does not have a funny bone) that it's not Tom.
My biggest problem with the proposed scenario (Intel plays their hand, is trumped by AMD, and Intel quickly loses marketshare due to delays, rushed designs, and anti-Intel/pro-AMD market shifts) is that AMD hasn't proven that it can do anything beyond a fast desktop processor.
Right now, I can buy a Slot 2 GX board and put four Pentium III 550 Xeon chips on it. If I spent enough money and did enough searching, I could probably get a server (likely only through Compaq) that had eight Xeons in it.
Now, of course, these systems pale next to an Alpha or SPARC. But we're talking x86-based systems here. And if management wants to run NT, then you're essentially stuck with x86 (Yes, I know, NT4 supports Alphas, but Alpha support is now officially dead).
There is no SMP Athlon chipset. Consumers tend to put down SMP, minimalizing its benefits (much like SCSI); however, you don't see the big iron running a single processor with IDE hard drives. There's a reason for this. Yes, it's often a terrible price/performance ratio, but that's where the big margins come from, not from desktop systems. Just look at the cost of a server-class Xeon-based system. Just the Xeon processor itself costs as much as your whole power-user computer.
AMD needs to break into this market. It will make them lots of money. Desktops won't...
Yeah, that's what I was thinking about as well.
Intel makes processors, chipsets, motherboards, network cards, video chipsets (used to make video cards, but now they imped the video chips in the motherboard's chipset, so you can't make a choice), etc.
Intel has invested quite heavily in lots of companies in the past ten years. They probably rival Microsoft in investing and buying interesting, up-and-coming companies. Though, Microsoft is a bit more evil about it.
Wouldn't it be funny if Intel bought AMD?
Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.
Just because AMD has had troubles in the past, doesn't mean they don't have their act together now. In fact, AMD hasn't had a single problem meeting for the Athlon demand yet. That certainly doesn't mean that they won't have trouble in the future, but I think any trouble they will have in this area will be minimal. They've learned the hard way how critical it is to meet demand.
Besides, most of the problems that they had meeting demand were because of the design of the K6 series of chips. The K6-3, especially, had monstrous amounts of trouble. The design was good on paper, but it had pathetic yields. You can compare it to Intel's Pentium Pro, which was also a massive flop.
1. This stuff is getting tired 2. This makes me a hypocrite.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
The fact of the matter is that the stake of the founder is most likely less than 50% by now. That's the nature of VC, especially when you've had to raise as much first-tier and private placement financing as Transmeta. Furthermore, the actual amount of stock sold to the public is typically less than 10%. Thus there is no way to "gobble up" a company on the open market. Make offers to those who hold large blocks, sure. But those who are holding the stock and are expecting a great IPO followed by stellar profit growth and a commesurate increase in valuation will be loath to give up their chance. Especially just before the moment of truth.
Walt
Well, according to this Sharky's blurb we can expect it in the 2nd quarter, or April-June of this year. Interestingly, that's around the timeframe predicted for Intel to debut its next-gen gigahertz Willamette core.
Nothing like an old-fashioned corporate pissing contest.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
- 1 part corporate sponsorship
- 1 part hype
- 1 part misinformation
- 1 part bias
Mix ingredients. Shake, do not stir.I haven't taken anything Tom says seriously since it was revealed he used a warez Quake3 hack to conduct "exclusive" benchmarks. And then he tried to defend it! The ego of the guy is incredible...just listen to the arrogance in his writing.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
...it's called crack.
Side effects include delusions, decreased intelligence and coherence, as well as irritability and peevishness.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Right now Intel has 84% marketshare, and AMD has 14%. Tom's suggestion that Intel is going to go to 0% marketshare and AMD is going to go to 97% marketshare is ludicrous because:
AMD DOES NOT HAVE THE MANUFACTURING CAPACITY TO SUPPLY THE ENTIRE PC INDUSTRY WITH CHIPS.
your statement tries to present the very weak arguement that because amd doesn't currently have the manufacturing capacity to outstrip intel, it never will. that is clearly a fallacious argument. as the demand, and the infrastructure support, for the athlon increases, amd will build more fabs. the one in dresden has already been tremendouly successful and is running ahead of schedule. i don't believe tom's was suggesting that the balance of power will shift overnight, or even this year.
i also think you fail to address the 3 main strength of tom's argument, that (1) the coppermine is near the end of its extendability cycle whereas the athlon will be improved in leaps and bounds (they're already showing off a 1.1 GHz Athlon), (2) for market reasons intel is disadvantaged in fighting in a low-margin arena, which amd (and possibly transmeta) are forcing them into, and (3) intel has made themselves hated by many people in the industry, including many of their top employees that are now at amd.
I agree with you that tom's presents an extreme view of the amd/intel situation, but I believe it'll prove to be a remarkably prescient one. In fact, I'm betting most of my money on it. already since october my amd shares have gone from 18 to 42.
You are really, really out of touch. Please stop spreading false information on the internet. Please stop spreading false information yourself. Pentium IIIs have 512k L2 cache, not the 256k you stated.
You should give VMWare another look--I don't know how long ago you tried it, but the released version for Linux (1.1.2, built 364) is quite usable. Version 2.0Beta is extremely nice--more stable, quicker, better SVGA drivers, and improved disk performance. It runs without a hitch on my system (RH6.1)--never hangs, never segfaults. Word and Excel 2000 run at near-native speeds. VMWare still has some issues when it comes to booting off raw SCSI disks (careful typing here!), but is a very usable product.
I agree that OS emulation is not the answer--probably something more along the lines of Transmeta may be. But VMWare works pretty well--especially with the 2.2.12 or later Linux kernels.
---
"You still haven't run Q3A on it! "
Uh, yes they did--Dave Taylor kicked Linus' butt, and it was Q3A. Please make at least a minor effort to know what you are talking about--visit:
http://www.transmeta.com.
---
Keep in mind that you can't buyout a private company without the consent of the owner. Currently, one man could block any Transmeta buyout no matter what the price. (As far as I understand it. Isn't Transmeta owned by just one guy?)
The cake is a pie
This shows why we should be very careful in anti-trust actions. Here we have a huge company, with a near monopoly. They are being seriously threatened by a small company and a tiny startup.
Two years ago it seemed as if there were no possible threats to Intel. Now it seems as if Intel is a hopeless dinosaur doomed to fall under its own weight. Or perhaps its own arrogance, rather, which seems to be the Achille's heal of these huge near-monopolies.
People tend to concetrate on the advantages of bigness when talking about these huge comanies, and fail to notice the disadvantages. The halls of huge companies are littered with the carcases of billion dollar failed projects.
Its why I'm not so hot on the Justice Department action against Microsoft. They dominate like IBM did in the seventies. Seems to me that they are headed for a fall. Win2000?
The cake is a pie
Will anyone realise that Office is running any slower than usual? *grin*
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" - Tom Lehrer
I really liked the article until I read this paragraph. Almost the entire article was very good, but unfortunately the author succumbed to one fatal miscalculation that lowered his credibility in my eyes: future-punditing, and giving his critical arguments more strength than they deserve. I have severe doubts that Intel will be giving up the desktop processor market in two years. I would put money on this prediction being wrong. The author made a strong case that AMD has succeeded wildly over the last year, but did not make a strong case that this success will extrapolate to the next two years sufficiently to drive Intel out of the desktop processor market of 50+ million units. (I'm not even sure AMD could ramp up manufacturing for that scenario!) He downplays the advantages of the Williamette core in a rather name-calling way ("based on ancient PentiumPro technology") rather than via some more sophisticated technical argument. The proof pro or con will be when Williamette ships of course, but I don't see the basis for his (IMHO) overly-strong conclusion.
The other comment that the author seems oblivious of is how 64-bits pays off for databases and how strongly Intel is investing in getting server applications to port to IA-64. This is not something I see AMD addressing strongly enough. As the author somewhat recognizes, corporate IT will likely remain on Intel on the server side over the short term, not just for 64-bits but for Intel's proven SMP capability. (Can you imagine how long it'll take AMD to wring the bugs out of their SMP implementations? Catching and debugging SMP race conditions is not a cake walk. I wouldn't buy any SMP servers from them at any price for at least the first year it's out.) Oh, and SMP isn't a big deal for "webservers," (small pipes, remember?) -- it's database servers where SMP pays off most.
One other point that this author and many others I've seen fail to mention about VLIW. It's not just a "maturity" issue, although that is a factor. It's the execution units! Most of the research I've read indicates that VLIW techniques don't payoff significantly over competing techniques (agressive out of order) until you get to around 8 simultaneous execution units. Itanium is down at around 4, and Transmeta is even lower, IIRC.
Still, a nice critique. I'm just stirring a few contrary opinions into the pot.
--LP
Hooray. Competition breeds better products for the end user and everyone is happy. Dont pick one company as better than the other, or one will die out and so will competition.
Tom is often biased. He was blindly supporting 3DFX after he received some "free" 3DFX cards and then all of a sudden he starts blindly supporting nVidia cards after his site receives an "approved nVidia review site" emblem.
During his 3DFX support campaign, he would often gloss over differences in the benchmark "comparisons" and have misleading explanations to his results which often did'nt agree with the other review/benchmark sites if it would show negativity to his "boss".
As an example, when benchmarking a Voodoo2 and Voodoo2 SLI setup with some other cards using a custom Quake2 map with extra high polygon and texture detail, the Voodoo2 SLI was absolutely blown away by a single 16Mb Matrox G200! This was obviously due to the limits of the PCI bus (which gives ~80MB/s after contention)of the SLI V2's which was being used heavily due to the available onboard memory of the V2's being half their SLI total minus the required frame buffers (the memory contents in both V2's in an SLI configuration are exact duplicates to allow the feature to work). But no mention of the PCI bus being a limiting factor on the Voodoo2's and no mention of the cheapo little G200 running almost 2x faster in that scenario thanks to its AGP bus.
What's more, a lot of info at Toms is ripped from elsewhere and glossed up.
He's not all that great, there are plenty better.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
The Crusoe has staggeringly low power consumption. The article says that even running at peak loads (during DVD playback), it uses less than half the power of a PIII. Depending on use, this could double or triple battery life. Also, because the it uses less power, the Crusoe will run cooler, enabling more compact designs. This kind of space and power saving in portables seems pretty revolutionary to me. The article may be correct in it's conclusion that the Crusoe won't make huge inroads onto the desktop soon, at least until VLIW processors become more developed, but there is a market for what the Crusoe offers.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
doubling the processors does not, in most cases, double performance. Its a very very complicated thing trying to split up tasks between two processors. Sometimes its easy, you can have word running on one CPU while excel runs on the other, no problem.
But say your playing an MP3, how to split that task up among 2 processors? probably doable, but your code would most likely need to assume 2 processors to get anywhere near double the performance. Which means single processor users are out of luck, unless you have TWO code bases. Some problems just CANT be split up between two processors with any significant improvement.
So in general, making one CPU faster is the far better option . Its cheaper too.
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
... the eigth page. Then the FUD hit the fan. After all they're talk about Intel vs. Athlon, (which I particularly enjoyed, being an Athlon owner), the Author had to go on and prove how little he actually knew about the future of computers. Page 8
According to the author, the Microsoft X-Box will not only be more powerful then the PSX2, but will also be cheaper! That's absolutely amazing! According to every other article I've read, the X-Box is supposedly less powerful and over twice as expensive. He mentions that the X-Box is due to use an advanced "chipset from Nvidia" but last I checked (yesterday) nVidia didn't have any processors that could come close to the PS2s raw computing power. In fact, the next generation of 3-D Graphics chips on the PC market are set to still run approximately 1/10th the polys/second of the Emotion Chip, and lets not even get into the Gigapixel ratings between the two.
He then goes on to talk about how the Dreamcast is an "X-Box Lite". Apparently because it runs CE the Dreamcast is super-sweet. But not only that, he suggests that because the DC runs CE and contains DirectX explains why there's so many titles already available for the DC.
Could you please show me where they are? I can't seem to find any good titles except for three or four that shipped back in September. When is the DC going to be releasing the 100's of titles they promise and push back every month?
Its this kind of idiocy in reporting that makes me absolutley HATE the media.
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Actualy Transmeta is going after a very special market segment as opposed to AMD/Intel. If you go back and look at Transmeta's press release they clearly state that they are focusing on the moble market... not the high end or desktop markets that AMD and Intel are slugging it out over.
In the end most likely what is going to happen is that AMD/Intel will lose major market share to Transmeta in the moble/low power area but still retian their lead in the desktop arena.
AMD has produced a great processor that still has a lot of room for growth. Their yields are up. They seem to have gotten the copper process working well for them, which seems to have been a major problem for chip makers. They're able to meet demand. Everything's going well.
.18 micron copper process. Either that's one huge FAB, or if Intel continues to stumble, AMD's going to have some serious problems meeting demand. This gives Intel what they need, time. They've been able to meet demand so far, but due to high costs and shortages of motherboards demand has not been as high as it could be. Now that VIA is producing chipsets, and motherboard should become cheaper and more available, it will be interesting to see if AMD can meet the increased demand.
But to say that Intel is going to topple is more than a bit extreme at this point. AMD can meet current demand, and the Dresden FAB will allow them to expand, but their ability to produce chips is still very small compared to Intel. They are going to have one FAB capable of making chips with a
Even if AMD doesn't crush Intel, the desktop microprocessor market appears to be competative once again. The mobile processor market will be heating up quickly with, Crusoe, VIA's upcomming offering, and even the StrongARM (if x86 compatability isn't required).
Just a walk down memory lane. About 5 years ago, a lesser known company called Nextgen was trying to compete with Intel by producing the Nextgen 80's and 90's.
The microprocessor architecture on these chips was great (x86 instructions translated into native CISC instructions and executed on multiple execution units, sound familiar K6?) with the exception of the fact that they omitted a separate FPU (at the time they made the argument that most consumer applications don't use an FPU anyway). To make a long story short, AMD bought them out and used their designs as the basis for the K5 and the K6.
Maybe the next chip after Athlon should have a name that gives Nextgen credit?
I owned a Nextgen 90 and later bought the K6-2 when it came out but switched to a Celeron because it overclocked so well (not to mention superior Quake framerates). Currently the very happy owner of a K7M with an Athlon 500 (running at 550 by bumping the FSB). The Athlon is an incredible chip. Everyone cheer for competition in the chip industry.
Dave
1. I want a first post. 2. If I can't have a first post, I would just like to say that I'm glad AMD is around. Otherwise, chip prices would just be incredibly high, and then who would be able to afford to buy flowers?
Now wasn't this exactly what they did? They had Linus play quake on a machine running Crusoe. They had a webpad that was running Crusoe. They WERE showing prototype boxes that worked extremely well! IBM is manufacturing these processors and there have been announcements from oem's that they will use crusoe. I think that even oracle(or some other database company) has announced that they will be using Crusoe in upcoming products.
I don't really think that Transmeta will be able to compete on the desktop front against AMD and Intel. Don't get me wrong, emulation is great, and Transmeta has shown that it can work wonders for processors designed for low power. But I doubt very strongly that an emulated processor will be able to beat out a native processor head to head (including cost factors).
At the same time, I hope that Transmeta manages to challenge the dominance of AMD/Intel on the desktop front as well. AMD has already shown what competition does for the processor market -- more would be even better!
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Dual cores, from what I can tell. It is supposed to be able to access 32-bit instructions just as well as 64-bit, since it is a direct extension and not a rewrite.
And how is AMD going to afford to keep up with Intel's Pentium III line with a huge chunk of extra 64-bit silicon?
You've got it backwards: how will Intel keep up with AMD's K7 line? Athlons are technically superior to the PIII by quite a bit, and Intel is far behind at this point thanks to Rambus. They are playing catch up. If the K8 is the first 64-bit x86 chip to hit the market, obviously it will have quite a head start on the Merced. And you make it sound like the extra entensions will slow it down... being 64-bit, that means it will kick the PIII's ass so badly that they will be totally unable to compete until Merced comes out.
And who is going to pay significantly extra money for a bunch of 64-bit functionality that's useless unless you are running Linux?
Who's gonna shell out the extra bucks for a Merced chip, when it will only run Linux? At least, for a while it will. Windows 2000 isn't even out for the 32-bit market yet, I'm sure it will take a significant amount of time to port to Merced. I wouldn't hold my breath. And even if it does, it'll be a tight fit. Linux is already a 64-bit operating system, it's just stepped down to work on 32-bit hardware. Getting it to run on Merced would be a piece of cake.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
The article said all you need to do is a recompile. The Sledghammer is a direct extension of the 32-bit instructions, so it will not only run legacy 32-bit code, it will kick any native 32-bit processor's ass doing it. All that would be needed to be done is recompile Linux on the Sledgehammer and there you go. The merced chip is a far more convoluted and complex process, which is why the Trillian project was necessary, but thankfully AMD will be simpler.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Conversely, it looks like Intel will have to depend on Linux to support its Merced line (assuming it even gets to the shelves), since Microsoft has dropped any pretense of supporting 64-bit architechtures at this point. I believe they were working on getting Win2K to work on Merced but they simply couldn't do it.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
You are really, really out of touch. Please stop spreading false information on the internet.
Xeon's are MUCH different from the regular Pentium III's. For starters, the main selling point is MP. Regular Pentium III's can only do DP, but the Xeon can do 4 way. Furthermore, the Xeon is available with 512k, 1M, or 2M of L2 cache. The regular Pentium III has only 256k L2. The Xeon's L2 runs at full clock speed, the regular Pentium II/III's run at half speed (except the Coppermine's, which run at full speed)
Intel's stock probably will come down eventually. It is ludicrously overpriced, but not close to RHAT, LNUX, YHOO, ...
This article is a typical example of the inflamatory rhetoric thats gets thrown around on Tom's site and here on ocassion. In the title alone the author is clearly on AMD's side. While that's not bad, it should clearly be noted that this is opinion. There is not one positive comment about Intel, and AMD is made out to look like the mesiah.
Now to qualify my own remarks: I do like Intel, but on the same token I also like AMD. I like the competition the results in better, cheaper products for all. I will buy the best system I can regardless of who makes it. I think everybody would.
The article asserts that most of Intel's woes are due to AMD's abilities. This could not be further from the truth. When you really look at things, the real reason AMD is gaining momentum is due to Intel's slips. Rambus is generally badmouthed for a variety of reasons, but the best reason for it's problems is immaturity. It is a new technology that needed further reasearch. Intel implemented it too early. The resulting slip of the i820 products caused a chain reaction of slippage by slipping boards that could support the newer Coppermine processors.
AMD meanwhile released Athlon right in the middle of these slips. And it when on to success since Intel hod nothing to counter with. This is the real and only reason AMD has shot ahead. Think for a moment if Intel had shipped i820 boards on time. Rambus would have proably taken off better, and we would have had coppermine's in the summer of last year. Further, Intel would have been able to counter Athlon right away. Perhaps even take the lead. Intel's problems and AMD's current success can only be attributed to Intel's slippages, not to any "briliant" moves by AMD.
Another problem for Intel is that they were also caught in the middle of a switch to 0.18 tech. Here is where AMD's small size helped. They were able to ramp to 0.18 far quicker than Intel could.
And Itanium? The author rants about Itanium and it's VLIW instruction set, lack of direct backward comatibility, and it's immediate move to Mckinley. Come on, Crusoe also uses VLIW so he's contradictory in supporting Crusoe and bashing Itanium. Also, Itanium was never proposed as the replacement to the current IA32 line as the author implies. It is targeted exclusively at high end workstations and servers. The areas even the Xeon can't break into. Intel has been recruiting, and helping every OS vendor it can find to port over to Itanium. The list includes Sun, HP (obviously), Win NT, and even linux (trillium project). The fact that Sledgehammer is also 64-bit is somewhat irrelevant since they're aimed at different markets. As far as Mckinley superceding Merced, Intel predicted this long ago. It new early on that Merced would not have the performance of Mckinley and said it was likely that Merced would only be used for initial development, while Mckinley would ship in production machines.
The point is, let's not bash any particular company for the sake of bashing. This entire market could change tommorow. AMD is still bleeding red all over the place and hasn't made a decent profit in a while. And if media reports are correct, the Dresden plant (for all it's potential) is a HUGE cost to AMD. So much so that there were rumors they wanted to rent out production capability to make the rent, or find a partner to buy into it.
Intel and AMD are a great story of competition. But let's keep thing in perspective...
Assuming that's $150 American, that's 'bout $225 canadian, plus a more expensive chip, and instead I got a BP6 and a celeron for about what I would have paid for just the mobo. I can justify the more expensive chip, but since feature for feature the motherboards are very similar (except the BP6 is dual!) It didn't make sense.
-Rob Ewaschuk
..to read about tech, and get interesting insights into the politics behind it all. He waves his conspiracy stick in neat directions, often implying that Intel is involved in some pretty microsoft-like tactics to get people not to make AMD motherboards and such.
And lately, Intel has really been on the run, releasing unstable 600's (or was it 650s?) and claiming to release the 750s and 800's when they weren't available..something that when AMD did, Intel cried about.
It's really impressive to see AMD doing so well...mostly indicated by the number of mistakes intel has made lately (Rambus, etc.)
I'm an AMD fan...though the last purchase I made was a celeron..couldn't justify the cost of AMD motherboards.
-Sylvester
-Rob Ewaschuk
I don't know, I have to take anything Tom's Hardware says about Intel and AMD with a big ole grain of salt. Just after AMD released the K6 he predicted the K6-2 would kick the PII's ass and he was wrong. Then he predicted the K6-3 would take out Intel once and for all, and he was wrong. Finally he said that Athlon would beat out PIII. Not to be rude, but we've all known that Intel chips we're using dated technology since the introduction of the PentiumPro. Was it a surprise that it finally hurt them? Not really.
Now Tom's Hardware predicts the demise of Intel. The problem is the Intel has lots of money and momentum. They can afford to spend it on regaining the lead, if their bulk and inefficiency doesn't kill them first. I'm seeing a large restructuring in their future to be more competitive. I also see them making more flexible products in their various devisions. Then we'd have to see.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
As Mark Twain says, "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
The article may be a bit too quick to announce the death of Intel. Yes, they have made a few missteps in the recent years and yes, AMD must be giving quite few people at Intel headaches. The problem I have with the story is that the author seems to be creating a story from pieces of evidence that everyone already knows from the news. He believes his own story so much that he also draws conclusions based on it.
Okay, Intel failed in the video chip arena.
Okay, RDRAM is not doing so hot (but then again, neither were PCI and USB when they first came out).
Okay, the i820 chipset was a bit of a disaster.
Okay, so they're trying to prevent VIA from importing their chips.
Okay, ZDNet appears to favor Intel.
All of these are either missteps or character flaws. We may dislike Intel for them or throw insults at them, but don't think that this spells their doom. Okay, let's look at the two companies that the article says will bring about Intel's death.
AMD - Yes, they have come a long ways, and they have created one kickass processor. Kudos to them for that. However, the article ASSUMES that they will pull off everything in the next year. That they will meet production schedules and meet demand with adequate chips, both of which they have a history of failing. As I understand it, building chips with copper interconnects is actually a complicated, problematic, AND expensive process. It remains to be seen if AMD can keep the prices low. That AMD will not run into any production problems is a VERY risky assumption to make and many of the author's conclusions are based it. Let's remember that until very recently, they were bleeding money badly. Besides the desktop, we also need to examine the notebook computers. AMD is still a long ways off towards dominating the notebook arena and as of yet has not announced any Athlon based notebook computers. As of yet, the popularity of K6-x notebooks have not taken off. With the SpeedStep technology from Intel coming out soon, it may very well take away what little marketshare AMD had.
Transmeta - Don't be so quick to think that Transmeta will take Intel down in the notebook arena either. Given that Linus is in the company and he is writing a Linux for Crusoe, we can infer that Transmeta is likely to use Crusoe as a vehicle for Linux. We may like Linux here on this board, but 90% of the computer consumers out there right now does not (probably just as many don't know what it is), and as was mentioned in the article, Crusoe probably WON'T run x86 instructions very quickly. Good battery life or not, this is NOT a good thing. And until it comes out and NO ONE has ANY problems running applications on it, don't assume it will be problem-free. Code-Morphing is a very cool sounding name and it sounds like very cool technology. But until I see it in front of me working flawlessly, it's just a very cool NAME of a very cool technology. People don't like change, especially when it's going to cost them a thousand bucks, because change involves risk. And if one is going to take that risk, there can't be ANY sacrifices, or compromises. If there are, one starts thinking about any hidden sacrifices, or compromises.
Intel, as the author says, has VERY deep pockets. And I disagree with his notion that time can't be bought. It most certainly can. With that much money, Intel can very quickly turn around any mistakes they have made or curtail any problems before they arise. Intel is very well entrenched. That is perhaps a MASSIVE understatement. You don't get to be one of the largest companies around by sitting on your laurels. You can bet your last dollar that Intel has plans. To assume that they don't have any just because nothing has been announced or leaked is just plain foolish.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
No translator, there is a full x86 core on die for running x86 programs. It will, however, run more slowly than a dedicated x86 processor.
I've found that Tom's seems to run on the ragged edge of falling on its face at peak periods, even WITHOUT slashdot. I've failed to get in with several attempts across a half hour.
Did anyone cache the article? Goggle's cache is from last November.
IMHO This is probably one of the most poorly researched articles at Tom's Hardware.
The major case that blurted out to me was the comment on the DreamCast, probably cos I was just playing it a minute ago.
In it he states that DirectX compatability is one of the reasons why the DreamCast has the wide plethora of games it currently has. I totally disagree with this, and AFAIK all the games on the Dreamcast have so far been written using Sega's own libraries and not DirectX.
The DirectX library's haven't turned out to be very good on the DreamCast and many of the traditional games developers who have tried using them have found that Sega's own development software is much better.
Also AFAIK the X-Box by Microsoft is still not officially in development and Microsoft have denied all knowledge of it.(I may be wrong on this point as I haven't checked about it for a while).
Tom's Hardware also seems to be a bit contradictory as one of the recent articles on the Athlon chipset still describes the Intel chipset as much better than even the new VIA one, and one of the major area's and reasons why Intel's processors are performing much faster.
If anyone has installed an Athlon they will also note the HUGE heatsink required for it.
the Intel's don't seem to require as big a heatsink.
Also even the idea that Intel would abandon the CPU market because of a little pressure from AMD seems laudable. When the Cyrix processor was released with a much better pipeline and much cheaper than the Intel, Intel released the MMX instruction set, and simply created a much faster internal core for the Pentium. ensuring that they regained their dominance in the market.
The Author's comment's about the PC dying a small death, and being replaced by thin-client type machines and games consoles is also flawed in a major way. How many people have tried using a TV as a monitor. It's pathetically poor, and typing a document is a strain on the eyes. I doubt that companies and people would end up typing documents on TV Screens.
Until much clearer display screens and input methods (Speech recognition) are developed, I don't think anyone shoudl assume that the PC will die a small death.
If anyone could tell us anymore about the author, or perhaps the author himself would reply and post his comments it would be very interesting.
I tried to get the author's details from the website, but the contacts page doesn't mention Van Smith at all.
I personally think the Athlon is way better than the Pentium III, and also bear no grudges against Tom's Hardware, which is one of the few sites including Slashdot that I read daily. I usually find the articles there very informative and well balanced, but personally don't beleive this article was.
DISCLAIMER: This article is undoubtedly biased and opinionated, and in case anyone from LinuxOne is reading, the views in this article are mine alone and not those of Andover.net/Slashdot/Va Linux.
> Die Wintel
haha
maybe its that im listening to die krupps right now... but that strikes me as extremely funny for all the wrong reason... i think ill have to convince my mates to name our industrially band that
DIE WINTELthe real shiftaling has user number 5134
Karma: -43 and DROPPING!!!
i must say that article was really interesting, and made me sit till 2 am reading it nervously and happily. i, personnally on the side of AMD in the whole story, think about the typical israeli, which is not very rich, and can't really afford a PII, so i bought a K6-2. note that i'm also not rushing after brand names, and always willing to take chance. AMD CPU's are rock solid, and anyone can afford them. i remember the little AMD company about a year, going to close it's doors, drasticlly dropping it's CPU prices, at that time, i knew i'll buy AMD. AMD also never rushed to buy a new board always, the K6 line is a ver good sullotion for super socket 7 boards, which went in very good. the athlon, the athlon is almost not avalible in where i live, and if it is, it is very expensive, and only very few people can afford it, at least now. as for now, AMD is in the lead, and i like it, but i dont want to see intel fading, i want them fighting as long as they can, so i can still buy these rock solid, bug free AMD CPU's. after i read in the article that the sullotion of intel for a buggy CPU and chipset is to take out a RAM slot, i think i'll never buy anymore any intel product. that just reflects how intel are making such a funny work, i think this sollution is redicoulus, and not really even a real sollution. i see my comment is getting too long, probably because i loved that article, anyways, i personnally will buy only AMD CPU's from now on, and i think that there should be more support for 3DNow! in games, which is a very strong processing unit.
Dan.
Good read, very dramatic and all, it had serveral good facts in the story but there were some glaring omisions.
I didn't see jack about the Xeon and what it's market state is. The author is talking directly about Intel's margins getting chipped away yet there was nothing about how the Xeon is doing.
I agree with the fact that Intel is losing it's margins, but I've read too many stories like this about IBM over the years. I know better. Companies like Intel have huge investments, and large reserves. Even smaller companies like Apple have enough in reserves to last many years of beatings.
If you want to get me worried about my investments I need to see some hard numbers. Comparisons of fiscal reports. Reports of profits from Networking, chipsets and other lateral markets.
It's a nice read and make a good point about AMD opening a can of whoop ass...but "Death Toll for Intel"...give me a break.
(I have few doubts that it will do just that - Intel's mobile chips are a joke compared to the Crusoe if it lives up to it's specs. It also should spank the K6's which are AMD's mobile chips.)
However, I can't imagine why anybody would want to put a Crusoe in a desktop. The Athlon or PIII would easily outperform it. The Crusoe wasn't intended to compete in the desktop market.
I'm generalizing
AMD's strategies are very nice from the consumer's point of view. The problem is when they release their earnings, and we can see the result of their chips being cheaper. I have an Athlon, and I love it, and I would never get one of those Pentium IIIs, maybe a II, but those stupid commercials about how it makes the internet better (???) really turned me off. Plus, Athlon just has a plain cool logo. I wish the best for AMD, and even if they end up dying, I thank them for making Intel finally stop their crap.
Was the question I was asked about an hour and a half ago by a co-worker. They found a good deal on the HP Athlon systems. I told them that I loved mine and would heartily recomend it.
I have several of both companies chips and love to see the competition driving prices down. I'm waiting to see what happens with VIA's Joshua CPU before I upgrade my Pentium II 233Mhz. It's an 66mhz mb that will go up to 533Mhz. Celeron, Joshua, whatever.
Also, while enough people are required to finish a project on schedule, too many right from the beginning can delay things as well. I would like to know why he thinks people were pulled from Willamette to be put on Merced. Intel has a LOT of design engineers. Without knowing the source of his information (and given the nature of his site), I am assuming he pulled this out of his ass.
Dan
However, I still have to equate Tom with a marketing type blowhard with just enough of a clue to be dangerous. Conspiracy theories aside, most of his information is rumor, or worse, just plain wrong!
In the meantime, Intel let its next generation 32-bit processor, the "Willamette" (the name could be worse; Intel could have called it the "Sissy"), flounder. Refusing to allocate the necessary resources to the new design, Intel chose to instead add patch upon hack to the geriatric P6 design introduced with the ancient PentiumPro.
I wonder if he's ever read "The Mythical Man Month". More people don't always mean faster...
While I do agree that AMD will probably increase market share in the future, I think writing off Intel is a HUGE mistake. I can't wait to see how the "sissy" Willamette does when Intel actually shows it. I'll wager that it'll be just a little faster than the Athlon...
Dan
The problem with this article is that it simplistically and incorrectly presents Intel only from the perspective of the Intel vs. AMD chip war. One must step back and see the bigger picture. Intel is much more than just a chip maker. The lion's share of Intel's value is as a holding company. Intel has performed brilliantly in finding new technologies and markets to invest in, serving as an incubator for new companies, and then returning that success to their shareholders. Besides the direct profit from these investments, Intel can hedge each of its bets in several different ways. The key to Intel's success is not that they have simple control of the chip market, it's that they have "minor league" control of everything else. In almost every technology related market, an Intel-backed company is a dominant player.
vmware has to write cdrom drivers, because they
cannot let you access the hardware directly. They have to make it appear to the guest OS that it
is a native hardware, while still following the rules of the host OS.
But that was one minor point of your statement. I disagree with your thrust by the fact that in commercial software world, if you don't dominate, you lose.
In the free software world, if you don't quit, you win.
Now that these two worlds are colliding, we shall
see what philosphy prevails...
I have seen this trend in a few articles from Tom's lately. While they go out of their way to be objective in other comparisons such as video cards.
What is the volume of Athlons shipped vs PIII? Does anyone know where I can get that info?
Do not underestimate the power of the Dark side
It might be there, but until we see it we won't believe it.
Tom's Hardware is a nice sight and that does good reviews on hardware. The only problem is all the hardware is tested and benchmarked in Windows. Does anybody know of a sight that does similar reviews for Linux? Just because something performs well under windows doesn't mean it will fly in Linux (look at the GeForce, because the drivers suck for it, it performs worse than a Voodoo1). For example I'm looking for a site that tells you what runs quake3 faster Matrox's new card or a Voodoo3, how many frames etc... I would be willing to create such a sight if I non exists and if I can get companies to send me some hardware to rate.
They misunderestimated me. -- George W. Bush
Okay, so now AMD has the upper hand. I think everyone is kind of forgetting that this is the computer industry. AMD will eventually make some bad decisions, and just like Intel it will fall. Then another small time chip manufacturer will be right on it's heels to take AMD's place and everyone will once again be cheering for the underdog. I think the important point here is that the competition between AMD and Intel has provided consumers with better chips and better prices. If only Microsoft had had someone like AMD on their ass about software Windows might actually run a little better. Oh, and I like the Tom's Hardware article, however, the part about a X-Box...lame. Other than that though it was a good article.
Hmm.. once again... Tom looks a little off here. He does offer some interesting comments and views, but I think that it is more hype that substance. Just in the cursory look at took at his article I noticed a couple of technical inaccuracies, assumptions, and predictions. I can see now why alot of the net discounts Tom's articles as being somewhat biased and inaccurate. Just my humble opinion.... C
You have a power supply on your mobo? Wow. It must be heavy.
Does anyone know when this chip will be available, and any idea on how many pesos to get one?
Pity the A.C.
Thirsty not for gin or wine
All he wants is tea
--- HAIKU MAN.
Van Smith lists DEC as being defeated by Intel for CPU dominance. One only needs to reference the out of court settelment paid by Intel for their patent enfringements of the ALPHA processor to realize how under informed Mr. Smith is on this matter. Intel paid heavily to prevent severe problems and loses. They were in such a bad position with the future of the pentium II and future products based on pirated technology that they had to buy DEC's whole IC manufacturing plant in NH to obtain use rights at a very great price. And gaurantee low fixed production costs to make the ALPHA chip for DEC for ten years. A price that made DEC cash heavy and a great buy for Compaq. Such statements from Mr. Smith indicate a very low level on internal knowlege and a desire to be a revisionist of historical facts. Intel still can't make a 64bit cpu. And as far as AMD being dominant as a inovator of CPU, DEC's engineering of Pipeline tech has yet to be matched by anyone and has been the basis of all new "inovations"? Yes I know that they are no more, but I never said they were great at marketing. But anyone who has any knowledge of Bill Gates knows it was not engineering that got him there!
Wasn't the StrongArm a DEC product that was 'aquired' by Intel? Humm?
First post!
Bruce
Thanks,
Bruce
As the Grand Prix driver Alain Prost once said, it doesn't matter how fast you are, or how far you are in the lead, it's whether you finish that counts.
So long as Transmeta works hard and concentrates on it's own stuff, it might inherit the lead, by default, with AMD and Intel effectively taking each other out.
That lesson would be best learned by Linux users & developers, too. You can't win a race you don't finish.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
This suggests (but does not prove; definitive answers will have to await the availability of Crusoe systems for more orthodox testing) that the Crusoe is struggling to carry out DVD decoding and would have fewer CPU cycles to spare in a multitasking environment than the PIII.
Seeing as how Transmeta's primary platform for their Crusoe processor is webpads and other portable devices, having fewer CPU cycles to spare while decoding a DVD (assuming he means watching the movie, and not just running DeCSS <grin>) I frankly don't see where having less spare cycles should be a major issue. On a <b>portable</b> device one is not very likely to be doing anything besides watching the movie!
Even if (for instance) one is running some sort of network service(s) such as http or email while watching the movie, these services typically require very little CPU time, and should not be significantly degraded -- Unless of course Rob is going to be trying to run Slashdot off his new webpad!
--Cycon
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
needs to take some jounralism classes, you can hardly read the article because his personal bias is laid on so thick. How come everyone is clamouring for the death of Intel? If it weren't for the x86 series of processors computer technology would not be where it is today, at least night in my livingroom. I think Intel did make a major mistake with Merced/Itanium. The VLIW structure works with the Crusoe which isn't touted as a powerhouse processor but it is a joke with a processor as complex as Itanium. I think with the Itanium Intel out to have taken a que from MIPS and designed a specialized core to do a given number of instructions very very fast. Of course doing so would mean no software you have now would work on it but that would be a bonus in the long run. The intelligent thing would be to make only a recompile necassary to run the software, maybe even add a little emulator in the BIOS that would allow for using x86 code. If all of the processor's instructions were SIMD capable they could easily build an ass kicking chip where the compiler would batch processes together and allow for branch prediction to keep the pipeline full. A simple chip architecture would mean alot less heat and alot cheaper chips which would do well to increase the profit margins on said chips.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
He's got to be kidding. It's waaay too early about the impact sledgehammer will have on merced. There is no sledgehammer. AMD hasn't taped it out. They certainly haven't sampled it. It's in the vapor stage. Admittedly the release date for the merced keeps slipping (making it the perfect processor for running win2k ;) ) but sledgehammer isn't anywhere close to being released. Can anyone tell me of any active project to modify an OS to use sledgehammer's 64 bit instructions? All the sledgehammer hype sounds like wishfull thinking.
--Shoeboy
I can't believe this crap. AMD comes up with admittedly good x86 implementations, but has historically failed to execute; i.e. it has failed to deliver enough of any processor family in the quantities required on everything up to the Athlon. The Athlon has been the exception so far, but we're only talking about three quarters. Intel's failure to deliver on processors, on the other hand, is measured in one or two quarters and then the supply matches the market demand.
Then there's the talk about Transmeta. I agree with the general thrust of the article concerning the Transmeta chips, but I have an even dimmer opinion of the company and its products. There are too many other low-powered advanced architecture chips for mobile system use, in particular the ARM series of microprocessors. Why go with a questionable unknown from Transmeta when I can pick a variant of the ARM from a number of vendors, and there's even a port of Linux to the ARM, along with a Java port at Blackdown. Linus Torvalds' may have the magic touch with software, but it's not carrying over too well with hardware. If I were he, or one of the Transmeta investors, I'd seriously question what Transmeta delivered for all that money and time.
Not to mention that most software will only use the processing resources of 1 processor at a time, so in the end you'll just be able to run 16 programs at near-full 50 MHz speed rather than 1 at 800 MHz.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Enough about the global financial crisis that will occur when intel's failed business plan leads its stock, the NASDAQ, and the global financial system into ruin.
/.. We want the skinny on Transmeta!
This is
Although it is believed that Transmeta initially intended and believed that Crusoe would outperform a similarly clocked PIII, Crusoe fell well short of this. Performance is so poor, that when Transmeta publicly introduced the Crusoe, the company described the performance of its new VLIW processor with a set of bizarre benchmarks....
Why is the Crusoe falling so far short of initial performance expectations? Again, as with the Itanium, the problem can be trace to VLIW. This design philosophy, especially for general purpose CPUs, is in its infancy, so no one has experience to set truly credible performance expectations.
Does this mean that the Crusoe is already a non-factor? Yes, and no. Yes, and Transmeta has already conceded this, the Crusoe will not be a player on desktops anytime soon. But in the portable market, Crusoe has a chance at success. With this greatly diversifying market, Crusoe's low power consumption is attractive by providing reasonable performance where battery life is paramount. It has the potential to be successful in Web tablets and low-priced, long battery-life notebooks.
The key to Crusoe's success will be if Transmeta can rapidly reduce the price of the 700MHz version to below $100 (it was announced at over $300).
What do you folks think? Is Crusoe a disappointment? Do you think that the do-it-in-software transmeta philosophy will pay off in prices as well as power?
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
The fundamental difference between a processor and an OS, is that a processor can be switched for anthoer one with no change in the operating system or programs running on top of it. This used to be clearer with the old socket seven boards where one could switch a Pentium for a K6 and then just boot the system. Now most processor changes come with at least a motherboard change as well. The thing of it is, that the new system can still run the old code. The processors run the exact same instruction set (minus 3DNow and SSE) and can therefor run the exact same software.
I will agree though that it will take more than better technology to display Intel from its current posisition. Many companies will only buy Intel machines for thier users. Intel has done very well to build loyality with thier Intel Inside program. Dell still refuses to sell AMD parts.
What the future holds for Intel is smaller profits and a more competive market place. Something Intel is not ready to handle as of yet. They'll be taking a beating until they do.
I'm talking about the general computer market, for which it is nothing but a PR disaster, not about specialized markets for which the PID has some merit (though software serving the same function, such as digital signatures, would probably be better even in the latter case because of its greater flexibility).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
If they lack the sense to take even obvious steps that don't cost any significant resources (e.g. announce "OK, Big Brother Inside was a stupid idea, and every batch off the line from now one will be burned with all zeros instead of a chip ID"), a "nice reserve" only delays the inevitable.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The article makes some worrying claims about the Intel business model:
dependent on high margins, unable to reduce costs, long time to
market, losing its best engineers. These suggest that Intel can't
just mark up its recent troubles to experience and get back to old
form. One way or another it does look as if Intel shareholders are
not going to be happy.
circuit, but it was just gate logic. It was Intel who first
assembled all of the components of the processing unit onto one chip.
Did TI do something that I am not aware of?
Intel has been so succesful for so long for good reason. I believe AMD might finally get in the black, and Transmeda might gain some market share... but Intel will continue to dominate.
The difference between these companies is simple:
Transmeda and AMD are good at making great chips.
Intel is great at making *MONEY*
McDonalds does not make the best or the cheapest burgers out there, but it has continued to thrive because of an ingrained, highly succesful business model. The better products often lose.
And while that may be upsetting to all you geeks out there, because in a perfect world, the best product always wins... but that is not how it works.
Last time I checked, Intel had absolutely no debt and over 10 billion dollars sitting in cash. How much do you really think they are going to suffer?
Tom says...
Huh? As far as I remember, Itanium has always had backward compatibility; it was supposed to have a Crusoe-like translator to change x86 instructions to VLIW instructions. Did this get tossed, or is Tom smoking something?
--
It absolutely baffles me that most people here think that AMD success == Intel leaving the microprocessor business. Talk about blowing things out or proportion!
.18 process (which was the fastest ramp-up in its history). Intel is going to so seriously kick ass when that process is fully mature (and AMD, also, will likely have problems ramping their .18 up).
The only reason AMD was so successful last quarter is because the demand for Intel chips FAR exceeded Intel's ability to manufacture them. This hardly says anything bad about Intel! It says their customers can't get enough of the parts which Intel made. AMD was used, at least by the major OEM's, as a substitute for Intel chips it couldn't get. Basically, AMD got lucky, because they were able to make what may potentially turn out to be long term relationships with the top OEM's as a result. If Intel didn't have manufacturing problems, AMD would have done much worse.
The Athlon succeeded, not because it was faster, but because it was available.
Now, here comes the meat of my point. Intel was not able to satisfy demand the huge demand. Q499 was Intel's record quarter in volume (and sales, and profit...) The reason for this is because the demand for PC's was HUGE that quarter. This is GOOD for chip makers, both AMD and Intel.
A record volume quarter which was hindered by manufacturing problems suggests to me that all Intel needs to do is get their manufacturing back on track, and they will be even better and do another record quarter! Intel's problem is not an inherent problem such as lack of demand, but it is too much demand! Manufacturing problems are temporary, and Intel's are associated with ramping up the
Right now Intel has 84% marketshare, and AMD has 14%. Tom's suggestion that Intel is going to go to 0% marketshare and AMD is going to go to 97% marketshare is ludicrous because:
AMD DOES NOT HAVE THE MANUFACTURING CAPACITY TO SUPPLY THE ENTIRE PC INDUSTRY WITH CHIPS.
Intel has 7 or 8 really big fabs, all of which ALREADY are 0.18. AMD has one, which is in the process or being ramped up. The suggestion that AMD with this one really big fab can out MANUFACTURE Intel with a bunch of really big fabs is just ludicrous.
Of course, Intel does not have the capacity to supply the industry, either. We saw that last year. However, Intel does have much more capital and no debt, and is putting two new fabs up this year. Intel can recover from manufcaturing problems because they have money.
Folks, this is NOT an issue of who has the better chip. There is virtually not performance difference between Pentium III and Athlon (if anything, Pentium III has a significant advantage right now because it can do MP and is available with much bigger and faster caches). All the OEM's want is parts. This is an issue of manufacturing.
Worst case scenario (for Intel) is that they drop to about 50% marketshare. Is that bad for Intel? You bet. Their market cap would go on a free fall.
I do believe that AMD is undervalued and that Intel is ludicrously overvalued. Does that mean Intel will go bankrupt and AMD will be worth 1/3 trillion dollars next year? No, but probably they will come a bit closer in price (perhaps even the same order of magnitude)
I like AMD, Intel annoys me, but I'm not ready to dismiss them. The article is right, Intel is hurting, but while a drop in margins will hurt their valuation, they aren't near bankruptcy.
They can throw HUGE amounts of resources into fixing their woes, which is a nice reserve. They have to accept a LARGE decrease in margins, especially as the Intel name means less and ceases to give them a premium.
Intel has massive manufacturing might and can crank up production on lower cost chips. Corporations aren't ready to adopt Athlon for mission critical systems, although that may change. Microsoft's decisions will also make a key difference. Will Microsoft realize an AMD optimized compiler? Will Microsoft release software (including NT/Win2K) optimized for the AMD system? Will third parties release drivers that don't suck it up under AMD chipsets (see the GeForce fiasco, mentions on Tom's site)?
Realize that for servers, a few hundred dollars in savings is trivial for the Intel guarantee. AMD will have trouble stealing the NT market from Xeon. The Linux market, however, could be theirs for the asking if they contributed optimizations for GCC to make it optimized for their processor. If Red Hat made an Athlon Linux (all the software recompiled to scream on an Athlon), it would hand them that market.
AMD has a HUGE opportunity hear, but the rest of the industry has to play along. A strong AMD and Intel duking it out for the x86 server market is GOOD for the industry, but we'll see what happens.
Alex
I guess that when another OS comes out that can do what M$ does and ALSO allows people to run there legacy M$ programs it will take the dominate place in the market if it is better.
Please don't tell me about wine and linux and vmware, cause they do not completely fit the bill. Wine suffers from the fact that it cannot run all of M$ products and results usually vary from user to user to much at this time. Maybe when corel's changes get in there it may make a difference, but not enought to make people switch.
Yes I also know that there are substitutions for Word and Office, but flat out some people just have to run word, or just want to run word cause there is some feature in M$ product that they like .
As far as vmware goes, when I tried it my cdrom started going to crap. They write there own driver for the system (under Linux atleast). I had other problems with upgrades to vmware not working and not letting me install new programs in a vmware sessions. It also does not handle all the hardware that it should. They need to write a proper program (IMHO) that does not make the kernel modules that it makes. There is already a cdrom driver why reinvent the wheel, so they can do what they want with the cdrom?
I'll look forward to seeing if Netscape can make a comeback with Netscape 5.0......
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